Posted on 02/16/2003 7:20:22 AM PST by ex-Texan
The Simpsons -- Who turned America's best TV show into a cartoon?
By Chris Suellentrop
At some point during its 14-year run, The Simpsons turned into one of the best sitcoms on television—and that's not a compliment. At one time, to call The Simpsons the best show on Fox would have been a vast understatement; to say it was the best sitcom on television would have been inadequate; and to describe it as the greatest TV show in history would (and still does) minimize its importance by limiting its cultural impact to the small screen. Who knows when it happened—maybe it was when Homer visited the leprechaun jockeys in Season 11, or when he was raped by a panda in Season 12—but for several years, watching The Simpsons chase Ozzie & Harriet's record for the longest-running sitcom has been like watching the late-career Pete Rose: There's still greatness there, and you get to see a home run now and then, but mostly it's a halo of reflected glory.
The hype surrounding this Sunday's 300th Simpsons episode (actually the 302nd because Fox isn't counting two holiday "specials") has underscored the show's decline. To celebrate the milestone, Entertainment Weekly picked the Top 25 episodes in Simpsons history: Twenty-four of them come from 1997 or before, meaning that only one comes from the past five seasons (which, not coincidentally, is the time period from which EW selected its "Worst Episode Ever"). Similarly, USA Today published a top-10 list written by the fan who runs the best Simpsons site on the Web. He picked nine shows from 1993 and before, and the other was from 1997. The newspaper also asked Simpsons staff members to select their 15 favorite moments and episodes, and only one person (Al Jean, the show's executive producer) chose something that happened within the past five years. Even as fans, critics, and staff members rejoice in the show's amazing longevity, they all agree: The past five or six seasons just haven't been up to snuff.
Who's to blame for this state of events? Some of the die-hard fans who populate the news group alt.tv.simpsons have settled on a "lone gunman" theory—that one man single-handedly brought down TV's Camelot. One problem: They don't agree on who's hiding in the book depository. Many fans finger Mike Scully, who served as executive producer for Seasons 9 through 12 (generally considered the show's nadir). Others target writer Ian Maxtone-Graham. Scully and Maxtone-Graham, both of whom joined the show after it had already been on the air for several seasons, are cited as evidence that The Simpsons lost touch with what made it popular in the beginning—Matt Groening's and James L. Brooks' conception of an animated TV family that was more realistic than the live-action Huxtables and Keatons and Seavers who populated 1980s television. Unlike other TV families, for example, the Simpsons would go to church, have money problems, and watch television.
But under Scully's tenure, The Simpsons became, well, a cartoon. In A.O. Scott's Slate "Assessment" of Matt Groening, he wrote that Groening is "committed to using cartoons as a way of addressing reality." But in recent years, The Simpsons has become an inversion of this. The show now uses reality as a way of addressing itself, a cartoon. This past Sunday's episode featured funny references to Spongebob Squarepants, the WNBA, Ken Burns, Tony Soprano, and Fox programming, but the Simpsons themselves, and the rest of the Springfield populace, have become empty vessels for one-liners and sight gags, just like the characters who inhabit other sitcoms. (Think Chandler Bing.)
The Simpsons no longer marks the elevation of the sitcom formula to its highest form. These days it's closer to It's Garry Shandling's Show—a very good, self-conscious parody of a sitcom (and itself). Episodes that once would have ended with Homer and Marge bicycling into the sunset (perhaps while Bart gagged in the background) now end with Homer blowing a tranquilizer dart into Marge's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years. Writer Mike Reiss admitted as much to the New York Times Magazine, conceding that "much of the humanity has leached out of the show over the years. … It hurts to watch it, even if I helped do it."
But can you blame one person for it? It would be nice to finger Maxtone-Graham, who gave a jaw-dropping interview to London's Independent in 1998. In it, he admitted to hardly ever watching The Simpsons before he joined the staff in 1995, to brazenly flouting Groening's rules for the show (including saying he "loved" an episode that Groening had his name removed from), and to open disdain for fans, saying, "Go figure! That's why they're on the Internet and we're writing the show." But just because Maxtone-Graham is a jerk (or at the very least, shows colossally bad judgment in front of an interviewer) doesn't mean he's a bad writer. On top of that, a show like The Simpsons is the product of so many creative individuals that it's difficult to blame one person—even Scully, the onetime executive producer—for anything.
