“Do not turn to another channel.” – Kent Brockman
Herein I disagree with Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times:
With the show now in its 21st season, it has become fashionable for bloggers to grouse that “The Simpsons” used to be a lot funnier a decade ago and boast that they’ve stopped watching new episodes.
(She goes on to cite the same Zombie Simpsons writer we mentioned earlier.) First of all, and Dave and Mad Jon will back me up on this, I have never done anything “fashionable” in my life. They don’t call me “sweatpants” for nothing and while I realize that’s a slightly different meaning of the word “fashion” it still applies here. I don’t think anyone who can see Zombie Simpsons for the garbage it is does so in an attempt to be cool. If anything the popular sentiment goes the other way (ours is a culture that birthed the concept of “haterz”, after all). Criticizing Zombie Simpsons is not an effective way to get people to like you.
Secondly, “boast that they’ve stopped watching new episodes” is a gross misuse of the word “boast”. Pride is the last thing I felt when I gave up on the show those many years ago. Regret, pain, and sadness, those were the emotions I felt. “Boasting” that I don’t like Zombie Simpsons makes as much sense as “boasting” about an airplane crash. The death of The Simpsons was the greatest pop culture loss of my adult life. It was a tragedy and treating it as such is simply appropriate.
Finally, Spurlock was doing promotional stuff on the New York FOX affiliate the other day. There’s video at this link. It’s very meh. But towards the end the station babe who’s interviewing him asks about those “critics” who say the show isn’t as funny as it once was. (Predictably Spurlock trots out the quote from Warburton, that is easily going to be my least favorite part of the special). But what’s telling about this is that she’s a FOX employee discussing Simpsons and she deliberately brought up the decline of the show so it could be refuted. FOX knows that almost no one thinks the show is as good as it once was, but they won’t permit even the tiniest bit of dissent to creep into the official line. We shouldn’t have called it Zombie Simpsons, we should have called it Potemkin Simpsons.
Dead Homer Society 
4 responses to “Too Cool for School”
“Pride is the last thing I felt when I gave up on the show those many years ago. Regret, pain, and sadness, those were the emotions I felt.”
Same here. It almost hurt me to give up on it.
I admit I like a good complain now and again. I wouldn’t be coming here if I didn’t. But my idea of a good complain (as far as this goes, anyway) is to get really nerdy about it and to go in-depth about all the parts that pissed me off and how they might have been better. Thus, complaining about stuff that isn’t actually that bad is just not the same. Last week’s episode, for example, was pretty bland and therefore I have less to say about it than a really foul episode like The Devil Wears Nada, which might be one of the worst episodes ever. I could complain about how there’s no excuse for that one for too many posts.
Actually, most of the complaining on blogs etc isn’t as good as it is here. It’s just “this show sucks now” and no more said. The quotes above assume that there’s a whole shadowy anti-Simpsons cabal writing charismatic and biting internet posts and influencing people like me into believing whatever they say. Which is not, in fact, the case. And who are these people whose dictation we all follow, anyway? Family Guy writers, I expect. Those fiends.
I really, really hate it when the powers-that-be accuse their detractors of populism, thus implying that whatever is the subject of said complaints is beyond criticism. Any criticism is caused by fashionability! Therefore there is no valid criticism! That’s about as sound a defence as sticking your fingers in your ear and going “la la la la.”
It also reminds me of how George Lucas repeatedly responds to vehement criticism of the “Star Wars” prequels from fans of the original trilogy. Those “fans” are overly nostalgic for the original movies, they’ve lost touch with their inner child, blah blah blah. Blame the fans in general and automatically excuse oneself from having to address the actual points of criticism being made. On “The Daily Show” the other day, Lucas was going on about how there’s a new generation of “Star Wars” fans who have grown up with the more recent movies and don’t care for the first trilogy. Pretty much the same thing has been said on Simpsons audio commentaries, that there’s a younger breed of fans whose first point of contact comprise the recent episodes and they prefer them to the older ones. That’s as maybe, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that the recent stuff is utter shite.
And, related to what Celia has said, if I was merely jumping on a rabid anti-Simpsons bandwagon, I’d be going out of my way to complain at length about every new episode – which I don’t do. Because frankly, most new episodes don’t even deserve to be complained about at length. Occasionally there’s an episode that’s offensive in its awful dreckiness, and that’s worth ragging on, but most of the time, episodes just tend to be bland and formulaic and mediocre. It’s the difference between a dull grey wall and a wall smeared with shit. I haven’t seen any season 21 episodes, but most of what I saw of season 20 was dull grey walls with the occasional wall of shit.
“Because frankly, most new episodes don’t even deserve to be complained about at length.”
Spot on. If you compare our “Crazy Noises” from Season 8 and now, you can see a big difference. With these brand new episodes it takes every ounce of my sober(ish) mental capacity to come up with a meaningful criticism other than “this sucks.” It’s painful and demoralizing. Not as bad as actually watching the show, but I assume watching a video of someone slowly removing your toenails one by one with a pair of pliers isn’t as painful as having it done either.
By the way, having known Charlie for the last 15+ years I can tell you without exaggeration that Webster’s missed the mark by not putting his name down as an antonym for the word fashion.