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There is a show that airs every night on the Fox network from around 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
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And it's an animated series about a family of five:
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Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie.
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And it's not an exceptionally entertaining show, in fact it's downright mediocre.
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But what's so unusual about it is that the show goes by the name The Simpsons.
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And the reason this is so strange is that it bears a striking resemblance
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to another animated TV series from the early 90s, one also called The Simpsons,
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which many people, myself included, consider the greatest piece of television of the 20th century.
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But make no mistake; no matter how similar these two appear,
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no matter what surface level resemblances exist, these are not the same show.
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And this, friends, is the story of how one became the other.
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How one of the best and most influential TV shows of all time became just another sitcom.
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This is The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened.
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So, to keep this outside the realms of my own subjective opinion, we're going to chart The Simpsons' decline off the IMDb user review data,
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collected from nearly 300,000 individual episode reviews aggregated over the show's 28 seasons,
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which looks like this:
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Yikes.
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And so the conversation is, how did we get from the Simpsonsmania of the 90s,
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to present-day, where the show is now widely referred to as "Zombie Simpsons?"
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And to understand this, as well as the gravity of its decline, we need to first go back to the series' origins.
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TV of the 80s was a very different place than what we have today.
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While the first half of the decade was dominated by soaps like Dallas and Dynasty,
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in its later half we would see the return and rise of the TV family sitcom,
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with shows like Diff'rent Strokes, Alf and Family Ties dominating primetime TV slots.
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Each of these big shows centered around instilling the virtues of the American family unit,
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with smart-aleck but well-meaning kids, and wise and loving parents.
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The families being shown on TV were safe and comfortable depictions of the staunchly middle-upper class,
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rich enough to be aspirational, while not so wealthy that they become unrelatable.
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Which was fine as long as you were never in the mood for anything more than good, wholesome fun,
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but it was also TV at its softest and most docile.
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There's a sugary blandness to the television of this period.
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Or, as Matt Groening referred to it, the "zombification of the American family."
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And it seemed like this was the way family sitcom was going to stay,
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right up until the last dying breath of the 80s,
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when, on December 14th 1989, two weeks before the closing of the decade,
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the Fox Network aired the first episode of The Simpsons,
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and in doing so completely transformed television as we know it.
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It was dark, it was satirical and it was hilarious.
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Rather than embrace the virtues of the American family like every other show of that time,
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The Simpsons seem to be actively mocking them.
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It's a little hard to imagine, given the modern media landscape,
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but back then The Simpsons were seen as an expression of blatant anti-authority.
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Disruptive entertainment that challenged every convention of primetime TV that had built up over the forty years of its existence.
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The Simpsons was counterculture,
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shining a spotlight and satirizing every ugly wart of American society that so many others willingly ignored.
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Bullying, depression, the struggle of the lower-middle class,
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nothing was off-limits and everything was game. And The Simpsons took gleeful joy in exposing it all.
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Such disregard for what, at the time, were seen as modern American values
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quickly drew the ire of many parental and watchdog groups, decrying The Simpsons as abashedly un-American,
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even drawing the disdain of former United States president George Bush Senior.
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"...make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons!"
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[crowd cheering]
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Of course, the disdain of such massive authority figures only fueled the flames of The Simpsons' countercultural blaze,
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and audiences across the world fell in love with the distinctly dysfunctional family.
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If you were born after 1990, you probably don't remember how big Simpsonsmania actually was,
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but for a time, The Simpsons was easily the biggest fictional property in all of media,
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with even throwaway pieces of Simpsons merchandise turning into their own miniature cultural touchstones,
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like The Simpsons arcade game, a staple of 90s Arcades across the world,
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or Bart Simpson's Guide to Life, which to this day is still one of my favorite books I've ever read.
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The Simpsons even had hit songs, like the infamous "Do the Bartman."
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♫ ...chain reaction ♫
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♫ If you can do the Bart you're bad like Michael Jackson ♫
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♫ Everybody if you can, do the Bartman ♫
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♫ Shake your body, turn it round... ♫ ♫ Check it out! ♫
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And so Simpsonsmania blazed on, but what truly made the show special was three core principles,
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each of which could be represented by one of the show's three creators.
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The first of which was Matt Groening. Groening was the one who conceived the initial premise for The Simpsons.
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He first came to prominence with his uniquely warped counterculture comic, Life in Hell,
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and if you go back and read this comic now, it's incredible how much of early Simpsons' rebellious spirit exists in it.
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And it's this disdain for authority and convention that gave classic Simpsons the edge it had.
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The second major creative force behind the show was Sam Simon, a veteran writer of TV sitcoms like Taxi and Cheers,
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Simon was the person who took Groening's rebellious concept and gave it form, turning it into an actual TV show.
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He was the one who hired and led the original writing team,
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and instilled the idea that the comedy of the show should always be grounded in its characters, and not just be a string of cartoonish gags.
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Which gave the characters a real weight and honesty, while also keeping the show consistently hilarious.
