Quote of the Day

“Hey Mom, Dad’s in a mental institution.” – Bart Simpson
“Oh my god, mother was right.” – Marge Simpson

Quote of the Day

“Bart! I asked you to watch your sister!” – Marge Simpson
“I tried to stop her, but she overpowered me.” – Bart Simpson

Quote of the Day

“Everything changes when you hit the big One-Oh.  Your legs start to go, candy doesn’t taste as good anymore . . .” – Bart Simpson

Quote of the Day

“Bart . . . Bart . . . Hey, Bart . . .” – Lisa Simpson
“Lisa, it’s six-am. Something’s wrong? Dad died!” – Bart Simpson
“No, no, he’s fine.” – Lisa Simpson
“Well, whaddya? I’m relieved.” – Bart Simpson

Quote of the Day

“Please, feel free to express yourselves. In these sessions, we want you to feel relaxed and uninhibited.” – Nurse at New Bedlam Rest Home for the Emotionally Interesting

Quote of the Day

“Your father really needs your help. You don’t want him to get a lobotomy, do you?” – Leon Kompowsky
“Hmm, lobotomy…” – Bart’s Brain
“That’s alright, son.” – Lobotomy Homer
“Well, there’s probably a downside I don’t see.” – Bart Simpson

Quote of the Day

“Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, overlooked middle child. Happy birthday to me.” – Lisa Simpson

Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!

Quote of the Day

“Homer, please, no one’s going to notice if you wear a pink shirt to work.” – Marge Simpson
“Wait a minute, go back! Zoom in!” – C.M. Burns

Quote of the Day

“Forget it, pal. There’s only one way out of here and it ain’t pretty.” – Not Jack Nicholson
“What’s that?” – Homer Simpson
“Dating the nurse.” – Not Jack Nicholson

Quote of the Day

“Bart, in the split-second before he died, I bet Scratchy appreciated his birthday present.  You see how this relates to us?” – Lisa Simpson
“Hey, you want that once a year empty gesture?  You got it, sis.” – Bart Simpson

Behind Us Forever: The Wreck of the Relationship

“Smithers, I seem to recall you had a penchant for bell bottomed trousers, back in ’79.” – C.M. Burns
“Sir, that was my costume from the plant production of HMS Pinafore.” – Mr. Smithers
“Oh, yes, of course.  Your spirited hornpipe stole the show as I recall.” –  C.M. Burns

Another week, another forgettable episode from Zombie Simpsons.  Homer and Bart get into a fight about broccoli, then end up on a father-son sailing ship.  Along the way, Homer gets scurvy, is thrown overboard a couple of times, vomits, and gets attacked by an octopus.  Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Marge runs Homer’s fantasy football team.  Both suffer from montages, expository dialogue, expository voice-overs, and the usual range of problems.

– A long couch gag ends with Scratchy’s blood splattered on the TV.  That was odd.

– And we open with repetitive shots to some guy’s nuts.  Who says the writing sucks?

– Bart and Milhouse watching a red band trailer would be a lot better if they didn’t stop to explain everything as they were doing it.

– The setup was a bit of a stretch, but Marge getting her mammogram search blocked was okay.

– Homer and Marge are having another one of their expository conversations, but this one is in the bathroom.

– This broccoli thing just goes on and on and on.  Ate up a lot of time, though, so there’s that.

– Homer takes a call from Lenny about his fantasy football draft.  Does this make any sense as dialogue with Lenny?:

Lenny: Homer, where are you?  Our fantasy football draft is about to start.
Homer: Today’s our draft!  I’ve gotta pick a good fantasy team.  When I lost last year they made me do something so humiliating….Jebus loves Tebow.

No, no it does not.

– Homer and Bart both get kidnapped in the middle of the night because how else could they get out on a boat?  This show doesn’t just take bad shortcuts.  It takes bad and unnecessary shortcuts.

– Guh, this guy is a waste of Nick Offerman’s talents.

– Trunks of life jackets just appeared out of nowhere.  One-year-olds have a better grasp of object permanence than this writing staff.  It’s astonishing.

– Hey, the B-plot just showed up.  Marge helpfully explains that she’s getting messages from Homer’s fantasy league.  Sure glad she told us that or we’d never have figured it out.

– The trash talking that so upsets Marge isn’t even funny.  It’s just lame: “Homer, your quarterback is garbage”.  Ooh, cutting!

