The Official Simpsons Griefing Thread

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XYZpdq said:
the Amadeus parody where Bart is Mozart really basically chills him down from even Amadeus' version of Mozart
edit- that Wachowski gag was dated, but some Sideshow Bob episode was based on Tivo and Microsoft's Clippy so that might be more dated
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Hell, the entire Zombie Simpsons (especially the first wave of Zombie Simpsons) were incredibly dated. In the early 2000's both Simpsons and Futurama had a hate-boner for websites, the internet in general, and e-commerce...probably just because the writers were Boomers...but also because of the Dot Com Crash. I remember episodes from around 2003-05 that constantly attack Amazon, Ebay, and Google for being passive trends that would never last. There was an early Zombie Simpsons episode about Artie Ziff losing all of his fortune from a failed internet startup, and I remember the entire episode just reeking of out-of-touch Boomer cringe.
 
some HD episode with the family getting taken the aliens' planet to be eaten, not sure if it was a Halloween special
finished with an extended "lol Star Trek" sequence through the credits, a few bits worth a chuckle, especially the shot of Bart as Scotty
looked like they only gave Bart three fingers as it's one of the shots where Doohan's missing finger was more easily spotted
 
XYZpdq said:
some HD episode with the family getting taken the aliens' planet to be eaten, not sure if it was a Halloween special
finished with an extended "lol Star Trek" sequence through the credits, a few bits worth a chuckle, especially the shot of Bart as Scotty
looked like they only gave Bart three fingers as it's one of the shots where Doohan's missing finger was more easily spotted
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I watched that one with my mom. Afterwards she looked at me confused and said "That really should have been a Futurama episode instead. "
 
Michael Jacks0n said:
Hell, the entire Zombie Simpsons (especially the first wave of Zombie Simpsons) were incredibly dated. In the early 2000's both Simpsons and Futurama had a hate-boner for websites, the internet in general, and e-commerce...probably just because the writers were Boomers...but also because of the Dot Com Crash. I remember episodes from around 2003-05 that constantly attack Amazon, Ebay, and Google for being passive trends that would never last. There was an early Zombie Simpsons episode about Artie Ziff losing all of his fortune from a failed internet startup, and I remember the entire episode just reeking of out-of-touch Boomer cringe.
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And the gag about Homer starting a .com that did nothing, but making a profit off of it when Bill Gates buys the domain, and, even as he's cutting the check, admits he has no idea what the site DOES, but, internet business is always good business!

Or Hermes in Futurama congratulating Dwight for being a "risk taker" for investing in Amazon...... the joke is arguably still funny, but not for the reasons the writers had.

They saw eCommerce as a foolish fad, so Dwight was being mocked as throwing his cash away.

Now, we all know that Amazon today is on the verge of being Trust-busted by the Government for running everything online and killing off untold traditional retailers who couldn't compete, so the joke seems to be about sarcastically criticizing Dwight for lack of risk, going the "easy" route and investing in a megacorp that's too big to fail short of being declared a monopoly.


I see it as the same reason Tex Avery went big on the anti-TV jokes in the last MGM theatrical cartoons..... displaced anger over having seen the future out of the corner of their eye, and realizing it wouldn't include them.

I get it, that's the human condition: Die young, or live long enough to be replaced.....

But I think they'd have weathered it a lot better had they embraced the concept of shelf life and quietly put the show to bed in the early 00's
 
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TowinKarz said:
Or Hermes in Futurama congratulating Dwight for being a "risk taker" for investing in Amazon...... the joke is arguably still funny, but not for the reasons the writers had.
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Yeah, this joke in particular always irritated me. Sure, Futurama writers couldn't see 1,000 years into the future, but they just shoehorned in a then-contemporary gag into a show that was set in the 31st century. The joke was that investing a penny into an internet business was a waste of money, as their stock was supposedly worth nothing. Surprise surprise, Amazon shares have been some of the most valuable stock in recent years. Currently a share of Amazon stock sells for over $2,000.
 
TowinKarz said:
And the gag about Homer starting a .com that did nothing, but making a profit off of it when Bill Gates buys the domain, and, even as he's cutting the check, admits he has no idea what the site DOES, but, internet business is always good business!
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Was there an early version you're referencing or something? The final version has Gates' goons just trash Homer's crude home office while he and Marge look on, horrified.

ToroidalBoat said:
Is there a GIF or panorama of that "so boring" universe Bart sees through the telescope Lisa won at an optics festival*?

*(that Bart wasn't informed of)
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universe.gif
 
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Irrational Exuberance said:
Was there an early version you're referencing or something? The final version has Gates' goons just trash Homer's crude home office while he and Marge look on, horrified.
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No, you're right, it's been a while.

Still, same idea: ebusiness is stupid and only hyper-geeks care about it.
 
TowinKarz said:
No, you're right, it's been a while.

Still, same idea: ebusiness is stupid and only hyper-geeks care about it.
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I just watched that episode just recently, and from what I can identify, that was made during the Dot Com bubble when internet startups would literally receive millions in investments for doing absolutely nothing. People would open up domain names of random nonsensical words with no mission statement, but would still receive money from optimistic investors who assumed their pointless companies would be profitable in the future. That gag in the Simpsons was most like satirizing that, but it still comes off as being myopic and assuming the internet was a pointless fad.
 
It certainly won't make sense 40 years down the road to anyone who wasn't "there" to see the .com implosion firsthand.

Whereas the "escalator to nowhere" joke is immortal.
 
TowinKarz said:
It certainly won't make sense 40 years down the road to anyone who wasn't "there" to see the .com implosion firsthand.

Whereas the "escalator to nowhere" joke is immortal.
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Exactly. I can understand how the show was important with satirizing American culture at the time, but by the end of the 90's, society was changing in ways that the writers couldn't keep up. Season 2 had an interesting take on censorship vs. art in the episode where Marge protests Itchy & Scratchy, but by the dawn of the millennium they were making dated, cringy jokes about cell phones. Satirizing censorship is timeless, but joking about evolving technology is not.
 
Michael Jacks0n said:
Hell, the entire Zombie Simpsons (especially the first wave of Zombie Simpsons) were incredibly dated. In the early 2000's both Simpsons and Futurama had a hate-boner for websites, the internet in general, and e-commerce...probably just because the writers were Boomers...but also because of the Dot Com Crash. I remember episodes from around 2003-05 that constantly attack Amazon, Ebay, and Google for being passive trends that would never last. There was an early Zombie Simpsons episode about Artie Ziff losing all of his fortune from a failed internet startup, and I remember the entire episode just reeking of out-of-touch Boomer cringe.
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That's good analysis that I've never thought of.

They really hated the interwebs because that's where fans of the old show would go to complain about how the show fell.
 
So I'm rewatching one fish two fish red fish blowfish and homer's night out and I gotta say these early episodes are making me hungry. The episodes open up with the family either sitting down to dinner or going out to eat and I actually feel like meatloaf even though Lisa was complaining about it at the start of the episode.

Also it could be corona shutting down dine in but I just wish I could sit down and have a nice dinner out again. Hopefully that will be possible again soon.

Also I love how the episode shows homer trying to be an ideal dad to his family when he thinks he'll be gone. It shows how once upon a time he wasn't an insufferable buffon and could have genuinely heartfelt moments
 
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