/co/ - Comics & Cartoons

Here's the source link while I'm at it.
https://twitter.com/joechoui/status/1436030573559046149

Get to posting, don't make my sweat and sacrifice in creating this thread all be for naught.

oh yeah, I saw this on twitter before. It's a really nice comic.

Les Kassos just did a Simpsons episode right now, but I'm not sure if it's funny, other than highlighting how dysfunctional the Simpsons are.
Les Simplon - Les Kassos #74

>>438724
Jesus that's fucked up. Those wacky Frogs.

>>438724
Did it say anything about how Lisa became an insufferable know-it-all who the writers always give the viewpoint they themselves consider correct?

>>438728
Why bring all this up when she wasn't even in the sketch?
Seems pretty obsessed.

What even fucking season are they up to by now, haven't watched an episode of the simpsons in yonks since I don't watch teevee.
>The series is currently in its 32nd broadcast season, and has already been renewed for two more.
For fucks sake!

>>438875
Simpsons has been going on for 32 fucking years.
god damn.

>>438882
Zombies don't count.

>>439322
The whole "Don't take the money you're owed just because it comes from a Bad Guy" cliche is so bloody stupid.

By taking the money you're at least draining it away from their resources, and if you really want to show off how moral you are why not spend/donate that money towards aiding a worthwhile cause rather than on yourself.

Its just egotistical showboating and pointless to the point of being counterproductive as a Good person.

>>439323
It is okay to take money from "bad" people, if you're PlayTonic.

>>439349
I never minded Principal and the Pauper.

Certainly was way less dumb than some of the plot or 'lore' twists that came later.

It occurs to me that both Marge and Homer have cheated on each other (not talking about the near affairs with Jacques & Mindy)
Homer probably fucked his Vegas wife while drunk, Marge engaged in efficient-German-sex with the Homer impersonating replacement with the heavy accent in the episode that was a cheap parody of The Prisoner.

>>439666
You want some Steamed Hams?

Steamed Hams But Every Scene is a Different Animation Style

>>440086
How about some Lego steamed ham?
Steamed Hams but it's in LEGO

So why has Steamed Hams seemingly become the #1 most popular Simpsons moment out of all of them?

Simpsons - Russia at olympic committee
topical

>>440450
Absurdity and Banality go together like caramel and salt.
The banality of the outdated boss over for dinner sitcom plot combined with the absurdity of Skinner's denials pumped up to 11 combine to make a masterpiece.
Skinner straight up gets out of a tight spot by resetting the conversation by exiting the room an immediately coming back in.

Is there anything at all that people still LIKE about the Simpsons?

>>441149
N/A

Say some Nahobino is dissing your fly girl

>>441218
What the fuuuuu....
Was that some reference to some fighting game?

>>441284
Shin Megami Tensei V

>>441699
The fact Chief Wiggum bloodily ground up two youths who were spraypainting a wall into burger meat with a giganto turbine-powered jetpack in a non-treehouse of horror episode is messed up.

This is interesting.
Someone is putting a ridiculous amount of work into remastering that old Simpsons Hit & Run videogame.
The Simpsons Hit And Run REMASTERED MOD And Its Cutscenes 2

>>443795
Did not know, highly impressed. I always thought the in-game character models looked MEH due to time constraints and the dev team not being the best at designing something that looks good and moves good while not having too many polygons.

>>445290
Mankind's ability to survive is astonishing. His inability to heal is tragic.

>>446073
>Hey guys you remember WaterWorld?
yeah, and I need to re-watch it now that the Ulysses cut is out.

>>446132
There is a new cut of WaterWorld out? Is this for real??

>>446141
Are you a big fan of the movie Tweester..?

>>446147
No, just saw it once and thought nothing about it was "bad".

Springfield Noire

>>446339
DEATH TOME | The Simpsons DEATH NOTE Parody (FULL)

Has there been some pushback going around in recent times about the removal of Apu from the Simpsons?

Don't know the details specifically, just heard about it in passing.
Like its actual Indian people that want him back who aren't the kind of brats that want to get rid of characters such as Apu or Speedy Gonzales for being 'stereotypical'?

