Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: The Simpsons (2024)

Because Phil doesn't want one.

Kill this board.

In any case, the Simpsons ban was almost a decade ago when the board was in its infancy. Who is to say it's still in effect? (The Simpsons movie board and heck even the existence of the FG board might be arguments that it is not.)

But hey, if ScottN says to kill the board, we should bow to his obvious greatness ;)

OK. I was just going by Phil's last stated preference.

Remember, it's his yard, he just lets us play in it.

He responded to my email, and he said that he's okay with it:

Luigi!

That’s fine! ;-) It’s kind of the wild west out there now so… ya know… ;-)

Phil

Well there you go. I thought so.

I mean, the show has gotten too boring to be controversial anyway. Should have been cancelled years ago.

I'd also say every episode of this show exists in its own universe.

Otherwise we'd have to accept that, somehow, the characters stopped aging 24 years ago. BUT at the same time, if ever there is a flashback to events from, say ten years ago, the character would be age appropriate for the time period.

One re-occurring nit is how Homer and Marge were orginally married; I think there are three different versions of that event. The same with the kid's first day of school, or last day for that matter.

I agree Rene! There was a time when I thought about counting up all of the episodes that appear to exist in the "present" time for the Simpsons, such as subtracting the Halloween, spinoffs, clip-shows, and other nono-"real" eps; to see how many actual days it has been for the possibility that we could've simply seen every day of a full year but I never did it, too much work It would also open up way too many continuity problems!

Yeah. After, what, 24 years of episodes, it's pretty much impossible that they all take place in the same timeline.

Heck, references to past episodes create major problems. Like the Sideshow Bob episodes. ("5 years ago, Sideshow Bob framed Krusty for armed robbery..." So when Bart was 5, Lisa was 3 and before Maggie was born? But Bart was 10 at the time, Lisa was 8 and Maggie was a baby, the same age as the present.)

I have a nit for this show at last! In an early episode (when the animation was really primitive and substandard compared to how it would become) Homer and Bart are watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and Bart wonders who all these balloon characters are, and Homer says that one of them is Underdog. The nit here is that the show was from the early 90s, but the Underdog parade balloon was actually retired in 1984. I read that on it's Wikipedia page, BTW.

Anyway, Bart wonders why they dont make balloons based on characters made in the "last 20 years". And Homer responds with, "Boy, if they made a balloon for every flash-in-the-pan cartoon character, they'd turn the parade into a BART!" And at the very moment when he says that, a Bart Simpson balloon appears in the parade on the TV.

I thought that was funny!

From "Make Room for Lisa":

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Okay. FDR is in the White House, an ice cream cone costs a nickel, and a hot new tune by Benny Goodman is hitting the charts. The year.. is 1939!

HOMER: Nineteen thir- nineteen thirty nine! Oh my God! I've gone back in time! I've got to warn everybody about Hitler... and get to the ice cream store!

Here's a nit.

In Replaceable You(23.4), Principal Skinner's mother says she carried him for 4 1/2 months. This contradicts Boy Meets Curl(21.12), where she was 9 months pregnant at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

Springfield must be west of the Mississippi.

In Monty Can't Buy Me Love (10.21), the local radio station is shown as KBBL. If it was east of the Mississippi, it would be WBBL.

ScottN: In Replaceable You(23.4), Principal Skinner's mother says she carried him for 4 1/2 months. This contradicts Boy Meets Curl(21.12), where she was 9 months pregnant at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
It also contridicts Principal and the Pauper where it was established that Seymour wasn't actually Agnes's son (despite that episode contridicting pretty much every other ep that contained bits of his background).

In Monty Can't Buy Me Love (10.21), the local radio station is shown as KBBL. If it was east of the Mississippi, it would be WBBL.
Good point Scott. At least three eps claims Springfield is in Kentucky, which is of course east of the Mississippi.

Simpsorama, the Futurama crossover indicates that Springfield may be in New York.

Homer, Leela, Fry, and Bender are walking to the Simpson house, and they pass Panucci's Pizza, with Seymour lying out in front.

Also, I loved the shots that Groening took at himself in this episode.

They were trying to keep people from neighboring towns (specifically Ogdenville) OUT of Springfield in this episode.

They had just finished the fence, and the vehicles came from INSIDE the fence.

Since they were trying to keep Ogdenville-ians out, they wouldn't call Ogdenville police, and given the well-established antipathy, there is absolutely no way they'd call Shelbyville police.

Ah. Well, maybe they deputized a few people. Which would not explain where they got the extra patrol cars.

One would think the production team would keep track of such things. Needlessly animating these cars and people is a costly mistake.

When the show premiered, Bart and Lisa would have grown up knowing about MAD and the Soviet Union.

Now, they've only known a post-9/11 world.

Moe in the Panda Rape episode....

Doesn't Moe's line "You ain't going nowhere, sweetie!" imply Moe has done something just as bad to a woman as the panda R?

How each character would vote?

Homer - On record as being for Haig in 1988 and Stockdale for Veep in '92, as well as for Obama in 2008, Romney in 2012. Didn't vote for Trump in 2016, and didn't like either of the major party candidates in 1996 because they were space aliens, although he still voted for Kodos.

Marge - Standard Democrat. Big Hillary supporter, voted for the Democrat Mary Bailey for state governor.

Bart - Could see him as a Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders voter if he were older, but probably he's an anarchist at heart.

Lisa - Green Party in general, but would have voted for Clinton in 2016 out of feminism/anti-Trump sentiment.

Maggie: Whether she swings left or right, she'll be very anti-statist.

Abraham - Open to voting Democratic for his social security, but at the same time doesn't like them for keeping him for seeing his grandson.

Mr. Burns - Staunch Republican to the point of being the chair of the local party. Was for Trump in 2016.

Smithers - Publically Republican, privately Democratic.

Moe - Probably one of those urban white Democrats who Trump picked up in 2016.

Lenny and Carl - Democrats; Lenny considers himself to be 'politically correct' and Carl is a working-class African-American. They are also implied to be gay lovers at various points IIRC.

Barney - Too drunk to vote, obviously.

Skinner - Military veteran Republican, certainly for McCain in 2008 but otherwise a bit wary about the religious right due to his implied bisexuality.

Krabappel - Apathetic public educator Democrat.

Groundskeeper Willie - SNP, of course.

Flanders and family - Ned is Mike Huckabee-esque Republican, the others might be less keen on the GOP - Rod and Todd are two more examples of gay characters.

Marge Simpson being portrayed sympathetically is what i hate about Simpsons episodes. She forces her intellectually disabled husband and her children to adhere to her fringe evangelist sect of Christianity, is hom*ophobic ("Boys kiss *girls*"), wants to turn Lisa (and Maggie) into soft and quiet girly girls that look good on the arm of a man of power

We are supposed to believe that this ramshackle reactionary old trout was a Jimmy Carter Democrat?

Pull the other one, it plays "Jingle Bells".

I've got a question....

Who built Bart's treehouse? It can't have been Homer, he can't put ANYTHING together that will stay together.

the "Look what happened without my pills" joke wouldn't fly in 2020 as it plays transgender people for laughs. It will eventually be snipped from repeats ala E.T.'s guns being turned into walkie-talkies.

The "I am the angel of the death. The time of purification is at hand" - already too dark and sinister to be funny and it's aged badly since.

That's alot of D'OHs! Cany ou make it to the end?

https://youtu.be/cnaeIAEp2pU

Someone needs to tell the producers of this show that it's been over 20 years since the 90's ended.

The cultural relevancy of this show ended with that decade.

The Golden Age of the Simpsons ended with the 20th Century.

This show has no business being still on the air.