/co/ - Comics & Cartoons

probably memes half the time. the show got a little bit better when he moved away from being showrunner after season 12.

>>476009
>>476016
it's still faintly bewildering to me just how much the show completely fell off a cliff under his tenure

>>476028
yeah the prevailing pattern behind Scully's seasons is a kind of serious apathy that starts to set in during Season 10. There's an almost persistent disinterest in doing stories which feel like they meaningfully iterate on the characters and instead the prevailing logic seems to be just having Homer doing as many retarded antics as possible.

>>476009
>the show got a little bit better when he moved away from being showrunner after season 12.
not hardly. Al Jean was as bad and in many ways worse.

>>476056
Yeah Jean sucked cock. I will say the show did get better in Season 30+ under Matt Selman since he brought in some fresh sensibilities and seems to have more respect for the show and the characters than Jean does and it could actually almost be good now if the voice actors were still at their Season 6 level instead of undead zombies--they're really the weak link at this point.

>>476062
>>476056
this was gone over at length in the old Simpsons thread that Jean loves really cynical humor where the characters want to kill each other most of the time and he was also responsible in a major way for the show taking a massive shit on Bart which is something Selman more-or-less stopped. also Jean cannot write a natural-feeling exchange between characters to save his life, his dialog is always very stilted and robotic.

>>476062
Selman stopped a lot of the preachy Lisa bullshit but he also made B&L into more generic kid characters who lost a lot of their personalities.

idk about you but Patty and Selma doing ASMR in My Life as a Vlog was a surprisingly funny HD season moment and shows that Julie Kavner still has it sometimes

>>476074
> also Jean cannot write a natural-feeling exchange between characters to save his life, his dialog is always very stilted and robotic.
At least Mike Scully was great at writing Bart/Lisa exchanges.

Moe get iPad.

>>476016
didn't Scully even O&W always talk about the difficulty of coming up with new plots because they exhausted all the obvious ones?

>>476085
Bill Oakley another time claimed Springfield has so many characters that the plot possibilities were near-infinite so you tell.

>>476085
at least all the ones you can show on network TV anyway, don't think a plot where Grampa molests Lisa would fit that category

>>476075
>>476074
I'll prefer to take your word for it rather than subject myself to Season 30 Simpsons to find out.

>>476086
Infinite possibilities if the staff actually wanted to try them which they've demonstrated before that they do not. This goes to eg. any tard who thinks Sherri and Terri should become major characters.

>>476093
the only way they could stay fresh was if they regularly hired motivated young writers who could work long hours. it was sort of an inevitability that the show would become a nepotistic old boys club and stagnate.

>>476093
>>476093
yeah i know S&T aren't very funny but then again neither were a lot of gag characters that got way more screentime than they should have like Rich Texan and Professor Frink for no reason other than that the writers thought Dan Castallaneta and Hank Azaria doing the voices sounded funny at the table read.

>>476098
I won't pretend HD Simpsons is equal at all to Season 6 even so there's plenty of utterly horrible animated shows like Fairview or recent American Dad that don't get shit on nearly as much for some reason.

Also blah blah blah Marge sounds like an undead zombie. Yes Julie Kavner sounds old compared to what she was in Season 5 I don't dispute that but she can still deliver lines well when she tries.

>>476110
My take on that is that Julie seems to try harder depending on what writer it is for example in Carolyn Omine's episodes she's often still pretty good but many Al Jean ones she clearly is not feeling the material and only puts in minimal effort.

Pop question--Do people here actually like Comic Book Guy, like as a character? Because I've seriously gotten the impression that his appeal is strictly with outsiders who've only casually seen a few post-classic episodes and remember him as a "funny sarcastic nerd

>>476114
tbqh CBG was in exactly one Season 1-6 episode and only becomes a prominent character in Season 7 onward and most of the time he was just used by the writers to shit on Internet Simpsons fans. Also the whole Kumiko thing really didn't go anywhere.

>>476110
oh no Harry Shearer is easily the worst of the main 5 voice actors now and not just because he's the oldest of them but he's also hated the show and stopped trying since the early teen seasons

>>476118
Scully and Jean basically ruined all his characters as a huge fuck you

>Skinner becomes a pathetic cuck
>Flanders becomes a caricature of a Christfag Republican
>Burns goes from evil mastermind to decrepit old man

>>475684
I agree BB uses the kid characters a lot more sometimes to the detriment of Bob and Linda not getting enough screentime.

Dislike the spucklers episodes, they never needed to expand on them and the episodes are just meh. I also find that they have overdone comic book guy in the hd era, but I guess that may be an unpopular opinion. It would be cool if they expanded a bit more on some of Professor Frink or Dr Hibbert as I think they could be good for mixing things up.

>>476159
yeah fuck the Spucklers. seriously Mary should have been in one episode tops and Love Is A Many Splintered Thing is one of my most hated episodes.

>>476128
while we're on that subject i seriously don't get why Simpsons fans love Jessica Lovejoy so much she's just a clone of Sherri and Terri and there's not a lot else that could be done with her

>>476165
Also fuck Shauna. She's not funny just creepy and a child predator who gets away with it but because someone on the staff is obsessed with her they keep trying to force her anyway.

>>476170
>She's not funny just creepy and a child predator who gets away with it but because someone on the staff is obsessed with her they keep trying to force her anyway.
so just like Milhouse creeeping on Lisa because he's the writers' self-insert

>>476172
Sort of although since Selman took over he got rid of most of that shit since he's against the idea of Lisa having romance plots.

>>476056
I can't for the life of me figure out why Al Jean loves marriage crisis episodes to the point of needing to do about three every fucking season. Nobody likes them, about 90% of them are painful to watch, and they're always exactly the same thing every time. There was one of the Selman-produced seasons (33 I thought) where good ol' Al is EP for one episode so of course he can get one of those plots in there.

>>476177
at least Mike Scully's seasons really had none of those

>>476177
Those episodes were rather grating going all the back to Homer's Night Out.

>>476181
So in all seriousness what are your least favorite Season 1-8 episodes, /co/?

