On the website “Bone the Fish” (side note: What the hell does this title come from? Can anybody help me out on this? In the abstract, I find it fairly unsettling) the second most popular choice for when the show did the modern variation of jumping the shark is the episode “That 90s Show.” We all know, and have come to accept, that The Simpsons operates in a very bizarre temporal world where nobody ages, or when they do it is at random intervals and sporadic. As such, the characters from The Simpsons have birthdates that don’t make sense in regards to their age and what have you, but to most fans it isn’t a big deal. We are happy with the back story the show has. The flashbacks to life events, Homer and Marge meeting in high school, the birth of Bart, the birth of Lisa, the birth of Maggie, etc. All these events have been specifically covered in episodes, all of which were, in my opinion, well done (particularly “And Maggie Makes Three”).
However, the modern day show writers decided having Homer and Marge’s courtship and marriage taking place in the late 70s/early 80s just didn’t jive anymore. They answered the cries of literally dozens (and these people are hypothetical as far as I know) and decided to retcon the show. Suddenly, Homer and Marge were still childless in the 90s. And Marge went to college where she met a smarmy professor and fell in love (just like that nightmarish hellscape that was Saved by the Bell: The College Years). And Homer was the creator of grunge rock. No, seriously. He even sang songs that sounded vaguely like music from the actual 90s. With one episode, the show decided to throw out literally almost two decades of backstory. Needless to say, it wasn’t well received.
Ironically, it was the VIEWERS that had the sadgasm.
That being said, I’ll come clean here and risk the anger of my fellow Simpsons diehards; I actually wasn’t too angry with them retconning the show. Yes, I wish they had done a better job of it, but it was not unreasonable to reset their storylines considering the show has been on for nearly 20 years now. I could have lived without it, but it wasn’t the end of the world to me. However, this wasn’t the end of their meddling with the history of the show. The very next season, they undid the retcon. Suddenly, the old history of Homer and Marge was the status quo again. Also, in this episode Homer sees a hypothetical vision of his life… in a pot of tomato sauce. Something I feel like this show is intentionally trying to hurt me.
This de-retconning exposed “That 90s Show” for what it really was: A cheap excuse to make jokes about 90s pop culture. They messed with the history of the show, alienated the handful of fans they had left, and all for a few jokes about grunge music. I hope it was worth it. As with when they’ve taken characters, given them new traits contradictory to their entire history, and then given them their old characteristics back, the damage can’t be undone. You can’t unmake “That 90s Show.”
If you may excuse me a strained metaphor, The Simpsons has become like a game of telephone. You take the original idea, strain it through dozens of different people, and you’ve got something completely different as the end product purple monkey dishwasher. Could The Simpsons writers (particularly the showrunners, who dictate the show more than anymore) have put more effort into staying true to their characters? Of course, but they sold them out in order to tell stories they wanted to tell or to do jokes they wanted to do. With less and less ideas available to them as the episodes piled up, it isn’t surprising that they came up with increasingly worse ideas that jeopardized the show’s integrity with its fans. It isn’t surprising, it’s just disappointing. There are still plenty of ideas out there which stay true to the characters we came to like in the first place. For example, here’s a free idea for any Simpsons writers out there reading this: Kirk Van Houten starts dating Ms. Krabappel. Two sad, desperate middle aged people finding love, with Milhouse, who is always put upon and getting the short end of the straw, awkwardly stuck in the middle? What’s not to like. Granted, I know you got Kirk and Luann back together for one episode (in which Milhouse thinks his parents have died and suddenly become an emotionally detached loner, another example of the show completely changing a character and then quickly changing them back) but you’ve clearly shown no concern for simply disregarding such things for the sake of the story. Or, if you feel like having some respect for the fans for once, you could easily explain why they have separated again. Such simple gestures toward the fans goes a long way.
I did not set out to condemn The Simpsons with this piece. I do not take any pleasure in pointing out how far it has fallen. In a way, I am merely trying to put the pieces together myself of just what has really gone wrong with the show. Sure, there are numerous reasons. Storylines that were far too ridiculous, a more consistent reliance on non-canon storytelling episodes in the vein of Treehouse of Horror (which itself has gotten worse over time), and quite frankly the writing just isn’t as funny. Many of the best writers retired, or went on to do other things (creating their own shows, writing novels, hosting The Tonight Show, and so on) so that isn’t too surprising. That said, The Simpsons is an institution that many would be honored to write for. Indeed, the likes of Ricky Gervais and Seth Rogen have expressed much joy in having the opportunity to write episodes. People such as myself grew up on this show and hold it in extremely high esteem. Certainly some of those people are extremely talented and would love to write for the show. You would think the show wouldn’t lose so much quality as such, but yet it has.
