The family that doesn't know the meaning of the word "cancelled" - The Simpsons!

[Reply #680 on:]

Well I disagree, but I'd like to point out that the episode was written by Dan Vebber who has also wrote several episodes of Futurama and American Dad. Maybe that's why the humour style in the episode feels different from normal?

[Reply #681 on:]

Like Futurama, though, The Simpsons is group-written, and the credited writer only indicates the person who wrote the original draft of the script. It'd be foolish to chalk that episode's success up to one single person. It worked because they had a genuinely inspired idea for once and executed it excellently.

[Reply #682 on:]

Maybe, but the episode was a bit lacking in humour.

[Reply #683 on:]

I disagree. If we're putting the episodes in chronological order, that's the hardest I've laughed at the show since maybe Weekend at Burnsie's.

[Reply #684 on:]

"Weekend at Burnsies" is hardly a great episode.

It baffles me that some people think as highly of "The Book Job" as that, to be honest. As I've said, it's easily one of the best episodes of the show from season 13, onwards, but top 25 of the show as a whole? Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion; I'm just genuinely confused that someone could think so lowly of the older episodes or so highly of the newer stuff...

[Reply #685 on:]

"Weekend at Burnsies" is hardly a great episode.

It's not a "great" episode, just a very, very funny one.

And while we disagree on The Book Job, it by no means that I think lowly of the classic era. I consider it an anomaly as far as modern Simpsons goes.

[Reply #686 on:]

Changing the subject, this is the ranking for all the episodes in the series on IMDB. What do y'all think?

1. Homer the Smithers
2. Homer's Enemy
3. Homer's Phobia
4. Homer Badman
5. Homer the Heretic
6. Homer's Triple Bypass
7. King Size Homer
8. One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish
9. Homer Defined
10. The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson
11. Two Bad Neighbors
12. Hurricane Neddy
13. Mountain of Madness
14. Boy Scoutz 'n the Hood
15. Bart the Murderer
16. Rosebud
17. Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song
18. Simpson Tide
19. Bart on the Road
20. Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge
21. Burns' Heir
22. Simpson and Delilah
23. Homer the Great
24. Stark Raving Dad
25. Homer Loves Flanders
26. Moe Baby Blues
27. Three Men and a Comic Book
28. Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy
29. My Sister, My Sitter
30. Alone Again, Natura-Diddly
31. Last Exit to Springfield
32. Grade School Confidential
33. King of the Hill
34. Marge Be Not Proud
35. Trash of the Titans
36. Lisa the Vegetarian
37. Skinner's Sense of Snow
38. A Fish Called Selma
39. Bart the Lover
40. 'Round Springfield
41. Mayored to the Mob
42. Lisa's Substitute
43. Bart Sells His Soul
44. Bart the General
45. The Trouble With Trillions
46. The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace
47. Some Enchanted Evening
48. Itchy and Scratchy and Marge
49. The Blunder Years
50. The Principal and the Pauper
51. Half-Decent Proposal
52. I'm Goin' to Praiseland
53. Pokey Mom
54. Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire
55. Deep Space Homer
56. Cape Feare
57. Treehouse of Horror V
58. The Springfield Files
59. Treehouse of Horror
60. Mr. Plow
61. Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 1
62. Flaming Moe's
63: Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 2
64. Kamp Krusty
65. Radio Bart
66. Bart the Daredevil
67. Homer vs. the 18th Amendment
68. The Last Temptation of Homer
69. Treehouse of Horror IV
70. Bart Gets an F
71. Mother Simpson
72. Lemon of Troy
73. Treehouse of Horror II
74. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
75. Homer Goes to College
76. Lisa's First Word
77. The Way We Was
78. A Streetcar Named Marge
79. Treehouse of Horror VI
80. Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes
81. Bart vs. Australia
82. Homie the Clown
83. New Kid on the Block
84. I Love Lisa
85. Homer's Barbershop Quartet
86. Krusty Gets Busted
87. $pringfield (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)
88. Itchy & Scratchy Land

To be continued...

[Reply #687 on:]

Please don't continue to copy and paste lists of every episode in the series. It's spam and it's obnoxious. At least put it in spoilers.

That said I'd noticed before that You Only Live Twice doesn't even crack the top 100, which is odd considering it's frequently named as the best or one of the best episodes of the series in articles or fan votes, as well as by numerous people on this forum.

And #20? Really? There's plenty of other questionable rankings, but that's the first glaring one. Not a very good list, but it's based on ratings accumulations that aren't even close to balanced, so that's what you get I guess.

