15
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Haters are always going to hate... with The Simpsons running for too long now, what kind of dramatic change should take place for it to be great once again?
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- Title
- TortureTheTrumps's comment from discussion "How would you end The Simpsons?"
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- TortureTheTrumps
Off-topic but: kind of weird to link to that specific comment rather than the thread itself, or just to make a regular talk post.
I don't think you can "save" the Simpsons. The era the Simpsons was made to lampoon is resolved and history does not move backwards, you can't bring it back and you can't do it again expecting it to be fresh, all of it already happened, the world has moved on.
Whatever attempt at modernizing the current show would feel would probably be deeply compromised by the need to appeal both to it's own internal diegesis and the realities of a changed America. You'd have to take out and/or rewrite so much in terms of characters, setting, plot points, you'd effectively end up with a kind of Ship of Theseus situation. If everything about the show needs to change is it still the same show?[1]
Personally I think whatever magic the Simpsons lost has now been captured by other shows like Bob's Burgers, The Amazing World of Gumball, Tuca and Bertie, or Bojack Horseman. The Simpsons should just end, doesn't matter how, and we should come to terms with the fact that it's time is over.
[1] In the interest of keeping the initial comment short I didn't go into a lot of detail but a modern Simpsons would, for example, have to ask some serious questions about it's setting. The landscape of the Urban US has changed, big cities have grown bigger, small towns have grown smaller, but a few towns have seen the opposite happen where young people have moved out of the large urban centers towards modernizing towns (Think places like Atlanta, Georgia). So where would Neo-Springfield be? An emptying Rustbelt town? A sprawling Urban center à la SF or LA? A slowly modernizing town attracting disillusioned Millenials? And if it's going to be a town stuck in it's past shouldn't the writing take that into account?
You have a point, but I also wanted to see what people thought of my idea for ending the show. It seems like the average "redditor" thinks that would be too much.
You are highly likely to be correct in that the magic that it once had is over and done with, in part because the writers have left, as another person wrote.
I'm not an average redditor, and I also think that would be too much.
Having Homer and Marge be post-transition transgender people would undermine the whole history of the show, in pretty much the same way that saying "it was just a dream" would. Homer is who he is, and Marge is who she is, because of their respective upbringings and their meeting and so on. Homer was a boy, and that created a certain dynamic with his father. Marge has always been one of three sisters, and that created a certain dynamic in her family. And so on.
Telling us that all their flashbacks were symbolic is the same as saying their whole characters are just dreams. It's not only not good storytelling, it's actively bad storytelling.
You may be right, but Simpsons was a farce from the start. The rule of funny applies here: the show is not bound by a strict internal logic.
It is also heavily episodic, like most pre-90s shows. The state of the world always resets in the end.
The rule of funny can only apply to something that is funny, but I don't think it would it be funny if Homer & Marge were revealed to be transgender. In my opinion, it would look too much like cleverness for cleverness's sake.
And, like I said, it would actively undermine the characters. It would basically be telling viewers that everything they've watched for the past two decades was a lie.
It might work as one of the 'Treehouse of Horror' vignettes, but not as part of the main series.
You are correct.
Probably.
I tend to agree, but not for the reasons you point out. The thing about shows like Simpsons it that they can do pretty much anything they want to the universe, except long lasting changes. This is not exclusive to that change, but to any substantial change that lasts more than one episode. They could make a gender-reversal episode and then go back to the previous.
The dramatic change that would be needed for the show to return to the greatnes it had in the beginning would be to recruit the original writers. This video (31 m) goes through the history of how the original writers departed and how that correlates with the show's decline. Death has some good points above (... what an odd thing to write), but in my mind it's all about the exodus of the writers. The world has changed, but the people behind the show have changed, too, and that's the real change that needs to happen to save the show.
But that won't be happening, I'm afraid.
Maybe, a complete teardown of the Fox television network, featuring the impending death of Rupert Murdoch at the hands of pitchfork-wielding Springfield-ites.
Or, revisit this early episode, and let the bomb go off.
They should have Bart jump over a shark tank on a motorbike.
TV shows have a shelf life. No show should continue as long as it has. I don't have an "ideal" number of seasons for a show (I guess it depends on a lot of factors) but 10 seasons should probably be considered the ceiling for most series. I'd much rather see a great show end on a high note, at the top of its game, than keep dragging itself along year after year when it's no longer interesting or relevant. Put it to bed and let something fresh take its place.
I just caught part of an ep the other day where it turns out that one of marge’s sisters was a lesbian (no idea how old it is I’m not a regular viewer). It was not handled very well imo, it doesn’t really make me want to see the simpsons take on trans issues.
I am bored as hell of the characters in the simpsons. Imo, the only way to make it interesting would be a time skip so the characters actually age, look different, sound different, and have different dynamics.
So in other words - make it a completely different show 😂
I don’t even know how the garbage show is still going - the characters and the stereotypes they represent are incredibly dated and dull.
The seasons should be shorter. Simpsons still has good episodes, but it is too irregular. The market shifted and top writers have more options. High quality shows have shorter seasons nowadays.
I think the show could've ended with this scene and it would've been completely satisfying