>>476182
My personal picks:

>Season 1
Life on the Fast Lane: Marriage crisis plot (uggh), has no good jokes and the pacing is really slow and it just drags.
>Season 2
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish: Sappy and emotionally manipulative (did anyone really think Homer was going to die anyway). Also lethally slow pacing.
The War of the Simpsons: Marriage crisis plot, thin on good jokes.
>Season 3
Like Father, Like Clown: Feels like tryhard award b8
>Season 4
Mr. Plow: Some good jokes but too slow and the Homer Marge snuggle bits come off as unnecessarily gross
Whacking Day: Too surreal, slow pacing and just feels very weird
Selma's Choice: More kind of unnecessary grossout moments
>Season 5
Bart Gets an Elephant: A bit too predictive of Season 11 and also too many grossout jokes
Secrets of a Successful Marriage: Marriage crisis plot, quite painful at times

>Season 6
Itchy & Scratchy Land: Way too surreal, feels like an abortive Simpsons movie script
And Maggie Makes Three: Compared to the previous flashback episodes way too gag-oriented and they forgot to age Bart and Lisa down in the flashbacks
Lisa's Wedding: I never liked the future episodes much anyway
>Season 7
Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily: I never liked this one and find it very forced and hard to watch a lot of the time
Bart The Fink: Aside from the fact that I've never super-loved Krusty to begin with this one just never felt that funny
>Season 8
A Milhouse Divided: Not that funny and yes it's another marriage crisis plot
The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show: There are some good jokes but it was mostly a vehicle for the writers to complain about Internet Simpsons fans
My Sister, My Sitter: Some good jokes but the whole premise was incredibly stupid and Bart and Lisa are really very unlikeable here and it gets painful to watch at times
The Old Man and the Lisa: The interactions between Burns and Lisa are quite painful even though there's some good jokes here and there.

I was never a fan of the Sideshow Bob episodes like Cape Feare, which many seem to consider one of the best episodes. I think he's painfully unfunny and forced as a character. Plus the idea of a grown man wanting to murder a 10 year old is pretty damn disturbing. The over-reliance on physical comedy also sticks out like a sore thumb. Feels like the character wasn't strong enough to carry a classic era Simpsons episode, so they resorted to stepping on a rake a hundred times.

>>476352
So Peanuts time logic, where several characters debuted as babies/toddlers before getting close to the same age as Charlie Brown and stopping.

Speaking seriously they need to just stop making more goddamn simpsons episodes.

>>476355
Actually, that reminds me, that's why I dropped Peanuts after initially buying several collected volumes. Time stopped moving, and change stopped happening. At least with Calvin & Hobbes Calvin is a child for a few years in-universe, instead of forever. So aside from a maybe magical talking toy tiger, shit is just believable.

>>476355
This is broadly how time works in cape comics too.

>>476352
That's not Ling, it's some random gook that Lisa disowned for eating horse meat.

Scully was the guy who decided Homer being a loud angry cartoon man who meets celebrities and gets injured 20x per episode was the apex of comedy.

>>476215
The rake scene in Cape Feare was to pad out the run time of the episode because they didn't have enough material, they've said this numerous times.

>>476363
>go on NoHomers thread
>numerous mentions of HD season episodes that draw a complete mental blank (like wtf is this?)
That.

>>476385
And there you go. Who the fuck is this random brown loli?

>>476364
You should really stop reading Peanuts after about 1975 anyway.

>>476213
>>476211
It's a remarkable thing how John Swartzwelder has written some of the best episodes of the series and also some of the absolute worst wtf did I just watch? ones

>>476390
What happened in Peanuts in 1975?

>>476393
That's really kind of a rough cutoff date but the strip did gradually lose its bite after that point.

>>476392
Swartzwelder usually wrote super-absurd, cartoony episodes so they had the potential to end horribly a lot of the time.

>>476389
I don't know enough about Zombie Simpsons, can't help you there.

I think Faith Off has the worst Lisa characterization I remember. People may not realize it because the episode isn't based around her.

>>476473
it's Lisa The Skeptic Mark II except her only role here is to insult what everyone else is doing.

>>476475
Don't get me wrong, I hate LTS too, but as douchey as Lisa is there it's tame compared to what she does in Dude Where's My Ranch.

>>476473
Lisa was not nearly as big an asshole in the Scully seasons as she became in the Jean ones but she was more just boring.

Lisa Goes Gaga is overrated as bad episodes go, there are many far worse ones eg. The Boys of Bummer. The entire town driving Bart to attempted suicide is infinitely worse than LGG which is just another bland guest star-centered episode.

The Musk Who Fell To Earth. No I don't hate it because of any kind of /pol/-related reasons, it's just LGG but worse.

Here's ten picks from me that are worse than LGG:

>My Sister, My Sitter
>It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge
>Co-Dependents' Day
>A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again
>Flanders' Ladder
>Go Big or Go Homer
>Thanksgiving of Horror
>The Last Barfighter
>Lisa's Belly
>Bart the Cool Kid

boys of bummer makes me genuinely rage a little i hate that episode so much

>>476480
"Elon Musk is possibly the Greatest Living Inventor" - some smartass kid

This episode really aged well when we have deathtrap cybertrucks exploding and Shitter becoming a worse platform than it already is as of today.

Holidays of Future Passed was a shocker to see. It's easily one of the two episodes from Season 23 I would give a 10/10 and at least 8/10 if going by Season 1-8 standards. The emotions, voice acting and themes all felt natural, and even the jokes were killer (especially the Ralph Police Clones on Fire).

>>476492
it was a touching ending but it's one of those episodes that falls apart under closer examination. the only good future episode was lisa's wedding all the others are ruined by the one that preceded it.

>>476500
>>476492
Anyway, Days of Future Future wrecked everything that might have been good about HOFP. There's no good jokes, Jenda is back and is actually annoying here, and...zombies? What?

>>476482
Let's not forget killing off Maude Flanders for absolutely bullshit reasons.

>>476479
If you think Lisa Goes Gaga is the worst episode ever you haven't seen much of the show past that point. There are at least ten episodes that surpass it for sheer horror.