– Homer just got scurvy for some reason.  It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but it did happen.

– Montage!  (Though maybe HMS Pinafore isn’t the kind of thing they should be reminding us of.)

– Homer’s now telling us how Bart’s feeling.  That’s a twist.

– Homer just puked for some reason.

– There are way too many useless lines for me to quote them all, but this is fairly typical:

Homer: Wait a minute.  He can’t order me around.  I’m his father.
Offerman: He’s your superior officer, so he can and will order you around.

They’re so hooked into just telling us what’s happening that I don’t think they even notice it anymore.

– The B-plot is back so that Selma could explain what’s happening and then they could do voice over to explain it some more.

– Offerman just asked Bart how he was feeling.  They really can’t go a scene without doing this.

– Remember when Lionel Hutz was tempted by liquor?  It was much better than this bit with Offerman.

– Hey, now there’s a storm.

– And now it’s giving Homer and Bart a chance to restate what’s happening for the umpteenth time.

– They really can’t stop:

Marge: So, did your sailing adventure help you work out your issues?

Anyway, the ratings are in, and it would appear that last week was a football and heavily promoted fluke.  Just 4.32 million people wished that boat sank last night.  That’s barely half of last week’s number, and is right back in line with how bad things were last year.  In fact, that number is good for #8 on the all time least watched list, and this is the earliest in a season that’s ever happened.  I still have no idea whether or not the show will get renewed again, but if these numbers keep up, there will be more stories about “Simpsons at historical low”.

Quote of the Day

“To make a tired point, which one of us is truly crazy?” – Leon Kompowski
“Not me, I got this!” – Homer Simpson

Compare & Contrast: Involuntary Commitment

"Sir!  I’m so sorry my grocer committed you.  We’ll never shop there again." – Mr. Smithers

Like the practice of medicine in general, the treatment of mental illness has a longstanding history of cruelty, incompetence and abuse.  People have undergone everything from lifetime confinement and mind changing drug regimes to electric shocks and lobotomies because of pseudo-scientific theories that often had (and have) more to do with the ignorance and prevailing prejudices of the people administering the "treatments" than they do with making the patients better.  On top of that is the frightful prospect of a mentally healthy person becoming trapped in that system and subject to its tender mercies, a fear that has driven fiction of all kinds for more than a century.

Serious drama, horror schlock, dark comedy and more have long used that and related ideas to provoke and entertain.  Some, obviously, work better than others, and there’s no way to guarantee success; but you can guarantee failure by using that powerful, well explored, and deeply rooted concept as a quick and haphazard plot twist to clean up a half-formed story and the flimsy character at its core.  In a nutshell, that’s what happened to "Diggs", a Zombie Simpsons episode so ill conceived that they couldn’t even bring themselves to put a pun in the title.

You want to do an episode about a lonely boy who’s a one kid falconry club at Springfield Elementary?  Fine.  Weirder shit than that has happened at Springfield Elementary.  You further want to reveal that said lonely boy is actually seriously mentally ill?  Okay, that’s a bit heavy for a shamelessly stupid show like Zombie Simpsons, but isn’t necessarily a problem.  Oh, you want to have the kid be involuntarily committed, have Bart find out, have Bart’s parents react with horror that he even knows such places exist, have Lisa(!) go along with it unquestioningly, then have the kid leave for a day to wrap up the plot before biking happily back to a life at the mental institute he clearly doesn’t want to be in?  Those are gonna cause problems.

To see just a few of them, take a quick look at the dinner scene where Bart has printed out (yeah, I know, ignore it) the name of the mental hospital where Diggs is being taken.  Bart can read.  He can certainly understand the words "Psychiatric Hospital" on the page he printed.  He hands it to Marge and this is what happens:

Marge: If this is what I think it is, it’s not a place we should ever ever take a little boy.
Bart: Then why is Diggs there?
Homer: Because it’s his home forever.

Marge’s reaction is bizarre in a couple of ways.  First, she’s just accepting that some kid is being permanently taken to a mental hospital?  That’s very un-Marge.  Moreover, what’s with the weirdly callous and fearful attitude?  Even if we spot them her acquiescence in this, the Marge we know and love would reassure Bart, tell him that the hospital is going to help Diggs, maybe even often to see about visitation.  Instead, she not only views it as a hopeless place too horrible to even speak of, but makes Bart feel even worse about his friend going there.

