Because of the declining quality (not sure how much you agree with that being the case), the fact that it's been over 500 episodes of the same damn show, or because you're starting to develop mental health symptoms like having dreams about that show?
The deja vu is weird. I keep running into episodes where characters say exact lines they've said before. I watched a season 22 episode where Grampa says "I'm going to give you your inheritance now. That way I can watch you enjoy it" and suddenly my brain zooms to a season 5 episode where he said that exact line. It's like show is haunting me
@@Stubagful Now I want to see for myself, but I am positive that I will be too reasonable, too busy with other things or too lazy to do so. Unless I can quickly figure out which two episodes you mean. Might kill some time during a train ride. This isn't actually meant as a request, since I don't want to make one and also think it would be difficult if not impossible to fulfil it, but what I've noticed in the past several years is that the new episodes are extremely forgettable to me in the literal sense, and I would be interested in hearing if you feel the same way. What has regularly happened is that I've read about a plot of a very recent episode and thought to myself "Guess I haven't seen that one" and then either re-watched it (the first few times) or just checked the ending (the other times) just to find out that I'd actually seen the episode. I keep wondering whether this also has to do with me having rewatched most Golden Age episodes many times, or if it is really the episodes themselves that are forgettable, regardless of the fact that I've only seen them once, at least to me.
Honestly I watched one of the more recent series and found it genuinely heartfelt, the episode in the wilderness and Lisa's brekky were some genuine standout episodes I loved
It's really sobering to see The Simpsons poke fun at the show running out of ideas and becoming stale twenty goddamn years ago. Really think about that for a moment, they've been running out of ideas for TWO DECADES now. It's a miracle this show is still capable of being even semi-coherent.
That's why one of the funniest things to come out of the Simpsons in those last 20 years was Don Hertzfeld's guest opening to it, where it shows a Simpsons literally doing that, becoming an incoherent mess of its former self to surreal exaggerated levels: ruclips.net/video/m78gYyTrG7Y/видео.html
My brothers and I noticed a strange phenomenon around this era. If we thought of a Simpsons quote during the day, that would be the episode that played on Sky that night. Eventually we realised it was just because we were thinking of Simpsons quotes all day, every day.
In your slight defense of Jerkass Homer and analysis of The Simpsons Movie, I will say it feels like Homer’s arc in that movie was a response to Jerkass Homer. In the Golden Age, there would be consequences for Homer’s actions that would run for the ENTIRE episode, and he would try his best to fix them (this shows that he has a heart and why Marge doesn’t just leave him), which is not how it goes post-Golden Age; he would do anything selfish and/or cartoonishly stupid and there’d be NO consequences, except on rare occasions and even then they’d get resolved so quickly. The Simpsons Movie has Homer act this way for the whole movie to the point where it affects his relationships with Marge and his kids and so they leave him, in other words showing that there are MAJOR consequences like in the Golden Age, which leads to Homer realizing how selfish he always was and, again just like in the Golden Age, leads to him trying to fix all of his mistakes and redeem himself in the eyes of Springfield and his family.
2:48 my local station would start at season 1 and play the reruns in order until they got within a season or two of the current one. Then they would start back over at season one. They did this for several years. I loved it.
"Basically the power structures of our capitalist system can be understood through the relationship between Comic Book Guy and Agnes Skinner." I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed that.
A fun (or not so fun) fact is that, in Spain, we consider the Golden Age to finish right with Behind the Laughter. It was the last episode with the original VA for Homer, Carlos Revilla (also former director of the European Spanish dub IIRC), as he died before dubbing the next season. It's not that current Homer (Carlos Ysbert) doesn't do a great job, and his voice isn't too different, but losing Homer's original voice AND a VA legend was too strong of a hit. Also, yes. The last sentence with Revilla's voice is "It's the last season", which makes this a very well-known fact.
You can have an abusive parent be right to escape them, but also feel guilt. And yes, your mind can plague you with the times they were good (or, your brain is just telling you that). I'm in my forties and have that, when I cut that **** loose over twenty years ago!
The Tony Blaire bit was actually one of the best in the episode 'cos after he leaves Homer says 'Oh my god! I can't believe we just met Mr. Bean' it's one of a very few jokes I did enjoy about that episode.
The Abe stuff really stings for me because he's one of my favourite characters because of the depth he had early on. He's a sweet, lonely old man who loves his family, but he was also an abusive bastard in his younger years, and it makes the relationship hard to square for homer. It's great stuff
You sound sound so exhausted about how much Simpsons you have to watch, but here I am, rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons over and over again for years. I've probably watched this show all the way through more than anyone else.
I think one thing is kinda missing in the "competition" chapter, is King of The Hill which leaned more in the direction of the genuine family style of writing so Simpsons was kinda caught between it and Family Guy for a long time
Since the influence of South Park and Seth Macfarlane’s show were mentioned, I think FUTURAMA should also be mentioned. The point at which many people say The Simpsons started declining was almost the same time that Matt Groening debuted his new series. Futurama is a show where no “Treehouse of Horror”-style episode structure is needed as an excuse to do wacky, fun, out of this world gags because anything could be canon to that mainline universe. I always felt like Groening had so much fun with Futurama’s style that it ended up influencing how crazy and meta an “average” episode of The Simpsons could get, like with the Jockey’s, the Loch Ness Monster, the Allen Wrench alien, etc.
On the subject of repeating the same episodes all the time, the Funzo and Gary Coleman Xmas episode got played so often on Australian telly that I was able to tell when that episode was on by the couch gag at the start.
"it's not the show that changed, we just got tired of it" That's definitely wrong when we can agree on which episodes are good or not. There's obviously a change
I watched a bit of an episode a year or two ago. The jokes were not bad. But they could have been written 20 years ago. The exact same kid of safe, coyly poking fun at authority and then sticking it's hand out for praise for the millionth time.
It's like the phantom season 9 theory, where if you cut out the bad episodes of season 9, 10 and 11 you have one really good season 9. People have done the same with later seasons as well, it's just the fact that around season 17, the number of phantoms seasons start to dwindle immensely.
And that kind of contradicts what he said at the start, that it can’t just be people getting tired of the show because we still obsessively rewatch the early seasons
That "imagined ending" for 'Kidney Trouble' is more or less what happened in the Futurama episode, 'Obsoletely Fabulous'. While the two episodes are not one and the same, they have similar story beats (the main character escapes from an operation, heads out to sea, meets a gang of misfits, and eventually completes said operation). Only, in the case of Futurama, Bender _does_ wake up from a dream, and actually reflects on his attitude; keep in mind, this is for a robot to whom Bender, let alone the audience, has no emotional attachment, and only appears in one episode (plus some of the movies) afterwards.
It's interesting seeing how the disscusion around post "golden age" simpsons has evolved. It used to be a case of everything post season 10/11 was just written off, but since the generation of fans during the 2000s growing up & all the episodes being widely accessable on Disney+ means there's a more nuanced discussion on the quality of the show.
i dunno about that one - i'm of said age here, and having watched most episodes at least up to around S27 (when i really just couldn't be bothered anymore), my comfort revisit zone with simpsons is completely what this apparent younger generation of fans consider doctrinaire i.e. S1 to 8 or so, occasionally rewatching the good ones from S9 to 11 too i can certainly single out the odd memorable joke or slightly above average episode from after that point, but it's hard not to think of how killer what came before was with very few genuine filler, the extraordinarily dense vs ordinarily sparse - so i do wonder how much personal standards and will to try different, better things after getting bored come into this
Remember that promo back in 1992 where Bart and Homer were talking about the end of the Cosby show, saying that if they had a TV show, they'd "run that sucker into the ground" ? ruclips.net/video/vWgI2YAupCM/видео.html
Did they show King of the Hill much in the UK? That was Fox's other animated show for adults coming out around this time so I imagined it influenced the tone of The Simpsons a little bit too, although it was far more 'grounded' than Family Guy or South Park.
I've never really watched it. But it's been aired in the UK. I'm sure it's still on somewhere, I just don't really watch TV anymore so I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's particularly popular though.
"Is the joke just Thing British?" YES. I don't know why but Americans go absolutely nuts for Thing British jokes. They weep with laughter at just normal sentences said in the UK so it doesn't surprise me The Simpsons did it
I am here five days later rewatching this video. Also I think your section on Ned Flanders 55:50 just helped me realize something about myself. This is a lot.
It's funny you say the Simpsons Movie is overall considered good, cause I've seen a lot of places that hate the movie for the overall same reasons as the "bad seasons" in this video. Honestly my biggest gripe wit the movie is, as admitted by the creators, they were basically required to go into making the movie for audiences that either never watched the Simpsons or maybe just watched the first season or two. It's why the villain is a made-up guy instead of Burns or Sideshow Bob or Hank Scorpio. And it bugs me cause when I heard that, it really made me question who they expected to watch this movie the most. They really expected people who either never cared about the show before or fell off super early would want to come back in such a massive number?
Hank Scorpio was intended to be the bad guy originally in the early drafts, but they couldn’t make him work in the script, so they made a up a new character to be the bad guy instead. Both characters are voiced by Albert Brooks.
I don't remember people thinking the movie was good. I remember the reception being "it's slightly better than most of the episodes that were airing at the time."