Lisa Goes Gaga isn't even the worst episode of its season let alone the series as a whole. Shit, it's not even in the Bottom 3 episodes of its season, those would be Moe Goes from Rags to Riches, The D'oh-cial Network, and THOH XXII.

Of the stuff not yet mentioned there's Future-Drama:

>Milhouse starts a fire and then rescues Lisa from it so she'll go out with him, which she willingly does
>which apparently had nothing to do with why she dumped him and went back to him as soon as she isn't going to college
>considering Jenda is kept in HOFP, apparently goes on to marry him--is she literally retarded?
>there's no stakes with Bart because Jenda has absolutely no personality and there's no reason why the audience should care if he stays with her
>she's a generic love interest and also acts creepy by trying to force him into sex, yet she was brought back twice and basically made canon as Bart's future ex-wife
>none of the jokes are funny and they all have to explain themselves to the audience
>Sherri & Terri got knocked up and had twins because they're twins (lolsofunneh right?) and Nelson pumped and dumped them because that's what his dad did
>as far as we can tell S&T weren't really doing anything wrong, weren't anything but affectionate to an asshole who is implied to be several years older than the rest of the class which means he knocked up S&T when they were underage, which is creepy as fuck, and weren't even kind of bullies anymore but the message is still "Nelson, you show those bitches"
>that moment was so bad and OOC that they even have a shot at the prom to show how OOC it was
>and as a capper, Bart gets told he'll never find true love until he dies

>>476507
Continued:

>DOFF is so bad it's funny for how pathetic it is, but FD is just ugly and depressing
>everyone's incredibly unlikeable or stupid, the futures are the barest surface level things and the only kind of sympathetic characters are the ones we're supposed to celebrate the suffering of
I hate Thanksgiving of Horror more but this is easily the worst overall episode. Even Boys of Bummer wasn't constantly referenced and basically enshrined in canon like how the other future episodes kept using bits of Future Drama. It's why Barthood is the only bearable Jean era future episode because it repudiated most of FD. Even roid Milhouse had a reason that time.

>>476505
>Shit, it's not even in the Bottom 3 episodes of its season, those would be Moe Goes from Rags to Riches, The D'oh-cial Network, and THOH XXII.
The D'oh-cial Network is an episode that isn't hated nearly enough. It's fucking bad, man.

>plot that's almost nonexistent that tries to be a parody/satire but completely fails at it
>loads of filler
>a lot of drawn out nonsense
>no even slightly good jokes anywhere
>even Moes Goes From Rags to Riches is better than this

>>476512
why that? it's been a long time since i saw that episode but i don't remember anything especially bad about it.

THOH XXIX was awful, even worse than LGG.

>>476535
They used to say Principal and the Pauper was the worst ever.

>>476537
Not the same thing. That episode actually tried a clever experiment. LGG is nothing but a relentless dicksucking fest of Lady Gaga and it deserves every last drop of vitriol it gets.

>>476542
like at least with PATP the episode had a point to it. LGG has no point and no effort outside worshiping Gaga.

It's not the worst IMO; that's Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson, the only episode of the entire show I have never watched from start to finish because it's that unbearable. Honorable mention to The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed and I Want You (She's So Heavy) which are the other episodes I am never in the mood to rewatch.

Lisa Goes Gaga was never my least favorite, I guess. But it has a hard reputation among the fans and casual watchers for being the absolute worst of the entire show, and the massive amount of hate is not easy to win so I guess Lisa Goes Gaga is still seen as the worst and probably it ever be, even if in my opinion it doesn't deserve that designation.

Boys of Bummer is surely the worst ever.

>>476553
>Boys of Bummer is surely the worst ever.
I agree it's pretty bad but LGG has no redeeming qualities at all.

LGG is more bland and inoffensive than outright bad. It's toothless, souless, and by the numbers, but there's nothing to really get butthurt over (such as an entire town driving a 10 year old to attempt suicide or Homer intentionally framing his wife for a DUI)

I get that it's basically a commercial for Lady Gaga. But then again, A Star Is Burns was basically a commercial for The Critic.

Lisa referring to Elon Musk as "the greatest living inventor" will go down as one of the most embarrassing lines ever uttered on the Simpsons.

>>476557
Yeah that's pretty bad. Also reminds me of how in early Star Trek Discovery (in 2017), they mentioned Musk as a famous pioneer inventor of humanity ("How do you want to be remembered in history? Alongside the Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane?" *last one is a fictional in-universe character who invented warp speed flight, btw*). The character saying it did turn out to be an evil mirror universe guy but even so they included Musk like that. But maybe even worse, the series actually said there's a school named Musk Jr. High School (it was only mentioned in dialogue and a character said it was a bad school, but still...). Just goes to show how popular he was among hip/celebrity circles pre-this year.

Anyway, one episode that is definitely worse than LGG is The Seven Beer Itch. It was and still is one of the biggest disasterpieces from the show and a rare one where pretty much nothing about the script works (visuals are nice though). There's also the worthless, unfunny and dull as sin Yokel Hero (which has zero redeeming factors, also completely wasting Albert Brooks).

>>476213
>My Sister, My Sitter: Some good jokes but the whole premise was incredibly stupid and Bart and Lisa are really very unlikeable here and it gets painful to watch at times
I don’t think people would hate My Sister, My Sitter so much if it ended with Bart properly apologizing for his douchebaggery by coming clean about what really happened. But he didn’t, and Lisa’s reputation is still damaged while Bart only gives a very weak apology and basically gets away with everything (the broken arm doesn’t count since it was his own fault). The only reason Lisa gets a babysitting job at the end is because Dr. Hibbert is an entitled SOB who needed a quick babysitter and Flanders didn’t care.

Paths of Glory is another one that is absolutely terrible. It extends Al Jean's overall disdain for Bart to the absolute limit by claiming he's a sociopath while trivializing ASPD like it's some fake movie disorder rather than a real thing that real people struggle with. It's a complete ragebait episode for me, and I am baffled on why some folks walked away from it thinking it was good. If opinion hasn't shifted on it yet, I hope more folks can notice how harmful this episode is.