>>441218
Final Fantasy Tactics, but Moe Szyslak is the main character

>>447155
The guy who rose a stink about it in the first place claims that he didn't actually want them to remove him from the show; just change him to be less stereotypical. Most people just chalked it up as another reason not to watch the Simpsons. I think most Indians never gave a shit about him. He wasn't like how Speedy Gonzales is to Mexicans; he was very specifically an 80s joke that no one really cared about.

>>447290
>He wasn't like how Speedy Gonzales is to Mexicans
Speaking of-
The New Speedy Gonzales | Gabriel Iglesias

Steamed Hams but it's a Ghost Trick chapter

>>448089
What episode was this in?

>>448377
This is so obviously a shoop.

>>448386
Hey now, don't go destroying a poor pokefuckers dreams.

Wolfcastle was one of the more amusing parodies in the Simpsons.
When you make a 10 strength and 10 intellect character in Fallout

It was weird when they actually used Ahnold in the movie instead of him.

Steamed Hams but it was banned in the USSR
This is one fancy take on it.

Homer Man X - Spider Boss

>>451393
Homer Man X5: Space Shuttle Strategy

>>455626
I member demotivational posters...

>>456139
Do not conflate Zombie Simpsons with pre-2000 Simpsons.

Dagoth Ur goes to Fargoth’s for Steamed Hams Meme

>>456299
Why is Dagoth so memeworthy?

>>457134
dagoth urs perform dagothwave live on stage for you

Homer in Time: Big Apple, 3 AM

>>459010
Fire Emblem Recruitment

Simpsons Golf But It's Neo Turf Masters

Springfield Noire

Steamed Hams, but it's a Viral Meme from 2001

you know what you doing

Steamed Hams but it's the Australian Dub

RAW IS WAR Intro (Botchamania 374)

Simpsons Fantasy IV - Zeromus

Big Iron but it's an Unforgettable Luncheon

So Homer totally did fuck Mindy and just pretended it was Marge, right?

Sneed

Lisa is built for BMC (Big Milhouse Cock)

>>474222
>t. Milhouse

Milhouse would be like 3 inches hard lol.

Is this just some sort of bot spamming random screenshots and greentexted lines from episode scripts?

>>474314
Now kiss.

Al Jean had sent the NoHomers admit the following email back around 2004:

"As you well know, Mr. Shearer has been vocal in his criticism of the show's quality in recent years. Thus, I am forwarding you this email and would like you to repost it in my name.

Our show has won every award it could possibly get in the past year. Dan Castallaneta received an Emmy for his performance in Today I Am A Clown. All this was made possible thanks to people who worked much harder than Mr. Shearer. He complains about his gradually-reduced roles in the show. Whenever I schedule a Thursday afternoon table read, I can never be sure that he will show up. Many times I've been told that he wasn't coming. Therefore I've made sure not to give him too much to do in any given episode.

Mr. Shearer has told me that he's upset with the show's current state and he was happier in Season 4. Well, I ran Seasons 3 and 4 along with Mike Reiss and I don't remember him being very happy back then. In particular, I remember him strongly objecting to Homer At The Bat, an episode that is now regarded as a classic.

In addition, Mr. Shearer has said that he feels cheated by the show financially. He is set to make just shy of 5.5 million dollars this year for what can generously be described as a few hours of work a week. When I consider how much our firefighters and teachers make, this attitude makes me want to vomit.

-- Al Jean"

>blah blah blah teachers and firefighters blah blah blah look at all the cool awards we got
Not an argument, Al.

>>474762
>>474758
I love the part where he thinks awards are proof of quality instead of industry people giving them to their friends.

afaik Shearer stopped actually coming into the studio and just recorded his lines from home at some point in the early 2000s

>>474758
>>474762
I've often heard the term "Jeanisms" within his episodes, and while I think I have an idea of what that means, I need more explanation to what that means.

So the question is what to you, are what makes a Jean episode, a Jean episode, and therefore, a godawful or bad episode (or good episode)?

>>474826
>having to explain the joke to the audience
>jokes around Homer's grotesque appetite
>bad visual gags, usually related to body humor as well (cf. Smart and Smarter)
>rushed story development

>>474826
To me it's mostly forcing celebrities to play themselves without adding anything meaningful to the episode. Another aspect would be nonstop "Marge and Homer have a fight" plots . And characters often being reduced to their most obvious character trait only makes it worse (Bart - prankster, Lisa - smart adult in a kid's body, Marge - mum, Homer - dumb, fat alcoholic).

