American Dad makes "topical" joke...

[Hype]

Bowling team name...

[JOEinPHX]

Ha!!!

[Jasper]

I remember when Dave was mentioned in that Family Guy Star Wars thing.

[JOEinPHX]

Seth must be a Jane's fan.

[Hype]

Seth must be a pothead.

[JOEinPHX]

Seth must be a Jane's fan.

[Hype]

[Larry B.]

Always loved that scene. 'Ice to see yoo' also always cracks me up.

Looking for another McBain scene I saw this website: http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/ukcuts/1. Had no idea the UK censored bits of The Simpsons.

[Tyler Durden]

I stopped watching The Simpsons in 1995. True story.

[JOEinPHX]

I stopped watching The Simpsons in 1995. True story.

Me too.

I tried watching it last night for the first time in years, and didn't laugh a single time the entire episode. It's turned into this weak show for little kids. No adult humor whatsoever. They spent 20 minutes trying to write a twilight book. WTF? How is that funny?

[Lokus]

I stopped watching The Simpsons in 1995. True story.

Ditto.

[kv]

x20 million

[Tyler Durden]

I bet Adurentibus Spina (aka Hypersonic) had no idea his thread was going to turn into an intervention.

[Turncoat]

I once went through the list of episodes in each season and decided that 1999 was the last decent year for The Simpsons... not great anymore, but enjoyable... and after that is when it just got sad... but that's just me...

I used to look forward to October, every year, and try to watch every single old special in syndication... but I even gave up on that... I've also made a point to watch every new Treehouse Of Horror, even though it's the only episode I'll see from each season... this year was just bleak.

[CaseyContrarian]

The Simpsons died with Phil Hartman.

I once went through the list of episodes in each season and decided that 1999 was the last decent year for The Simpsons... not great anymore, but enjoyable... and after that is when it just got sad... but that's just me...

I used to look forward to October, every year, and try to watch every single old special in syndication... but I even gave up on that... I've also made a point to watch every new Treehouse Of Horror, even though it's the only episode I'll see from each season... this year was just bleak.

[JOEinPHX]

The Simpsons died with Phil Hartman.

i would agree with this summation.

[Hype]

The exact moment the Simpsons died was Season 9, episode 2 -- "The Principal and the Pauper". The episode with "the real principal Skinner" (who has since been forgotten on purpose, as per the end of the episode). Harry Shearer was, and has been many times, very vocal about this being a direct violation of what made the show great in the first place, which is that it wasn't a fucking cartoon, it was social criticism and timeless commentary on the American family in an animated vehicle.

The source of this horrible transgression? Ian Maxtone-Graham. By his own admission, when he joined the show (by the way, all the way back in Season 7 his presence was being felt, but only in the form of a terminal disease that gestated for a couple years but fulminated from Season 9 onwards, violating the rotting carcass ceaselessly for the last 14 years), he had never seen an episode of it before, and couldn't keep some of the characters' names straight (infamously, he fucked up Rod and Todd Flanders), and also thought the show SHOULD be more "cartoony" (going so far as to, in season 10 if I recall, have Homer say "Cartoons don't have to make sense!" with a character like the Great Gazoo (from the Flinstones I think?) appear saying "He's right you know."), with far more emphasis on sight-gags and painfully stupid topical jokes and guest-stars, rather than on timeless social issues.

CaseyContrarian is at least partially correct, as well, since Hartman's characters were extremely useful plot/humour devices in the original style of the show.

So yeah. I've thought about this a lot, and could say a lot more, but I'm exhausted. Good evening.

[Larry B.]

[CaseyContrarian]

The exact moment the Simpsons died was Season 9, episode 2 -- "The Principal and the Pauper". The episode with "the real principal Skinner" (who has since been forgotten on purpose, as per the end of the episode). Harry Shearer was, and has been many times, very vocal about this being a direct violation of what made the show great in the first place, which is that it wasn't a fucking cartoon, it was social criticism and timeless commentary on the American family in an animated vehicle.

