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I would say that it’s been about three years now since the venerable Simpson's jumped the shark. Having placed their heavy-handed, didactic agenda forwarding ahead of humor, the show has devolved into a GI Joe cartoon lacking only the ending’s lesson recap (Because knowing is half the battle!). The Simpson's would be only slightly funnier if they simply flashed "Republicans are the Debil" and "Vote Democrat" to a soundtrack of looping Homer "D'oh's." At least then my intelligence wouldn't be insulted at the thought of 27-year old latte-sipping writers freshly graduated from NYU thinking they're pulling a fast one on me by subliminally seducing me with their puerile Marxist worldview.
To the current Twenty-something generation of rotational Simpson's writers, you have the legacy of doing to The Simpson's the same thing that Lorne Michaels eventually did to Saturday Night Live. The episode of The Simpson's where they wrote in a cartoon figure of Peter Griffin and labeled him Plagiarismo is especially ironic, since The Simpson's pathetic attempt at infusing Family Guy's left-driven humor into the previously apolitical Simpson's was a last-gasp, desperate attempt to remain topical and cutting-edge. Or so they thought.
In copying the left-leaning Family Guy, the "next gen" of Simpson's writers have failed at the most important aspect of a situational comedy: Family Guy is funny.
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Did you ever see the episode of South Park that explains why Family Guy isn't funny? I always thought it was funny, too. Until I saw that episode.
Posted by: doinkicarus
at August 23, 2007 6:43 PM
The Simpsons jumped the shark after season 8. Yes, a decade ago. That's the last time they made an episode that belongs in the top 50, and it was the acme of the show: remember Hank Scorpio?
Yeah, season 8. It's been going downhill ever since. I tried turning it on last season just to see where it had gone, and it involved Homer going to India. It was painful.
Posted by: Bryan Pick
at August 30, 2007 10:46 PM
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