>>474826
Including all of the following:

>celebrity appearances that do nothing but dick suck the guest star ala Lady Gaga
>explaining the joke to the audience as anon said above
>overly long couch or blackboard gags
>marriage crisis episodes (are 3-4 of those per season really necessary?)
>B plots that are inserted for no reason. If the episode is about the adults, the subplot is about the kids, and vice versa--often they don't intersect and only exist to fill time or give Bart and Lisa something to do
>Flanderizing characters

>>474840
And also:

>Refusal to think outside the box. There’s a lot of reports that Jean likes to shoot down any episode pitch that deviates too far from his personal vision of how the show should work, choosing instead to go for the same kind of episode every single time. This has led to entire seasons of his work feeling samey, making them all feel like this unified blob of gray mush aside from the occasional standout.

>>474848
i sometimes think he gets inspiration from ZAZ movies (Airplane, Naked Gun etc) which would be fine if the episodes didn't pretend they want to tell a story, but yet again they try to have a plot/stakes which often completely doesn't work for the same reason.

>>474850
not sure I agree here, there were definitely ''outside the box'' episodes under Jean (Seemingly never-ending story, 24 minutes, The man who came to be dinner etc.) especially around the movie, just not that much in regards of his whole career.

>>474850
>i sometimes think he gets inspiration from ZAZ movies (Airplane, Naked Gun etc) which would be fine if the episodes didn't pretend they want to tell a story, but yet again they try to have a plot/stakes which often completely doesn't work for the same reason.
^this x100 but the hilarious part is that none of his comedy is ever worth it to make this structure feel needed. He wants to be Airplane but all he gets is a boomer's Facebook feed minus the AI.

>>474762
that sure sounds like a boomer's facebook posting alright

I think he just has a box where he’s most comfortable. It seems weird for such a longstanding writer to have a comfort zone, but he definitely seems to have one perhaps out of a sense of pride. Usually, he dismisses criticism for his work with the excuse that the show still earns Emmys. Obviously that means everything is fine and we don’t need to change anything. So not only does he stay within his comfort zone and rarely leave, he comes up with any cope and excuse to stay there.

>>474840
regarding marriage crisis plots: Homer and Marge are a couple, they surely love each other, this has been shown many times over the series but in Jean episodes their idyll must be interrupted by anything else. Because in his view in reality couples can't live in calm or have mutual understanding - true love is too ideal to be implemented, even in a cartoon.

>>474840
Dare I say Jean always kind of had problems structuring episodes as far back as the classic seasons as well as getting enough material to fill 22 minutes. This was somewhat apparently in Seasons 3-4 when you had stuff like Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes to pad out the run time (the writers also admitted that Itchy & Scratchy episodes were often used to burn time).

>>474871
>>474868
depending on who you ask he and Mike Reiss were responsible for the golden age of the show.

>but Season 4 felt off-kilter towards the end
that's rather easily understandable because the staff were extremely tired by that point. most of the OG writers left after the 8Fxx episodes were done and showrunners could only stand two seasons before they'd had enough. i'm sure Mike Reiss never wanted to come back again for that reason. Cape Feare was 100% the result of a totally tapped out staff who knew they would be leaving the show anyway.

>>474871
>>474879
anyone who has their doubts about Al Jean need only check out his DVD commentaries, interviews, and Twitter posts to realize that he always played second fiddle to Mike Reiss and really should not have been made solo showrunner.

>Reiss is a naturally funny guy, still is--check out his book Springfield Confidential
>hearing Jean talk about the show you always get the impression that he wanted it to be like Family Guy with cynical characters that are always at each other's throats
>i'm sure he'd do a plot where Homer gets drunk and molests Lisa if he could get away with it on network TV
>in most of the DVD commentaries while the rest of the staff are like "aw, this scene is so heartwarming" or "you can feel Bart's pain" Al is like yeah Homer is a dick nobody should be like him or Bart was a real cunt for what he did to Mrs. Krabapple in Bart The Lover

tl;dr he seems to get off on the idea of characters who want to kill each other most of the time and it goes a long way to explaining why the show turned out the way it did after he took over in Season 13

>>474904
I never explored the DVD commentaries much so I guess I missed out on a lot of insight there, or lack of it on Jean's end. But it does fit with how he was on Twitter. It always seemed like he was disinterested compared to some of the other staff, at least the ones that used Twitter. Though it's probably fair to say he liked Lisa, since she was almost the only one actually presented positively even if she really wasn't acting good in context a lot of the time.

