Simpsons by the Season: 25

"That's the great thing about art - everyone can have their own opinion about why it sucks."

This season is in many ways a carbon copy of the previous. For the most part it's simply bland, the episodes drifting into one another without ever really catching. There are only a handful of truly offensive episodes (I'll detail those towards the end, as two split the coveted worst episode of the season award) but just as scarce are the good ones. The minds behind The Simpsons must have decided that to prolong the longevity of the series they will churn out episodes that aren't going to enrage the viewer (who is far more loyal than they deserve) but will instead placate them with mediocrity. Viewers won't be up in arms, so they'll probably grudgingly return to the television to pay homage to a fallen great. After all, you can't say you've watched the entire series while skipping season 25. 

The identical feelings at the end of season 24 and 25 I believe may have signified the end of change in the series, settling into a permanent lull. It won't change now. It doesn't go from fantastic quality, to low quality, to ridiculous, to tame and then back to something previously; it'll stay at tame as tame is safe. Low effort, low quality (but not bottoming out quality) will bring in enough viewers to keep the propped up, rotting corpse of the series alive for another day. It's the end of the line. 26 won't be better or worse, and neither will 27. The show has flatlined a hair above being legally declared deceased. Of course, it's still better than the death spiral of 15-18 (give or take) in which the show bottomed out, but being on life support after it's heart attack is such a sorry state.

Don't get me wrong, the show still has its periodic ups and downs (occasional heartbeats and seizures, if we're continuing on the hospital metaphor) but they're few and far between. There are two pretty decent episodes in "Specs and the City" (the Simpsons' version of Google Glass comes to Springfield) and "Steal This Episode" (their take on internet privacy), and about four terrible ones. "Days of Future Future" is an absolutely nonsensical mess with Homer being cloned, and then it's in the future and there's zombies, and... all I know is it wasn't a Halloween episode. "The Man Who Grew Too Much" has Sideshow Bob splice genes of animals to make himself super-human. "You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee" has Homer officiating the World Cup. Homer and Bart get back at Skinner through a prank, telling him his mother has been murdered and he was the main suspect, but they'll help him get rid of her corpse by chopping it into pieces in "Yellow Subterfuge".


Sigh.

Fortunately, those four messes make up only a fraction of the season, so it's mostly watchable. Anger has subsided and it's been replaced by boredom. Just as long as it's still on the air, right?

Best Episode:

"Steal This Episode" takes the cake, as it delivered a fairly even handed approach to internet privacy. Sure, it's low hanging fruit, but they tackled it well.

Worst Episode:

I've already described them, but Homer being a World Cup referee is so bafflingly stupid it's too difficult to ignore. However, "Days of Future Future" is such a pieced together trainwreck it might, somehow, be worse.

Best Quotes:

"Eduardo Barcelona, or in english, Eddy Miami." 
-Homer's Brazilian pen-pal

"Nelson, you frighten me so, 
the psychoest bully I know,
you're a sociopath,
in need of a bath, 
I'm sure you'll end up on death row"
-Bart's valentine for Nelson

"I'll never experience the ultimate reward for a life well lived: the gentle slumber of death."
-Homer living in a dream world

Steve Jobs: Movie Review

Yesterday I went to see the Steve Jobs biopic with high hopes; it's been getting fairly solid reviews, it's about an incredibly interesting person, and the movie is Ashton Kutcher free, all totaling in a surefire recipe for success. Or so I would have thought. I couldn't help feel a little disappointed by the movie, and I believe a large part of that stems from having read his biography and remembering a number of the more interesting details of Jobs' life that were either glossed over or entirely ignored.

For the most part it felt like I had just watched the second installment of a three part series. The choice to present the movie in the fashion of three separate acts certainly allows it to delve more deeply in the details of those specific parts, and through that focus on Jobs' character. However, it skips some of the most memorable (and I would say most interesting) times of his life, and only selecting a sparse number of specific scenes hardly does justice to someone whose influence stretched decades. Starting his business in a garage with Wozniak is mentioned but only in brief. The creation of the iPod is only alluded to with a conversation with his daughter saying "I'll put 1,000 songs in your pocket." His untimely death which came upon him through neglecting his health in his famous Jobs' style of believing he can cure his own cancer with his dietary choices isn't shown nor mentioned as the film ends upon the release of the iMac. Through this it becomes an entertaining movie about a man, as it will certainly grab your attention through a number of excellent scenes with fast-paced, heated conversations but I cannot say it does more than scratch the surface on who Steve Jobs actually was.

He's painted as a self-centered jerk, and, let's not forget, it's easy to argue that he was. But he was much more than that - his wild eccentricities hardly make it through, save for one scene with him washing his feet in a toilet. Times when he would go to meetings without shoes or without having used any deodorant because he believed his all carrot and apple diet would cure him of any foul things in his body (all that is true) simply didn't make it to the screen. He was so overly emotional that he on more than one occasion would be crying at work and frequently so astoundingly cruel that he would make others shed those tears as well, but that was hardly touched. I mean, he loved acid and was about as close to being a hippie as a massively successful businessman can be, but you really just see him as a man in a suit who just happens to be obsessive and rude. Why then remove those scenes when they could have both added such depth to his character while making great cinematic moments? It seemed the purpose of the movie was to humanize him, but much of the greatness (or the opposite depending on how you see it) came through the ways in which he wasn't. His craziness - and there are few other words for it - are what made him. Yes, they show him to be a perfectionist but much in the same ways as many ordinary people are, and for better or worse, Steve Jobs was anything but the norm.