>>476570
I find it strange that MSMS used to be a well-regarded episode, I mean it was from Seasons 1-8, right? But recently it's gotten a really bad rap, worse even than many Zombie Simpsons episodes that have no redeeming qualities.

>>476576
p. sure it's because they don't like how Bart sabotages Lisa and gets away with

>inb4 yeah but he broke his arm and...
doesn't count as just desserts because he was going to milk his injuries for all they were worth

>>476578
>>476576
I didn't like it because the premise was really stupid to begin with.

>Marge actually being dumb enough to let Lisa babysit Bart
Is something Homer would do but Marge being that dumb is pushing it. Also in general the kids were very unlikeable and you just wanted to punch the both of them out.

>>476579
Bart's asshole-ish behavior in the episode is at least understandable, you would probably also flip out if your younger sister was told to babysit you. If it was me I would have just punched her teeth out, left the house, and hung out with a friend.

>>476582
my brother is 5 years older than me and i can tell you if i was in Lisa's situation that is very much how he would have acted to me

Pretty sure Lisa The Simpson is another one that used to be regarded better than it now is and a great sendoff to Oakley & Weinstein but now a lot of people accuse it of having a retardedly feminist message by suggesting all the Simpson women are successes and super smart and all the men are losers.

>>476602
Seems to me the issue is less the "Simpson gene" per say and more its Lisa glorification where the show tries to remake Moaning Lisa/Lisa's Substitute but worse. Also of course the show's staff glorifying Lisa and dismissing Bart after the early seasons of the show. The last couple O&W episodes are basically this.

Brawl In The Family used to be regarded pretty good I thought but people don't seem to like it much now.

>>476604
that's true for a lot of Season 13-15 which was better received back when they aired than now. it really seems like that was because everyone was sick of Mike Scully by that point and were relieved to see him gone and the early Jean era eps being a little less cartoonish so they way overrated them.

>>476606
I do agree that my opinion of 13-15 has diminished a lot from what it was.

>>476604
>Brawl In The Family used to be regarded pretty good I thought but people don't seem to like it much now.
also i mean people are more sensitive to the idea of sexual consent nowadays although they're still liable to blame Homer for getting drunk in the first place, which feels rather icky. if Marge was the one who instead got sloshed and married some dude in Vegas when she was unable to legally consent, would you still claim she's at fault for getting drunk in the first place? I wouldn't.

I remember Seasons 13-15 being regarded as a revival of the Simpsons after the dark ages of Seasons 10-12 but that opinion doesn't seem to be all that popular nowadays.

South Park's Elon Musk episode wasn't quite as dreadful as the Simpsons' one probably because it wasn't as relentless of a dicksucking fest. They didn't go super hard on him but that was also back when the guy was still semi-sane.

>>476606
yeah i guess people were so burned out on Scully that they exaggerated the quality of those episodes

>>476558
My issue with TMWFTE is really that Musk could not act for shit while Gaga at least tried.

>>476878
Let's be fair to the argument, it's not like EM was the same guy back in 2015 that he is now. Beyond Blunderdome was also a more watchable episode back before we knew Mel Gibson was a closet Stormfag.

>>476062
>>476056
I guess Al Jean has never wanted to quit the Simpsons because as he's said most other shows don't allow as much freedom from network interference. The one time he tried starting his own show outside the Simpsons it got cancelled and fucked over by the networks even though it got good ratings and overall was pretty good so you can't really blame the guy. Plus I mean no matter who was running the Simpsons after Season 8 it would still suck and they'd be totally out of ideas.

>>476918
If you mean Teen Angel, I highly doubt that that bombed because the networks screwed the pooch rather than the fact that it was the sitcom corn that he's always shit out.

now I think S13-15 are ok, a little worse than 12, a little better than 11 and a lot worse than 9-10. there are some genuine classics in there like I Am Furious (Yellow), Sweets and Sour Marge, The Dad Who Knew Too Little, Moe Baby Blues, I D'oh Bot, The President Wore Pearls, and Simple Simpson. I don't think the characterization changed all that much from the Scully era and the jokes are a little less sharp but I guess the stories are more coherent. i thought Season 16 was the first real "zombie" season, i didn't like any of those episodes and the writing was narcoleptic. i haven't really been motivated to watch anything beyond that.

plus they started ratcheting up the marriage crisis episodes which i detest

>>476926
I guess you could kind of say it was between 16-18 as the show reached a level of dullness it never got out of until Selman took over from Jean. I thought in 13-15 they at least somewhat still tried and it's definitely true that a showrunner can only last a few seasons before running out of gas.

>>476930
>>476926
I had thought that too, that Season 17 just has a near-lack of episodes where you remember much of anything at all. The episodes from that season are neither good nor outright bad, they're just...there. It does seem that the staff were really creatively uninspired around that time for whatever reason.

>>476933
The Girl Who Slept Too Little and My Fair Laddy were at least highlights of 17 I thought.

>>477006
Yet Season 1-8 Simpsons does seem to take this into account. None of the romance plots involving the kids are real romance plots, nor does romance actually happen. Bart's crush on Laura is an entirely innocent one and Milhouse and Samantha just practice kissing and that's it (regardless of what WDJ and Killbot think). It's only when you get into Lisa's interest in boys do things get off and it would get worse as time went on.

Now flash forward to The Bart Wants What It Wants which seems to play things up like they're older teens or adults dating but Greta is a total blank sheet of paper as far as any kind of personality goes, proving that it's just a cookie cutter romance plot Bart has been awkwardly shoved into.

>>477006
I know Matt Selman has been vocal about disliking Lisa love stories to the point of refusing to do them as showrunner because he believes a 2nd grader shouldn't be dating, but at the same time if you actually watch Lisa's Date With Density it's actually pretty innocuous--Lisa wants to dress Nelson up in nice clothes and doesn't know how to go further than that and Nelson just kind of awkwardly plays along. Because I mean even in Dude Where's My Ranch her crush on Luke isn't stretching belief that much but then you have Haw-Haw Land which is a rejected romcom script awkwardly using child characters.

>>477016
Then again Al Jean looks like a giant thumb so you tell me.