And all that’s before we get to the glaring elephant in the room: how come nobody has asked about this kid’s parents?  He’s supposed to be an elementary school student for fuck’s sake!  And not only does he not have any parents, none of the adults we do see care about it either.  Are they on vacation?  Did he run away?  Did Voldemort kill them in the Simpsons universe too?

It’d be one thing to overlook all that in a regularly nonsensical Zombie Simpsons episode that’s flopping all over the place anyway, but they play this seriously . . . over . . . and over . . . and over again, complete with sad piano music each and every time.  Diggs and his bleak future are clearly the biggest element of the story now, but the episode spends most of its remaining time on a bunch of falcons we hadn’t seen before, then ends with Diggs riding off to his fate.  How is the audience supposed to react to this?  It’s like watching someone do bad stand up right next to someone who’s getting beaten and handcuffed.

Are you sad?  Well don’t be, because here comes Milhouse!

Even topics as dour as getting hauled off for no cause can be funny, of course.  For starters, it helps to not have it be about a little kid.  (Unless it’s a Halloween episode and Bart saw a gremlin on the side of the bus, and even that made more sense than “Diggs”.)  More importantly, it has to fit in with the universe you’ve created and the story you’re telling, which brings us to "Stark Raving Dad" and "The Old Man and the Lisa".  In one, Homer gets committed to the New Bedlam Rest Home for the Emotionally Interesting by his boss for wearing a pink shirt to work and flunking an obviously idiotic take home personality test.  In the other, Burns gets committed to the old folks home because two grocery clerks decided he wasn’t capable of being in society.

Forget about what happened to Homer and Burns once they got where they were going ("Diggs" didn’t show us where its title character was going), and just compare the who and the why.  Homer gets sent up by his boss, which is a pretty terrifying prospect for anyone who’s not in management.  Burns gets sent up by a couple of dudes at the store, which is pretty terrifying for anyone.  Both are egregious abuses of authority, but they’re also absurd.  Real life grocery store employees cannot sign commitment papers, which is what makes doing it on The Simpsons so enjoyable. 

Similarly, both Homer’s and Burns’ transgressions were ludicrously minor.  Homer wore a pink shirt and checked some boxes wrong (or, rather, let Bart check them wrong); Burns couldn’t make up his mind about a condiment.  Neither can get you committed, much less by people other than doctors and judges.

Both cases take that dark concept and make it funny by changing and exaggerating it beyond reality while leaving it recognizable.  In other words, by satirizing it.  Zombie Simpsons, by contrast, took a very sad real world situation and . . . left it very sad.  I’m not sure what that’s called, but "boring" and "not funny" would be a good start.

As I said on Monday, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they dumped "Diggs" at 7:30 instead of the usual 8pm.  Zombie Simpsons episodes are typically some combination of dumb, nonsensical, boring and just plain bad; but "Diggs" managed to stand out for not only being all those things, but also stapling them to a story that would’ve been hideously depressing if it weren’t so mind numbingly stupid. 

Quote of the Day

“Mr. Simpson, after talking to your wife, we believe you’re no threat to yourself or others.” – New Bedlam Psychiatrist
“That’s the most flattering thing anyone has ever said to me.  Could I have it in writing, please?” – Homer Simpson
“Of course.” – New Bedlam Psychiatrist

Quote of the Day

“I could call ’em for you.” – Leon Kompowski
“Oh, great.  And try to put a good face on this.  Tell ’em this one of those places where rich women lose weight.” – Homer Simpson

Compare & Contrast: Megastar Guest Voices

“We want Michael!  We want Michael!  We want Michael!” – Crowd
“Here he is, here’s the guy want to see!” – Homer Simpson
“He’s three hundred pounds!” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
“He’s white!” – Woman in Crowd
“He’s dressed without flair!” – Moe
“Boooo!  Boo!” – Crowd

It would take an awful lot of words just to catalog, to say nothing of exploring or explaining, the myriad of mistakes that comprise “Lisa Goes Gaga”.  The episode had it all: bizarre and comedy free flights of fancy, unvarnished celebrity marketing, excruciatingly bad exposition, magic powers, characters acting bizarrely out of type (Lisa, Skinner, there were a lot), pointless and unrelated scenes, and, to top it all off, the entire thing may or may not have been the dream of some anonymous backup dancer.  But all of those problems cascaded from one central failing, the inability of Zombie Simpsons to handle the very famous.