Though the assessment of Homer not being likeable wouldn't be entirely wrong. In many ways he is not a good person at all. But the thing that still makes him click is not "we shouldn't act like Homer" but because most of us do act like him from time to time. He's absolutely a jerk to Flanders but many people have that one guy who just rubs them the wrong way even if everyone else loves 'em. People can be petty, impulsive, thoughtless and even volatile and in a way it makes Homer very relatable. He can make people laugh at the parts of themselves that suck.

>>474904
>>474907
i wouldn't say Jean was without his positives but you do get the impression he doesn't really "get" the characters a lot of the time

>>474904
It does seem he needed Reiss as a foil. Once he proved he could function as a solo writer during the Scully era he became a valuable asset to the show and there was really a lack of other viable options to succeeed Mike Scully and they thought he had showrunning experience and was very organized and disciplined.

Jean's particular takes on the characters became increasingly apparent including continuing asshole Homer from the Scully seasons (framing Marge for DUI is still in the top 5 worst things Homer has ever done). He never liked Bart very much so Bart became increasingly irrelevant as time went on. Lisa of course was his perfect daughterfu who can do no wrong. Marge is the totally helpless victim of Homer's douchebaggery.

fuck Al Jean though

Having seen a fair amount of Season 13-16, their biggest sin if anything is being...functional. They rarely do anything grossly wrong, but while Scully tends to have the feeling of a show unable to figure out what it wants to be, Jean is 100% content in doing absolutely the bare minimum of anything creatively. Most of his stories are so automatic that they barely even register as actual stories, the only really change they register is how increasingly sloppy his basic construction becomes as time passes.

>>474910
The Jean era turned to absolute garbage during season 17 and then it somehow managed to sink lower than that around season 21.

The Simpsons in the classic seasons worked because they had relatively regular turnovers of the show's staff. Oakley and Weinstein had threatened to leave the show if they didn't get to be made showrunners. They happened to think Season 2 was the show's peak and wanted to recreate that with their own twist on things. Like the previous showrunners they got tired out after two seasons and quit.

Easy as it is to shit on Mike Scully, it makes sense why he became showrunner. He'd been there since Season 5 and John Swartzwelder and George Meyer had no interest in the job. Again if Scully had only stayed two seasons like his predecessors it might have been ok but he was afraid to step down because he thought the show would be ending soon and he wanted the credit for being the last showrunner. Scully also got it to the point where the writers were a lot lazier than before, they'd put in a few hours a week instead of staying up all night reworking scripts like they formerly did. I would guess Jean made things even lazier.

I mean any institution needs new people once in a while; twenty years of the same guy running things leads to stagnation.

Oakley and Weinstein began the decline of the Simpsons; Season 8 was a minor step down in quality at the time, and the infamous The Principal and the Pauper aired at the end of their time as showrunners. However, Mike Scully perpetuated the show's downfall and is far more to blame for changing the series from a provocative comedy to just a commercialized sitcom.

>>474862
I will say that I definitely don't think the marriage crisis stories as a concept is bad per se but it's just that the immense overexposure to it in the post classic era by Al Jean (who is obsessed with this type of premise, it seems) has actively done a lot of damage to the premise and tarred its reputation by loads of uninspired, if not forced, marriage crisis plots, many of which feel poorly written and at worst turns Marge into kind of a monster when Homer hasn't really done anything to deserve it and sometimes being assumed to be the bad guy, but this we have discussed in other threads so I won't get into that again). A good marriage crisis episode is still good, but yeah, seem like at this point the premise is so overdone all too many attack those on principle.

TheRealJims did a video where he counts 76 different episodes involving some variation of the Marge and Homer have a fight plot.

>>475082
FWIW Al Jean's "defense" with marriage crisis episodes is that IRL married couples fight all the time so those plots make perfect sense. Which leaves me...very concerned about Jean's views on marriage.

>>475106
sure it happens but these episodes specifically Jean's make it sound like every trivial dispute is worth a divorce

>>475107
That seems to be the distinction. It's normal for couples to have occasional disputes but being kicked out of the house or contemplating divorce shouldn't happen almost every time as it does here. If you're having too many fights, you have to consider whether the relationship is toxic. It has gone beyond normal marital squabbling at that point.

