There Is Nothing Good About This

Well, alright, there are a couple of good things, but they are drowned out somewhat.

The Simpsons is going HD, and that means that the opening sequence, which is two decades old and beginning to show its age as the animation in the main show evolves, needs remaking from the ground up. What it doesn't mean is that FOX had any excuse to do something like this: 

The big, flat, cardboard-cutout-looking town is dismal. You're celebrating going HD, you morons -- draw something worth broadcasting in HD. The bird on the title card is pointless and detracts from the image. (And since when were there three-eyed birds in The Simpsons? Has Burns been dumping waste in the sky now?) Why are Kearney and Jimbo sawing the statue's head off when Bart already did it? Adding a belch to your theme music is rarely wise. The baby with one eyebrow thing is just change for its own sake, and the Texan oil baron doesn't need to be in the title sequence. He's only in a handful of episodes and then only for a few seconds each. See also the crazy cat lady. And why is Hans Moleman in the sewer? The whole thing makes no sense. The old sequence was a massively exaggerated version of the show, as if it was designed to introduce the programme or something. The new one is like a grotesque parody of it. Homer getting hit by the car and smashed through a door is indicative of everything that is wrong with the show these days. And how many times is a TV falling off a bracket going to be funny? It's passably funny now that at the same time the show goes HD the family get a widescreen (but still purple) TV and that it isn't secured properly, but unless you're planning on changing it again next year that's going to get old. Really old. The 'zaniness' of the new episodes is one of the worst things about them, and this is predictable zaniness. That's the worst kind. (Speaking of which, if that sign advertising Krusty's funeral service is the same every week then I'm massively unimpressed by that too.) The couch gag is dismal too, but at least that's presubably a one-off. As for the chalkboard lines... well, they're just ironic.

Of course, none of the above matters a damn because The Simpsons is shit anyway these days and even if you are dumb enough to watch it they're never going to actually show this sequence because that would take precious seconds away from the endless, tedious, repetitive scenes of Homer getting repeatedly hit with things. They actually stopped employing the cast in series 18. Since then they've made all episodes by repeating a stock reel they made of Homer getting hit by things and one of Nancy Cartwright's Scientologist robo-calls.

This is, of course, everything I expect from FOX, but presumably at one point everyone involved liked the show as it was? That said, I don't think it's possible to write more than a week of solid quality screenplay on any topic, 24 being the obvious example. And that's how much of this show there is now.

There exist six hours of Fawlty Towers. There exist eight hours of The Office. There is a day and a half of Red Dwarf (and no more). There is a full week of The Simpsons. Why? I mean, the only thing comparable to that is Star Trek, and that's not just twenty years of the same thing (or even ten years of the same thing and ten years of shit pretending to be the same thing).

Just stop it. Let it be. Make your money some other way. And everyone else, stop watching programmes that aren't any good. Learn to judge a show by its content and not by how familiar its title is.

Bah. People.

How To Watch TV

(This article is mainly about hit TV show The Simpsons. Bare with me.)

I watch television in a very simple way. I find a show that looks vaguely interesting, sit down, watch it, and then keep watching until the show has finished it's airtime. I believe that's how the majority of people like to watch televisions.

The thing is, I have a blog about television. This means, sometimes, I will watch a show with a critical eye. This is also how others watch television is they are a TV critic or if they too blog about television. This is also an acceptable varient.

What I don't understand are the people who mass together on the internet to scutinise every second of the show's continuity. The most-talked about show is Doctor Who. I like watching Doctor Who; it's reasonably entertaining. What I'm not going to do is complain that a recent boxset of the show involving the Pertwee adventure Doctor Who and the Silurians uses the correct title of Doctor Who and the Silurians. Many people complained when Christopher Ecclestone was credited as Doctor Who because "the character's actual name is The Doctor". David Tennant was one of these people. Shame on you, David Tennant.

That's one end of the scale. The other end of the scale are fans of The Simpsons. Earlier this week, FOX aired a brilliant episode titled That 90's Show. It was a flashback to before Bart was born about how Homer and Marge had troubles in their relationship before they got married. I found it hilarous because I grew up in the 90's, and identified the stabs at culture of that era. However, a lot of people are complaining that this episode was even allowed to air. Why? Because it 'deleted 20-years worth of continuity'.

So?

The fact that the characters don't age doesn't delete continuity? The fact that it's a cartoon? The fact that they're all yellow?

I realised that The Simpsons wasn't a drama series to be taken seriously when I was quite young. Probably after the first episode I ever watched. But it really conerns me to see a lot of people trash this episode because it completely ignores the fact that Homer and Marge met in the early 70's. These type of people don't seem to realise that this would make them in their late 50's, and that Bart should be 30 by now. It's not even the young people on the internet that think this, TV Critic Robert Canning thinks so too. Grow up, Robert.

I think ignoring this type of person is for the best. Enjoy watching TV, everyone!

Studio Simpsons on the South Park Missed

Channel 4 are brilliant. They buy the rights to air South Park and don't. They buy the rights to air Studio 60 and stick it on an obscure digital channel that people avoid because it's aguely intellectual. They buy the rights to air The Sopranos and stick the new episodes on at 1.30am.

The latest way that they're screwing up the schedules is buying the rights to The Simpsons, airing a series of new episodes only to suddenly cease showing the new series half way through, sticking on an entire season that's ten years old, and then start showing the second half of the new series. ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

Well, I say "new series". The "new" episodes are five years old by now.