“Oh, you want a rock fight, eh?” – Homer Simpson
Tag: Alone Again Natura-Diddily
The Day the Laughter Died
By Mike Zanna There was a time when The Simpsons was the best show on TV. The show that currently calls itself “The Simpsons” has little resemblance. It’s not nearly as good. It’s not even good compared to the rest of the stuff on television. It’s like The Simpsons, but without everything that made The Simpsons so amazing. The show has become a hollow shell, a shadow of itself, a ghost of its former greatness. I’m sure there’s another supernatural metaphor I could use. So what the hell happened? At some point, The Simpsons went off the air and was replaced by its evil twin, Zombie Simpsons. I’m not sure when this happened, but it was at least a decade ago, maybe even a decade and a half. I started wondering if I could pinpoint the exact moment that the change occurred. If I could find one episode that killed the show, what would it be? When exactly did The Simpsons jump the shark? I came up with an answer. Personally, I think The Simpsons died on February 13, 2000, with the death of Maude Flanders. Maude wasn’t the only one who died that day. “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily” isn’t the worst episode ever, but it had the longest lasting negative effect on the series. Most bad episodes can be safely skipped or ignored. Even “The Principal and the Pauper” restores the status quo at the end of the episode. Whether you like the revelation about Principal Skinner or not, it doesn’t affect the episodes that aired afterwards. “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily” was what TV Tropes would call a Wham Episode. Afterwards, the show would never be the same. Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and after eleven years, I can see why the producers would want to shake things up. It’s just that this particular change was a bad idea that was poorly handled. The show had made some changes before, and many of them are lampshaded in this episode. For example, the Van Houtens had split up. Zombie Simpsons would later have them get remarried. Killing Maude Flanders was the first change the producers had made that was irreversible. The Simpsons had never killed a recurring character before. Bleeding Gums Murphy had died back in Season 6, but he hadn’t been seen on the show in years, outside of the opening title sequence. He wasn’t played by one of the show’s regular voice actors, so the producers couldn’t use him without bringing in Ron Taylor or recasting the part. Maude Flanders was played by one of the regulars, Maggie Roswell, who had played many parts before leaving the show. She would later return, but Maude would not. I suppose the producers could have resurrected Maude if they’d wanted to. They are the gods of the show’s universe, after all. They can do whatever they want. But there’s no way they could bring her back without destroying the show’s reality. Then again, this episode ran the week after “Saddlesore Galactica,” which…
Quote of the Day
“Look, Ned, I know we ain’t hung out much, what with your insane fear of drinking and me being banned from the church and all.” – Moe
Alone Again Natura-Diddily Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“But I distinctly heard you say that Maude was with God.” – Bart Simpson “Oh, that’s right, I was at Bible camp. I was learning how to be more judgmental.” – Maude Flanders Much like the commentary for the Jockey Elves episode, the commentary for the death of Maude Flanders mostly dances around the actual events on screen and their larger implications for the overall history and health of the show. Also like the commentary for the Jockey Elves, George Meyer is here quietly commenting on things without doing any of the stammering defense/non-defense of the indefensible crap that’s occurring on screen. What’s most interesting here is that they actually do acknowledge that Flanders starting to date people might have been premature, that Rod and Todd were too much of a bummer to do much with, and that death is awfully difficult to handle on a show like this. They don’t really say much beyond that, and it’s cold comfort knowing that they’re aware of the problems here, but it’s something. Six guys on this one, though Jim Reardon recorded from Oakland, where he was working on WALL-E. 1:20 – Here’s an artful elision: “Maggie Roswell, the actress who played Maude Flanders had decided to leave the show for awhile.” Well, that’s one way of putting it, and I don’t even blame them. FOX really, really doesn’t like people talking about salaries, and that the subject was a no-go on a commentary doesn’t surprise me in the least. 2:15 – Scully chuckles as Homer sprays his crotch with bug repellent. 2:30 – The NASCAR drivers all turned them down for voices. 3:20 – Maxtone-Graham denies that it was supposed to be his name in giant letters, says he originally wrote it as Reardon. 4:30 – Long silence here broken by someone asking if that was another actress doing Maude, which, of course it was. 5:30 – FOX, which was broadcasting NASCAR, didn’t care about their crash heavy portrayal. 6:30 – Scully’s rambling about how they got to the death scene and how they didn’t want it to be “horrifying”. He seems nervously defensive, which I suppose is understandable. 7:00 – Reardon complains that the camera was supposed to pan right to show Maude as she went off the edge but instead it went left and cut her out of the shot. Calls it a “clerical error” that never got retaken. 7:30 – Meyer jumps on to try and explain what they were going for on the act break and admits that it didn’t work out and “just seemed grim”. As usual, I’m glad he’s here. As soon as he’s done, Scully, Maxtone-Graham and the rest of them go back to nervously laughing and explaining things. 8:00 – They wrote a scene where Ned talks to the boys about Maude being dead, but it was too sad so they cut it. 8:40 – That’s followed by more rambling defense of this as having a lot of “heart”. 9:20 – Selman brings…