Regarding South Park, I'd argue that it and The Simpsons have different demographic targets. South Park is the show for teens and young adults, whereas The Simpsons is more for parents. There's some crossover between the groups, but the appeal of the shows are different because they have different goals in mind
@@Stubagful God that was such a throwback those damn tennis matches. I think the Simpsons were also not on when the day 9/11 happened and Queen Mum died too 😅 that's all I can remember from those days as i was so young 😅
In regards to the Kidney Trouble episode and the disconnect between previous portrayals of Abe’s parenting, is it not possible that Homer has only ever been focusing on the negative aspects of how he was brought up allowing them to build and reinforce his worst personality traits because that’s what people just tend to do? But, when faced with the prospect of his father’s death, reflects more on the times where Abe did show love and concern for his son, which were probably difficult to show as a struggling single father? Not that I think this is an aspect the episode was trying to get across, as I agree it treats the flashback like Abe has always been this way while never addressing how he’s been portrayed as a parent thus far. But it is an aspect that I think could explain why we have never seen this side of Abe before as Homer has never had a need to focus on it, but he has had a need to focus on the bad moments in his upbringing across the prior 9 seasons.
Ohhh! I've been looking forward to this one. Appreciate your videos, very well written and entertaining. I am almost completing my collection of The Simpsons on physical media, only 3 seasons left.
I think we give the Loch Ness monster episode a pass due to a few things. A lot of people do genuinely believe the monster exists, or at least did exist. What happens to the monster is reminiscent of King Kong, so people's minds already have something familiar to latch on to so it doesn't immediately leap out as being so outlandish. Lastly, finding Nessie was a focus for the majority of the episode and the aburdity was built up. The Jockie reveal was a sudden drastic heelturn in what was otherwise a pretty normal episode at that point.
I haven't finished watching this video yet, so please bare that in mind... but I've got to say so far this is the most pinpoint accurate, relatable video I've seen in terms of growing up as a UK Simpsons fan. I felt seen when you were talking about taping them off the television and that's why certain episodes would feel tedious. Also, your stuff on Homer and Grandpa is a brilliant take I've never really thought of in that way. Great stuff! Hope the rest is as interesting.
I've been looking forward to part 2 of your Simpsons analysis. I've been enjoying these videos. Rewatched Part 1 and the Futurama video a few days ago🤣.
What about in series 5 'The Last Temptation of Homer' where Hibbert is prepared to use a tube to send Marge and Bart to another country if they didn't have insurance, I mean he doesn't exactly do it with glee but he becomes more sinister and I wouldn't say it's sympathetic, wasn't he always sort of like that?
The Rolling Stones fantasy camp episode is a good celebrity guest star episode because it makes use of Mick and Keith as a pair and also has other rock icons like the late Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, and Lenny Kravitz. And also oh yeah when Rodney Dangerfield was on as a guest, he was sort of playing a version of his character from Caddyshack but he isn't because he is the son of Mr Burns (he was designed to have Burns's features). And Andrea Martin played Apu's mother. In the case of Sideshow Bob, it's a celebrity voiced character that went from 'guest' character to being a recurring character. And yes I didn't know it was a Prisoner parody (because I don't remember the koala at the end being part of the actual show, just thought it was a 'koalas are creepy' gag like at the end of Bart VS Australia). Marisa Tomei playing one of Ned Flander's many love interests is another good one. R.Lee Ermey didn't voice himself or a parody of his character from Full Metal Jacket in the episode he was in. Dan Aykroyd wasn't playing himself, he was Comic Book Guy's father.
Its a real testament to your ability as a video essayist that you can make a video this long whilst keeping up the same high standard of analysis you always have. Nothing felt like filler here, all the points flowed together nicely and were all worthwhile. My favourite part was the section on jerk ass homer and the assertion that he's always been a selfish jerk. Most sitcoms function because the characters are very flawed or even terrible poeple, and its somewhat bizarre to me that poeple dont recognise this. Of course this can even have real-world implications whereby poeple consciously or subconsciously emulate such behaviour when certain characters or archetypes become mainstream. I know for my own part that I haven't been immune from this in the past.
Really interesting video, i do think this era has loads of interesting episodes and ideas (but I think the same age as you means we saw these as kids). I was watching tons of the show over COVID and once i hit season 17/18 it became a nightmare to keep going. Somewhere up to season 23ish now and feel like it's picking up again. Great video as always!
I'm not a big fan of the episode, and I can see the criticism but the scene where Dr. Hibbert says that he helped himself to one of Homer's kidneys really does never fail to make me laugh my head off...
That story was likely never going to work as a Simpsons episode, but John Swartzwelder did his best to inject his brand of humour into it. The bit where he asks Marge to blow up the hospital is still funny to me.
I was in the camp that the movie should've been it. It just felt like the right ending for the show. Funnily enough, I'd stopped consistently watching during this "era" too (can't remember when), but I was still excited for the movie and loved it upon its release. All I can say is good luck with the rest of it. While this has made me consider watching more of seasons 10-18 at some point, I don't have high hopes for what's to come, haha.
"It can't be Simpsons fatigue"? Why not? This show, by all greatness, always had a pretty limited scope. So at some point it either gets too out of character or repetitive... Or both, as it did. I think Simpsons should really take a note from Southpark. Do only a few episodes each year and put all your ideas and effort into those.... And since there are, like, 3 good eps each new season, that would make so much more sense than whatever they do now.
They should end the series with the last season being completely serialized. It starts with all the cliches: Lisa and Bart fighting, marge and Homer marriage issues, Homer and Bart having issues. And throughout the season we get development that actually stick til the last episode and we slowly see them become a happy healthy family developing in ways that help each of them further their bonds. Homer becomes a better husband and father, Bart is still a trouble maker but becomes a bit better behaved due to his family being healthier, him and Lisa not fighting as much. And Maggie finally starts talking
Everybody who can actually watch this right now: Enjoy it while it's fresh! I probably won't get around to watching it until tomorrow the very earliest.
@@Stubagful I've actually just decided to watch your video :), at least as much of it as I can before I need to stop to go to sleep. (I'm an hour ahead of you.) The thing I originally wanted to do tonight is something I am both too tired and too late for to do properly. And I would risk staying up until much too late if I did it. And I'm actually also even too tired to just watch your entire video, which might result in me watching it in a way that will count as two views from me. So enjoy the free additional view if you get it. Spend it on something reasonable.
@@Aneurin_Hunt It's a behemoth compared to his other videos. Not all of them, but most, I'd say. But yes. I've watched a ten-hour plus video essay, at least in part. Not sure how long the longest one that I've watched in full was.
Your video is weird because you keep saying exactly what the difference is between the golden age and the newer era in this video and the last video while also saying people don’t know what the difference is. The difference is this: more hits and much fewer misses. And sincerity. Newer episodes (later seasons) are less sincere and miss more often than not based on the sincerity missing and the cheap inclusion of gimmicks like celebrity focus and flanderization of people and characters. You can point out that there are stand outs or areas where they “tried” but it’s a trend not a black and white thing. You’ve made those observations repeatedly but then summarize it as if there is no difference.. like all the same data but then just dismiss it all and say “we are different the story isn’t”.
I misread the title the first time as: "pre Golden Age" and was disappointed at the thought of this being a 2-hour video about those shorts and maybe season 1 and 2.
I hope adult animation takes inspiration to be the next BoJack Horseman. Although I hope its not a horrible influence were people take the wrong lessons on what made BoJack Horseman good like Watchmen and A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.
Caracatures of Robin Hood and Santa Claus(Saint Nicholas) are characters, but only Sherlock Holmes is a character without real world counterpart… what we see from Disney, Coca-Cola and others for the first two aren't REALLY nothing more than caracatures and commercial representation of real life people…
Really interesting. In regard to people thinking homer became jerk, it does show how nostalgia can add rose tilted glasses to peoples views. It reminds me when I've seen people dislike a show runner for doctor who and yet mention stuff the past show runner they love has done. For me, i used to watch the Simpsons on channel 4 as didn't have sky growing up. Episodes seemed to he very random order wise and I'm sure sometimes they'd air the first of a two parter and then not show the next one but could he wrong. Due to the order, I never really knew what season an episode was. A rewatch does sound interesting
I love the segment where you talk about how the term Flanderization has been Flanderized b/c it ignored the existence of "The World" outside of The TV Series itself - peak stuff. To be clear, I'm not a fan of the Simpsons, but when you release a feature length video - I'm going to watch it, and it's amazing to learn the term Flanderization originated from a bunch of nerds who - in a literal sense - failed to "touch grass" by not reading the room and seeing that Christianity hasn't had a positive reputation in the US for several hot minutes, so they invented an entire term on a seemingly false premise.
Spoiler for next time: it actually stops. There's an episode called "no loan again, naturally" where it resets to the Ned is a great neighbour and homer irrationally thinks he's a jerk and there hasn't been a Christianity joke since. This episode was broadcast in 2009. Christian fundamentalist Flanders hasn't been a thing in 15 years and NO ONE gave the show any credit for this. Everyone still maintains the show did this and it's still bad for doing it
I think you're strawmanning the "It's like a video game story" criticism. That is a valid thing to say (if applicable in context) because good video game stories have natural gaps where gameplay tells the story rather than dialogue or cutscenes. It's normal for a video game to have less story content than a TV show. That's how it's supposed to be. That is not how non-interactive stories are supposed to be. If a story is behaving like an interactive story, then it shouldn't be and people aren't wrong for pointing that out.
