Lexy was kind enough to send Will and me this column from Salon.com called Ask the Pilot. The writer is a pilot who provides explanations and answers questions about the more technical ins-and-outs of flying to re-assure anxious or inform curious travelers. But he also delves into pop culture on occasion. Lexy sent this to us because he had these spot on words regarding the Simpsons…
can we talk for a minute about “The Simpsons”? I lamented this popular show’s remarkable downfall in a column a few weeks ago, but I need to elaborate.
How tragic it has been for something once so brilliant to become so crass and embarrassing. Poor Matt Groening — only those six-figure royalty checks, I imagine, keep him from drowning himself in the California surf. From 1990 through 1995, “The Simpsons” presented what was arguably the most cunning satire in the history of television. What made it so was its style — its masterfully hewn characters, rapid-fire comic timing, and a welcome lack of the sort of self-congratulatory comic vanity the networks normally give us. The scripts were wry and irreverent but never obnoxious. “The Simpsons” was art.
And then something — I don’t know what, precisely — began to go terribly wrong. There is no single moment — a switch of writers or producers, for instance — that commenced the demise, but within a season or two the scripts began falling apart. By 1998 the show was unwatchable, and it has remained that way: tediously self-conscious, bloated with slapstick and annoying plots hitched cheaply to various events and celebrities (and products) drawn from popular culture.
Am I the only one who feels this way? In October 1990, the openly gay actor Harvey Fierstein appeared in a fondly remembered episode playing Homer’s personal assistant, Karl. Watching this episode today, you see how deftly the writing and directing were able to incorporate the theme of implicit homosexuality. Not once is the word “gay” uttered; there are no political overtones or kitschy ironic references to Karl’s sexuality. By comparison, one need only to endure the 1997 guest appearance of filmmaker John Waters to see how weak and witless the scripts would become. When Fierstein was asked to appear in a sequel to his 1990 appearance, he found the script so void of subtlety and overflowing with kitsch that he refused not only the initial offer but a rewrite as well.
What ever made the show sick, it so unraveled its DNA that today, in reruns, the eras are plainly distinct: A veteran fan can usually differentiate “Simpsons” old from “Simpsons” new within the first 10 seconds or so.
Sadly, the longer “The Simpsons” plays on, the weaker and more diluted it becomes in our cultural memory. Somebody kill it, please.
I could not agree more!! We’ve all been talking about this for a long time. Specifically, we mark the “beginning of the end” for the Simpsons as the episode where George Bush moves into Springfield. So I thought I’d commit my point of view to the page….