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The third and final major contributor to The Simpsons was a little more hands-off than Simon and Groening, but arguably just important.
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And that was its producer, James L. Brooks,
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who not only was the one pushing for the series to get made in the first place,
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but also largely credited as being the person to bring a heart to The Simpsons.
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While not on the actual writing staff, he'd often come to the yearly story retreats,
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and was always keen to encourage ideas that were more emotionally resonant than they were satirical or comedic,
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often pushing episodes that featured Lisa or Marge as the protagonist,
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and is even credited at penning the beautifully bittersweet moment from the episode Lisa's Substitute,
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where Mr. Bergstrom hands Lisa a note that simply reads, "You are Lisa Simpson." before disappearing from her life forever.
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Rebellious satire, comedy grounded in character, and heart.
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These men and their ideals were at the core of The Simpsons,
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something that is plainly obvious by the fact that you can still see their names listed at the start of every episode.
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Of course that's to say nothing of the actual writing staff, who were also heavily involved in the development.
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John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Conan O'Brien, David M. Stern,
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these and many others were the exceptionally talented writers that made up the early staff of The Simpsons.
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And while Groening, Simon, and Brooks oversaw the show's creation, these were the people that crafted each and every episode.
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One thing that becomes abundantly clear after going through enough old interviews with these guys
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is the incredible amount of work that went into each and every script.
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A team of roughly twelve writers would work multiple long eleven-hour days on a single episode,
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and it's a little hard to imagine now, given how seamlessly the comedy in classic Simpsons flows,
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but I think once you start to break down the way these jokes work, the effort behind them becomes abundantly clear.
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Let's take one of my favorite moments from one of my favorite episodes, Bart Sells His Soul,
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in which Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for five dollars,
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and after a run of bad luck and a rather horrifying existential nightmare, he realizes what a mistake he's made
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and journeys out late into the night in order to find Milhouse, and reclaim his lost soul.
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And then this happens:
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"Well finally, a little luck!"
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[evil laughter]
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It's a brilliant, darkly hilarious piece of comedy, timed, paced, and delivered to near perfection.
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But what's interesting is what happens when you break down the mechanics of how this joke works.
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Mainly by recognizing that this is not one singular joke, but a combination of smaller ones.
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It starts with Bart's bike being run over by the street sweeper.
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Second, it turns out that all the street sweeper actually did was clean the bike.
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Third, no, it's actually been destroyed.
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Fourth, the reveal that this was actually an act of malice by some psychotic nameless public servant.
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And finally, the street sweeper plunging down the stairwell.
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That's five jokes in fifteen seconds.
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And I get that by breaking them down like this, I'm robbing them of some of their magic,
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but I think it's important to understand the underlying structure.
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And that is how each little piece of comedy builds on and expands on the one that came before it,
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crescendoing in the beautifully absurd and nearly surreal punchline.
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And it's a perfect example of the brilliant layered comedy of the jokes of classic Simpsons.
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These are jokes that, according to writers of The Simpsons from the time,
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would go through roughly thirty to forty drafts of rewrites, which I think is genuinely evident from their makeup.
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They're simply too layered and too intricate to be the product of one single writing pass.
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And this is also a style of comedy that was completely distinct to everything else at the time.
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Sitcoms of the late 80s and early 90s were ruled by the laughter track, which had been a staple of American sitcoms since the 1950s.
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Originally provided by a live studio audience, but now it was just fake canned laughter,
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used as an artificial way to prop up lazy one-liners and unimaginative quips.
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The problem with using laughter tracks is that they only allow for jokes to be structured in a very particular way,
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with long lead ins and big punchlines.
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But there is also a forced quality to it too, as it takes the onus away from the audience and tells us when to react.
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And if a joke is genuinely funny, then surely we don't need it to be pointed out to us.
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And if you want to see some proof of this, just check out what an existential nightmare the Big Bang Theory turns into when the laughter track is removed.
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"Sorry I'm late."
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"What happened?"
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"Nothing. I just really didn't wanna come."
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[long, uncomfortable silence]
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[shudders]
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Not only is there not a laughter track in The Simpsons, there straight up could not be one.
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The pace, rhythm, and subtlety of the jokes didn't allow for it.
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Take our previous street sweeper gag.
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The way the joke is interconnected and paced means there's no space for canned laughter.
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The only place you could put it would be right at the end, and by doing so, you would ruin these darkly surreal atmosphere the joke establishes.
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And so in disregarding the biggest crutch of TV sitcoms of that era, The Simpsons created a different style of comedy to anything else at the time.
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One that was consistently creative, surprising and hilarious.
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And yet, despite how exceptionally the show delivered its comedy, it never did so at the expense of its characters.
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I think the key to what makes these characters so distinct and memorable
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is that each one operates off a very specific set of conflicting beliefs and motivations.
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Take Homer, for example.
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He's an emotional man, equally prone to bouts of both intense joy and excitement, as well as fits of blinding rage.
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He's unintelligent and slow witted, but not just that. He was also gluttonous and extremely lazy.
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And this aspect of his character would often prove more detrimental to him than his low intelligence.
