Posted on 09/26/2011 8:12:50 AM PDT by no gnu taxes
I used to love this show. As a young adult in 1990, when I first heard about the show, I scoffed at it, figuring it was some lame effort at crude humor aimed at the lowest elements. But when I watched it, I saw it had a brilliant take on society, and every show had a positive message overall.
Sure they had political spoofs. But I thought they were fair and even handed.
Then around 2000, the show went downhill rapidly. The writing became crap, and the show slowly started turning MSNBC. The end of of my watching this show became around 2003 or 2004 when they had something like 3 straight episodes trashing the Iraq War with an obvious anti-Bush bias.
I guess if you were an Olbermann fan, you'd have liked it still, but now the show makes me want to vomit. I don't think I've seen an episode in 6 years, and from what I see on other forums, I'm probably right.
I tend to think other Freepers feel the same way.
I’m thinkin’ it was unwatchable on Day One. I guess I don’t know how disgusting it is/was, as I can’t even sit through one of the commercials much less an entire show.
I still enjoy the Simpsons. It does poke more fun at conservatives but most sitcoms do. I just try to dismiss the bias. The characters really crack me up; especially C Montegomery Burns.
I liked when Moe pulled a shotgun on a customer who tried to use Sacajewea dollars.
I liked the movie better than the shows.
I’m more of a movie person. I don’t like TV shows.
Frank: "Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?"
Hawkeye: "Saves time, Frank."
Guess the same thing could be said of my reaction to watching "Family Guy"--saves time!
Forgot to mention in my last post.... I haven’t watched any television in about nine months. It all is liberal poison and mindless garbage with no value at all in my opinion.
The Simpsons used to be one of the more conservative shows on TV.
When the Treehouse of Terror shows began airing in November.
Yes it did. The shows now are blatantly different from the peak 90s period shows which are still funny.
When did you watch it?
I think a lot of people who trashed this show from the start don't realize this. I THOUGHT the Simpsons at the start was going to be what it turned into 10 years ago. Sure there was a lot of silly, irreverent humor back then, but every show ended with a positive conservative message. It was really the show's charm at that time.
My favorite will always be the "stay home from church" moon waffles episode.
Futurama, IMO, best animated series of that type. Though the newer episodes started to get smutty, I check them out online.
It jumped the shark when they killed Flander’s wife... or when Phil Hartman died.
IMO...the most conservative-friendly network animation show in the last 10-15 years is King of the Hill. And it actually follows a plot for the duration of the show as opposed to being built along a string of little quips held together with fart jokes. But The Simpsons is still better than Family Guy or American Dad. I just don’t get Seth MacFarlane’s “humor” at all.
We can make a general measure a person’s maturity easier than a general measure of how a cartoon series changed.
Still, “unwatchability” is measured. Nielsen and others do so. The show continues to have high ratings. Higher than unwatchable.
Nevertheless most mature adults will find that the newer shows of the series are not fun anymore. The dissonance between what the mature adult has come to learn about life contrasted with the show’s silly caricatures, the sophomoric challenges to morality and establishment, are glaring. Whereas older shows — well over a decade old, wear two veils that hide the galling dissonances. One, that one watches them with the remembrance and recollected perceptional framework of one’s bygone but cherished youth. Two, the imaging of morality and social mores is aged, those issues are not of the current moment piquant, many are more settled, the times have moved on.
The fan has matured. The show has not.
The earlier shows were often fairly conservative in tone. An evangelical Christian was a regular cast member and the Simpsons are just about the only family on TV that go to Church regularly.
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