However, would they have only stuck with the characters we fell in love with in the first place the show could have probably overcame its decline in comedic quality. Alas, they did not. They tweaked character’s personalities and traits so much that in the end they barely resemble the characters that attracted us to the show in the first place. It’s hard sometimes to even keep track of who a character is anymore. It leaves you annoyed, confused, and most of all emotionally detached from the characters. That might be ideal for a show such as Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which wants you to find the characters morally and ethically repulsive, so that you are then amused when their scheme backfire on them. You don’t like the characters as people, so when the bad things befall them it is a satisfying viewing experience. That is not what the Simpsons was built on. It was built on satire and some silliness but with an emotional heart at its center than made it possible to root for even characters such as Homer. Now that we don’t know what Homer we’ll get from week to week, we can’t do that anymore.
Worst of all, this is not a fixable problem. The misdeeds of the show’s writers have already bore fruit, and the characters have become too convoluted and contradictory. It is absolutely amazing that the show is even approaching its 20th anniversary. However, for the last few years I have to feel that its continued existence has been on reputation solely. I can’t imagine FOX ever pulling the plug on The Simpsons. It has just meant too much to them. Indeed, even with all my handwringing about the last few seasons I don’t really want the show to end. A world without new episodes of The Simpsons is weird and foreign to me. It is a no win situation for me. Either the show continues to desecrate its memory or it comes to an end, and neither scenario am I happy with. I guess all I can do is hope for the best whenever a new episode airs (the occasional really good episode does surprise me every now and then, but it has been awhile since there has been a great one). That and, of course, keeping my Simpsons DVDs close at hand at all times. That way, I can watch episodes when I knew who the characters were and what they stood for, back when they were great characters and not simply treated as empty shells for the writers to projects various traits through from week to week. Here I am, my favorite show of all time 20 years old, and I am eulogizing it before it is even gone. Well, as Axl Rose so eloquently put it “Nothing lasts forever.” There’s some other stuff in there about candles and precipitation, but it isn’t relevant to this conversation.
All this said, I’d like to end this on a positive note. Thank you, most Simpsons writers past and present, for hundreds of episodes of fine comedy and, in the words of Mayor Quimby, may all your disgraces be private.
[Have The Simpsons ‘boned the fish’? Or is there hope for America’s Favorite Family yet? Sound off in the comments!]
I was disappointed that you didn’t bring up the Tanzarian/Principal Skinner episode as that was the episode where The Simpsons jumped the shark/boned the fish. It did everything that you hate the writers doing; it ascribed a new trait to Principal Skinner (that being he wasn’t really Skinner, being a delinquent), introduced a new character (the real Skinner) and conviently threw that new character and the new traits out the window by the end of the episode. Skinner being a delinquent adds a new level of interaction between him and Bart as Skinner is no longer solely a bumbling authority figure. He’s a Bart Simpson that turned his life around. But don’t worry; that’s completely discarded so you don’t have to think about it too much. This is what I’ve heard to referred to as negative contuinity.
The Simpsons usually handles it well most of the time but the problem is that the writers don’t adhere to it all the time. Characters like Artie Ziff, Herbert and character traits like Lisa’s vegetarianism should disappear by the end of the episode and never be brought up again if the writers adhere to negative contuinity. But then you have characters like Hank Scorpio and “Michael Jackson” who never appear again as examples of when writers do adhere to negative contuinity.
As for the talent of the writers, a friend of mine compared the current and recently past Simpsons writers to fanfic authors. They are a fan of the source material and have their interpretation of a character regardless of any factual proof otherwise. The”That 90s Show” episode being the perfect example. I agree with his observation and wish I could claim it as my own.
The moment that the Simpsons jumped the shark (or “boned the fish”) for me was several seasons ago when the family was sent to Guantanamo Bay for Bart disrespecting the US flag. I’ve always appreciated the sly political jokes that have been inserted into episodes (“WIMP, am I?” – GHW Bush), but when the political humor became the central storyline it just seemed to be trying too hard without a payoff. One thing I think we can agree on is that “classic” episodes are evergreens – you don’t *need* the pop culture or social context to get them. Sure, some individual jokes may go overhead, but the episode as a whole stands on its own. I like to think that in 20 years when I’m watching the Simpsons with my kids, the Hank Scorpio episode will still be funny (I am assuming the Bond franchise will continue well into the future). But I can’t see them “getting” the Guantanamo episode without a lot of explanation and background from me.
