Dirty Old Town

[vovat]

In last night's Simpsons episode, I enjoyed Marge's early attempts to get acquainted with the Internet, but it went somewhat downhill after the show started focusing on the online game. That idea has kind of been done before; American Dad did an episode about a "World of Warcraft" style game not too long ago, and while I haven't seen it, I understand that South Park did an episode with a very similar premise even before that. Admittedly, the writers would have had no way of knowing about the AD episode, but still. And I think there was too much of an effort to work in all of the townspeople, all playing characters who closely resembled themselves. The subplot was all right, but there was so little time devoted to it that it couldn't really go much of anywhere. I remember looking at the clock when Lisa first mentioned soccer, and thinking, "They're starting a subplot THIS late into the episode?" The "What have you done with the real Moe?" joke was good, but does that mean it was the fake Moe playing Earthland Realms with Marge?

It sometimes seems like I'm in the minority as far as actually watching the new Simpsons episodes. I mean, the show obviously still gets the ratings, or it would have been cancelled by now. But it seems like the show being past its prime is now an opinion of a lot of the more casual fans, and not just the whiny Internet nerds. And speaking of whiny Internet nerds, I took a look at the alt.tv.simpsons newsgroup today, and the traffic is much lower than when I was a regular poster there. I think that might be down to the decline of newsgroups in general, though, rather than anything to do with the show itself.

Also last night, one story on the Fox affiliate's local news was about how Ray Nagin had visted Philadelphia, and then gone back home and said something like, "If you see Philly, you'll appreciate just how clean New Orleans is." They were trying to present this as some kind of terrible thing for him to say, despite the fact that, y'know, Philadelphia IS pretty dirty. But then, didn't Nagin also get in trouble for saying New York hadn't done anything with Ground Zero, even though that was also true? Anyway, the next story was about how high the murder rate is in Philadelphia. So what were they aiming for? "You stand a fair chance of being brutally gunned down here in Philadelphia, but at least you won't see any litter"?

Comments

[bethje.livejournal.com]

Actually, the reporter who began the story about Ray Nagin talking smack about the city paused, in the beginning of his segment, and pointed at some trash on the ground. But it was like, "waaah, there are two crumpled pieces of paper. That's okay, right?"

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I told you "Simpsons" is going down the tubes. But you just don't listen, do you? :P I'm looking forward to the movie, however. It damn well better be at least half-way decent.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I thought you just warned me that the colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself.

I'm probably going to keep watching the show until it's no longer on. There are still enough funny moments, even in the weak episodes, to make it worthwhile for me. Besides, I value the familiar.

I really don't know what to expect from the movie. About all I've been able to gather from the trailers is that it involves Homer getting a pig, and Bart bonding with Ned Flanders. And that's assuming either of those things remain in the movie, since I understand that it's gone through a lot of changes.

[kristenjarrod.livejournal.com]

The South Park World of Warcraft episode was pretty good.