For me personally, the last season that was OVERALL good was was around season 13. there are many good episodes throughout those seasons. But around season 14 the show (for me) hit a tipping point. Of course every season has standout episodes and i enjoyed the movie enough but yeah man
I know you're still making your way through the modern Simpsons at the time of this video but in my opinion modern era Simpsons is actually better than this middle era, and could be classified as an upturn in quality. For instance they tone down the "edgy" humour that was present during this era. The greatest example of this would be Homer himself, who is often friendlier and nicer to others around him than he was during the classic era. I think the jerk-ass Homer complaints mostly come from people who haven't watched the show in years, and continue to think of the middle era as representing the modern Simpsons. I think the golden age versions of the characters feel more similar to the modern era versions than to this middle era. However one criticism I have with modern era Simpsons is the ADHD-like tone that is present in some episodes, which removes the audiences ability to get immersed in the show. This issue doesn't apply to all the modern episodes, however it is a common thing I noticed. Anyway I enjoyed the video and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show's modern age.
I am already noticing that. I'm still on season 24 and haven't had much strangulation in a while. They noticeably start dialling back on the things fans complain about. "Flanderization" actually stops - jokes where Ned's an intolerant fundamentalist vanish completely around season 20 and yet everyone talks as if this is still how the show is
@@Stubagful Exactly. it's cool for people to criticise the modern era, but in my opinion a lot of the criticism feels out of date with the current show.
@Stubagful I mean people stopped watching, so like, of course their opinions will be out of date. I don't mean that too snarkily but like, if people were so put off by the heart sort of going out of the show for awhile, it's gonna be a real can of worms to consider getting back into. And if prompted for an opinion, right or wrong, people are gonna go with where they last left off.
I feel like the same argument can be said for SpongeBob, where most people treated nearly everything past seasons 1-3 and the first movie as complete garbage due to it being different. While the later seasons do have their bad episodes, there are still plenty of good episodes from that period that just get undercut due to not being from the first 3 seasons.
I have one reservation about one of your observations, namely the one about the "Kidney Trouble" episode. I think I am roughly your age (early 30s), but I think you mad ethe mistake of judging Grandpa Simpsons' parenting my modern standards and not by the standards of someone who grew up in the 1960s. I have seen all of the golden age Simpsons and I think that Grandpa was not a bad parent, but simply a parent burdened and shaped by his era. Grandpa is a World War II veteran and a single father, so it is understandable that he has some inner demons and also some resentment towards his son who is not the brightest, but simultaneously reminds him of his wife who left him behind with all the responsibilty. Also like we all do with our own parents it is possible to love them and care for them, but also despise some aspects of their parenting, hence it would make sense that Homer would remember depressing and traumatising moments of his childhood, but also happy memories where his father was there for him. This makes Grandpa one of the most intriguing and also deep characters, as he has lived through decades of American history, but also raised his son by himself something which was unusual at the time.
I do get that parenting styles were different - but your point actually kind of underlines what I'm saying about the lack of grey areas in the Homer/Grampa relationship. From this point on, one person's always supposed to be the problem rather than a mix of the two. Homer's always treated Abe with contempt and that contempt makes sense when you saw those exchanges along the lines of "you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly". So they add the sweet moments, but they also removed the "dumb as a mule and twice as ugly" moments and you just end up sitting there thinking lesser of Homer for acting this way when he doesn't appear to have much motivation to treat Abe the way he does. I felt Kidney Trouble pushed the blame more onto Homer than it should have done. Two things can be true at the same time: Abe caused Homer some damage AND ALSO Abe has his reasons for being that parent that he was, and from what I watched, from this point on, it pushes more of the blame for their fractured relationship onto Homer, when it meeting in the middle makes more sense to me. I've actually just hit a really interesting episode in season 24 called "To Cur with Love" where it reveals Homer had a childhood dog that bit Mr Burns, and so Grampa has to get rid of the dog and Homer's memories of what Grampa did are inaccurate because obviously he was a kid and he didn't understand what was going on.
I think this is undercut by the fact that Mona is shown to be a better parent than Abe. She’s a product of her time as much as he is but she still manages to be so much kinder and more caring to Homer, who remembers her much more fondly than he does his dad. Even by the standards of the time Abe was a poor father and the fact that Homer still carries that resentment into adulthood is proof of that
I salute your dedication to watching all of this show and pointing out that a lot of this era is still worth watching even if the quality of the emotion focus episodes was pretty varied. Love the reviews Stu, keep them coming - as you can, of course. Going through the modern era must be difficult.
What about the change in animation style? For me that was a major reason for losing interest. So much of the humour was rooted in how expressive the characters were, every squash and stretch and off-model moments. But the animation became stuff and sterile and totally charmless. It was nice when there was humanity there visually. Oh, and poor Julie Kavner’s voice… it can be hard to listen to in later episodes. PS I had no idea the Simpsons movie was so well thought of. Is that a view that’s changed over time?
18:30 It feels like you're misreading Homer's abusive father. Its nor uncommon for survivors to have a positive relationship with their abuser, and the cycle of abuse has peaks and valleys. So of course when Homer is feeling guilt over his father's kidney op he is remembering a good time. The good times are sometimes what abusers have to leverage over the people they abuse.
god this channel is right up my street. I love this type of stuff, this is quintessential RUclips, academic insights into stuff from childhood. Love it
I hate the one where Maude dies it happens for no reason in a stupid way and why did Ned deserve that he's like the nicest characters it didnt hit hard but also felt mean spirited
After Maude's death he's a really nice guy. Before that he's actually a very judgmental, hateful man who puts on an act of humility because he's projecting his Christianity, usually to deny to himself that he's a sinner.
Best video I've seen on post classic 'Simpsons. I think the main reason The Simpsons was not as good from season 10 onward is because the writers started to change. Simply, the writing was not as sophisticated and no longer part of the era that those previous writers were informed by. It came to be that jokes had to be pointed out by the new writers, rather than let to just sit. They had to modify it, but as said in the video, some of the choices were admirably bold. I just don't think it works most of the time. Homer's guilt-ridden nostalgia for his father in the Kidney Trouble episode does not redefine who Abe was. I mean, in that flashback alone, Abe gave little Homer alcohol to put him to asleep. Not great parenting. We don't even know if Homer is a reliable narrator. Well, actually he usually isn't. Furthermore, Abe stole his kidney at the end, kind of cementing the pattern of him being a sh*t role model, which owes to Homer's cowardice through having this weak father figure. Ned may not have been more complex in the beginning, but he was more believable. That nice guy you kind of hate because of being too perfect. The word complex is much overused. The crazy Christian trope he became felt lazy though. I don't think holding Ned up as an ideal Christian still in 2010 would have been at all unreasonable. Consider in 2024, 75% of Americans still identify as religious, where as in the UK it's about 45%. 'Hail Mary Pass was one of the worse episodes and was too late for jump the shark. Perhaps it was massacre the shark. My brain checked out around then, although I came back a bit later searching for hits, but mostly finding misses. The Simpsons indeed wanted to be edgy like South Park or Family Guy, although The Simpsons started cut-away jokes way before Family guy. The makers of Father Ted even credited the show with this inspiration for their own writing. Examples welcome. I don't think analyzing why something is worse than it once was has to be productive. I think inherently, however, it is. We can learn greater value and how to develop as better creators or artists ourselves. It also never hurt to be discerning or to have taste. Brothers and sisters breaking up and making up seems pretty typical to me. You highlight some good nuggets from the teen episodes, as well as some terrible ones. I really did like The Frying Game, the one with the Crayon. I count Bart The Mother as classic era, as I feel the show changes half way through season 10. Mad Mad Marge is typical season 11 craziness. I like it, but it's far more sinister and wacky than the golden era. After season 11 they tried to restore some civility. "Shut up Becky!" I like most of season 11 for being the outlier. "Could this be the end of our series... of events."
If you want an animated show that manages to be good over 1000 episodes, you can try One Piece. Or you can try the much shorter live action Netflix One Piece that did the impossible of being a good live action animated adaptation.
@@Stubagful Luckily most studios makes seasons have 8 episodes nowadays. Live action adaptations of animated shows have a stigma of being worse than videogame adaptations for a good fucking reason speaking as an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan. It’s interesting that good shows from 2023 are a videogame adaptation, a live action anime adaptation, and another show staring Bella Ramsey fighting hostile fungus monsters. That third show is Hilda season 3 and how to end a show and the show overall is how to write a family.
As cringe and ill-advised as the plot twist in Principal and the Pauper is, don't let the cringe factor blind you to how freaking S-tier the jokes and dialog are, even in the most hated scenes. It's a VERY funny, acidly cynical episode. Agnes is in rare form.
In the wedding video scene in the film, the writers had nearly slipped in a joke where right before the camera would cut to the video after Marge would tearfully say "Goodbye Homie", she would get up and ask Bart to help her turn off the camera, proceeding to struggle with it. They thankfully knew that they had to back off for that scene and let the tone carry the scene.
You had me at Season 10 being the end of the Golden Age. There were some rebounds for me, such as Seasons 13 and 14 but after that I was pretty much done. The one that made me shut off the TV was The Bonfire of the Manatees. I tried a few times after that and the Movie was OK but for all intents and purposes I was done.
