Yeah, yeah, I know – funny show, groundbreaking comedy, yadda yadda.
Look, don’t get me wrong; I like The Simpsons. I liked Life In Hell, the comic that brought creator Matt Groening to scuzzy, underground prominence in the eighties. I liked The Tracy Ullman Show, on which The Simpsons started as a series of interstitial shorts. I even enjoy watching the show, usually (except for the last five or ten years, when the show hasn’t been nearly as good as the first ten or fifteen years, or whatever).
No, it’s not The Simpsons I dislike, per se.
But The Simpsons are a lot like Star Trek; it’s not the show itself that bugs me. It’s the fans.
Over-the-top Simpsons buffs – the people who sneak show references into the most mundane bits and pieces of everyday life, who sit around cafeterias and trade show trivia for day after day, who answer serious questions with vaguely-appropriate Homer quotes – remind me of Star Trek fans, the kind that’ve adopted “Gene Roddenberry” as their worldview and live the creed in their daily lives.
They’re just like the Comic Store Guy…
…oh, crap. Now I’ve done it.
[Pointing] HA HA!
I think the Simpsons realized rather early on that their hardcore fans were annoying. By the mid 90s they were making fun of the nerds who nitpick everything and label every new episode as the worst one ever. For extra fun, read the comments by “fans” when they get made fun of:
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F12.html
Still, an annoying Simpson fan is a lot more tolerable than the average Family Guy fan. I’d take season 19 Simpsons over anything they did.
I was kind-of against you, Mitch… until you mentioned the fans. I’m with you.
I’m even more of the same mind in regard to “Family Guy”. Funny, wildly irreverent, and oh-so-wrong funny… until Seth gets an issue to scourge, one that resonates with the “fans” . Then it is barely mediocre.
Doh!
Badda,
A quick edit:
“…until Seth gets an issue to scourge, one that resonates with the “fans” . Then it is
barely mediocreAmerican Dad.”There. Got it.