The part of the video when Jims covered the more petty fights reminded me that I'd be okay with more of that from the show. I'm less okay with episodes that imply Homer and Marge really shouldn't be together because the premise of the show is that they should.

Homer Gets a Job or Marriage Crisis episodes. Both grossly overused plots but which do you personally prefer, /co/?

>>475116
>>475112
>>475107
>>475106
i hate marriage crisis episodes so much damn why can't they do something else with Homer and Marge's relationship? Homer gets a job plots at least have comedic potential. Maybe a more interesting poll would be marriage crisis vs Bart gets a girlfriend vs Lisa feels insecure and sad.

marriage crisis plots are always exactly the same thing

>Homer does something douchebaggy like frame Marge for DUI but be forgiven almost instantly
>Homer and Marge both act like douchebags this has happened so much that Marge is almost as unlikeable as Homer
>Marge acts like a douchebag either Homer didn't do anything or he did some trivial thing that doesn't warrant the overreaction she produces the wacky nature of the act makes her less sympathetic for being angry about it or my personal favorite they don’t want to present Marge as being in the wrong so a Marge centric episode will suddenly turn into a marriage crisis in the third act out of nowhere.

>>475038
A pretty good example of Scully's problems (in part because it's easily one of the least cartoonish premises of his latter three seasons) is Insane Clown Poppy. Despite the basic idea being very simple and if anything quite grounded (Krusty dealing with the child of a past relationship), the episode wastes no less than seven minutes on filler up until Sophie actually appears on screen, then another two on the extended Gulf War flashback. The episode is more or less halfway done by the time the actual premise is established and then much of the latter half is left on mafia shenanigans rather than on Sophie's character and how she effects Krusty. We learn pretty much nothing about her beyond that she plays the violin.

What if Moe got Ipad

>>475122
Actually that raises a very legitimate question--what were the potential reasons for the sudden and dramatic drop in quality from 5F to AA production runs? While there is pretty well-agreed to be a run-off in Scully's first production season, it genuinely feels like the scripting quality utterly self-destructed the moment his second season as showrunner began.

>>475122
yeah he should have just stayed a writer. i will say in his defense that he was always really great at writing Bart+Lisa interactions.

>>475126
That's probably because Scully had a brother growing up and has kids of his own so he understands how to write those plots. You can tell with some writers like Oakley and Weinstein or Swartzwelder who don't have kids and don't really know how to write child characters.

>>475106
i kind of agree that Jean has a very weird and uncomfortable idea of what relationships are like and he really doesn't seem to get Homer and Marge's dynamic at all

i mean in the classic seasons Homer and Marge are plenty of times shown to be soul mates and have an active sex life but Jean just always wants to show them as being ready to kill each other--in the Mr. Plow DVD commentary he even asks wtf does Marge find this gross lardass attractive for?

Let’s not pretend Jean is the only one who writes shitty marriage episodes and/or Marge as a jerkass. Werking Mom was a Carolyn Omine episode. Just saying.

>>475134
this doesn't actually mean much. The credited writer for an episode only actually writes the first draft, not the finished episode. Everything after that is the collective work of the writers' room, directors, and most primarily the showrunner. Marge being the subject of Strong Arms of Ma for example wasn't even Omine's idea - it was supposed to be Homer until Jean wanted the "Marge becomes a bodybuilder" angle. (Which means he can be blamed for the rape joke)

>>475135
oh well i guess Omine did the best she could with the mandate Jean imposed on her

>>475136
too bad really because the premise of the episode seemed like a good one but Jean completely fucked it up and it's easy to see which parts were and weren't Omine's

>>475143
Brooks was also a co-creator of the Mary Tyler Moore show, credited as groundbreaking for having a lead that was not only a woman but one who wasn't married or dependant on a man at all. And if he also had a hand in some of the side characters at the time, it'd explain a fair bit. They actually had some cool female characters that even if they might've had some connection to a male character, weren't truly defined by them. Except Maude, I suppose. Brooks seemed like a pretty cool fella for the time! But they were always gonna be fighting against Sam Simon enforcing a boys' club in the writers' room in particular. And the effects felt pretty quick once Brooks was no longer a showrunner (probably compounded by one of the new showrunners being our old friend Al Jean).