[Reply #688 on:]

Marge vs. the Monorail is not #1 - therefore this so-called "IMDB" is an invalid source.
Heck, it's not even on top 100, so apparently those who have voted aren't real fans, because real fans would rank Marge vs. the Monorail very high.

[Reply #689 on:]

I was just going to bring that up

Marge vs. the Monorail was only beaten by Community's Remedial Chaos Theory in some internet competition of the greatest sitcom episodes of all time.

Also going full circle here, "Homer the Smithers" was pitched by Mike Scully.

[Reply #690 on:]

Really surprised how high Simpson Tide is, pretty underwhelming episode

[Reply #691 on:]

That list is clearly flawed, probably because ratings aren't mostly done in the context of all episodes to make such a list.

I have to say, while Marge vs. the Monorail, of course, is very prominent* and great episode, to me it's not one of the very best episodes.

* Or whatever the word is I was thinking of.

[Reply #692 on:]

The Simpsons' episode's ratings on IMDb are constantly fluctuating. It's quite bizarre, but they rise and fall with seemingly no logic. Every time I've looked at what episodes are in the top 10 there, they're different.

On top of that, recently, lots of episode's scores on IMDb (of other shows, too) significantly dropped out of nowhere - in a completely inconsistent way, too, I might add. Futurama's episode-scores are still utterly out of whack.

Episodes like "Bendin' in the Wind" and "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" recently fell from 8.something to 6.1, with "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" falling even more significantly from 9.something to 6.6. On the flip side, some episodes like "Attack of the Killer App" that were only rated about 6.8 to begin with are have now shot up to the 8s. "Attack of the Killer App" is now 8.2, making it the show's 23rd best episode by their rankings.

Basically, something strange is going on. Either someone is seriously fucking with the votes by creating multiple accounts (these episodes only have a few hundred votes each, so a relatively small number of fake accounts would be needed to have an impact for anybody who cared enough to do it) or, more likely, IMDb has completely pissed about with its algorithm, causing the scores of things to go weird for a while. They've done this before. Back in 2006, they changed something that caused every film released in the last 2 years to instantly drop 0.2 points overnight. They never officially admitted to anything, but I have no idea what else could account for EVERY film from 2004-2006 dropping in that way and I wasn't the only person to notice it.

So yeah, I'd basically ignore that list at the moment. Whilst the episodes do move up and down on there constantly, the highest rated episode is usually something like "You Only Move Twice", "Last Exit to Springfield" or one of the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?"s.

[Reply #693 on:]

Are IMDb ratings a thing people really care about? I hold them in the same regard as the CGEF ratings. It just makes me yearn for a true site that was dedicated to rating every episode of every TV show ever.

[Reply #694 on:]

Also going full circle here, "Homer the Smithers" was pitched by Mike Scully.

I liked Mike Scully just fine as a staff writer - I just don't think he should've ever been made show runner.

[Reply #695 on:]

I completely agree. He was a great asset to the show as a writer but him as showrunner seemed to be a case of The Peter Principle in action.

[Reply #696 on:]

I completely agree. He was a great asset to the show as a writer but him as showrunner seemed to be a case of The Peter Principle in action.

Yeah, I keep forgetting Mike Scully also wrote Lisa On Ice and Marge Be Not Proud. I still think there's more to it than just him though. It's pretty obvious in Season 11 that most of the original staff were gone by that point, for example.

[Reply #697 on:]

I think Futurama had a big part in the decline of The Simpsons. It was around that time that Matt Groening stole all the best writers for Futurama and Matt clearly stopped taking the same level of active interest in guiding The Simpsons around then, too.

Mike Scully clearly wasn't amazingly talented enough to make up for those issues on his own and although I think he did a decent job - certainly for two seasons - it just felt like people stopped caring once they hit the 10-year milestone. I still think that if someone else had taken over as showrunner for seasons 11 and 12, we'd probably have a show that remained of quality for several more seasons.

[Reply #698 on:]

I have been going through all the commentaries lately and about couple of episodes...

I haven't realised before how funny episode The PTA Disbands is. There is so many great jokes in it, which maybe comes from the story being loose and with new kind of situations.

Another random episode, King-Size Homer, I just thought is very good, even better than I've thought before. And it's noticeably funny episode as well.

[Reply #699 on:]

And in English, that means...?

[Reply #700 on:]

Shut up, Cudry.