While not part of the main show per se, would you consider a plot analysis of The Simpsons Hit & Run? It would be easy to write off the game as just being GTA yellow which it does pull off very well - but considering that the plot involves aliens filming Springfield for money followed by them meddling with the format to increase viewership, in turn creating a zombified Springfield, I wonder if there's more to be read from this interpretation and how it fits in with the evolving quality of the post-Classic era era of the show. Great video!
As someone who watched the simpsons in Czech, I consider the 12th series to be the end of the golden age, when the original voice actor of Homer got sick and they replaced him from the 13th series. Although officially, I would stretch it up to the 15th series, when the Simpsons still radiated the right atmosphere.
“When You Dish Upon a Star” is my personal pick for where the show jumped the shark. There are great episodes that come after it, but that episode is the earliest one that I actively dislike and do not want to watch.
Glad i found someone else who actually thought regarding marge was actually a really solid episode. You hear a lot of crap about it, but its honestly quite an interesting idea
Tomacco is real. The two plants are highly related members of the nightshade family. It was first theorized in 1959. A man named Rob Baur, a Simpsons fan, successfully achieved the hybrid in 2003 and is featured on the commentary track on the DVD version of the episode. It was lab tested and found to indeed contain nicotine
The loc ness monster episode was completely erased from my mind. Even after hearing you talk about it i still have no memory of it. Its as if you just made it up
This video is seriously great but oh my lord I think I can technically file all the midrolls I watched on this as a tax break. I didn't even know this many ads could be on a video?
1:21:19 Funnily enough in 2001 when Al Jean was starting up again as show runner the contracts for the VAs had to be renewed and it NEARLY DID end the series (similar to what happened in Holidays of Future Past in 2011)
as a brazillian I agree with what was said about the episode they go to Brazil. They know nothing about the coutry except 'soccer', the time marge tries speaking portuguese is jarring and cringe, they show monkeys in the strrets of Rio, one of the biggest metropoli in the world, i wish we had monkeys there but we killed them all ages ago, it's not a freaking jungle. the jungle is as distant from rio as mexico is from canada, they act like it's all in the same place. and they can't even say Pelé right, it's not 'Pelay' it's Pelé (the final é sounds like the e in Mexico) there were other things I don't remember now. Ah, what they got right was the corruption lol
Is it weird that I actually *like* Kidney Trouble? I enjoy quite dark humour and I get this feeling that people forget that Abe was an absolutely awful father to Homer. Doesn't give Homer an excuse but I can remember my brother and i watching the moment when the car falls on Homer and we were in tears laughing. And it has one of my favourite lines of all time: "I stole zis accordion from a blind monkey, but you sicken me." But then, the internet also seems to think that Sonic the Hedgehog is sexy and that Doctor Whos golden era was "when I first got into Doctor Who" so I don't think the collective voice of insanity is a good indicator of somethings quality. Oooooh BBC 2. That's a memory
I didn't like Behind the Laughter the first time I saw it. It's very clever but it didn't seem that funny and just felt like the show giving up to me. I've made my peace with it now, but it wasn't for me. I think I stopped watching not long after at the time, because the heartfelt stuff in the show was so important to me, so my reaction was 'well if they don't care, neither do I'. That's not to take anything away from anyone who enjoys it, but everybody doesn't necessarily think the same thing y'know?
1:37:29 We didn't just get tired of it in syndication. I went through the first 9 seasons with a friend who had never seen the show before. We did not rewatch any episodes. When we got partway through season 9, he decided the show had reduced in quality enough that he wanted to stop. So, there's definitely something to the consensus of a quality drop. 55:23 They're not making him more complex. They're just making him into a strawman for views they don't like. Also, the difference between Homer being a jerk and Jerkass Homer is that jerkass Homer is intentionally cruel and unrepentant. Homer being a jerk often doesn't understand what he is doing.
1:26:14 that picture quality point is so so true. Not quite the same thing but i was watching X-Men 97 and my internet was being weak so it only displayed in like 480p for a minute or two, and let me tell you it looked GLORIOUS! It suddenly felt like an old episode, not just a continuation, and it fully made me cry. Just from the change in picture quality. I genuinely dont enjoy HD simpsons as much because it just isnt what i remember.
Because the Simpsons as a franchise has over 600 episodes over the corse of 34 years, I realised that when the show started to become popular, the show became more Quantity over quality just like SpongeBob.
Re Flanders: no, he went from the depth of the varieties of form the perfect neighbor could take to a “Christianity is the punch-line! What was the set-up?” dialogue bucket.
Season 16 is where it ended for me- I actually think 9-15 were golden. IMO, two things killed the show: a)The show became too dramatic. Every ep became a mini-drama, with too much time & resources being spent to set-up and resolve a plot. Too many jokes were jettisoned in favor of an emphasis on the plot. People don't watch cartoons for the plot! The show worked when it was mainly an excuse for jokes and parody, with any plots being of only secondary concern. b)The show became too formulaic. For just one example: Every episode started to contain at least one long(ish) montage set to a popular song. That gets old QUICK and should be used VERY sparingly. BONUS: c) The show, which had always been "stuck" in time, began to reference more contemporary culture and incorporate modern issues. Again, that is NOT why we watch cartoons. Cartoons should offer an escape from the modern world and it's problems. The Golden Age is so golden because the show was perpetually set in 1990, and offered us a retreat from the present world, while still being "relevant" because it parodied the culture which it came from (much as Bugs Bunny did in the 40's & 50's, and thus still remains relevant and wonderful to this day) and the never-changing foibles of humanity. I'm still impressed though that they were able to keep the show so good for as long as they did.
I think what people do not like about Ned does not have to do with how he uses religion in his interactions with people, but how much of a role religion plays in his life. At the start of the show, Ned was always religious, but he was not someone who was solely defined by it; I would argue that he was far more driven by her personal sense of integrity and strong connection to his family. However, once we leave the golden years, we see that Ned's personality is basically defined by his religious beliefs, and this is why I feel a lot of people see him as much more "basic" than in the past.
44:33 Peter gets raped by a bull in family guy. It is an exact family guy joke. Just swap a bull and a panda. Family Guy S8 E11 "Dial Meg for Murder Airdate: January 31, 2010 Simpsons S12 E5 "Homer vs Dignity" Airdate: November 26, 2000 Family guy stole that gag from Simpsons.
Progress at time of posting: midway through season 24 and only slightly losing the will to live
Because of the declining quality (not sure how much you agree with that being the case), the fact that it's been over 500 episodes of the same damn show, or because you're starting to develop mental health symptoms like having dreams about that show?
The deja vu is weird. I keep running into episodes where characters say exact lines they've said before. I watched a season 22 episode where Grampa says "I'm going to give you your inheritance now. That way I can watch you enjoy it" and suddenly my brain zooms to a season 5 episode where he said that exact line. It's like show is haunting me
@@Stubagful Now I want to see for myself, but I am positive that I will be too reasonable, too busy with other things or too lazy to do so. Unless I can quickly figure out which two episodes you mean. Might kill some time during a train ride.
This isn't actually meant as a request, since I don't want to make one and also think it would be difficult if not impossible to fulfil it, but what I've noticed in the past several years is that the new episodes are extremely forgettable to me in the literal sense, and I would be interested in hearing if you feel the same way. What has regularly happened is that I've read about a plot of a very recent episode and thought to myself "Guess I haven't seen that one" and then either re-watched it (the first few times) or just checked the ending (the other times) just to find out that I'd actually seen the episode. I keep wondering whether this also has to do with me having rewatched most Golden Age episodes many times, or if it is really the episodes themselves that are forgettable, regardless of the fact that I've only seen them once, at least to me.
Enough ads on this one?
Honestly I watched one of the more recent series and found it genuinely heartfelt, the episode in the wilderness and Lisa's brekky were some genuine standout episodes I loved
It's really sobering to see The Simpsons poke fun at the show running out of ideas and becoming stale twenty goddamn years ago. Really think about that for a moment, they've been running out of ideas for TWO DECADES now. It's a miracle this show is still capable of being even semi-coherent.
At times they’ll trend on twitter just for the simple fact of a new episode airing, anything else they can offer is probably stale
That's why one of the funniest things to come out of the Simpsons in those last 20 years was Don Hertzfeld's guest opening to it, where it shows a Simpsons literally doing that, becoming an incoherent mess of its former self to surreal exaggerated levels: ruclips.net/video/m78gYyTrG7Y/видео.html
@@neilworms2i remember discovering his work and then hearing about the simpsons opening he did. so surreal indeed
Let's make simple math:
30 seasons around 20 episodes each. Each episode is 20 minutes long.
That's 200 hours
King of the hill at 5 Simpsons 6 and Malcom in the middle at 7 and then at 11 pm Simpsons again
My brothers and I noticed a strange phenomenon around this era. If we thought of a Simpsons quote during the day, that would be the episode that played on Sky that night. Eventually we realised it was just because we were thinking of Simpsons quotes all day, every day.
Haha. That happened to me with the frogurt episode. In my defence, it wasn’t even Halloween when it played.