Compare & Contrast: Deaths
“One more time!” – Lisa Simpson “Oh, come on, Lisa, I got a date with Billie Holiday.” – Bleeding Gums Murphy Cloud There are a lot of head shaking problems with the way the show killed off Maude Flanders. The biggest is probably the fact that it was motivated by outright cheapness on the part of FOX and whoever else signed the checks. Maggie Roswell had been with the show since Season 1, providing not only Maude’s voice, but also the voices for Miss Hoover, Helen Lovejoy, Luann van Houten, and countless one off or minor parts (“No, my son is also named Bort”). She was always credited as a guest, and the money they paid her to show up in ten or so episodes a year wouldn’t have been a rounding error on the show’s annual budget. To fans of the show, refusing to pay her means two things. First, it means the nimrods in charge are fucking with the show, which is always bad. Second, it means that trivial monetary matters have overridden concerns about quality, which is worse. The Simpsons was what it was in no small part because it was protected from the death-by-a-thousand-cuts that wear down so many other programs, and refusing to pony up for something as vital yet inexpensive as the actress who voices half of your minor female characters can only mean that the bean counters have gotten their knives well into the vital organs of the show. They mention several times on DVD commentaries that FOX repeatedly nickel-and-dimed them about giving up the live orchestra for each episode, and that FOX was behind the shortening of the episodes by two minutes as well as the ongoing fiasco that is the four act structure. Screwing Roswell out of a few thousand dollars was a chilling precursor to those other management imposed restrictions. As bad as all that is, however, it occurred outside the control of the writers. Neither Mike Scully nor anyone on staff at the time could’ve kept FOX from treating the Simpsons franchise like a rented mule. Off-voice Maude (a recurring problem in Season 11) and the disappearance of Roswell’s other characters simply isn’t their fault. What is their fault is the unbelievably dumb, callous, and cartoon-y way they handled Maude’s death. Relating an unmitigated tragedy like the sudden death of a woman who was beloved by her community, her husband, and her two small children would be a tricky task even on a show that’s typically calmer than The Simpsons. Doing so in a cartoon where physically impossible things routinely happen (even before the show fell apart) requires walking a very fine line that allows you to express the sadness of it all while still keeping the story moving and the jokes coming. “Alone Again Natura-Diddily” not only fails to walk that line, it swerves back and forth across it like a drunk driver. To take just one example of this, the first non-Lovejoy speaking parts at Maude’s funeral…
Crazy Noises: Alone Again Natura-Diddily
“While our organist is on a much needed vacation, we thought we’d try something new, so get down and put your knees together for the Christian rock stylings of . . . Kovenant!” – Reverend Lovejoy For the fourth summer in a row, we here at the Dead Homer Society will be spending some time discussing twelve year old Simpsons episodes. This year we’re doing Season 11. Why Season 11? Because we’ve done Seasons 8, 9 and 10 already, and it’s time to take an unflinching look at the end of the show. Since Skype and podcasts didn’t exist in 1999, and we want to discuss these episodes the way the internet intended, we’re sticking with the UTF-8 world of chat rooms and instant messaging. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “solemn”). Today’s episode is 1114, “Alone Again Natura-Diddily”. Yesterday was 1113, “Saddlesore Galactica”. [Note: Dave couldn’t make it again this week. I’m beginning to think this “job” of his is just an excuse not to watch Season 11.] Mad Jon: I know we always talk about how off Maude’s voice is this season, but this is the most standout to me. Charlie Sweatpants: Well, yeah, they’re sending off a character in a very serious way – and they’re doing it because they were too cheap to pay the actress they’d been paying for more than a decade at that point. If ever there was a clear indicator that FOX didn’t give a fuck about the quality of the show, that was it. Mad Jon: I am not a fan of the character change episodes, but man, I am really not a fan of the ones that require an unemployed Homer to get things on track. Especially when he has to hide in a mailbox for some reason. Charlie Sweatpants: No arguments here. Homer is such a crutch in this episode that Flanders comes home from a date straight to the Simpsons house. Mad Jon: This one feels like a repeat of the Vegas wife one. Except, you know, someone dies. Charlie Sweatpants: Good call. It’s got all the problems that one does, plus several more. I mean, Homer actually promises not to be a jerk, and then proceeds to be a jerk, and we’re still supposed to sympathize with him. And Jerkass Homer is especially bad here because the rest of the episode is so damned solemn and serious. Mad Jon: It really is. We have to support Ned through his loss, as well as his realization that he needs to move on, through the trials of that, and finally to the point that he learns he can be himself and still find love, I guess. And all the while all I can hear in the back of my head is "And that’s my queue to exit." So I am supposed to feel bad and slapstick-y at the same time? Homey don’t play that. Charlie Sweatpants: I know how you feel.…