>>477015
FWIW I actually think the basic premise of The Bart Wants What It Wants almost could have worked if it was about Greta being so desperate to get the attention of Bart that she willingly tolerated even his worst behavior and the fact that he genuinely didn't care about her. That's quite a separate angle from what they did with Laura and Jessica in that we'd get to see how Bart treats a "normal" girl who happens to like him even though he probably wouldn't have come out looking very good.

>>477022
I don't see TBWWIW as a totally unworkable concept either; what it really needed was for Greta to actually have some defined character. It could be Bart and Laura in reverse where one party just friendzones the other.

>>477017
Maybe so but you still have the awkward issue of how Nelson has nothing at all in common with Lisa and the viewer is left struggling to think of any kind of reason why she'd have a crush on him in the first place.

>>477017
It seems like some writers like Selman and Omine are better at making Bart and Lisa act like kids while Al Jean is functionally incapable of doing that.

it's too bad that the HD seasons turned Kirk Van Houten from a pathetic divorcee bum into some weird parody of Nick Fuentes

>>477033
can you expand on this because I feel like I understand what you are saying but i really don't and want it spponfed to me

>>477035
He means Hostile Kirk Place where he's turned into a /pol/tard.

>>477064
oh well i'm not too familiar with Nu Simpsons so i'll take your word for it

Lisa's feet.

>>476062
You notice that Selman really likes having B&L as little kids and removed a lot of the depth to their characters.

>>477015
Didn't some anon complain about Milhouse being a creepy stalker to Lisa?

>>477425
he was and the other odd thing is that Bart is almost never a factor in those plots. The implication of Bart's best friend dating his sister is something that they totally glossed over and it effectively made Milhouse two entirely separate characters--Bart's best friend and Lisa's stalker.

So let's talk a little about Allison and Lisa friends in general.

The "Lisa meets a new girl at school who makes her feel insecure and threatened plot" is all extrapolated from Lisa's Rival. Of course that episode isn't about Lisa making a friend it'a about her hating a girl she could be friends with but is worried about being upstaged. It's not like a Zombie Simpsons episode like Lisa the Drama Queen where she just instantly befriends Juliet after two seconds. But in the end their relationship is really shallow and not based on anything substantial. The classic seasons never implied that Lisa never hung out with her peers at all, just that she didn't have any friends as close as Bart is with Milhouse. Lisa being a totally friendless aspie is really a Zombie Simpsons trope specifically a Jean era one.

>>477589
meh I much prefer Allison when I want to pair Lisa up with a buddy

>>477596
>ant-sized picture

>>477597
I got the pic from NoHomers and it only let you download a thumbnail unless you're a registered user.

>>477607
i don't recognize that episode other than that it's pre-HD season

>>477762
>I'm now remembering that the Simpsons has infrequently had someone obsessed with Nordic heritage because of the "Ogdenville is actually 100% pure white Norwegians" episode
The Saga of Carl was written by a Jewish guy (Eric Kaplan) so clearly it wasn't him.

>>477762
I think you need to take your meds.

>>476385
she was just voiced by Tress MacNeille so clearly they wanted the possibility of using her again

>>477916
I argue that the girl on the bus isn't actually a character. Lisa was leading a double life with her parents. Sam was merely an accessory to that. The two barely even had a conversation.

>>477916
One case where they would have been better off using a guest star as Tress can't sound like a little girl to save her life.

Sam was just Allison but browner because token diversity moment.

>>477427
>>477425
Milhouse is the type who would drug and rape a woman.

>>477932
I really fucking hate the MilhousexLisa ship they try to force. Him having a crush on her was cute at first, but now it's gotten so old that I just roll my eyes with any awkward scene between them. That Milhouse zombie shit was the absolute worst, take a hint and stop trying to force them together. Her future is no less depressing than Bart's now.

>>477960
I haven't watched a whole lot of Zombie Simpsons but I've always seen Milhouse's attempts to hit on Lisa as uncomfortable and weird. It's obvious that she's not interested in him at all. Lisa clearly has a strong a personality and I can't imagine her being such a doormat like that. I do think her being with Nelson is more realistic and makes more sense. Millhouse is a loser. He's like that nice guy that thinks he's entitled to get a date, he's kinda pathetic.

>>477964
What's weird about that? Young children can definitely have innocent crushes perhaps not quite like how they are on the show but happens.

>>477961
>>477960
Which, yeah they never bother with any kind of rationale as to why Lisa would ever get with him in the first place outside maybe pity. Homer Scissorhands probably had the dumbest ever Lisa/Milhouse moment although it at least gives some rationale in that she's at least somewhat flattered by the attention he's paying to her and doesn't want to lose it. So she doesn't like him at all but still gets pissed if he's interested in some other girl. Both options are bad but the second is worse because Lisa comes off as a manipulative asshole.

>>477964
Having a childhood crush can happen before you start being interested in girl.

>>477974
I really don't care about the MilhousexLisa thing at all, it's been done to death and the future episodes always show it as exactly the same thing every time which is that Milhouse is a loser and Lisa is miserable. But then again I don't care about NelsonxLisa either, it was ok for one episode but when they keep spamming it it doesn't work especially once they established that Nelson isn't going to become a nice guy no matter what Lisa does.

Also in Future Drama it's not only pretty disturbing that Milhouse starts a fire and almost kills Lisa in the process so he can save her and look like a hero, but she's apparently not only aware of it but doesn't care and dates him for a while until breaking up with him over some trivial unrelated reason. Although it's ironic that after that episode drove home the point that marrying Milhouse would end badly, Holidays of Future Passed does have her marrying him anyway.

>>477976
I never really liked any of the future husbands they portrayed for Lisa, which even includes Hugh. Lisa is way too smart to instantly fall for some guy she just recently hated before. With Millhouse she at least knows him for much longer and somewhat expects what to get out of him, but as said before the show never really explained why Lisa would want to even marry Millhouse in the first place. Ideally I would have liked to see their relationship end for good after Future mDrama, with Lisa knowing she still has a great future ahead and doesn't have to lower herself to marry him. Which would also lead to Lisa becoming president in Bart To The Future.