Perhaps more could have been shown if they had removed at least some of the conversations with his frumpy and annoying mother of his first child (Chrisann Brennan) and the child herself (Lisa Brennan) who as the movie progresses turns from adorable to, well, frumpy and annoying as well. Steve Jobs lags behind when he speaks with Chrisann at length about not accepting Lisa, and I assure you, those conversations happen far too frequently. Nearly half the movie is spent on Chrisann and his daughter, and each time they returned I would long for the talk about the company or computers. The legacy of Steve Jobs has little do with his relationships outside of work, but are instead a mere footnote that reflects his character and attitude. I would rather have seen his battles with Disney and fighting for Pixar than fighting over his daughter, or see more of his presentations rather than arguments with her mother.

If you go in completely cold to this movie without any prior knowledge, by the end you wouldn't even be sure exactly what Steve Jobs did. There's a conversation between Steve Wozniak and Jobs about what the latter actually does and Wozniak accuses him of contributing pretty much nothing. Jobs replies with a metaphor comparing himself to the conductor of an orchestra, which, in all fairness, is true - but the movie does little more than show him as a mostly useless cog in a machine that functions just as well without him. Perhaps he wasn't an incredible programmer, but his talents in leadership were second to none, even if he was at times agonizing to deal with personally. Watch the movie and you'll see him make a few costly decisions and little more, save for finding success while seemingly not adding much to the table. Jobs leads the presentations but they hardly touch on how effective he was in doing so. He was passionate about his ideas and demanded perfection, but frequently they only showcased those examples that led to failure.

This movie can hardly call itself Steve Jobs, as A Few Select Anecdotes About Steve Jobs would be more accurate. It's an entertaining enough movie; the acting is strong and the conversations are engaging. However, so much of it feels like a missed opportunity as time and time again Jobs is misrepresented and dulled from how he truly acted - again - for better or worse.

Simpsons by the Season: 24

"There's like eight amazing shows, none of them on Fox."

At the end of the last blog post I made a plea for sanity in The Simpsons, claiming that when the show holds onto reality it's infinitely more entertaining than when it gets completely lost. This season, in a refreshing fashion, actually holds to that - the over-the-top absurd moments are few and far between, and while they still exist (Reverend Lovejoy literally boring frogs to death in "Pulpit Friction") the season is much more tolerable than others due to the fact that most episodes have a straightforward plot that doesn't go insane two-thirds of the episode through. 

Sadly, that isn't to say it was a success of a season, but more of a stay from absolute travesty. Many of the same issues in previous seasons creep up, but they're just not quite as pervasive as they have been. Homer's a jerk in "A Test Before Trying" where he puts up a parking meter to scam people out of pocket change, but at least it's a side-story and not the main. Episodes are rehashed or merged, like in "Whiskey Business" - Moe gains confidence through wearing a specific suit (not Marge's Chanel one though!) and it turns out he can make a phenomenal drink (but gained his popularity in a different way than through his Flaming Moe). Continuity errors still come through, with Bart pretending to be a great piano player in "The Fabulous Faker Boy" (they reference him never having any musical talent, forgetting he surpassed Lisa's success in jazz through drumming a few seasons ago) and "The Saga of Carl" in which Carl's adopted Icelandic heritage is revealed, which just raises countless questions considering Lenny, Homer and himself have been friends since childhood. But, I'll be realistic here, and realize that in the grand scheme of things these are relatively small errors or oversights, and the weakness of the season doesn't lie there.

The problem with this stretch is a lot harder to pinpoint. It's hard to say "this just has to be funnier" and leave it at that, but that's really the core of the problem. The humour just isn't there anymore, lacking the cleverness and wit of previous seasons and replacing it with jokes that feel more like they're just going through the motions. They can hardly fill a full episode slot anymore, as if it's becoming too hard for them to do so. The couch gags are getting longer and longer, and twice this season they had two minute segments at the end of episodes that are complete non sequiturs. One had Mr. Burns explaining the "fiscal cliff" premise and the other was a clip about... I don't know, advertising characters doing something. It was a total mess. It's not that those clips are the worst parts of the season, but it's indicative of a greater problem; they're so low on ideas that they literally can't fill the entire show up before having to switch thoughts to something else. It's like the show itself is battling with attention deficit.

While this isn't the worst season by a longshot, there's little to report that's positive except for the moderate absences of negatives. While few moments or episodes really stuck, there wasn't anything that made me as violently angry (I may take the series a little too seriously at times). So, take it as you will. Is The Simpsons best served lukewarm now? Perhaps that's the truth.

Best Quotes:
"A kid's never lonely when he has balogna! Except me." 
-Milhouse

"Emergency meeting in the faculty lounge. BYOB." 
-Chalmers to Edna

"Nah, it's a 44 long. I wear a 38 hunched." 
-Moe, shopping for a suit

"My gay dad is gay for gays."
-Homer about Abe

Best Episode:
"The Day the Earth Stood Cool" is probably the best episode of the season. It pokes some easy fun at hipsters but it does a pretty decent job of doing so.

Worst Episode:
"A Tree Grows in Springfield" has a message of "hope" written into a tree in the backyard of the Simpsons' house. It's essentially the episode with the angel all over again, and not much better. This is also one of the episodes with the two minute segment at the end that has nothing to do with the episode itself.