Whether or not you are a fan of her songs or of the outsize public persona to which her music is only tangentially connected, Lady Gaga is undeniably one of the most famous and discussed people on planet Earth here in 2012.  She’s enormously popular with her fans, of course, but she’s also reached that rare level of fame where literally anything she does is news to the celebrity press, and her statements and actions frequently push beyond the paparazzi ghetto and into regular news.  Even a passing familiarity with popular culture requires you to at least know who she is.

This is Wikipedia’s list of Season 23’s guest stars:

Aron Ralston, Jane Lynch, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, Tim Heidecker, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Wareheim, Neil Gaiman, Andy García, Kevin Michael Richardson, John Slattery, Matthew Weiner, Kevin Dillon, Janeane Garofalo, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Dana Gould, Ted Nugent, Armie Hammer, David Letterman, The Tiger Lillies, Jeremy Irons, Michael Cera, Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage, Julian Assange, Kelsey Grammer, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Jackie Mason, Robbie Conal, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Nicholas McKaig, Kenny Scharf, David Byrne, Glenn Close, Brent Spiner, Kevin Michael Richardson, Steve Coogan, Treat Williams, Bryan Cranston, Eric Idle

There are a lot of recognizable names on that list, but in terms of raw fame, none of them are even in the same league with the one time Stefani Germanotta.  Parts assigned to a bunch of television chefs, or a talk show host, or even some well known movie star are basically interchangeable.  There are, after all, quite a few television chefs, and if Jeremy Irons doesn’t want to be the talking bar rag, there are plenty of other respectable British actors with great voices out there.  There is only one Lady Gaga.

That yawning fame gap means that you have to do something special for her.  Just having her show up as somebody’s girlfriend or rival won’t fly.  Even more importantly, it’s a fantastic opportunity.  Someone who draws that much attention from that many places opens up a nearly unlimited array of potential subjects and stories.  Zombie Simpsons wasted all that by having Lady Gaga not just play herself, but play herself as Lady Gaga the Megastar.

We’ll do what she did, and that’ll make people like us, right?
(Second image shamelessly yoinked from here.)

Twenty seasons ago, The Simpsons took a similar opportunity with Michael Jackson – who was, relative to the time, probably even more famous than Gaga is now – and turned it into one of their most memorable episodes.  Crucially, they did it by stripping Michael Jackson of everything that made him Michael Jackson the Megastar: his looks, his fame, his fashion, his sex appeal, everything.  All they left him with was his talent and his voice, which, if you’re having him play a fictional cartoon character, are the only truly important parts.

Creative, recognizable and funny will always be better than mindless repetition.

They understood that exaggerating the already exaggerated – and that kind of globe spanning fame is nothing if not the exaggeration of one person into something more than a person – was pointless.  Once someone has actually taken a chimpanzee with him on tour or gone out in public wearing a dress made of meat, there isn’t anything you can do to make the situation meaningfully stranger.  Trying to compete with things like that by making them even bigger or weirder isn’t the least bit creative, it’s just an animated imitation of something someone else is already doing.  If news broke tomorrow that Lady Gaga was touring in a pink and purple train with giant shoes on its drive wheels and a built in concert stage, you might be impressed, but you wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

By contrast, making Michael Jackson an ordinary person is a real feat.  Unexceptional and unremarkable are two things Michael Jackson never was.  From the time he became famous as a child right up until his death, Jackson was always larger than life.  But on The Simpsons (and really only on The Simpsons), he was just a guy, a bricklayer from New Jersey who liked it when people were nice to him.

That humanity is why the story in “Stark Raving Dad” has such heart to it and why the episode is unique among all the things Michael Jackson was famous for.  Bart and the rest of the town love Michael the Megastar.  For them, it’s about the album sales and the dance moves and the one white glove covered in rhinestones.  For Leon Kompowsky, however, those things are incidental to Michael Jackson, the talented boy who loves his sisters and writes songs for them.

The only time “Lisa Goes Gaga” even hinted at that kind of depth and creativity was when Lisa went off on Gaga for giving people false hope and unrealistic expectations.  All the positive attitude and self confidence in the world can’t change the fact that sometimes people fail, that sometimes life gives you lemons that cannot be turned into lemonade.  But the episode dropped that idea almost as soon as it considered it, and ended with Lisa doing things that the overwhelming majority of Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters will never get to do: meet her and sing with her and experience even a little bit of what it’s like to look upon the world from that tremendous height.  After all, there’s a parallel universe somewhere in which Germanotta stubbed her toe before an audition or didn’t meet the right people and today she’s wearing regular clothes and working at a temp agency for slightly more than minimum wage.

