I agree. I was telling my friends years ago that they needed to age everybody seven years, which puts each kid in elementary, middle, and high school respectively. Some of the best episodes are ones where they time-shift ("Lisa's Wedding," various incarnations of the Homer-Marge courtship); that's because it gives the writers license to present new scenarios to us. Actually, all of Kurp's ideas are good, though I think the Simpsons still pull off a decent travelogue episode from time to time, though he's probably right that there's nothing left after Antarctica.
isaac_spaceman's casterbationbot, CASTERBATIONBOT 200010:54 AM
I'll stand my ground and say that the function of a critic is to evaluate what a filmmaker/showrunner/writer has done, as opposed to offering suggestions for what a filmmaker/showrunner/writer should do next. The critics I read are very good at criticism and evaluation but unqualified to be showrunners; by and large, showrunners are way better at running shows than critics would be. I don't mind a bit of "they should just do X because they've been setting it up for so long" or "Y and Z have so much chemistry that the show really ought to pair them up more," which are really ways of talking about what a show already has done, and I don't mind a bit of overarching discussion about what a show needs to do to right itself, like "less Bart" or "get rid of the fourth act." But proposing specific things like advancing Bart and Lisa to specific grades or having a season-long arc is the kind of stuff best left to the people who actually have to do the difficult work of breaking and writing stories. And getting that kind of proposal from a widely-read critic is practically an invitation for every armchair showrunner on the Interwebs to write a response piece about his dumb-ass plot ideas, 99.9% of which are idiotic right out of the gate and 0% of which are completely well thought-out and fully realized.
Also, by "less bart-centric episodes," they surely mean "fewer bart-centric episodes." unless they mean those that are bart centric should be less bart centric. but they've been doing that since season two, and the rest are stupid.
Why would a show that thrives on syndication want to do season long arcs?
by the way, cross-referencing these ideas with jump the shark ideas gives you a 100% overlap.
I love the idea of Lisa and Bart in different grades. I almost wish they'd gone there 5 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I was telling my friends years ago that they needed to age everybody seven years, which puts each kid in elementary, middle, and high school respectively. Some of the best episodes are ones where they time-shift ("Lisa's Wedding," various incarnations of the Homer-Marge courtship); that's because it gives the writers license to present new scenarios to us. Actually, all of Kurp's ideas are good, though I think the Simpsons still pull off a decent travelogue episode from time to time, though he's probably right that there's nothing left after Antarctica.
ReplyDeleteI'll stand my ground and say that the function of a critic is to evaluate what a filmmaker/showrunner/writer has done, as opposed to offering suggestions for what a filmmaker/showrunner/writer should do next. The critics I read are very good at criticism and evaluation but unqualified to be showrunners; by and large, showrunners are way better at running shows than critics would be. I don't mind a bit of "they should just do X because they've been setting it up for so long" or "Y and Z have so much chemistry that the show really ought to pair them up more," which are really ways of talking about what a show already has done, and I don't mind a bit of overarching discussion about what a show needs to do to right itself, like "less Bart" or "get rid of the fourth act." But proposing specific things like advancing Bart and Lisa to specific grades or having a season-long arc is the kind of stuff best left to the people who actually have to do the difficult work of breaking and writing stories. And getting that kind of proposal from a widely-read critic is practically an invitation for every armchair showrunner on the Interwebs to write a response piece about his dumb-ass plot ideas, 99.9% of which are idiotic right out of the gate and 0% of which are completely well thought-out and fully realized.
ReplyDeletejust posting to fix my handle.
ReplyDeletePoochie? (too easy?)
ReplyDeleteAlso, by "less bart-centric episodes," they surely mean "fewer bart-centric episodes." unless they mean those that are bart centric should be less bart centric. but they've been doing that since season two, and the rest are stupid.
Why would a show that thrives on syndication want to do season long arcs?
by the way, cross-referencing these ideas with jump the shark ideas gives you a 100% overlap.