1 post tagged “the simpsons”
This morning, my husband came across a scintillating article on the widespread use of hand sanitizer by poltical candidates. Is it good hygiene, or a contemptuous disgust for the germy little people they're shaking hands with? My husband referred to it as a "Bart's People" story, which made me laugh. And then I realized that particular episode of The Simpsons will be included on the 9th season box set that comes out in December.
The Simpsons used to be one of my favorite shows, second only perhaps to Buffy. But I honestly haven't watched a new episode in about two years. I had become so disillusioned with the show that I found it upsetting to watch subpar episode after subpar episode, especially as the later episodes began to dominate the syndication special to the exclusion of seasons 6 and 7. The last episode that made me laugh at all was the "Land of the Jockeys" episode, and that was simply because of the sheer awful ridiculousness of it all.
Season 9 is really the show's last gasp at relevance. It is thoroughly uneven, with one brilliant episode ("The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"), a number of episodes with hilarious parts that peter out towards the end ("This Little Wiggy", though it's redeemed by the last minute appearance of the pyromaniac leprechaun, and "Trash of the Titans", which thoroughly wastes Steve Martin), and some real stinkers (...gonna use oil-based paint cuz the wood is piiine!). So it's not an immediate must-buy for me as the last 8 seasons have been. And that makes me sad. But it's going on my wishlist, where it will linger until someone either decides to buy it FOR me, or I break down and realize that my desire to see the Canyonero ad whenever I want overrides my dislike of the rest of that episode (the one where Krusty becomes an alterna-comic and hangs out with Janeane Garofalo -- god, that could have been so good).
Season 10 was my first year in college, and I watched it pretty much every week with everyone else on my floor in our RH's apartment. I'm looking through the episode guide now and I don't see a single good episode. The only funny line that's even popping out to me right now is from the Mark Hamill episode: "Guys and Dolls, we're just a bunch of crazy guys and dolls, oh yeah yeah yeah yeah guys and dolls..." And that's not even that funny. *sigh* At least season 11 has the Tomacco episode. Season 12 has Comic Book Guy's bootleg tape of Mr. Rogers drunk. ("What do you mean I can't take off my sweater? I'm HOT!") In season 12 there's literally only one episode I can remember at all (the one where they go to Brazil), and after that I honestly don't think I'd seen any until this year's Halloween episode, which I saw on YouTube and didn't laugh at once. Not ONCE. So sad.
There was also a clip from the Simpsons movie on a DVD we recently rented. It was very, very random and not particularly funny (Hower gets attacked by his sled dogs). I'm expecting this movie to be worse than the Dark Crystal sequel, which I'm pretty depressed about, too.