The Simpsons openly contemplated that idea by showing that what made Michael Jackson special would’ve still made him special even if he’d been a fat mental patient who dressed without flair and never sold a single record.  After all, his music could reach deep and bring people together even when it was played on an overturned waste basket.  Massive fame and all the glitzy trappings that come with it may be nice, but they are too impersonal to define a person or their talent.  Zombie Simpsons was too distracted by the shiny objects to notice that, so they mistook Lady Gaga’s fame and the pizzazz that comes with it as an end in itself rather than as a side effect of something more important.  Once that mistake was made, the episode never had a chance.

Quote of the Day

“Aw, she looks sad.” – Leon Kompowsky
“That’s cause she knows you’re looking at her.” – Bart Simpson
“Although I’m aware you’re looking at me, I would look exactly the same even if you weren’t.” – Lisa Simpson

[Initially scheduled this for pm instead of am.  Whoops.]

Quote of the Day

“We call this guy The Chief.  He’s been here in 1968, never says a word, never moves a muscle.” – Leon Kompowsky
“Hey, Chief.” – Homer Simpson
“Hello.  Well, it’s about time somebody reach out to me.” – The Chief

Happy 20th anniversary to “Stark Raving Dad”!  Original airdate: 19 September 1991.

Reading Digest: You Guys Are Giving the Internet a Bad Reputation Edition

“This is what Michael Jackson looks like!  You look like a big, fat mental patient.” – Bart Simpson
“You’d be amazed how often I hear that.” – Leon Kompowsky

The pop culture internet had a minor conniption this week when one of the world’s least reputable news sources, TMZ, reported as a “bombshell” (their word) that Michael Jackson hadn’t done the singing in “Stark Raving Dad”.  This is something you can find out by reading just the introduction to the Wikipedia article for that episode.  You don’t even need to scroll down, it’s right there at the top; but if you do scroll down, you’ll see a heavily footnoted section dedicated to just that as well as a photo spread titled “The three voices of Leon Kompowsky”.  And yet it was reported as news by such august outfits as The Houston Chronicle and Kaplan Test Prep Daily, as well as theoretically internet savvy outlets like television blog Warming Glow (which is named for a Simpsons reference) and music website Consequence of Sound.  To repeat, this information was in the Wikipedia article with footnotes and pictures.  Stop and take a breath before you click publish, okay?

Of course, that’s not all we have.  There’s also some information on everyone’s favorite three hundred pound president, several people who want to see the show ended, some excellent usage, and a review of that porn movie.

Enjoy.

It Was All Yellow: Reviewing the Simpsons Porn Parody – Smooth Charlie’s Click of the Week is this surprisingly positive, tongue-in-various cheeks review of the Simpsons porn movie.  I particularly like this:

However, the guy voicing Homer/playing Homer’s penis does a phenomenal Homer impression. To the point where for the first ten minutes I thought they might be using actual audio from the show. Then I realized that even in 22 seasons they would have had trouble finding a suitable response to “You like the way I suck your cock, Homey?”

520 – Taftography, or: a Conventional Portrait of the Candidate – A political cartoon featuring the face of William Howard Taft as the floor plan for the 1908 Republican Party convention.  It opens with the Mediocre Presidents song despite the fact that he isn’t mentioned in it, but that counts as excellent usage nonetheless.  There’s also some kinda awesome Taft quotes.  I could almost see this one being a Simpsons line:

I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.

The Simpsons’ latest season – A review of Season 22, which, while far more forgiving of Zombie Simpsons than I am, does contain this:

In fact, I’m starting to think that whether or not you enjoy The Simpsons at this point depends on how bothered you are that the show keeps trotting out similar storylines to earlier episodes’. I’m certain that most of the storylines in series 22 could be compared to old episodes (sometimes multiple old episodes), using characters in the same ways time and again.

That’s just crazy enough to work . . .

Simpsons Video of the Week. – New York is that a way, man!

you sunk my battleship! – Heh, some school official in Britain threatened to replace striking teachers with parents.

Top 20 TV Quotes of all time – The Simpsons has three on here, including #1.