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He was also an optimist, often choosing to ignore problems until they became unavoidable,
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but also just kind of wanted to be left alone.
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To go about his life his own way, and enjoy the little pleasures of it on his own terms.
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And lastly, he really, really cares about his family.
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These are the core traits that define Homer Simpson.
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These are the motivations and beliefs that determine each action he takes,
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and in any given scene, you can see one or more of them pulling him in different directions.
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In other words, there was a consistent internal logic to Homer.
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No matter how outlandish this situation he was in, Homer could always be expected to act like Homer.
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And so when comedy did occur, you weren't just laughing because something goofy was happening,
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you were doing so because a character you were intimately familiar with had done something that made sense to them and only them.
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The comedy of Homer's character comes from his failings causing him to misinterpret the world around him, and suffer because of it.
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This is the kind of character writing that was dense throughout every episode of The Simpsons.
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But it's only when this combined with the show's expertly crafted narratives that the series' true strength becomes apparent.
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Even when the show ventured into its more surreal territory, which it often did,
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there was always the feeling that each story had something to say.
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From accepting one's own mortality, to corruption in politics, and even the nature of the human soul.
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And yet It did all this with a sincerity that never felt patronizing.
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And so The Simpsons delivered classic episode after classic episode,
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like the touching, poignant Lisa on Ice,
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the genius season-spanning cliffhanger Who Shot Mr. Burns,
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and the irreverent, hilarious Last Exit to Springfield.
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These, and so many others, are some of the finest pieces of television ever crafted,
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and cemented The Simpsons not only as one of the greatest TV shows of all time,
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but as a bonafide worldwide cultural phenomenon.
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The Simpsons, it seemed, was unstoppable.
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And then...
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Season eight happened.
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The eighth season of The Simpsons is... odd.
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It's still home to a lot of classic stories,
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in particular the episode Homer's Enemy, which is the all-time highest rated episode of the entire show.
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But when you look at this season closely, things were beginning to change in subtle, but meaningful ways.
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The rock-solid narrative commentaries of the earlier seasons were gradually giving way to stories that were growing increasingly more nonsensical.
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Homer became a heavyweight boxer, Bart started working at a burlesque club,
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Marge got involved with both the Italian mob and Japanese yakuza, and the family hired a magical British nanny.
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And I like all these episodes, but what they represent is the start of a pivot away from satire straight into the absurd,
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a pivot that's full significance would only truly come to light a season later, with the infamous episode The Principal and the Pauper.
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It's an episode largely reviled by the hardcore Simpsons fanbase,
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and was originally written about by Simpsons authority Charlie Sweatpants in one of his many fantastic blog posts about the show.
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Like a lot of seasons eight to ten, the episode itself isn't particularly bad, and there's even some great jokes in there.
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But the problem comes from how it shatters the fictional integrity of one of the show's most beloved characters:
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Principal Seymour Skinner.
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Skinner, like so many other of the supporting cast of The Simpsons, is a geniusly written character.
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Designed as the direct antithesis to Bart, Skinner is a rigidly authoritarian abider of rules,
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and a strict believer in hierarchy and order,
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used to hilarious effect in the episode The Boy Who Knew Too Much.
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But at the center of Skinner's character, and what made him this way,
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is his upbringing by his tyrannically oppressive razor-toned mother Agnes,
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and the pair were a hilarious commentary on what overly authoritative parenting could do to a person.
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"I owe everything I have to my mother's watchful eye,"
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"and swift hand..."
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"Hm. There's mother now."
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[crow cawing]
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"Watching me."
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"Well they have a right to be here! It's school business! I-"
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"Mother, that sailor suit doesn't fit anymore!"
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"Hrmm. I think we should go."
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It's dark, comedic Simpsons brilliance, emblematic of how Simpsons of the 90s handled its characters.
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And in 22 short minutes, The Principal and the Pauper undoes all that.
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The entire episode is based on the premise that the upbringing that made Principal Skinner who he is
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and is so integral to his character... never actually happened.
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Instead, the character we thought was Seymour Skinner is actually Armin Tamzarian,
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a street punk from Capital City who switched identities with his M.I.A. Officer after returning from the Vietnam war.
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It's not the first time The Simpsons delved into absurdist storytelling,
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various episodes from even the earliest seasons would occasionally dabble in these kind of immersion-shattering narratives,
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but throughout them we could always rely on the characters to act like the characters.
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But now this episode was telling us that a character who's been built up carefully for eight years isn't real and never was.
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all for the sake of a cheap gag narrative that ultimately goes nowhere and says nothing.
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It felt... wrong. A little perverse, even.
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And if this perversion had remained just in this one episode, it wouldn't have been that big a deal,
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but unfortunately this was just a prelude of what was to come.
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Slowly, as The Simpsons crept along, little pieces of it would start falling away and disappear.
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The narratives were becoming less poignant, the characters less consistent,
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and a lot of the jokes were starting to land with the laziness of the most average of sitcoms.
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Something was changing for the primetime series.