Fortunately, many of the Bond movies themselves are evergreen, so even if the franchise peters out (which is a distinct possibility, given their failure to recapture what made Casino Royale so good with its sequel, and the last few Pierce Brosnan movies showing that the classic formula is pretty much tapped out) Many of its conventions will still be pop-culture staples for decades to come.
I don’t disagree with the analysis (I go long periods now between Simpsons viewing), but I find the tone of this piece grating, mostly because I worked on a show that went to 250 episodes and the stories got very, very difficult. So naturally I sympathize with the writers, instead of thinking that they’re these titanic failures who are overlooking obvious solutions. It’s not that the fanfic metaphor isn’t true; it’s just that the predicament seems more or less unavoidable.
I like to compare it to ballplayers. A great player who’s aging is often still a good player, but he suffers by being compared to what he once was.
Finally, I would fix this sentence: However, would they have only stuck with the characters we fell in love with in the first place the show could have probably overcame its decline in comedic quality., particularly if the very next word is the de haut en bas “Alas.” But that’s just me.
The Principal and the Pauper (the Tamzarian episode) I didn’t mention because my feelings on it are conflicted. In listening to the audio commentary on it, writer Ken Keeler explained that his point when writing the episode was to point out how attached people can get to characters on TV shows and how when you change something about them, people are livid. The episode’s main theme is that while Skinner isn’t Skinner per say in terms of his history, he is the same guy characteristically and emotionally that people have always known.
My main issue, then, with the episode, is that they used a character whose history we were familiar with with flashbacks and such. If, for example, Lenny, had some sort of different history than the characters had been led to believe, Mr. Keeler could have dealt with the same themes. However, he chose Skinner, who had a well established back story, and that is what aggravated people. Of course, Keeler’s contention was that such aggravation at television characters was the very thing he was satirizing, but I don’t know why you would want to mess with the emotions of your loyal fans.
Anyway, my problems with that episode aren’t as egregious as other episodes, so I didn’t really mention it, but there is certainly reason to dislike said episode. I was mostly concerned with when they changed characters emotionally, though I did mention the retcon that was in the similar vein to The Principal and the Pauper.
Also, I do realize I said that in the boy band episode they were subliminally recruiting for the army, when, of course, it was for the navy. Yvan Eht Nioj and all that. Error on my part. I apologize.
Mr. Marcil,
I understand where your sympathy comes from, and I do also realize that it is probably staggeringly difficult to come up with episode ideas once a show has run for a long period of time, let alone 400+ episodes. However, you will notice that I didn’t really disparage the writers for their storyline choices, except on a few occasions when I found it particularly egregious and lazy (for example the exact double episode).
Often times The Simpsons have a very loose (The Simpsons go to X place) or silly plot, but I let it slide generally because I realize that original plots are hard to come by at this point. However, I cannot abide them blatantly changing character traits and rendering us unable to really relate to the characters. They could have continued to tell stories without giving the characters convoluted and conflicted characteristics I feel.
Anyway, since you wrote for Daria (I both clicked your link on this page and then checked out your IMDB) and you have had a chance to work my dream job, I respect and appreciate your insight.
Two things:
1) The leprechaun jockey episode may have been a hot mess, sure. But it was also, at the time, one of the most effective meta-episodes of television I had ever seen, taking to task both the show itself and the more nitpicky segments of its audience, both of which richly deserved the ribbing.
2) In the context of fish, “bone” and “de-bone” mean the same thing. If that helps.
There were a lot of good points in this article, but it’s a struggle to take someone seriously when he clearly doesn’t understand the past participle.
Love,
A grammar nazi.
Hey! I understand the past participle! I just never proofread my work because I am a jackass! So there!
While I agree the show has gone steadily downhill, I have to disagree with some of your illustrative examples.
You’re a little too unforgiving when it comes to characters making uncharacteristic choices and/or having lapses in ordinarily decent judgment. Personally, I think it makes the characters easier to relate to on a human level. We all have lapses in judgment and all but the most boring of us act uncharacteristically from time to time. If the characters were perfect molds, I think the show would be even worst than it is now.
In the case of Bart, he’s always had a few episodes where his bad boy streak has gone over the top and he’s usually paid the price (I believe he and Skinner both wound up in the hospital for their allergic reactions to shrimp and peanuts, respectively). I don’t think that means he can never go back to the kid who can sometimes show some tenderness and good judgment when it really counts.
