Simpsons by the Season: 22

"Why can't you support my gibberish?"

Season 21 began to taper off towards the end, and 22 continues in that fashion. It's far from the worst season you're going to see, and the more I watch I believe those seasons are somewhere in the 13-19 range, but it just isn't very good. The reason being is they must feel like they have to push to an extreme to keep the audience entertained, as if that twenty-two minutes of television isn't engaging enough unless there are needless Michael Bay-type explosions and eyes popping out of their sockets (both happened, and neither in the Halloween special). Simplicity just doesn't cut it, and going above and beyond both the abilities of the characters and going to extremes of the characters' personalities themselves happens nearly every episode this season. Nothing is written with a level head, and they try to push the entertainment almost as an adventure, with everyone getting into increasingly impossible situations rather than a character based comedy, but that, ultimately, loses the wit and charm of the show. The Simpsons has to realize that the audience isn't that stupid. We have patience. We don't need everything cranked up to ten. If we wanted Family Guy we'd just go watch it.

Too many episodes began well and held promise but lost it when the show took a ridiculous turn and shot itself in the foot. This is nothing new, but it seemed especially prominent in this season. Take "How Munched is That Birdie in the Window?". Bart nurses a bird back to health, and he gets upset with the dog because Santa's Little Helper swallows it whole. That's not that bad. But it can't stay that way. It's not insane yet, so the viewer must be bored. The result is bringing Santa's Little Helper to an ostrich farm to give him away, but Bart gets attacked and ends up choking out one of the birds. Things were going alright for a while, but just in case anyone fell asleep, have Bart wring the neck of an ostrich.

Or "The Scorpion Tale". Have the family accidentally happen upon a drug that makes old people nicer? OK, so the means to get there is pretty stupid but the end result isn't. Old people being pleasant isn't necessarily a bad plot. However, their eyes start popping out of their sockets as a side effect. When in doubt, resort to easy shock value when wit is in short supply.

How about "Homer the Father"? Homer tries to be a better father to Bart, using the values of a (really funny) typical '90s sitcom. Great! But instead of having the humour coming from how Bart reacts to this, or how Homer stumbles through his attempts, they have Bart steal nuclear secrets and sell them to China. As I said - it's not about the characters, it's about adventures and incredible situations. I won't even have time to discuss in detail the Simpsons winning both an Oscar and a Golden Globe, or Fat Tony dying and being replaced by a relative, or how profoundly stupid it is to have Ned and Edna fall for each other which is just baffling in and of itself, because there are just too many examples to exhibit.

Even if the situation isn't extreme, they'll make the characters that way, typically exaggerating their capacity for cruelty or some other degree of the evil in their nature. We've already seen Bart's ability to torture and blackmail in the reprehensible "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em" in which he threatens Skinner with a peanut after he discovers he's allergic. They inexplicably decide to return to that well, but this time around he's abusing Homer, as he can no longer stand up to Bart after taking a parenting course. You end up hating Homer for being a terrible, thoughtless parent but hate Bart more for treating him so terribly afterwards. This isn't the only example, either; the entire premise of "The Fool Monty" is the entire town abusing a helpless, lost-his-marbles Mr. Burns.

Trim it down, Simpsons. Find a middle ground and focus on who your characters are. The situations aren't funny; it's how the characters react to them, and they have to react in character. That's what's funny. Look at "You Only Move Twice" with Hank Scorpio; the government breaking into his compound isn't the funniest part of the show, nor is it the funniest part of the scene. It's when Homer, walking away dejected after having to leave his job, casually kicks a grenade away like a loose stone as he's leaving. Or in "Marge vs. the Monorail"; it's not that there are possums in the wiring of the monorail that's so funny. What makes that scene memorable is that he casually states he "calls the big one bitey" as if it's hardly a problem at all. It's Homer's stumble-through-life nature that's classic Simpsons, as in when he saved the nuclear plant by guessing and hoping for which button to push to save it from a meltdown, not having him blowing one up in China as they had in this season.

Moderation, Simpsons. All things in moderation.

Best Quotes:
"Boys don't have feelings, they have muscles!"
-Homer's advice to Bart

"Lay off Detroit. Those people are living in Mad Max times."
-Moe on Detroit

"His bat's hungering for a homer, just like Chronos for his children."
-The announcer at Bart's little league game

Best Episode:
I would say the best episode this season is "Flaming Moe" in which Moe makes his bar friendly to unattractive gay men. Moe changing up his bar is nothing new, but the show has traditionally made comedy about gay people pretty darn funny. It could have gone to "MoneyBART" where Lisa uses statistics to bring Bart's baseball team to consistent victories, but one scene in which a man offers to teach Bart over the summer to build model boats by hand. Bart responds with "How would you like to kiss my ass?". It was so indicative of the decline of the show and the characters that it spoiled an otherwise good episode.

Worst Episode:
Everyone abusing Mr. Burns in "The Fool Monty" was the lowpoint of the season. Once again, characters going insane is not funny. It's just lazy writing, and the same goes for when the characters are over the top cruel, which this episode has in spades.