Irrational Defense

I finally opened my copy of season 9 of The Simpsons. I was listening to the audio commentary for The Principal and the Pauper, one of the worst Simpsons episodes ever (its awfulness all the more glaring given its location in a very good season, bordered by two of my top 100), mostly wanting to see what they had to say for themselves. Apparently, according to them, the fans who hated that episode are afraid of "new" thingsand want everything to stick to the status quo. The argument really doesn't wash -- the fans don't dislike "new" things -- they dislike bad things. The commentators undermine their own point when one observes that the fans didn't complain about the van Houtens getting divorced. Maude dying was not greeted with outrage, nor was Apu's marriage, progeny, or adultery. Lisa becoming a vegetarian was unenthusiastically greeted due to the preachiness of the episode, and Lisa becoming Buddhist was just a bad episode.

Why was it a bad episode? There are trhee reasons:

1. It wasn't funny. The jokes fell flat.
2. It had a poorly developed plot that was more over the top than most episodes (without clearly being a parody or some such) and smacked of desperation.
3. It ended with the mother of all cop-outs.

It had nothing to do with trying something new. El Viaje de Nuestro Homer was well received, as were the Simpsons-turned-crimesolvers episodes (that is, the Sideshow Bob episodes). Several innovations were tried in the Halloween episodes, and the various three-show episodes that tend to appear each spring, and they were generally well-received.

Another thing that bugs me is that they called it a "controversial" episode. Hardly. When ninety percent of fans think it's a bad episode, there's not really any controversy -- it's more of a consensus. If fifty percent thought it was excellent, and fifty percent thought it was horrible, then there would be controversy. Matt Groening, to my surprise, called it one of his least favorite episodes in his season introduction, but did not participate in the commentary to expound on that.

They also mention that the episode is a shot at their critics, especially those on the internet (then, not now, so I wouldn't have been included). Leaving aside the fact that doing this in an effort to upset those complaining about the show was also going to leave those who weren't complaining about it upset (and make them start complaining), they're still missing the point. Valid criticism (and some, though admittedly not all, of the criticism was valid) can help a show maintain a high quality. As they've previously demonstrated, however, these writers like to whine and moan that they should be exempt from all criticism. That's really unfortunately, as (I imagine not coincidentally) season 9, while still quite good, marked the beginning of the decline for the show, to the point where, about a couple years ago, I stopped caring whether I caught the new episode each week.

I'd have more to say on all this, but I have other matters to attend to.