Comments on: Mourning the Loss of Mourning http://noiselesschatter.com/2012/08/14/mourning-the-loss-of-mourning/ Reading too deeply into these things since 1981 Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Philip http://noiselesschatter.com/2012/08/14/mourning-the-loss-of-mourning/#comment-1838 Philip Sun, 19 Aug 2012 02:47:45 +0000 http://noiselesschatter.com/?p=1221#comment-1838 I think I’ve only seen Doh-In’ in the Wind when it was new…I recall liking it more than I expected to like it, but by that point in the show’s run that doesn’t say much. Re: Phil Reed’s Christmas Boogie…I wouldn’t put it past me.

]]> By: Ridley http://noiselesschatter.com/2012/08/14/mourning-the-loss-of-mourning/#comment-1825 Ridley Sat, 18 Aug 2012 21:16:54 +0000 http://noiselesschatter.com/?p=1221#comment-1825 Think I’ve mentioned this before but my enjoyment of The Simpsons left with D’oh-in’ in the Wind. Didn’t like Treehouse IX either and they were the start of the production code AABF– in Season 10. (Though I do think things have improved with Season 21 slightly.)

Also, is this a good place to mention that I genuinely dreamt a couple of months ago that you had released “Phil Reed’s Christmas Boogie”?

]]> By: Philip http://noiselesschatter.com/2012/08/14/mourning-the-loss-of-mourning/#comment-1788 Philip Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:46:09 +0000 http://noiselesschatter.com/?p=1221#comment-1788 Good points. And I loved that in the astronaut episode, about 2/3 of it was devoted to discussing how strange it is that Homer WOULD be going into space, and crafting fair enough reasons that he’d end up there. Ultimately, sure, he goes…but he goes because the writers bent reality just enough that they could justify it. Nowadays, you’re right. The episode would want Homer to go to space so he’d go to space. Maybe they’d have Apu or someone say, “Why would they let you go to space?” and Homer would shrug and that’d be the writers acknowledging that it makes no sense which would be the closest thing we get to a justification of the plot. We really are a far cry from the fairly logical progression of yesteryear.

]]> By: Justin http://noiselesschatter.com/2012/08/14/mourning-the-loss-of-mourning/#comment-1776 Justin Thu, 16 Aug 2012 05:22:23 +0000 http://noiselesschatter.com/?p=1221#comment-1776 It’s funny. I’ve always thought where the show went astray — in a point sort of parallel to yours — was when it got away from being about a typical dysfunctional American family. Things always bled into hyperbole and certainly I couldn’t call every plot believable, but it was grounded in its own very broad reality. Homer could be an astronaut, but there were other things he couldn’t do, and that was the show’s foundation. Certainly by violating that the show has lost its heart, but I also think it lost its humour there too; the jokes are no longer tethered to that foundation of family and now simply float aimlessly. (That the jokes themselves today are not as timeless and that the writers are probably too concerned with not treading on 500 previous episodes worth of jokes is also a factor.)

To use an example as summary — and in wrapping up not rival the length of your excellently written article — it seems The Simpsons fell apart when the show became less concerned with how little money the family had (“Money’s too tight for steak,” needing to take another job to pay for a costly renovation or a pony) and more concerned with wanting to do an episode about tennis so, hell, Homer builds a tennis court in the backyard, why not.

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