On Lisa, if you’ll notice, she very typically acts her age when it comes to dealing with Bart. So, her goading Bart and his new found prankster friend by calling them losers, isn’t so out of character. She’s always looking for ways to get back at her brother who’s always deriding her for her intellect. Also, if you’ll recall, the cemetery episode actually dealt directly with Lisa thinking she was too smart to be afraid of monsters and cemeteries and such. She kept trying to deal with her fear rationally and logically, but was still afraid, until the monsters told her that it was perfectly normal for her to be afraid sometimes as an 8-year-old girl.
Also, the Party Posse was purposed to recruit people into the Navy, not the Army. And they weren’t leprechaun jockeys, they were elf-like (as in Keebler) or troll-like creatures that lived “underground in a fiberglass tree”. ;)
And now, I’m officially overthinking it. :P
The Simpsons suffers from a lot of the same things that comic books and soap operas suffer from. When characters spend decades essentially caught in a weird nowhereland (Lois Lane didn’t figure out Clark Kent’s secret for, what, like 60 years?) where technology (and the writer) changes around them while they’re caught being essentially the same. Marvel and DC have dealt with this by resetting the universe every now and again. Soaps deal with it with wacky explanations (his TWIN died, she survived the crash but suffered amnesia and was kidnapped by a prince who fell in love with her beauty) in the name of continuity. The Simpsons doesn’t have an easy vehicle by which to do this and, by and large, it’s comedic so it doesn’t matter.
I also have very little problem with the Bart Skinner/baby animal disconnect. You can’t think of instances in the real world where a person would punch another person in the face without thinking twice but would adopt a lost puppy?
This piece starts out strong but by the end devolves into a somewhat pedestrian fan-rant, and the strong hint of “Why don’t they just let *me* write for the show??” makes it a bit whiny. The topic is a question worth exploring, though.
The little breaches of character are something that bother me, too, but when writing for a show with such a long history, it’s easy to get hamstrung if you let those things stop you. I don’t think they can afford to throw away ideas anymore, and if they got too picky the show would never get done.
Essentially, if you’re in the writer’s room trying desperately to crank out another episode of The Simpsons when practically every idea has been used, and then someone says “Bart and Skinner threaten each other with allergies,” and it makes the room laugh, then it’s getting used.
In the room, it’s frowned upon to be the one saying “We can’t use that funny idea because blah blah blah” without offering an alternative, because then you’re just the one stopping the writing from getting done without being constructive. And shooting down ideas before they start can be paralyzing for a writer.
In my opinion, there’s not much anyone could do to make me care about The Simpsons. Yes, recent episodes are lackluster, but I think the biggest problem is that everything about the show, from the characters to the tone, is just too familiar. We’ve seen everything happen to these characters hundreds of times over and just the sheer volume makes nothing seem to matter. Since Al Jean came back, I feel like we’ve seen a revival of the “Homer and Marge have a falling-out and then make up” episodes, which was once one of the show’s strongest formulas, but now nothing could be more meaningless. These stories have gotten so worn out that regardless of continuity, each one has zero stakes. Not only do we know that Homer will get her back (after all, we knew that even in early seasons), we don’t even care how he does it. Besides, these days it’s likely to be a lazy throwaway joke anyway.
I think the throwaway endings of the Scully years (esp. the one where they end up on the island, or when the volcanic eruption is interrupted by a telethon) were pretty funny, and were kind of meta jokes about how TV show endings don’t really matter. However, they might have worked too well, since they also set a bad precedent where it made them matter less, and made it hard to care about a Simpsons ending ever again.
Also, I missed the un-retcon episode, but IMO “That ’90s Show” was one of the best episodes of recent seasons because it actually surprised me. And if you disregard the era-specific signifiers, it doesn’t really contradict past backstory.
I think a lot of the discontinuities with character actions can be disregarded if you look back to the conceptual forerunner of The Simpsons: Commedia del Arte. Practically all of the principle Simpsons characters are direct reflections of characters in the Commedia, or at least aspects thereof, with Homer reflecting Zanni, Bart reflecting Arlecchino, Mr. Burns reflecting the miserly aspects of Pantalone, and so forth, and like the Commedia, the actions in any given performance of The Simpsons aren’t expected to have any bearing on future episodes.
In the Commedia, as in The Simpsons, characters have traits that are used and discarded as necessary, with Bart being unncessarily cruel in one episode and having a conscience in another, or Pantalone being lecherous in one performance, but simply miserly in another. It might seem like lazy storytelling and characterization, but it’s all a matter of intent. The characters that people love are archetypes and sketches that’re filled out as they need to be for the purposes of the comedy being told.
In short, I think this article was thought, but not necessarily overthought.