>>477977
>>477976
>>477974
Outside Lisa's Wedding the entire idea of Milhouse crushing on Lisa is a Zombie Simpsons meme and they hardly ever interacted in Seasons 1-9.

>>477979
>Outside Lisa's Wedding the entire idea of Milhouse crushing on Lisa is a Zombie Simpsons meme and they hardly ever interacted in Seasons 1-9.
Lisa's Date With Density?

If you go through some older issues of the National Lampoon when Al Jean and Mike Reiss were on the editorial staff, it becomes pretty clear it had to have been Mike doing most of the heavy lifting on the Simpsons humor-wise

>>477979
A 10 year old crushing on an 8 year old is creepy either way you think about it. It's only a two years age difference but children develop quickly and there's a big difference between 8 and 10 in smarts and overall mental maturity.

>>477981
it's like Oakley and Weinstein where it was clear that Bill was the senior partner in their relationship and responsible for most of the creative direction in the episodes they wrote and as showrunner

>>477979
I think Milhouse and Samantha Stanky are a better couple than Lisa and Milhouse (at least they're the same age which makes it somewhat less creepy). If Lisa doesn't marry Milhouse, I do see the point. Milhouse trying to make Lisa love him is just wrong.

>>477979
The entire idea of shipping them started as a 10 second gag in Lisa's Wedding. After that the writers were just on it and on it and on it and it was amusing at first eg. in Lisa's Date With Density. Eventually it got annoying and tiresome.

>>477992
yeah it was a quick gag in one episode and also an amusing plot point in another but it should have ended there. kind of like SkinnerxKrabapple. they didn't have any romantic interactions up until Grade School Confidential, still a very good episode, and although they still do hook up at the end they shouldn't have used that storyline after that. it makes Skinner look like even more of a loser when they're on bad terms and not in a funny or endearing way either. which proves O&W genuinely though Season 8 would be the end of the show.

>>477992
While Milhouse is a creepy fuck really incel is a better way to describe him. he's the sociopath the show tries to depict Bart as. In post-classic season Simpsons he kind of lives through Bart like in Much Apu About Something where he tried to convince a reformed Bart to launch Groundskeeper Willie off a cliff. He's also an asshole in Das Bus--while he didn't eat all the food he was still sneaking it, forced Bart and Lisa to carry him while they were being chased by the angry mob and still left them to die after they did everything they could to protect him. he seems obsessed with all of the Simpsons siblings recently he got a crush on Maggie, he's often the catalyst for Bart and Lisa to get into arguments with each other. The Lady Gaga episode, when Lisa pretended to be a college student. That time Bart was dating that girl and didn’t visit Milhouse in the hospital. The moment when Milhouse gets some power it goes straight to his head.

There's nothing cute about this ship. As a teenager Milhouse is a violent abusive dick who's willing to ruin Lisa's life just so he can have her to himself but it also goes back to the show's longest running gag. People forget that Future Drama is another where Bart gives up his success for Lisa. He sacrifices his future just so his sister won't be stuck with Milhouse, only for her to be shown as marrying him anyway.

>>478006
>he seems obsessed with all of the Simpsons siblings recently he got a crush on Maggie
wait what!?

>>478017
Wasn't that the one where they go to New Orleans?

>>477964
Speak for yourself. I had crushes as early as 5.

>>477960
>>477964
As I believe has already been mentioned Matt Selman basically shelved the MilhousexLisa ship and it hasn't been seen or heard from since he took over as showrunner; he dislikes the idea of a 2nd grader dating people out of principle.

>>478031
perhaps so but you probably didn't have them on kids younger than yourself, in general at that age it's odd to even be friends with someone more than one year from you

While I agree The Musk Who Fell To Earth was a pretty bad episode, I went on NoHomers and there were a whole bunch of people screaming about that episode and how Musk was Satan, and all recent posts from the last few months not from back when it aired in 2015 when the consensus was just another shitty guest star dick sucking fest episode.

>>478006
I guess Barthood is the most popular and best-regarded future episode since it provides Bart and Lisa with futures that are reasonably believable and don't shit on either of them also it dispensed with the stupid sci-fi gags that ruin most of those episodes.

>>477712
>>477607
>no Janey episode ever

>>478041
Janey is a whole other can of worms regarding the show's handling of women that deserves a discussion unto itself.

>>478042
I don't dispute that it was always a problem with the show. Some of the writers claimed they don't know how to really write women which I think is a bit silly or else is more an admission that you have some weird pathology around them.

>>478043
Not exactly what I meant. Janey was never really a character, she was just there when the script needed a same-aged girl for Lisa to talk to and nothing more than that. Eventually as Bart and Lisa's characters became more developed Janey's role became more ambiguous. Milhouse worked great as Bart's sidekick but Lisa was written in such a way that it was never clear what they could do with Janey. Really the show's overreliance on guest stars came back to bite them in the ass especially with female characters. Janey and Sherri and Terri were retconned into girls who tease Lisa simply because they're the only non-guest star female child characters outside Lisa herself.

>>477986
>A 10 year old crushing on an 8 year old is creepy either way you think about it.

no, not at all. It was incredibly common over here for kids with 2 years difference to have a crush on each other, it pretty much happened whenever those age groups met when I was a kid.
Also keep in mind that there's a difference in how fast kids mature as well. A 12 year old could look like a high schooler and a 16 year old could look like someone still in grade school, I've seen both happen - in my family even.

overall mental maturity difference doesn't really count with all the adult cunts acting like children today, and personally I find it both attractive, when a girl still acts innocent and childish, and when she is mature enough to be self sufficient in any situation.

>>478050
look, i know you Brazilians all lose your virginity at, like, 10, but you're you, we're us

>>478185
Having a crush is not the same as losing your virginity.

>we're us
Yeah, that's the problem, the US is the only country on earth who has so completely wrong ideas on human sexuality.

How come discussion here on Pluschan feels better than the actual main site?
Was 4chan /co/ really full of that many schizos?

>>478187
The leaks proved the "theory" that mods banned more good posters than bad, and let the worst continue posting.

