Liveinadive wrote:

changes the dynamic far too much.

Yeah, because Bart and Lisa are suddenly adults. It needed to be progressive, and a good bit slower than realtime to let us adjust to what would've been a dramatic, but ultimately very much worthwhile evolution.

If you want to make an animated Modern Family then just do that, having Simpsons past as a millstone is sure fire fail.


TBH there are more than enough animated comedy shows out there, it's not really worth getting hung up on the Simpsons.
Just watch F is for Family, Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty etc.

Watched the first 2 episodes of American Gods last night - really liked it. Loved the extremely odd, off kilter feel of it and it is absolutely gorgeous to look at.

The latter, but yes, MF is quality.

I disagree, I think it stayed good longer than most, in fact, I think it's still good now.

Started it the other week, finally got around to watching the last few last night, bloody lovely programme. I like Gaiman a lot anyway, but I love the ambition shown in American Gods by the makers, really happy to give a free reign

Yeah I loved it for those reasons too. Wouldn't want Fuller running most things, but Hannibal and AG were perfect fits.

Hannibal was really really good.

Also dead wife and the russian sister are both utterly wonderful creatures for the looking at

I like Gillian Anderson.

No wait, I fancy Gillian Anderson, carry on.

Because Gillian Anderson is the sex.

Diluted Dante wrote:

We'd probably have killed off Grampa Simpson, who's  a brilliant character.

Burns, too. But if this had averted my abandonment of the series twenty years ago, it would've at least been a successful change for me. Homer'd be coming up to retirement at the plant about now...

The majority of ageing resistance comes from Bart and Lisa entering their teens, but they'd become second-tier characters by 2000, and most of the others wouldn't have changed all that much. But their evolving lifetime phases would've given its writers a lot more to work with. Maybe they lost their nerve with “The Principal and the Pauper”, because that was the perfect time to start introducing big changes. (Creatively, not commercially.)

Soon after, we endured Basinger and Baldwin, Gary Coleman, Britney, Kid Rock, and NSync. You can't say that the signs weren't there. They were trying to track with the times with horribly shoehorned celebrities and pop-culture references, increasingly neglecting the most interesting aspect — their own characters' foibles. It's not as easy as saying ‘Write funnier episodes’, because after so many years with that cast — years of building affection for them, what became of them via their enforced commercial stasis is really quite sad.

mistercrayon wrote:

Lisa is only notionally 8 at least. She did grow up even though her age was the same.

That's one of the main reasons I have for supporting the idea. It absolutely feels as if they should've aged by now, but commercially, it was a bad idea to launch back then. So they went from being incredibly fresh and original to a product with zero free will, and that leaked into its being.

It's not that it's stale nearly as much as its staleness resulting from corporate railroading.

We just finished episode 9 of Handmaids Tale and it's deffo dipped.. a strong last episode (there's 10 right?) could save it.

Last episode of Preacher was great.

Started Catastrophe last night. The most laugh out loud sitcom I've watched in ages.

Are all the episodes of The Handmaid's Tale up on Ch4's iplayer then? I can't be done with one episode a week anymore, so I've been waiting to jump in.