- Excessive use of guest stars--there were seven special guest voices in tonight's episode. Only two (the Conchords) really added anything substantial (though Hawking and Glass had funny throwaway bits). One of the most remarkable things about The Simpsons is the massive ensemble it's created with just the five members of the voice cast, almost none of whom appeared in this episode (Krusty, Moe, Millhouse, Martin, and Grandpa are about it). Heck, even Marge and Bart don't have much to do in the episode.
- Lazy writing--The episode introduces two completely separate storylines (Homer and Bart go to Europe and Lisa goes to arts camp), which never intersect in any way whatsoever once the characters part ways--it's almost like they wrote two fifteen minute shorts and just jammed them together into a single episode.
- Family Guy-ification--Like South Park, the folks behind The Simpsons have tried to make clear that they're no fans of the Seth MacFarlane "remember the time..." setup to string in jokes/references. Yet, there were several instances of that exact same setup this week (pretty much all the Krusty flashbacks in particular). At its best, The Simpsons lets jokes follow from plot and from character, and doesn't just toss off lazy references.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
WHY YOU LITTLE....: It's become far too trendy to say that The Simpsons has jumped the shark, or at least that it hasn't been good since a particular point in time (often correlated with when the speaker was in college), but I wanted to talk about several things that bugged about tonight's edition:
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