>>478187
It's because there's no /pol/tards here. Kind of nice to not have threads constantly derailed by schizos screaming about the Jews or how all women suck. No I'm here to talk about comics and cartoons not about the USS Liberty. Fuck off.

>>477991
Samantha was the only girl who had an authentic and actually reciprocated interest in Milhouse.

>>478044
Question is how many one-off characters would be worth reusing? I guess Allison had potential but I don't see what use it would serve to bring back that guy from Dude Where's My Ranch or Gina Vendetti.

>>478222
With Ruth or Allison they would serve the legitimate purpose of giving Marge and Lisa actual friends (and FWIW Ruth did come back two times). Thebig problem with guest characters in the classic series is that they were usually created to explore narrative dynamics the dozen or so established secondary characters could not, which created the problem that these dynamics just had to be repeated over and over with replacements rather than iterating them long term. It would be like if Homer kept getting new neighbors to have a rivalry with instead of his one established rivalry with Ned Flanders.

>>478224
They brought back Lurleen in that one episode and if it was any indication I'd rather they not bring Jessica or Laura back.

>>478224
Case in point, the Greta quest. Uggghh...

>>478224
Goddamn, why does Milhouse have to act like a rapist nowadays?

>>478223
if they could bring back Ruth 2x then surely they could have done the same with Laura

>>478227
>Goddamn, why does Milhouse have to act like a rapist nowadays?
It gets worse. One of his regular daily tasks in TO is literally just stalking Lisa.

>>478224
That would explain why Lisa is such a bully to Allison in her questline. Maybe it would be a good idea if they didn't add Alex Whitney to Tapped Out. Also doesn't the Laura questline have her hating Bart?

>>478233
>That would explain why Lisa is such a bully to Allison in her questline
What really gives you pause for thought is how all the Zombie Simpsons "Lisa has a beef with another girl" episodes manage to move the point of conflict away from Lisa herself. Instead of Lisa being butthurt about another girl because of her own insecurities the girl is delusional/paid off by Marge to befriend her/a Republican/part of a clique of bully girls. They're all just a rehash of Lisa's Rival but written in such a way that nothing is Lisa's fault.

>>478230
TO also had Moe stalking Marge. Seriously why is that game so obsessed with stalking? It's rather disturbing.

>>478236
Must be the same reason why Bob's Burgers eventually had Louise befriend her stalker. The writers think stalking is cute instead of disturbing and something in which there is no humor to be found.

>>478233
>Also doesn't the Laura questline have her hating Bart?
Laura's questline is awful. It has Bart acting needlessly desperate trying to woo her affection (and accidentally mistaking women's perfume for cologne in the process). Laura and Lisa strike up a fast friendship, except because teenagers are so high maintenance because of their needless texting and calling and social media commitments, Lisa starts to slack off on her extra credit assignments and become less of an overachiever.

So she decides friendship isn't worth it and starts to avoid Laura. Laura somehow can't be apart from Lisa so she stalks her as she goes to the library. And then Bart stalks Laura. Lisa breaks off the friendship, Bart goes "you'll always have me, Laura", Laura insults him and calls him a stalker and is utterly unrecognizable in this entire narrative. Think Maya in The Wayz We Were. Her personality has been thoroughly lobotomized while Bart has been effectively swapped for a creepy Milhouse allegory and Lisa embraces the joys of toxic antisocial behaviour. Nobody comes out looking good.

>>478241
That says a lot about the Zombie Simpsons writers when there's no one there to filter them, most of it pretty bad.

>>478243
In all fairness if you saw the draft scripts for Season 1-8 episodes, even many beloved classics, they had a lot of horrible and sociopathic jokes that got removed in the finished version like Lisa wanting to break Allison's spine in half.

>>478241
Holy fuck, that's terrible. Don't put Alex Whitney in Tapped Out, please don't.

>>478241
What a shitshow. Not only does it mutilate Laura but Bart and Lisa are also grossly OOC also why the fuck is everyone stalking each other in TO?

Tapped Out is borderline schizophrenic. They have some strangely good and even interesting stuff out of characters they normally don't use for any good purposes but they mangle one off characters repeatedly. It does kind of prove why a lot of those characters shouldn't come back. Many questlines either make them way OOC or are just the same thing as the episode they were in, not entirely the writers' fault of course since many of these characters really had no depth to them. We just didn't notice when they were only ever in one episode. As for Laura, I still think she'd be doable. Wendy Corduroy is like her enough to believe Alex Hirsch was directly inspired by the Simpsons.

The only one-off questlines I recall liking were Mindy, Allison, and Annika (not because of Annika herself though). Mindy's was cute and she still felt like herself. Allison was also portrayed perfectly fine and they even added the extra wrinkle that she's really an average kid who succeeds by driving herself hard while Lisa is often shown as having superhuman smarts and talent.

>>478255
IDK it seems more as if they like him a little too much. At the very least, he's constantly showing up whenever I check out quest dialog even when he has nothing to do with the character in question, like Anime Marge.

>>478253
Fair enough and I've never played TO to know much about it so I can't fault the writers too much for the shitty TO questlines (at least they make an effort to include one off characters or else ones that have never been used much) but there's no excuse for making them so OOC and unlikeable as well as a would-be rapist/stalker or other icky stuff. I mean I don't want them to make the game too G-rated and I approve of using minor characters but let's not go too far with disturbing material.

I miss Herman so much.

>>478253
To me that's more from a position of lack of creativity. You can easily expand on the characters based on what bits and pieces already exist but the show's staff seems to take the path of least resistance. It's not as if the recurring characters are that much better; half of them are one dimensional gag characters like Disco Stu and Duffman. If anything a lot of the classic season one offs have a better dramatic basis to build off of.

yeah seeing Laura more would have been cool plus her and Ruth seem like they could have always been in the show. also that they're not just a direct foil to anyone for that matter. It'd be pretty easy to see them go off and interact with almost anyone else and it probably would lead to at least somewhat varied results.

>>478225
Reminder that they were going to bring Karl back in Three Gays of the Condo but Harvey Fierstein wouldn't do it since he thought the script was just a bunch of cliched gay stereotypes. Surprised Karl hasn't been used in Tapped Out, incidentally.