I haven't realised before how funny episode The PTA Disbands is. There is so many great jokes in it, which maybe comes from the story being loose and with new kind of situations.

The PTA Disbands! is in my top 3 Simpsons episodes of all time. It's a really underrated episode, and is so damn funny - in a surprisingly dark way, for the most part, too (with some utterly genius satire to boot).

[Reply #701 on:]

And in English, that means...?

Why would I need English? I'm never going to England.

[Reply #702 on:]

Me fail English? That's unpossible

[Reply #703 on:]

I saw the preview of the Family guy/Simpsons cross-over. It looked ok.

[Reply #704 on:]

Saw that Simpsons Lego episode yesterday, first new ep I've seen in aaages! I actually quite enjoyed it, not amazing, but better than I expected. Lots of funny Lego jokes and I loved watching Chief Wiggum's Lego helicopter getting blown up!...

[Reply #705 on:]

Is this show still on?

[Reply #706 on:]

Just watching the "Days of Future Future" episode and there are a few continuity errors, such as how Grandpa ages but then reverts back to how he normally looks, and how Krusty is alive yet he's presumably going to be the one killed in the new season (we could be wrong about that, though).

*edit*

Ah, so it was all a dream? Or false memories? I see. Why are people mad at this episode then if a large chunk of it never happened?

[Reply #707 on:]

Maybe because that's the depressing episode?

[Reply #708 on:]

Just watching the "Days of Future Future" episode and there are a few continuity errors, such as how Grandpa ages but then reverts back to how he normally looks, and how Krusty is alive yet he's presumably going to be the one killed in the new season (we could be wrong about that, though).

*edit*

Ah, so it was all a dream? Or false memories? I see. Why are people mad at this episode then if a large chunk of it never happened?

I didn't know people were mad at this episode because of continuity issues, I just dislike it because it's incredibly unfunny and filled with loads of half-assed future jokes that seemed like cast-offs from Futurama (literally taking the twist from "Obsoletely Fabulous" but in a much less meaningful and creative way). It's just a poor excuse for an episode that, whilst wasn't necessary, didn't use any potential it may have had.


Also it's pretty much confirmed that it's in fact Krusty's father, the Rabbi, who will die in the season premier.

[Reply #709 on:]

Yeah; I'd be absolutely amazed if it's Krusty. That was reported by some website because they found out that the episode is called "Clown in the Dumps" (months after the internet did) and assumed that that meant Krusty would be dying even though if he died, he wouldn't have much of an opportunity to be sad about it. It's going to be his dad.

[Reply #710 on:]

Or maybe they'll find his dead body in a landfill. You never know!

[Reply #711 on:]

So is anyone else watching the marathon?

[Reply #712 on:]

So is anyone else watching the marathon?

I won't be watching anything past Season 12, that's for sure.

[Reply #713 on:]

I already have all the good ones, all on dvd!

[Reply #714 on:]

Yeah, me too and I have things to do for a large portion of it, but I'll still be tuning in and out. I wonder how many hours a day fxx will air the show once the marathon is over

[Reply #715 on:]

So is anyone else watching the marathon?

Yup, watched most of it all day. It was nice seeing most Season 1 episodes again, and a somewhat small portion of Season 2.

Yeah, me too and I have things to do for a large portion of it, but I'll still be tuning in and out. I wonder how many hours a day fxx will air the show once the marathon is over

I expect they'll probably air late at night like they do with Futurama's syndication reruns on that WBPG channel. I was on the guide DVRing all episodes I liked, and saw a little past the marathon. I saw a Homer's Oddysey airing late at night, I THINK.

[Reply #716 on:]

I wouldn't be too surprised if this took most of their afternoons, considering the other shows they air don't have a third of the episodes the Simpsons does

[Reply #717 on:]

I like how the Season 1 episodes are still miles better than most of Season 13 and beyond.

[Reply #718 on:]

I forgot how maudlin the earlier episodes are and they don't end on comedy notes. Like the episode where Burns hits Bart with the car, he totally gets away with it and Homer tells Marge he doesn't love her anymore (then she calls his bluff) and that's how the episodes ends. And it kind of bugged me how Marge never made the case she made to Homer about how she would just like the medical bills paid and an apology on the stand. Why would you not want justice for your son?

[Reply #719 on:]

Question: is there an episode of The Simpsons that is generally disliked by everyone? Such as "A Leela of Her Own" for Futurama. I know a lot of people dislike the episode "The Principal and the Pauper", but is there a specific episode that is universally disliked by most of the fans?