In your slight defense of Jerkass Homer and analysis of The Simpsons Movie, I will say it feels like Homer’s arc in that movie was a response to Jerkass Homer. In the Golden Age, there would be consequences for Homer’s actions that would run for the ENTIRE episode, and he would try his best to fix them (this shows that he has a heart and why Marge doesn’t just leave him), which is not how it goes post-Golden Age; he would do anything selfish and/or cartoonishly stupid and there’d be NO consequences, except on rare occasions and even then they’d get resolved so quickly. The Simpsons Movie has Homer act this way for the whole movie to the point where it affects his relationships with Marge and his kids and so they leave him, in other words showing that there are MAJOR consequences like in the Golden Age, which leads to Homer realizing how selfish he always was and, again just like in the Golden Age, leads to him trying to fix all of his mistakes and redeem himself in the eyes of Springfield and his family.
2:48 my local station would start at season 1 and play the reruns in order until they got within a season or two of the current one. Then they would start back over at season one. They did this for several years. I loved it.
"Basically the power structures of our capitalist system can be understood through the relationship between Comic Book Guy and Agnes Skinner." I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed that.
TheRealJims does a good job at giving post-golden age a fair shake and analysis of the series.
seriously the best Simpsons channel for the sole fact that it doesn't feel like he's a simpsons shill with a semi-cringe OC in the show's style
"This is the history of just stamp the Ticket man"
Alright... Everyone loves season 27, well maybe not everyone, some people love it, and others just tolerate it.
But it's a season of television of distinct blandness
A fun (or not so fun) fact is that, in Spain, we consider the Golden Age to finish right with Behind the Laughter. It was the last episode with the original VA for Homer, Carlos Revilla (also former director of the European Spanish dub IIRC), as he died before dubbing the next season. It's not that current Homer (Carlos Ysbert) doesn't do a great job, and his voice isn't too different, but losing Homer's original voice AND a VA legend was too strong of a hit.
Also, yes. The last sentence with Revilla's voice is "It's the last season", which makes this a very well-known fact.
You can have an abusive parent be right to escape them, but also feel guilt. And yes, your mind can plague you with the times they were good (or, your brain is just telling you that). I'm in my forties and have that, when I cut that **** loose over twenty years ago!
The Tony Blaire bit was actually one of the best in the episode 'cos after he leaves Homer says 'Oh my god! I can't believe we just met Mr. Bean' it's one of a very few jokes I did enjoy about that episode.
It was a damp squib of an episode.
@@pious83 I preferred Homer's Barbershop Quartet, which has a damp squid.
I like the bit where they get stuck on a roundabout
@@pious83I remember watching it live as a kid, it was one of the first times I realized the show was going down
Apparently the whole scene was Blair's idea.
The Abe stuff really stings for me because he's one of my favourite characters because of the depth he had early on. He's a sweet, lonely old man who loves his family, but he was also an abusive bastard in his younger years, and it makes the relationship hard to square for homer. It's great stuff
You sound sound so exhausted about how much Simpsons you have to watch, but here I am, rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons over and over again for years. I've probably watched this show all the way through more than anyone else.
I think one thing is kinda missing in the "competition" chapter, is King of The Hill which leaned more in the direction of the genuine family style of writing so Simpsons was kinda caught between it and Family Guy for a long time
Since the influence of South Park and Seth Macfarlane’s show were mentioned, I think FUTURAMA should also be mentioned. The point at which many people say The Simpsons started declining was almost the same time that Matt Groening debuted his new series. Futurama is a show where no “Treehouse of Horror”-style episode structure is needed as an excuse to do wacky, fun, out of this world gags because anything could be canon to that mainline universe. I always felt like Groening had so much fun with Futurama’s style that it ended up influencing how crazy and meta an “average” episode of The Simpsons could get, like with the Jockey’s, the Loch Ness Monster, the Allen Wrench alien, etc.
On the subject of repeating the same episodes all the time, the Funzo and Gary Coleman Xmas episode got played so often on Australian telly that I was able to tell when that episode was on by the couch gag at the start.
I remember those days watching it on channel ten then neighbours would play afterwords I would rage cause I use to hate that show
"it's not the show that changed, we just got tired of it"
That's definitely wrong when we can agree on which episodes are good or not. There's obviously a change
I watched a bit of an episode a year or two ago. The jokes were not bad. But they could have been written 20 years ago. The exact same kid of safe, coyly poking fun at authority and then sticking it's hand out for praise for the millionth time.
It's like the phantom season 9 theory, where if you cut out the bad episodes of season 9, 10 and 11 you have one really good season 9.
People have done the same with later seasons as well, it's just the fact that around season 17, the number of phantoms seasons start to dwindle immensely.
And that kind of contradicts what he said at the start, that it can’t just be people getting tired of the show because we still obsessively rewatch the early seasons
Both things can be true
@@OrgaNik_Music Sure, but he’s saying that only one of them is true
That "imagined ending" for 'Kidney Trouble' is more or less what happened in the Futurama episode, 'Obsoletely Fabulous'. While the two episodes are not one and the same, they have similar story beats (the main character escapes from an operation, heads out to sea, meets a gang of misfits, and eventually completes said operation). Only, in the case of Futurama, Bender _does_ wake up from a dream, and actually reflects on his attitude; keep in mind, this is for a robot to whom Bender, let alone the audience, has no emotional attachment, and only appears in one episode (plus some of the movies) afterwards.
Wait, what other robot are you referring to?
@@camelopardalis84.
Robot 1-X.
@@TotoDG Thanks! I keep remembering this episode very incompletely.
It's interesting seeing how the disscusion around post "golden age" simpsons has evolved. It used to be a case of everything post season 10/11 was just written off, but since the generation of fans during the 2000s growing up & all the episodes being widely accessable on Disney+ means there's a more nuanced discussion on the quality of the show.
That's an interesting point. I do remember watching a good amount of these episodes growing up but I never felt the need to rewatch them.
@@mikewilliams6025 or maybe it’s other people hold different opinions are now more vocal to challenge the status quo
i dunno about that one - i'm of said age here, and having watched most episodes at least up to around S27 (when i really just couldn't be bothered anymore), my comfort revisit zone with simpsons is completely what this apparent younger generation of fans consider doctrinaire i.e. S1 to 8 or so, occasionally rewatching the good ones from S9 to 11 too
i can certainly single out the odd memorable joke or slightly above average episode from after that point, but it's hard not to think of how killer what came before was with very few genuine filler, the extraordinarily dense vs ordinarily sparse - so i do wonder how much personal standards and will to try different, better things after getting bored come into this
Remember that promo back in 1992 where Bart and Homer were talking about the end of the Cosby show, saying that if they had a TV show, they'd "run that sucker into the ground" ?
ruclips.net/video/vWgI2YAupCM/видео.html
Did they show King of the Hill much in the UK? That was Fox's other animated show for adults coming out around this time so I imagined it influenced the tone of The Simpsons a little bit too, although it was far more 'grounded' than Family Guy or South Park.
I've never really watched it. But it's been aired in the UK. I'm sure it's still on somewhere, I just don't really watch TV anymore so I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's particularly popular though.
Futurama would run after The Simpsons, perhaps early 00s in the UK?
"Is the joke just Thing British?" YES. I don't know why but Americans go absolutely nuts for Thing British jokes. They weep with laughter at just normal sentences said in the UK so it doesn't surprise me The Simpsons did it
No, not true. Americans do not go nuts for them. Don't associate the behavior of the writers with the behavior of the audience.
No, Americans don't. We don't really care about your country as you think we do
@@Solid_HankOmg you're so obsessed
@@Solid_Hank Thank you for speaking on behalf of all Americans. next time I see a Thing British meme I'll think of you
Hey now, Austin Powers was hilarious, and that whole thing was built on "thing British "
I am here five days later rewatching this video. Also I think your section on Ned Flanders 55:50 just helped me realize something about myself. This is a lot.
It's funny you say the Simpsons Movie is overall considered good, cause I've seen a lot of places that hate the movie for the overall same reasons as the "bad seasons" in this video.
Honestly my biggest gripe wit the movie is, as admitted by the creators, they were basically required to go into making the movie for audiences that either never watched the Simpsons or maybe just watched the first season or two. It's why the villain is a made-up guy instead of Burns or Sideshow Bob or Hank Scorpio. And it bugs me cause when I heard that, it really made me question who they expected to watch this movie the most. They really expected people who either never cared about the show before or fell off super early would want to come back in such a massive number?
Hank Scorpio was intended to be the bad guy originally in the early drafts, but they couldn’t make him work in the script, so they made a up a new character to be the bad guy instead. Both characters are voiced by Albert Brooks.
I don't remember people thinking the movie was good. I remember the reception being "it's slightly better than most of the episodes that were airing at the time."
Regarding South Park, I'd argue that it and The Simpsons have different demographic targets. South Park is the show for teens and young adults, whereas The Simpsons is more for parents. There's some crossover between the groups, but the appeal of the shows are different because they have different goals in mind
I thought the Simpsons being on BBC 2 was just a fever dream of mine but it really was.
I remember getting annoyed when bbc2 would pull the Simpsons because a tennis match overran
@@Stubagful God that was such a throwback those damn tennis matches. I think the Simpsons were also not on when the day 9/11 happened and Queen Mum died too 😅 that's all I can remember from those days as i was so young 😅
At one point the line up I think was Simpsons then malcolm in the middle and then buffy.
