Is anyone truly happy about the news that The Simpsons will be making a new season? After 24 years and over 500 episodes, The Simpsons is nothing more than a big, bloated mess. It’s the cartoon equivalent of a beached whale and, just like a beached whale, our only option is to unpack the dynamite and get to a safe distance.
It’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when The Simpsons was a watchable cartoon. The Simpsons was not only ground breaking in its field but popular too, due to its imperfect characters and sitcom-esque plots. It had wit, humour and charm. It even proved quite controversial – in 1992 the then President of the United States, George Bush Sr. criticised it in a televised speech. So what went wrong?
The Simpsons
changed after its tenth season. Coincidentally, this was the time that
Family Guy started to get popular. Why did it change? Well, the skinny
is that a number of staff wanted to end The Simpsons and met with FOX.
The network decided to replace the naysayers and continue with the show.
At the same time, FOX was taking notice of Family Guy’s success. It had
the same format as The Simpsons (a family based cartoon) but it had
wackier plots and adult themes. The network decided that what was
popular for Family Guy would be popular for The Simpsons, too, so they
copied it. The Simpsons became crude and wacky, it maintained an
audience, it made money for the network and it stayed on the air. The
abomination was born.Not only did the writers start copying other shows but they copied their own show, too. Peculiarly, their ‘new’ episodes are rehashes of old ones – Bart and Grandpa bond over something, Lisa does something annoying, etc. In addition to that, the characters have become caricatures of themselves to make plot writing easier - Homer is an idiot, Flanders is Christian, Moe is a creep. Because of the overall shallowness of the production, the writers also overdo dramatic scenes to force us to sympathise with characters. Yes, Marge leaving Homer was dramatic the first time we saw it but after the hundredth time it gets stale. By doing this, the writers lost any investment we had in the characters and the setting.
It’s during this process that the most irritating aspect of The Simpsons emerged: celebrity cameos. What used to be a pleasant surprise is now a way for writers to avoid thinking (“Tiger Woods could teach golf to Bart?”, “Lisa meets Paul McCartney?”). Not only is Springfield saturated with hapless celebrities but it has a sickening devotion to them, as if it knows it needs them to continue to be on air. “This week, Lady Gaga is shown as the musical messiah, next week Hitler helps Marge organise her family.” Some of the “cameos” are confusing, too. Tony Blair? Julian Assange? Who cares?
The news of a forthcoming crossover between The Simpsons and Family Guy just proves that they have officially run out of things to write. The immediate response of fanbases was muted, to say the least. No whoops of delight or swearing of vengeance, just passive acceptance. This seems as good a judgement as any of The Simpsons fans for the past decade or so. A few years ago, a crossover between the cartoons would have been unspeakable due to their marked differences – today, the only difference is that one family has a severe case of jaundice. It’s very unlikely anyone cares enough anymore to start an old-fashioned flame war, going out in a blaze of glory and, shutting down whole forums.
So, that’s how it lies with the 25 year old The Simpsons. Despite everything, it’s still staggering along, half-dead, like a zombie who’s raison d’être is to stalk Family Guy. As long as The Simpsons keeps making money, FOX will keep it on the air. But enough negativity! Let’s look forward to 2037, when The Simpsons’s fiftieth season will be running. The Simpsons will have a Charles Dickens crossover - Bart will be Oliver Twist, Homer will be Fagin… what a wonderful episode that will be!
Featured Image: FOX
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