Beauty road test – Eyelash extensions – Technically the ones on the show were implants not extensions, but this is still an excellent reference:

If you’ve ever watched back-to-back reruns of The Simpsons (and let’s face it, you have), you may be familiar with the concept of eyelash extensions. They were the secret weapon (illegal in the United States!) that allowed the curly haired Shirley Temple clone to triumph over Lisa in the beauty pageant episode. If you’ve ever watched back to back reruns of The Simpsons, you may also be aware that the show’s absurdist sense of the surreal can ultimately end up communicating fundamental truths about the world we live in.

It sure does in this case: while they may not require an illegal cosmetic surgery trip to Mexico, eyelash extensions are a secret weapon.

And yeah, it was Paraguay not Mexico, but still.

Does anybody else want the simpsons to end? – I don’t generally think of Yahoo Answers as a useful source of information.  The, um, limited coherence of the opening rant here is a testament to why, but I like the response from “Jim”, a “Top Contributor”:

They should have ended that show a very long time ago. I can’t stand that show.

TMZ Breaks a Twenty-Year-Old Simpsons "Bombshell" – Our old friend Denise Du Vernay of “Simpsons in the Classroom” fame takes a look at the non-story Simpsons story I mentioned in the introduction.  She’s got all the details; I don’t have anything to add except to point out that dumb tends to beget dumb.  

"Honey, I’m chilly. Would you turn on the art?" – Excellent usage:

"I wouldn’t take it down if I were you," advises Bart in an episode of The Simpsons. "That’s a load-bearing poster."

Bart actually says “It’s” not “That’s”, but this is about a new material that can be used to make wall hangings heat your home, so I’m still counting it as excellent usage.

The Simpsons Coverage and Panel – Comic-Con 2011 – I enjoy how pretty much the only way they can fluff the Simpsons appearance at Comic-Con is by talking about upcoming guest voices.

ASCAP Honors Top Film and Television Music Composers at 26th Annual Awards Celebration – Apparently Jay Kogen was on hand to give Alf Clausen that award.  Aww.

Suggested Viewing material – YouTube of Homer missing Lisa and trying to play her “sax-a-ma-phone”.

Simpsons World Was a Pretty Sweet Purchase – Someone got that giant doorstop of a Simpsons reference book for $30 instead of the nutbar $150 they were asking.  For thirty bucks, it appears to be a good purchase.  Amazon wants $90 at the moment though.

events : FARM’s AR conference in sunny LA – Sam Simon is going to be speaking at an animal rights convention the weekend of July 22nd.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins…In 10 Words – Mr. Poppers Possums does have a nice ring to it.

What Everyone Secretly Wants to Do to His Boss – Animated .gif of Homer getting a pretty good sound out of that guy.

Have the Simpsons overstayed their welcome? – This holds out the kind of hope I haven’t had since about Season 10:

But what I do know is that I would like to see from the show, is one final season of the show returning to its former glory — no holding back, showing its fans that there is some juice still left for it to go out with a bang. Make one final season that tops all season, stay true to the original concept but milk it for all its worth. Come out on top, because the show deserves nothing less than an excellent exit —  but in order to do this, the showrunners should first recognize that all good things must come to an end. Even The Simpsons. It will be sad, but it will be worth it rather than ending the show with dismal ratings because everybody quit on it.

It’s much too late for that.  Oh sure, if they announced right now that Season 23 was going to be it, the finale would get huge ratings.  But I doubt any of the mid-season filler would see even the tiniest bump.  

The Best TV Shows – And finally, I get to end with two people who, in a discussion of their favorite shows, both agree with us:

I say it was hilarious from seasons 1 through 12; most fans will say it started declining after season 8 and reached its nadir (which has lasted right through season 22 and is sure to continue through 23) by season 10.  Probably better than Seinfeld at its peak (seasons 4-10), the depth and breadth of its style and plotlines is remarkable.  The massive ensemble of regular characters is huge, and none of them are space-fillers; somehow the writers came up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 rich and unique characters to inhabit the town of Springfield.  Consummate skill displayed by the voice actors.  This show also satisfied the intellectual viewer like no other.

And:

Only the first 10 seasons count as Tier 1 material.  The next 13 seasons might find a place somewhere in the ballpark of Tier 25 if I’d gone that far.

Amen.

Quote of the Day

“Marge, I can’t wear a pink shirt to work, everybody wears white shirts.  I’m not popular enough to be different.” – Homer Simpson