Last week I did something quite significant. I told my DVR to stop recording The Simpsons. Can you believe the show has been running for twenty years? That’s crazy! Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to care about the show lately. My DVR would record it, but I usually wouldn’t watch it until there came one of those rare days when we generally didn’t have anything to do. Then I’d sit down and try to get caught up on Simpsons episodes. I say “try” because only about fifty percent of the time would I actually be able to watch the whole episode. The other half of the time the show was delayed because of some sporting event that I couldn’t care less about, which means at best I could see the beginning of the episode. In fact, just such a thing happened when I went to watch the 20th anniversary special, which I had heard was very good. This was when I finally decided to give up on the show.
So far in this post, I’ve done a lot of complaining. While complaining a highly popular sport on the internet, I’m going to try to spend the rest of this post reminiscing fondly.
I was exactly eight years and one month old on December 17, 1989. I have no idea what I was doing that Sunday evening, but I know I wasn’t watching the first episode of this new cartoon on Fox called The Simpsons. Before long, everyone knew who Bart Simpson was. I knew that Bart’s show was one of those shows that I wasn’t allowed to watch. It’s actually quite strange, by today’s standards, to think that this show was ever controversial. Especially the first season or two. I mean, the family even went to church and there’s usually some kind of “everybody hugs” moment at the end of the show. What’s even stranger, though, is to consider that there would be no Fox News today if it weren’t for Bart Simpson’s popularity.1
Once when I was in fourth grade I decided to sneak a peek at this forbidden show. It was Homer Defined, the episode where Homer causes a meltdown unrequested fission surplus at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. That episode aired on October 17, 1991, but I could have been watching a rerun of it. I didn’t see what was so great about the show, but I only saw a few minutes of the show before turning it off and going back in the living room for fear of being caught watching this show I wasn’t supposed to watch. The part I saw was where Professor Frink showed a diagram of concentric circles and explained that “These unfortunate people [in the center circle] will be instantly killed. This circle, which I am sad to say we are in, will experience a slower, considerably more painful death.”
The first episode that I really watched in entirety was The Front, the one where Bart and Lisa write an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon and submit it in their grandfather’s name. In the cartoon, as I recall, Itchy sends Scratchy to heaven, either by killing him or by knocking him upward very far. Itchy arrives through Elvis Presley’s floor, with his head going into the TV. Elvis says something like “this show ain’t no good” and shoots the TV screen (and Scratchy). I’m not sure why, but my brother and I thought that was the funniest thing, and we repeated the line over and over. “This show ain’t no good. BANG!”2 That episode aired April 15, 1993, but we were watching it in syndication. I was in middle school, so it was probably more like 1995 when I watched it.
After that, The Simpsons became a show that we watched regularly. I think it was on twice a day in syndication, so we got caught up on the first five or six seasons pretty quickly. Over the next decade, I watched pretty much every new episode that aired. There were many great episodes and many forgettable episodes. Two that jump to mind are The Cartridge Family (where Homer gets a gun), and Homer’s Phobia (where Homer has a new friend that he finds out is gay). I continued to watch as the quality of the show went downhill for a while, before it seemed to kind of bottom out in the mid 2000s.
If I had to pick one moment in the show where I might say the show jumped the shark, for me anyway, it would be Million Dollar Abie, which aired on April 2, 2006.3 That was the episode that featured the “diePod.” I remember thinking to myself, “this is the kind of writing I can expect from this show. Who thought this was funny?” It just epitomized every corny joke that I hadn’t laughed at over the last few years.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been any good episodes since then. The funniest episode in years was That 90’s Show, which aired in 2008. The episode featured a flashback to the 90s, hilariously and intentionally shattering the show’s continuity. I mean, the show technically started in the 80s, so a flashback to the 90s should just be a flashback to the first ten seasons of the show! This was combined with many many references to the decade I became a teenager in, so I guess it was designed to appeal to me. I mean, Homer was in a Seattle grunge rock band named “Sadgasm.” The song “Closing Time” was used throughout the episode to represent the entire decade. Weird Al makes a guest appearance. They watch an episode of Seinfeld. I was laughing the whole episode.
