As a proponant of comedy that goes on just a little bit too long, I have to second the brilliance of the rake scene. I also do a bang on impersonation of Sideshow Bob’s little grunt.
“Yehaggghr.” thwack! “Yehaggghr.”
What jokcey episode? Because as all Simpsons fans know, the jockey episode never happened.
You hear me? Never. Happened.
See, the problem, as I see it, with this thread is that one man’s trash is another man’s really funny joke. I was pretty well helpless with laughter after the knifey-spoony bit, and Sideshow Bob’s rake scene is one of the best scenes that the show ever produced, IMHO.
That said, the lamest, stupidest, most obvious joke I ever saw on The Simpsons was “Remember, kids! Never trust anyone over thirty! And now, here’s Peter Frampton.” So anvilicious.
The rake bit is brilliant, IMHO.
One gag I always hated was Fat Tony having a laser sight on his icepick. Don’t know why, it just really irritates me.
I’m just glad that this thread wasn’t titled ‘Worst. Simpsons Joke. Ever.’
This bit struck me as over the line:
[the kids are on a field trip to a post office]
Skinner: Well, children, any questions for Postmaster Bill?
Nelson: You ever gone on a killing spree?
Bill: [laughs] No, no! The day of the gun-totin’ disgruntled shooting up the place went out with the Macarena!
Skinner: Well, I’m just glad I work in an elementary school.
This post reminded me of it and made me crack up.
Worst bit I can think of is at the state fair when Homer kept giving Lisa the thumbs up.
Yeah, you’d think all those people who burned Dixie Chicks CDs should have been all over that.
Oh wait, they only care about respecting presidents they voted for. Never mind.
That would be the quince log…
Interesting at the wide variety of reactions. The rake bit is one of my favorite bits and one of the few bits that’s become incorporated into my daily vocabulary (the “yohrrrer” part, not the stepping on rakes part).
Yes yes. Well put.
That having been said, one particular joke that infuriates me is from the Y2K treehouse of horror episode:
I forgot exactly how it was setup, but I believe it was something to do with Homer forgetting to make things Y2K compliant. The millenium hits and of course everything electronic in the world starts malfunctioning. And then things non-electronic.
So here it is: Homer takes the milk out of the fridge and it suddenly has holes in it spraying milk all over the place. ROTF! I thought that was hilarious, probably the best moment in the whole bit.
UNTIL
Lisa: “It has a computer chip in it. Everything does.”
GAH!! Why the heck did you feel the need to explain it!!! The idea of a carton of milk malfunctioning because of Y2K - brilliant.
It’s sorta the way midiclorons completely ruined the whole force.
In one of the more recent episodes, the Simpsons have money trouble (again). There are two jokes that stand out as being terrible though I can’t really explain why. One has Homer going to the bank and applying for a loan, and then going behind a bush and pretending to be Marge and his kids. The voice he does for the kids is really annoying. In another scene, the family is meeting to discuss the money troubles, and Homer remarks that he spent the last of their money on the cowbell he’s holding. Then it calls apart, and he yells “Damn you Ebay!” For some reason that just seems like a desperate attempt to have a tendy popculture reference.
Didn’t they do the rake gag TWICE in that Sideshow Bob episode? I just thought they dragged it on too long. I did think it was funny that there were just all these rakes there in a circle in the middle of nowhere for no particular reason.
I like the Peter Frampton/over 30 line too. Maybe a bit obvious, but still funny.I found Homer’s attempt to sound like his kids was friggin’ hilarious. A friend of mine can do an imitation of the voice perfectly. I do agree with the eBay reference, though.
I think the flat out stupidest Simpsons scene was at the end of an otherwise fairly decent episode (1890’s house, maybe?) where they apparently had 30 seconds to fill at the end. So for thirty seconds they had Homer looking into the end of the garden hose with Bart turning it on and off while the rest of the family laughed. As Krusty would say, “What the hell was that?”
I haven’t seen the episode, but that’s sounds like a certain classic 1890’s film clip - one of the earliest surviving films, and possibly the first comedy ever shot.
You win.
Thank you! I just looked it up. http://www.orbitalreviews.com/pages/full/Sprinkler.shtml. It is, in fact, “A Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895)” – “In the very short skit, a gardener is watering his property when another guy comes up behind him, without his knowledge, and steps on the hose, cutting off the water supply. The gardener then looks into the hose, at which point the other guy lifts his shoe up and the water sprays all over the gardener’s face,”
So I take it back – it still wasn’t very funny, but at least it maintains the Simpson’s tradition of clever obscure nods to Pop culture .
No, see, that’s what makes it hilarious. The bit is a reference to a film made in 1895, the same year as in the reality show they were on!
Genius.
The “Yvan Eht Nioj” thing in that N’Sync episode would have been great if they hadn’t explained it and based the rest of the episode around it. Explaining jokes = bad.
A lot of stuff in the “outsider art” episode wasn’t funny – Jasper Johns just stealing stuff. Homer in the famous paintings.
There were some funny things in that episode, but a lot of it was lame.
I saw an episode that was so bad that I seem to have blocked most of it out. All I remember is that it was amazingly unfunny and whatever humor was attempted was bizarrely rude. The worst of it was the following gag:
Marge goes to an exercise class. While she is doing one of the exercises, we hear panting from one of the other students. The camera angle changes and we see that the guy is panting because Marge’s hair is rubbing against his crotch. 