Saturday, August 26, 2006
Editorial: Eight Is Enough
There’s a certain sense of finality accompanying this week’s release of The Simpsons: Season 8 DVD. A sense that this is the final piece of merchandise that most Simpsons fans will ever need to buy, and that some of the greatest years of television, already long behind us, will at least never go forgotten.
Season 8 is the last season that can be characterized as good. It’s no secret the show has been literally unwatchable for nearly the past decade now, but if you’re looking for that place where the slide started, look no further. As Season 7 was a step down from Season 6, Season 8 is a step down from Season 7. Next year, we didn’t get so much of a step down, but rather a fall off a ladder that would likely require hospitalization, followed by the next year which would be the equivalent of a one-way ride on a ValuJet.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Season 8 is pretty good. It’s not the mixed bag that Season 9 is, as I would qualify most of the episodes from 8 as “funny” to “hilarious.” In fact, two of my favorite episodes come from this season; the perennial fan-favorite “You Only Move Twice,” starring Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio, the world’s most affable megalomaniac, and “Homer vs. The 18th Amendment” which saw Homer skirting the law with the improbable return of prohibition to Springfield. Other popular episodes from this season include “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer” – which has the bar-none best animated sequence in the series, along with Johnny Cash and a talking dog – and “The Springfield Files” (“Keep watching the skis!”)
There’s some fairly lame ones too. “The Old Man and the Lisa” is just the first nail in the coffin of Mr. Burns’ character, who in recent seasons has become as much of a dunderhead as Homer. “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase,” which proves most of the series’ secondary characters should not have a second show based off them, let alone 8 minute segments, and “In Marge We Trust” which – despite the classic “Mr. Sparkle” subplot – features Reverend Lovejoy fighting baboons and for that I consider it lesser.
There’s a disturbing trend that can be found in each of this season’s episodes, good and bad – they’re all completely outrageous. “You Only Move Twice” is fucking hilarious due to Brooks’ voiceover and the simple running joke of Homer’s obliviousness – but it still features Homer working for a James Bond-esque supervillain. Other episode in this season include Moe flying in The Fan Man’s outfit, a Mary Poppins musical, Burns and Homer trapped in a rocket house, entire episodes based around references to The X-Files and Frasier, military school, Poochy, Burns’ long-lost son, and other aforementioned examples. Now again, many of these episodes remain pretty funny. But it’s easy to see that the “rubberband reality” that Groening describes in the series commentary totally fucking snaps. In the next seasons, it would snap AND take out the eye of kid in the room.
What killed The Simpsons? A lot of people point to Mike Scully’s tenure as showrunner. He did preside over some awful, awful episodes (See: Season 11-Season 12) but the answer is a lot more simple than that. It’s just time. You work on ANYTHING, be it a TV show, a book series, a comic or a job for 8 years and you’re going to start to get burnt out. The show was clearly starting to run out of ideas by Season 7, and it just got more and more noticeable until they started throwing leprechaun jockeys and celebrity cameos at us until we said “Fuck you.” and quit watching.
I might buy Season 9. There’s a handful of episodes on there I like a lot (“The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” “Bart Star”) but several more that I loathe (“All Singing, All Dancing,” “Simpson Tide,” “This Little Wiggy,” “King of the Hill” and a few others) and I’m just not sure that it’s worth the price that they ask for the boxed sets.
So enjoy your 8 boxed sets and buy a ticket to the movie if you absolutely have to. But for all intents and purposes, The Simpsons ended for me this past Tuesday.
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Yeah, I think any sane Simpsons fan is going to stop buying this stuff at 8. I've been meaning to pick up seasons 6 and 7, I just haven't gotten around to it. But 8 is the definite breaking point. While there's a few really great episodes, it's the last season that really was any good, and even it falls prey to the rut that's killed the show for so many people.
I don't know if they are so much unwatchable in recent years. But I do know that I am not as adamant about seeing each episode as I was in the past. They are still good for a laugh even when channel surfing.
I hear that the new episodes aren't as bad at Seasons 11 and 12, but I'm just so divorced in my interest from the new episodes that I can't bring myself to watch them.