So, instead, there are a few conspiracy theories for the show's not-quite demise. Perhaps the problem is too many cooks, as staff legend George Meyer implied to MSNBC.com: "We have more writers now," Meyer said. "In the early days, I think, more of the show, more of the episode was already in the first draft of the script. Now there's more room-writing that goes on, and so I think there's been a kind of homogenization of the scripts. … Certainly, the shows are more jokey than they used to be. But I think they also lack the individual flavor that they had in the early years." Another theory lays the blame on the show's many celebrity guest stars, which have made the show resemble those old Scooby Doo episodes where Sandy Duncan, or Tim Conway and Don Knotts, would show up just for the heck of it. Still others think the problem is the show's brain drain: Long-absent individuals include creators Groening and Brooks, actor Phil Hartman, and writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss (who both left briefly to do The Critic), Greg Daniels (still doing King of the Hill), and Conan O'Brien (who has been linked to the show's decline so many times that Groening once called the theory "one of the most annoying nut posts" on the Internet).
But maybe no one, not even a group of people, can be held responsible. Simpsons determinists lay the blame on unstoppable, abstract forces like time. The show's writers and producers often subscribe to this line when they publicly abase themselves for not living up to the show's high standards. Maxtone-Graham told the Independent, "I think we should pack it in soon and I think we will—we're running out of ideas," and Meyer admitted to MSNBC.com, "We're starting to see some glimmers of the end. … It's certainly getting harder to come up with stories, no question."
An incredible anxiety of influence hovers over Simpsons writers, who realize that they are judged not by the standards of network television, but by the standards of their own show's golden age. By the end of his tenure as executive producer, Scully was making nervous statements to the press like, "Basically, my goal is just not to wreck the show" and, "Yeah, we don't want to be the guys that, you know, sank the ship." Maybe The Simpsons is killing The Simpsons by setting expectations too high. After all, even while you're wincing or groaning at a particularly lame gag, you're hoping that the show will stay on the air longer than Gunsmoke. It's hard to imagine television without The Simpsons. If it sticks around for another 300 episodes, maybe, someday, the wound of the past few seasons will be remembered like the one Maggie administered to Mr. Burns: an accident, and not a fatal one.
From the sky comes a scream, as Homer is crashing right into the Capitol. A few footsteps later, he comes running down the stairs.
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.
[unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs]
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]
That sounds like a good place to start if you're looking for when the show got in trouble. It looks like the writers, new or hold-overs, started to look at the show as an institution or franchise, rather than as something new or creative. They got lazy and self-referential and played off previous shows, rather than realities in the outside world. When the team did something new, they didn't escape winking and nudging references to earlier shows and the conventions of the series. But what makes the show different from others is that animation allows so many possibilities that a few bad shows don't make good ones impossible and drag the whole season down. It's hard to get as fed up with cartoony characters as with real actors.
Commenting on something about which one admits to knowing absolutely nothing is, as you put it, "silly". For the fans of the show, The Simpsons provides some of the most biting and memorable satire that has probably ever appeared on American television.
Homer: "Flanders was a zombie?"
I have gone WITHOUT the Simpson's since I moved in '96 to this rock in the South Pacific that doesn't HAVE Fox. Som technically, I can't say if it's declined or not. But, if I had to guess, or put one finger on anything, it would be the loss of Phil Hartman as the voice for Lionel Hutz, Attorney at Law...
I hope they use that in an upcoming episode. You have no idea how funny that sounds.
The target audience, unlike the show's characters, grew older; why else would the early episodes now be the favorites?
The notion that something can be made timeless by design is durable, even if not "doable."
While my daughter was growing up, I refused to have it on in the house; at the insistence of my neighbor who thinks the show is delightful I have been watching the daily reruns for about 3 weeks now.
I find it to be mostly boring and terribly animated.
If Homer is "everyman," then Springfield just may as well remain anonymous.
Just because we all know a "Homer," doesn't mean we care to be reminded of the fact.
And then there's the Lisa Episodes : The horror, the horror. Here's how they go:
The whole family is sitting at the table talking.Everyone but Lisa expresses an unenlightened opinion on (whatever issue). Pan over to Lisa with a sad face. The music does that two note 'thingee' to let us know this is sad . Fade to commercial.
Scene two : All of Springfield has become a lynch mob, because all of Springfield holds the same unenlightened opinion on (whatever issue) first brought up at the Simpon dinner table . So Lisa shows up and while everyone is talking, she stretched out her arms and wails, "No, No ; listen to meeeee !" Then she gives Words of Wisdumb ; the music tells us this is supposed to be uplifting; everyone 'comes around' to her way of thinking.
Scene three : Happy Ending. Roll credits.
How I loathe that cartoon character. It's sad when a grown woman loathes a bit of paint on celluloid. But I loathe Lisa Simpson.
I think the worst episode is "Bart wins an elephant". Best : The Valentine's Episode for 1993. Or maybe the Daredevil episode. Or maybe any 1993 or earlier show.
The Simpsons is beautifully drawn and filmed. It's not meant to be "The Roadrunner" in movement. This isn't claymation, it's great writing and social commentary.
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