@@kumajin3621 Oh my god, brain blast
The joke is that Homer thinks Tony Blair is Mister Bean.
In regards to the Kidney Trouble episode and the disconnect between previous portrayals of Abe’s parenting, is it not possible that Homer has only ever been focusing on the negative aspects of how he was brought up allowing them to build and reinforce his worst personality traits because that’s what people just tend to do? But, when faced with the prospect of his father’s death, reflects more on the times where Abe did show love and concern for his son, which were probably difficult to show as a struggling single father?
Not that I think this is an aspect the episode was trying to get across, as I agree it treats the flashback like Abe has always been this way while never addressing how he’s been portrayed as a parent thus far. But it is an aspect that I think could explain why we have never seen this side of Abe before as Homer has never had a need to focus on it, but he has had a need to focus on the bad moments in his upbringing across the prior 9 seasons.
How are you in every comment section I see, and always making really insightful comments lol
@@cyrus2395 Luck I guess? 😅
Ohhh! I've been looking forward to this one. Appreciate your videos, very well written and entertaining. I am almost completing my collection of The Simpsons on physical media, only 3 seasons left.
I think we give the Loch Ness monster episode a pass due to a few things. A lot of people do genuinely believe the monster exists, or at least did exist. What happens to the monster is reminiscent of King Kong, so people's minds already have something familiar to latch on to so it doesn't immediately leap out as being so outlandish. Lastly, finding Nessie was a focus for the majority of the episode and the aburdity was built up. The Jockie reveal was a sudden drastic heelturn in what was otherwise a pretty normal episode at that point.
I haven't finished watching this video yet, so please bare that in mind... but I've got to say so far this is the most pinpoint accurate, relatable video I've seen in terms of growing up as a UK Simpsons fan. I felt seen when you were talking about taping them off the television and that's why certain episodes would feel tedious. Also, your stuff on Homer and Grandpa is a brilliant take I've never really thought of in that way. Great stuff! Hope the rest is as interesting.
Just wait. I've buried some more obviously controversial stuff deep in the video 😜
I've been looking forward to part 2 of your Simpsons analysis. I've been enjoying these videos. Rewatched Part 1 and the Futurama video a few days ago🤣.
this is one of the best simpsons videos I've ever seen.
What about in series 5 'The Last Temptation of Homer' where Hibbert is prepared to use a tube to send Marge and Bart to another country if they didn't have insurance, I mean he doesn't exactly do it with glee but he becomes more sinister and I wouldn't say it's sympathetic, wasn't he always sort of like that?
The Rolling Stones fantasy camp episode is a good celebrity guest star episode because it makes use of Mick and Keith as a pair and also has other rock icons like the late Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, and Lenny Kravitz. And also oh yeah when Rodney Dangerfield was on as a guest, he was sort of playing a version of his character from Caddyshack but he isn't because he is the son of Mr Burns (he was designed to have Burns's features). And Andrea Martin played Apu's mother. In the case of Sideshow Bob, it's a celebrity voiced character that went from 'guest' character to being a recurring character. And yes I didn't know it was a Prisoner parody (because I don't remember the koala at the end being part of the actual show, just thought it was a 'koalas are creepy' gag like at the end of Bart VS Australia). Marisa Tomei playing one of Ned Flander's many love interests is another good one. R.Lee Ermey didn't voice himself or a parody of his character from Full Metal Jacket in the episode he was in. Dan Aykroyd wasn't playing himself, he was Comic Book Guy's father.
In sessions 10 through to 20 there decent episodes, but after season 20 it definitely goes all downhill from here so good luck with that.
The house is sinking = MARGE GETS A JOB. Homer becomes a chauffeur to pay back Patty and Selma after he lost money investing in pumpkins.
Its a real testament to your ability as a video essayist that you can make a video this long whilst keeping up the same high standard of analysis you always have. Nothing felt like filler here, all the points flowed together nicely and were all worthwhile. My favourite part was the section on jerk ass homer and the assertion that he's always been a selfish jerk. Most sitcoms function because the characters are very flawed or even terrible poeple, and its somewhat bizarre to me that poeple dont recognise this. Of course this can even have real-world implications whereby poeple consciously or subconsciously emulate such behaviour when certain characters or archetypes become mainstream. I know for my own part that I haven't been immune from this in the past.
Really interesting video, i do think this era has loads of interesting episodes and ideas (but I think the same age as you means we saw these as kids). I was watching tons of the show over COVID and once i hit season 17/18 it became a nightmare to keep going. Somewhere up to season 23ish now and feel like it's picking up again. Great video as always!
I'm disappointed that new season DVDs don't get released now.
I’m glad mad mad marge getting some love here marge saying don’t mess with me I got jimmys is one of my favourite jokes from the show
"Maybe I am insane. I mean I am talking to myself"
"you are? Aww I thought I made a friend"
I never understood the post golden age hate. I grew up on these seasons and enjoyed it a lot as a whole. I Am Furious (Yellow) is a BANGER
I'm not a big fan of the episode, and I can see the criticism but the scene where Dr. Hibbert says that he helped himself to one of Homer's kidneys really does never fail to make me laugh my head off...
That story was likely never going to work as a Simpsons episode, but John Swartzwelder did his best to inject his brand of humour into it. The bit where he asks Marge to blow up the hospital is still funny to me.
I was in the camp that the movie should've been it. It just felt like the right ending for the show. Funnily enough, I'd stopped consistently watching during this "era" too (can't remember when), but I was still excited for the movie and loved it upon its release. All I can say is good luck with the rest of it. While this has made me consider watching more of seasons 10-18 at some point, I don't have high hopes for what's to come, haha.
Funny thing is The SpongeBob Movie in 2004 for many is the same for Bikini Bottom but both shows continued past their expiration date
"It can't be Simpsons fatigue"? Why not? This show, by all greatness, always had a pretty limited scope. So at some point it either gets too out of character or repetitive...
Or both, as it did.
I think Simpsons should really take a note from Southpark. Do only a few episodes each year and put all your ideas and effort into those.... And since there are, like, 3 good eps each new season, that would make so much more sense than whatever they do now.
They should end the series with the last season being completely serialized. It starts with all the cliches: Lisa and Bart fighting, marge and Homer marriage issues, Homer and Bart having issues. And throughout the season we get development that actually stick til the last episode and we slowly see them become a happy healthy family developing in ways that help each of them further their bonds. Homer becomes a better husband and father, Bart is still a trouble maker but becomes a bit better behaved due to his family being healthier, him and Lisa not fighting as much. And Maggie finally starts talking
Everybody who can actually watch this right now: Enjoy it while it's fresh! I probably won't get around to watching it until tomorrow the very earliest.
You're well within your rights to put it on your queue. It is a behemoth
@@Stubagful I've actually just decided to watch your video :), at least as much of it as I can before I need to stop to go to sleep. (I'm an hour ahead of you.)
The thing I originally wanted to do tonight is something I am both too tired and too late for to do properly. And I would risk staying up until much too late if I did it. And I'm actually also even too tired to just watch your entire video, which might result in me watching it in a way that will count as two views from me. So enjoy the free additional view if you get it. Spend it on something reasonable.
@@Stubagfuljust under two hours is a fairly short, long form video essay on a tv show.
@@Aneurin_Hunt It's a behemoth compared to his other videos. Not all of them, but most, I'd say. But yes. I've watched a ten-hour plus video essay, at least in part. Not sure how long the longest one that I've watched in full was.
@@camelopardalis84 yes it is long for stubagful but in the greater context of RUclips it isn't.
Your video is weird because you keep saying exactly what the difference is between the golden age and the newer era in this video and the last video while also saying people don’t know what the difference is.
The difference is this: more hits and much fewer misses. And sincerity. Newer episodes (later seasons) are less sincere and miss more often than not based on the sincerity missing and the cheap inclusion of gimmicks like celebrity focus and flanderization of people and characters. You can point out that there are stand outs or areas where they “tried” but it’s a trend not a black and white thing.
You’ve made those observations repeatedly but then summarize it as if there is no difference.. like all the same data but then just dismiss it all and say “we are different the story isn’t”.
1:21:23 that episode was originally going to be the final episode, not should of
because there was contract disputes or something during that time
I misread the title the first time as: "pre Golden Age" and was disappointed at the thought of this being a 2-hour video about those shorts and maybe season 1 and 2.
I hope adult animation takes inspiration to be the next BoJack Horseman. Although I hope its not a horrible influence were people take the wrong lessons on what made BoJack Horseman good like Watchmen and A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.
“Robin Hood’s a character” “HE SURE IS” one of my favourites🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Don't you mean Sherlock Holmes?
@@RespectTheLogos3 ahhh fuck yeahhh🤣🤣🤣🤣🙈🙈
Caracatures of Robin Hood and Santa Claus(Saint Nicholas) are characters, but only Sherlock Holmes is a character without real world counterpart… what we see from Disney, Coca-Cola and others for the first two aren't REALLY nothing more than caracatures and commercial representation of real life people…
Really interesting. In regard to people thinking homer became jerk, it does show how nostalgia can add rose tilted glasses to peoples views. It reminds me when I've seen people dislike a show runner for doctor who and yet mention stuff the past show runner they love has done.