>>478267
Really since Ruth did come back twice anyway there's no special reason why they couldn't be recurring characters ala Sideshow Bob.

>>478271
The Simpsons writers always seemed to hate loreshit and if left to their own devices like falling back on gags. Some of that might simply be an unavoidable product of a lot of the OG writers' backgrounds as SNL and National Lampoon stffers where you were mainly doing sketch comedy. There may be some kind of generational gap as well between the OG Simpsons writers being boomers/Gen Xers and Millenial cartoon creators who seem to favor loreshit a lot more. That's why the Spuckler family exist as prominently as they do, with their endless supply of incest, beastiality, and pedophillia (yes, there is an overt pedophillia joke in Love is a Many Strangled Thing) references.

>>478274
>That's why the Spuckler family exist as prominently as they do, with their endless supply of incest, beastiality, and pedophillia (yes, there is an overt pedophillia joke in Love is a Many Strangled Thing) references.
that's nasty. not even the Scully seasons had pedophilia jokes in them.

>>478274
>and National Lampoon stffers
*Staffers I mean

>>478271
Ok yeah of all the guest characters in TO Laura is one of the few where she's really totally OOC. One thing that's kind of cool is how they have some signs of a personality outside of what the plot demands. Like it wasn't essential to the plot that Laura was a cool-headed tomboy, it absolutely does make Bart connecting with her more believable but it doesn't feel like a demand of the plot. Likewise for Alex being eccentric and blurting out whatever she's thinking. Or Allison actually being a nice, if a smidge oblivious, person. It's what helps them still feel like actual characters.

The more I think about Alex the more I feel she's criminally underrated and also feel a huge chunk of that is just down to her being a (very early) post-Season 8 character.

>>478230
>>478236
That just sounds like a joke that you're either taking too seriously or is poorly framed in the game.
When you say daily task, is it something you have to do again and again? Jokes stop being jokes as soon as they're repeated.

>>478283
Alex did have some potential and I thought it was nice that they didn't just make her into a generic Mean Girls boss bitch character.

Actually, while we're on that subject, what are the actually popular post-classic guest characters?

>>478287
>Actually, while we're on that subject, what are the actually popular post-classic guest characters?
The only ones I can think of are Linguo and Ling Bouvier, but I don't remember who voiced Linguo, and Ling is recurring.

>>478288
what? who the fuck gives a shit about Ling except that one guy who shall remain nameless?

>>478287
Most of the other ones are rehashy but there's something that would get in the way. Like saying someone like Allison would be a Bush Republican or only pretending to be like Lisa because Marge bribed her would basically be character assassination.

>>478293
Well yeah but that wasn't my point. The "Lisa has a beef with another girl" plots are all near-exact retreads of Lisa's Rival and they're all pretty one dimensional characters because the lazy-as-shit writers would rather keep reusing this same plot over and over instead of trying to expand on Lisa's rivalry with another girl her age and perhaps get new storylines out of it in the process. They've proven they can do it when they want to, I'm pretty sure Mike Scully said they killed off Maude so that there were new storylines they could do with Ned.

But seriously I don't want Laura or Jessica back if Papa Don't Leech is any indication of how it would turn out.

Also if you watch Seasons 1-8 most of the one off characters don't have closed endings.

>Homer is still friends with Karl at the end of Simpson and Delilah
>he reconciles with Herb in Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes
>he is on good terms with Mindy in The Last Temptation of Homer
>is still friends with Hank Scorpio at the end of You Can Only Move Twice
etc. Same with Marge and Ruth, Lisa and Allison, Bart and Laura, etc. The episodes always leave you with the impression that their stories could continue from there. The only big exceptions are Homer's mom and Mr. Bergstrom since their leaving is essential to the episode. Whereas in Jean era episodes like Lisa The Drama Queen everything is reset to ground zero at the end of the episode, and that really seems to be a consistent belief of Al Jean's in maintaining a rigid sitcom formula.

Thank God the site is actually usable again. An Easter miracle similar to the wokeshitter Pope finally being dragged down to Hell.

>>478283
I never cared for Alex anyway.

>>478275
The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochy Show kind of did.

in re: one-off characters

Mary Spuckler should have stayed a one-off in Apocalypse Cow.

>>478274
To be honest most of the one-note gag characters (Professor Frink, Disco Stu, Duffman, Sea Captain, etc) were not prominent in Seasons 1-8 and only started being run into the ground in the Scully seasons.

>>478424
or Crazy Cat Lady

>>478425
Serious who in fuck ever thought she was funny in any way?

>>478425
Cookie Kwan. Probably the single most annoying Tress MacNeille character on the show.

Mike Scully was the guy who literally destroyed the show to piss off some complaining Internet Simpsons fans.

>>477762
this is what i call schizobabble

>>476392
ever heard how Swartzwelder sometimes submitted draft scripts where he forgot to even give Marge and Lisa any lines at all?

>>478480
>ever heard how Swartzwelder sometimes submitted draft scripts where he forgot to even give Marge and Lisa any lines at all?
Good.

>>478606
lol wow i never heard about that

>Nibbles, chew through my ball sack
Everything you need to know about the Scully era in one line.

>>478606
If you're a child actor, you will be molested at some point. It's not a matter of "if" but "will."

>>478480
based

>>478403
fuck you, Sarah Silverman

>>478303
meh i always did think Lisa's Substitute was overrated

>>478622
To be fair if I was a writer on the show the fans would probably complain about my ideas/tastes as well. You can't ever please everyone.

>>478606
Robertson did a good job with her voice however that doesn't mean her comments about DB weren't disgusting and uncalled for.

>>478606
Samantha was the show's first one-off loli character but she's never been very popular with fans for whatever reason.

So what's the worst joke from Seasons 1-8? I vote for the Ban The Bottle sequence in Mother Simpson. That was just...no, ok?

>>478670
>So what's the worst joke from Seasons 1-8?

The golden age episodes had their share of meh jokes but it was never too bad because they didn't try to shove it in your face. With Zombie Simpsons it's like wtf did I just watch?