Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Simpsons - When were they last funny?
Posted by N2Peach on 1 October 2010 - 12:06pm.
Some things rotten, very rotten in the state of Groening. Many evenings I have sat with my 8 year old attempting to laugh at the Simpsons and errr failed. Its clever, very clever . In fact perhaps too clever for its own good. But funny -no,no. When did the rot start? Perhaps about 5 years ago, did they get new writers in because the funny bone then began to dissapear.
My 8 year old now wants it switched off. Imagine the heartbreak. Please some one let me know what is happening?
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Perhaps its......
Overfamiliarity.
Everything was better in the past.
Family Guy
changed everything for me. It took a while, but it simply left the Simpsons looking dated, routine and tired. Is that unfair?
Totally agree
except it happened overnight for me. Even the old 'Simpsons', back when they were good - and it has been years since then - seem didactic, sentimental, cloying, Bart and Lisa plain irritating, by comparison.
Family Guy is starting to wane,
IMO. The Cleveland Show is much funnier to my brain.
Family Guy's moment's been and gone
but it was still a line drawn in the sand. The 'New Rose' of post-Wait Til Your Father Gets Home family-orientated American animated comedy.
A genre forever to be known as
PWTYFGHFOAAC.
cleveland
Cleveland funnier than family Guy ??
not through my eyes.
King Of The Hill
is the pick of the bunch.
My research shows that,
Season Eight was the last consistently funny season, the standard started to dip in season nine, season ten had fewer quality episodes than nine and season 11 started with the truly awful Mel Gibson episode and is generally weak throughout the entire run. After that it was downhill all the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons_(season_9)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons_(season_10)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons_(season_11)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons_(season_12)
The days of me sitting down every Sunday
to catch the latest episode on Sky 1 are long gone.
But I do find myself catching episodes I haven't seen before and laughing at some really sweet comic runs. Homer still got it.
South Park is still pretty consistently doing really strong episodes
Intelligent Life...
..addressed this question sometime last year.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/bee-wilson/homer-v-mickey
Learned... it's pronounced learned,
Scholars maintain that the rot started when Seymour Skinner was revealed to be Armand Tamsarian.
Series 3-8 are some of the best TV ever though.
Up Arrow for Art
Spot on. These are the DVDs I own and I won't be buying any more.
"The year is 1965 and you and I are undercover detectives on the speedway circuit - now let's burn rubber, baby!
SPEEDWAY SQUAD - IN COLOR!"
Then again....
It could all just be a matter of opinion.
I still love it and think Family Guy's rubbish so each to their own.
Could it have been more than 11 years ago...
... when Groening started to put his efforts into Futurama?
Ker-azy Homer
The Simpsons faded when it became the crazy Homer show. I think that was around about series 9, when the humour increasingly depended on Homer doing stupid things that made little sense as opposed to doing understandable things in a stupid way. If that makes any sense at all.
Series 3 to 8, as noted above, are pure comedy gold. Few TV comedies will top Homer going to Krustie's Klown Kollege...
Thankfully, Futurama picked up the baton and is incredibly consistent, no doubt helped by being canned after 4 series... (I haven't seen any of the new revived series though - does it still have the magic?)
Seconding Futurama over all the above
...not seen the revivicated Series 5 yet, but reviews seem fairly positive.
When it started to get inappropriate for children
I know that sounds pompous, but when Homer makes a joke about masturbation and the 8 year-old and the 6 year-old want the joke explained, I would rather, erm, handle that issue (if I have to) at another time.
Is it possible?
Has any programme ever kept up a high standard over that many series? Genuine question.
The secret is knowing when to quit
Seinfeld bowed out at the right time (regardless of what you think about the last episode) managing 9 series, which in turn fed Larry David's last glorious season (7 and counting). The Larry Sanders Show(6 seasons) are all gems. Cheers did okay for it's 11 seasons.
The Simpsons is too much of a cash cow for Fox to abandon -more here in the ever-reliable wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons
For some reason
...I decided to watch all 10 series of Friends - I know it's unrealistic, and the characters range from annoying to very annoying, but I'm 7.5 series in and it's holding up very well - I'm not much of a chuckler, but I usually manage an audible laugh or two per episide...
I love Friends
or Chums as Wesley Snipes insists it's called in England. It's a long story.
Not if you love
the combined brilliance of Michael Sheen and Tina Fey...
Well played, Sir!
Great clip.
good to see that the peak is pretty much agreed upon as being
roughly series 3 to series 8. i'd say 2 has a lot of very excellent stuff in it too and that the slide really started as early as series 7 but hey. i think the real nail in the coffin was the Movie. folks i knew who'd defended it even into the recent years *hated* it.
the peak years really were bloody golden though.
Good question
When did The Simpsons turn into just a show among others?
Now it´s maybe two or three laughs per episode. I used to literally roll on the floor. I realise it would be impossible to still have the same impact and maybe it´s me/us more than them.
But, as said above, the peak years really were great.
Guess they´re the The Rolling Stones of yellow families, more attractive for the memories of past than the present.
I bought the first 10 boxes of the Simpsons
then decided it was getting stale. Taken in context of when it was first broadcast though, series 3 to (pff) 8? 9? were up there with the best cartoons.
and yet, 10-15 years later and I fin myself returning to Futurama more than I watch the Simpsons.
Still not a patch on Bugs or Tomanjerry in their pomp though.
Famous guests
It lost something when they started to use guest voices regularly.