For me, i used to watch the Simpsons on channel 4 as didn't have sky growing up. Episodes seemed to he very random order wise and I'm sure sometimes they'd air the first of a two parter and then not show the next one but could he wrong. Due to the order, I never really knew what season an episode was. A rewatch does sound interesting
i agree with everything you said without thinking about it.
Broooo they were spamming TF outta that Thomas Edison episode 😭😭😭😭 Im glad im not the only one pissed about that
That Flanderization part is amazingly well written and interesting, makes me think
Missed an oppertunity by not having the globe land on Youaregay.
He gave up after 829 unsuccessful spins.
I love the segment where you talk about how the term Flanderization has been Flanderized b/c it ignored the existence of "The World" outside of The TV Series itself - peak stuff.
To be clear, I'm not a fan of the Simpsons, but when you release a feature length video - I'm going to watch it, and it's amazing to learn the term Flanderization originated from a bunch of nerds who - in a literal sense - failed to "touch grass" by not reading the room and seeing that Christianity hasn't had a positive reputation in the US for several hot minutes, so they invented an entire term on a seemingly false premise.
Spoiler for next time: it actually stops. There's an episode called "no loan again, naturally" where it resets to the Ned is a great neighbour and homer irrationally thinks he's a jerk and there hasn't been a Christianity joke since. This episode was broadcast in 2009. Christian fundamentalist Flanders hasn't been a thing in 15 years and NO ONE gave the show any credit for this. Everyone still maintains the show did this and it's still bad for doing it
@@StubagfulWow it never struck me that "Christianity lol" hasn't been done in a long time with Ned.
I’ve rewatched your previous simpsons analysis many times; its great to have a sequel!
I think you're strawmanning the "It's like a video game story" criticism. That is a valid thing to say (if applicable in context) because good video game stories have natural gaps where gameplay tells the story rather than dialogue or cutscenes. It's normal for a video game to have less story content than a TV show. That's how it's supposed to be. That is not how non-interactive stories are supposed to be. If a story is behaving like an interactive story, then it shouldn't be and people aren't wrong for pointing that out.
For me personally, the last season that was OVERALL good was was around season 13. there are many good episodes throughout those seasons. But around season 14 the show (for me) hit a tipping point. Of course every season has standout episodes and i enjoyed the movie enough but yeah man
I know you're still making your way through the modern Simpsons at the time of this video but in my opinion modern era Simpsons is actually better than this middle era, and could be classified as an upturn in quality. For instance they tone down the "edgy" humour that was present during this era. The greatest example of this would be Homer himself, who is often friendlier and nicer to others around him than he was during the classic era.
I think the jerk-ass Homer complaints mostly come from people who haven't watched the show in years, and continue to think of the middle era as representing the modern Simpsons. I think the golden age versions of the characters feel more similar to the modern era versions than to this middle era.
However one criticism I have with modern era Simpsons is the ADHD-like tone that is present in some episodes, which removes the audiences ability to get immersed in the show. This issue doesn't apply to all the modern episodes, however it is a common thing I noticed.
Anyway I enjoyed the video and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show's modern age.
I am already noticing that. I'm still on season 24 and haven't had much strangulation in a while.
They noticeably start dialling back on the things fans complain about. "Flanderization" actually stops - jokes where Ned's an intolerant fundamentalist vanish completely around season 20 and yet everyone talks as if this is still how the show is
@@Stubagful Exactly. it's cool for people to criticise the modern era, but in my opinion a lot of the criticism feels out of date with the current show.
@Stubagful I mean people stopped watching, so like, of course their opinions will be out of date. I don't mean that too snarkily but like, if people were so put off by the heart sort of going out of the show for awhile, it's gonna be a real can of worms to consider getting back into. And if prompted for an opinion, right or wrong, people are gonna go with where they last left off.
I feel like the same argument can be said for SpongeBob, where most people treated nearly everything past seasons 1-3 and the first movie as complete garbage due to it being different. While the later seasons do have their bad episodes, there are still plenty of good episodes from that period that just get undercut due to not being from the first 3 seasons.
I also assume some of the popular SpongeBob memes also come from post first movie episodes as well? (Never watched the show)
@@BH-98 Yeah some of the memes are from post season 4 lol.
I have one reservation about one of your observations, namely the one about the "Kidney Trouble" episode. I think I am roughly your age (early 30s), but I think you mad ethe mistake of judging Grandpa Simpsons' parenting my modern standards and not by the standards of someone who grew up in the 1960s. I have seen all of the golden age Simpsons and I think that Grandpa was not a bad parent, but simply a parent burdened and shaped by his era. Grandpa is a World War II veteran and a single father, so it is understandable that he has some inner demons and also some resentment towards his son who is not the brightest, but simultaneously reminds him of his wife who left him behind with all the responsibilty. Also like we all do with our own parents it is possible to love them and care for them, but also despise some aspects of their parenting, hence it would make sense that Homer would remember depressing and traumatising moments of his childhood, but also happy memories where his father was there for him. This makes Grandpa one of the most intriguing and also deep characters, as he has lived through decades of American history, but also raised his son by himself something which was unusual at the time.
I do get that parenting styles were different - but your point actually kind of underlines what I'm saying about the lack of grey areas in the Homer/Grampa relationship. From this point on, one person's always supposed to be the problem rather than a mix of the two. Homer's always treated Abe with contempt and that contempt makes sense when you saw those exchanges along the lines of "you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly". So they add the sweet moments, but they also removed the "dumb as a mule and twice as ugly" moments and you just end up sitting there thinking lesser of Homer for acting this way when he doesn't appear to have much motivation to treat Abe the way he does. I felt Kidney Trouble pushed the blame more onto Homer than it should have done. Two things can be true at the same time: Abe caused Homer some damage AND ALSO Abe has his reasons for being that parent that he was, and from what I watched, from this point on, it pushes more of the blame for their fractured relationship onto Homer, when it meeting in the middle makes more sense to me.
I've actually just hit a really interesting episode in season 24 called "To Cur with Love" where it reveals Homer had a childhood dog that bit Mr Burns, and so Grampa has to get rid of the dog and Homer's memories of what Grampa did are inaccurate because obviously he was a kid and he didn't understand what was going on.
I think this is undercut by the fact that Mona is shown to be a better parent than Abe. She’s a product of her time as much as he is but she still manages to be so much kinder and more caring to Homer, who remembers her much more fondly than he does his dad. Even by the standards of the time Abe was a poor father and the fact that Homer still carries that resentment into adulthood is proof of that
I salute your dedication to watching all of this show and pointing out that a lot of this era is still worth watching even if the quality of the emotion focus episodes was pretty varied. Love the reviews Stu, keep them coming - as you can, of course. Going through the modern era must be difficult.
What about the change in animation style? For me that was a major reason for losing interest. So much of the humour was rooted in how expressive the characters were, every squash and stretch and off-model moments. But the animation became stuff and sterile and totally charmless. It was nice when there was humanity there visually.
Oh, and poor Julie Kavner’s voice… it can be hard to listen to in later episodes.
PS I had no idea the Simpsons movie was so well thought of. Is that a view that’s changed over time?
18:30 It feels like you're misreading Homer's abusive father. Its nor uncommon for survivors to have a positive relationship with their abuser, and the cycle of abuse has peaks and valleys. So of course when Homer is feeling guilt over his father's kidney op he is remembering a good time. The good times are sometimes what abusers have to leverage over the people they abuse.
Honestly it makes me happy to know Stu hasn't experienced that level of abuse in his life 😌
god this channel is right up my street. I love this type of stuff, this is quintessential RUclips, academic insights into stuff from childhood. Love it
I hate the one where Maude dies it happens for no reason in a stupid way and why did Ned deserve that he's like the nicest characters it didnt hit hard but also felt mean spirited
After Maude's death he's a really nice guy. Before that he's actually a very judgmental, hateful man who puts on an act of humility because he's projecting his Christianity, usually to deny to himself that he's a sinner.
You sound like Garth marenghi. I. A good way
Best video I've seen on post classic 'Simpsons.
I think the main reason The Simpsons was not as good from season 10 onward is because the writers started to change. Simply, the writing was not as sophisticated and no longer part of the era that those previous writers were informed by. It came to be that jokes had to be pointed out by the new writers, rather than let to just sit. They had to modify it, but as said in the video, some of the choices were admirably bold. I just don't think it works most of the time.
Homer's guilt-ridden nostalgia for his father in the Kidney Trouble episode does not redefine who Abe was. I mean, in that flashback alone, Abe gave little Homer alcohol to put him to asleep. Not great parenting. We don't even know if Homer is a reliable narrator. Well, actually he usually isn't. Furthermore, Abe stole his kidney at the end, kind of cementing the pattern of him being a sh*t role model, which owes to Homer's cowardice through having this weak father figure.
Ned may not have been more complex in the beginning, but he was more believable. That nice guy you kind of hate because of being too perfect. The word complex is much overused. The crazy Christian trope he became felt lazy though. I don't think holding Ned up as an ideal Christian still in 2010 would have been at all unreasonable. Consider in 2024, 75% of Americans still identify as religious, where as in the UK it's about 45%.
'Hail Mary Pass was one of the worse episodes and was too late for jump the shark. Perhaps it was massacre the shark. My brain checked out around then, although I came back a bit later searching for hits, but mostly finding misses.