Unfortunately, since that time I haven’t kept up with the show. When the show moved to HD, it started requiring a lot more space to have eight episodes of the show sitting on my DVR going unwatched. Maybe the writing isn’t really at fault; maybe I’ve actually grown into and out of the target demographic over the past twenty years. Whatever the reasons may be, I’m now saying goodbye to the show.
All in all a pretty fun game, although something just doesn’t feel quite right. Looking back on the Metroid Prime games, I think that the first one was the best. But I’m not sure why, because I played 1 & 2 back-to-back last summer, and I thought 2 was far superior when played that way. But when they aren’t fresh on my mind, I think the first one was better! I can’t figure out why, since those thoughts contradict each other. Some other thoughts: this is also the easiest of the Prime games, and the presence of voice actors was a little weird to me. Finally, I have to mention the two super-cool unlockables. One is ship bumper stickers, which means it looks at games saved in your Wii system memory and puts their logo on your ship. So there’s a giant Zelda triforce on the top of my ship, and a Paper Mario head on the side of my ship. And the other cool unlockable is a Samus bobble-head doll with your Mii’s head on it. Normally I wouldn’t think seeing my head on a woman’s body was very cool, but I’ll make an exception in this case. You can see both of these unlockables on 
This game was just great. I’m not sure how else to say it. As you probably already know, the game takes place on micro planets that you can run around. Playing around with gravity is incredibly trippy. There are even a few places where a planet is small enough that a long jump can literally put you into orbit! I wonder what Isaac Newton would say if he were alive to see this game? Stephanie also enjoyed the commitment-free 2-player co-op. She was able to help sometimes by freezing enemies. In fact this was so helpful it felt like cheating sometimes, especially because she could just hold bullet bills in place, then I could take my time. The game does have a few bad points. Namely, Spring Mario. Fortunately, you only have to use Spring Mario about 4 or 5 times in the entire game (in fact, I don’t think I ever used it until after the first time I beat the game).
I’ve played Guitar Hero games a few times, but this was the first one that I actually owned and spent significant time on. I think my skill might have plateaued at can-beat-nearly-everything-on-hard-and-a-few-things-on-expert. Unfortunately the Wii version of this game had some problems, like the fact that it only outputs sound in mono. This is a music game, how did that get past the QA process?? Another annoyance is the lack of co-op quickplay feature (not that this is a huge deal to me, personally, since I only have the one guitar). For the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, a patch was released to add that feature, but of course the Wii isn’t quite that capable. Oh well. I just put my disc in the mailbox this morning to get a replacement disc that does have stereo sound, but they said it could be 3-4 weeks, and I might be quite busy with 
As you may know, this is the third game in the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. (Well technically Two Thrones was the third game, and this is a port of the third game.) The first game in this trilogy was just amazing. One of the best video games I’ve ever played. Unfortunately Ubisoft rushed out the sequels without giving them the same love. The Warrior Within was a train wreck of a game. In this game they’ve gotten back on course a bit, but it still seems to fall short of the first game. But I have to admit I’m only partway through the game. The Wii controls are a little tacked on, but they aren’t really bad. They are comparable to Twilight Princess (where Wii controls were also tacked on). Somehow the graphics seem worse to me than they were in the original game, but maybe I’m just not remembering it correctly. I’ll have to go back and see sometime.
February 2, 8:37 am
I agree with you completely. I’m still watch it every week, albeit with ever decreasing excitement. I think it is the writing, actually. I mean, I about fall on the floor laughing at The Family Guy and The Cleveland Show jokes and those are typically super low-brow. But maybe it’s the satire and the almost South Park like tendency to push the line and make fun of literally anything or anyone that appeals to me. They don’t hold back. I feel like The Simpsons is holding back. It’s as though they’re trying to be the conservative Sunday night cartoon. Maybe Fox News bought The Simpsons?
On a lighter note, I also recall my first clandestine viewing of The Simpsons; I was also not allowed to watch when I was a kid. Then sometime in high school, we all watched it every week as a family. But I digress. My first time, so to speak, was the episode “Bart’s Dog Gets an F” in which Santa’s Little Helper goes to obedience school. This episode was controversial because it contained the word “bitch.” The obedience school instructor says, “You son of a bitch. Good show!” to Santa’s Little Helper after he has been successfully trained by Bart.
I realize you can’t say “bitch” on the internet, but this is reminiscent, bitch.