The source of this horrible transgression? Ian Maxtone-Graham. By his own admission, when he joined the show (by the way, all the way back in Season 7 his presence was being felt, but only in the form of a terminal disease that gestated for a couple years but fulminated from Season 9 onwards, violating the rotting carcass ceaselessly for the last 14 years), he had never seen an episode of it before, and couldn't keep some of the characters' names straight (infamously, he fucked up Rod and Todd Flanders), and also thought the show SHOULD be more "cartoony" (going so far as to, in season 10 if I recall, have Homer say "Cartoons don't have to make sense!" with a character like the Great Gazoo (from the Flinstones I think?) appear saying "He's right you know."), with far more emphasis on sight-gags and painfully stupid topical jokes and guest-stars, rather than on timeless social issues.

CaseyContrarian is at least partially correct, as well, since Hartman's characters were extremely useful plot/humour devices in the original style of the show.

So yeah. I've thought about this a lot, and could say a lot more, but I'm exhausted. Good evening.

Just using Hartman as a marker. I appreciate your insight, because I've long had a theory about all comedies: when the gag lines could be uttered by ANY of the characters, then it's toast. What you've described about Maxtone-Graham seems to confirm this. Lisa should not say a line that Moe could say and vice-versa.

It's also the reason why all Aaron Sorkin writing is garbage outside the subject matter of the show. Don't be fooled by the "intelligence" of the writing or the pace of the delivery. It's hack work.

[Hype]

The exact moment the Simpsons died was Season 9, episode 2 -- "The Principal and the Pauper". The episode with "the real principal Skinner" (who has since been forgotten on purpose, as per the end of the episode). Harry Shearer was, and has been many times, very vocal about this being a direct violation of what made the show great in the first place, which is that it wasn't a fucking cartoon, it was social criticism and timeless commentary on the American family in an animated vehicle.

The source of this horrible transgression? Ian Maxtone-Graham. By his own admission, when he joined the show (by the way, all the way back in Season 7 his presence was being felt, but only in the form of a terminal disease that gestated for a couple years but fulminated from Season 9 onwards, violating the rotting carcass ceaselessly for the last 14 years), he had never seen an episode of it before, and couldn't keep some of the characters' names straight (infamously, he fucked up Rod and Todd Flanders), and also thought the show SHOULD be more "cartoony" (going so far as to, in season 10 if I recall, have Homer say "Cartoons don't have to make sense!" with a character like the Great Gazoo (from the Flinstones I think?) appear saying "He's right you know."), with far more emphasis on sight-gags and painfully stupid topical jokes and guest-stars, rather than on timeless social issues.

CaseyContrarian is at least partially correct, as well, since Hartman's characters were extremely useful plot/humour devices in the original style of the show.

So yeah. I've thought about this a lot, and could say a lot more, but I'm exhausted. Good evening.

Just using Hartman as a marker. I appreciate your insight, because I've long had a theory about all comedies: when the gag lines could be uttered by ANY of the characters, then it's toast. What you've described about Maxtone-Graham seems to confirm this. Lisa should not say a line that Moe could say and vice-versa.

It's also the reason why all Aaron Sorkin writing is garbage outside the subject matter of the show. Don't be fooled by the "intelligence" of the writing or the pace of the delivery. It's hack work.

Yeah. Hartman was a good place to stop. There's another one that I forgot to mention last night. Even after Maxtone-Graham took on a larger role and the show started its downward spiral, there was a KEY element that remained from the earlier years, though in a lesser capacity, which would explain why you get the odd decent episode a year up until the year 2000: John Swartzwelder. Swartzwelder almost single-handedly (with the exception of Halloween episodes and a few other collaborations) wrote 59 (!!!!) episodes of the show, most of which occurred in the golden era between Season 4 and Season 7, and he was almost certainly involved in the process of most of the others. His writing was a major part of what gave those great episodes their timbre and flavour. He had an obsessive tendency to embed references to 19th Century Americana into the show, including things like Bart's and Abe's use of 1890s grizzled-gold-prospector speak, e.g.: "Con sarnit" and "Dag nabit", as well as the historical flavour of many of the episodes. He also had an absolutely brilliant sense of humour that gave Homer most of his character. In 2000, he quit the show and began writing books which he self-publishes. They are fucking brilliant. Buy them: http://www.kennydalebooks.com/