The Simpsons indeed wanted to be edgy like South Park or Family Guy, although The Simpsons started cut-away jokes way before Family guy. The makers of Father Ted even credited the show with this inspiration for their own writing. Examples welcome.
I don't think analyzing why something is worse than it once was has to be productive. I think inherently, however, it is. We can learn greater value and how to develop as better creators or artists ourselves. It also never hurt to be discerning or to have taste.
Brothers and sisters breaking up and making up seems pretty typical to me.
You highlight some good nuggets from the teen episodes, as well as some terrible ones. I really did like The Frying Game, the one with the Crayon. I count Bart The Mother as classic era, as I feel the show changes half way through season 10.
Mad Mad Marge is typical season 11 craziness. I like it, but it's far more sinister and wacky than the golden era. After season 11 they tried to restore some civility. "Shut up Becky!" I like most of season 11 for being the outlier.
"Could this be the end of our series... of events."
How many Simpsons break downs can there be on RUclips? Apparently a lot! Well, here we go.
The answer is Conan.
Conan O’Brien
#teamcoco
If you want an animated show that manages to be good over 1000 episodes, you can try One Piece. Or you can try the much shorter live action Netflix One Piece that did the impossible of being a good live action animated adaptation.
Trust me: I am strictly going to watch miniseries of no more than 6 episodes after this
@@Stubagful Luckily most studios makes seasons have 8 episodes nowadays. Live action adaptations of animated shows have a stigma of being worse than videogame adaptations for a good fucking reason speaking as an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan. It’s interesting that good shows from 2023 are a videogame adaptation, a live action anime adaptation, and another show staring Bella Ramsey fighting hostile fungus monsters. That third show is Hilda season 3 and how to end a show and the show overall is how to write a family.
Red Dwarf is great, fulfils this criteria and it's all on IPlayer.@@Stubagful
As cringe and ill-advised as the plot twist in Principal and the Pauper is, don't let the cringe factor blind you to how freaking S-tier the jokes and dialog are, even in the most hated scenes. It's a VERY funny, acidly cynical episode. Agnes is in rare form.
In the wedding video scene in the film, the writers had nearly slipped in a joke where right before the camera would cut to the video after Marge would tearfully say "Goodbye Homie", she would get up and ask Bart to help her turn off the camera, proceeding to struggle with it. They thankfully knew that they had to back off for that scene and let the tone carry the scene.
I call this the silverage
"There's no shame in being second!"
You had me at Season 10 being the end of the Golden Age. There were some rebounds for me, such as Seasons 13 and 14 but after that I was pretty much done. The one that made me shut off the TV was The Bonfire of the Manatees. I tried a few times after that and the Movie was OK but for all intents and purposes I was done.
While not part of the main show per se, would you consider a plot analysis of The Simpsons Hit & Run? It would be easy to write off the game as just being GTA yellow which it does pull off very well - but considering that the plot involves aliens filming Springfield for money followed by them meddling with the format to increase viewership, in turn creating a zombified Springfield, I wonder if there's more to be read from this interpretation and how it fits in with the evolving quality of the post-Classic era era of the show.
Great video!
lisa the greek😭 great episode😡
As someone who watched the simpsons in Czech, I consider the 12th series to be the end of the golden age, when the original voice actor of Homer got sick and they replaced him from the 13th series. Although officially, I would stretch it up to the 15th series, when the Simpsons still radiated the right atmosphere.
I always loved the middle seasons.
“When You Dish Upon a Star” is my personal pick for where the show jumped the shark. There are great episodes that come after it, but that episode is the earliest one that I actively dislike and do not want to watch.
Stu art
Glad i found someone else who actually thought regarding marge was actually a really solid episode. You hear a lot of crap about it, but its honestly quite an interesting idea
Tomacco is real. The two plants are highly related members of the nightshade family. It was first theorized in 1959. A man named Rob Baur, a Simpsons fan, successfully achieved the hybrid in 2003 and is featured on the commentary track on the DVD version of the episode. It was lab tested and found to indeed contain nicotine
The loc ness monster episode was completely erased from my mind. Even after hearing you talk about it i still have no memory of it. Its as if you just made it up
This video is seriously great but oh my lord I think I can technically file all the midrolls I watched on this as a tax break. I didn't even know this many ads could be on a video?
1:21:19 Funnily enough in 2001 when Al Jean was starting up again as show runner the contracts for the VAs had to be renewed and it NEARLY DID end the series (similar to what happened in Holidays of Future Past in 2011)
as a brazillian I agree with what was said about the episode they go to Brazil. They know nothing about the coutry except 'soccer', the time marge tries speaking portuguese is jarring and cringe, they show monkeys in the strrets of Rio, one of the biggest metropoli in the world, i wish we had monkeys there but we killed them all ages ago, it's not a freaking jungle. the jungle is as distant from rio as mexico is from canada, they act like it's all in the same place. and they can't even say Pelé right, it's not 'Pelay' it's Pelé (the final é sounds like the e in Mexico) there were other things I don't remember now. Ah, what they got right was the corruption lol
The Simpsons biggest problem is that it's trying to keep up with modern trends.
Is it weird that I actually *like* Kidney Trouble? I enjoy quite dark humour and I get this feeling that people forget that Abe was an absolutely awful father to Homer. Doesn't give Homer an excuse but I can remember my brother and i watching the moment when the car falls on Homer and we were in tears laughing. And it has one of my favourite lines of all time:
"I stole zis accordion from a blind monkey, but you sicken me."
But then, the internet also seems to think that Sonic the Hedgehog is sexy and that Doctor Whos golden era was "when I first got into Doctor Who" so I don't think the collective voice of insanity is a good indicator of somethings quality.
Oooooh BBC 2. That's a memory
I didn't like Behind the Laughter the first time I saw it. It's very clever but it didn't seem that funny and just felt like the show giving up to me. I've made my peace with it now, but it wasn't for me. I think I stopped watching not long after at the time, because the heartfelt stuff in the show was so important to me, so my reaction was 'well if they don't care, neither do I'. That's not to take anything away from anyone who enjoys it, but everybody doesn't necessarily think the same thing y'know?
1:37:29 We didn't just get tired of it in syndication. I went through the first 9 seasons with a friend who had never seen the show before. We did not rewatch any episodes. When we got partway through season 9, he decided the show had reduced in quality enough that he wanted to stop. So, there's definitely something to the consensus of a quality drop.
55:23 They're not making him more complex. They're just making him into a strawman for views they don't like.
Also, the difference between Homer being a jerk and Jerkass Homer is that jerkass Homer is intentionally cruel and unrepentant. Homer being a jerk often doesn't understand what he is doing.
1:26:14 that picture quality point is so so true.
Not quite the same thing but i was watching X-Men 97 and my internet was being weak so it only displayed in like 480p for a minute or two, and let me tell you it looked GLORIOUS! It suddenly felt like an old episode, not just a continuation, and it fully made me cry. Just from the change in picture quality.
I genuinely dont enjoy HD simpsons as much because it just isnt what i remember.
Because the Simpsons as a franchise has over 600 episodes over the corse of 34 years, I realised that when the show started to become popular, the show became more Quantity over quality just like SpongeBob.
Thanks for the thoughtful invite. You definitely have alot to cover...in a while. Lol
Re Flanders: no, he went from the depth of the varieties of form the perfect neighbor could take to a “Christianity is the punch-line! What was the set-up?” dialogue bucket.
Season 16 is where it ended for me- I actually think 9-15 were golden. IMO, two things killed the show: a)The show became too dramatic. Every ep became a mini-drama, with too much time & resources being spent to set-up and resolve a plot. Too many jokes were jettisoned in favor of an emphasis on the plot. People don't watch cartoons for the plot! The show worked when it was mainly an excuse for jokes and parody, with any plots being of only secondary concern.
b)The show became too formulaic. For just one example: Every episode started to contain at least one long(ish) montage set to a popular song. That gets old QUICK and should be used VERY sparingly.
BONUS: c) The show, which had always been "stuck" in time, began to reference more contemporary culture and incorporate modern issues. Again, that is NOT why we watch cartoons. Cartoons should offer an escape from the modern world and it's problems. The Golden Age is so golden because the show was perpetually set in 1990, and offered us a retreat from the present world, while still being "relevant" because it parodied the culture which it came from (much as Bugs Bunny did in the 40's & 50's, and thus still remains relevant and wonderful to this day) and the never-changing foibles of humanity.
I'm still impressed though that they were able to keep the show so good for as long as they did.
I think what people do not like about Ned does not have to do with how he uses religion in his interactions with people, but how much of a role religion plays in his life. At the start of the show, Ned was always religious, but he was not someone who was solely defined by it; I would argue that he was far more driven by her personal sense of integrity and strong connection to his family. However, once we leave the golden years, we see that Ned's personality is basically defined by his religious beliefs, and this is why I feel a lot of people see him as much more "basic" than in the past.
44:33 Peter gets raped by a bull in family guy. It is an exact family guy joke. Just swap a bull and a panda.
Family Guy S8 E11 "Dial Meg for Murder Airdate: January 31, 2010
Simpsons S12 E5 "Homer vs Dignity" Airdate: November 26, 2000
Family guy stole that gag from Simpsons.
What have you done?
Basically, you've made the conscious choice to torture yourself for our amusement.