I was going to make this a Jeter vs Ripken post, but I think I'll save that for later, so I don't just copy and post the email I sent Dad.
This is more important: Which season of The Simpsons is the best?
Maybe it should be your favorite, but I think people who have favorites seasons invariably believe them to be the best.
This topic is broad and full-flavored. It's not as narrowed as Favorite Episode, or Top 5 Favorite Episodes, or favorite peripheral character, or favorite couch gag or chalk board scribbles or even favorite Albert Brooks character (that's a no-brainer: Scorpio). "Favorite season" almost implies "best season", doesn't it? It's not a single entity. Liking Carl more than Lenny doesn't imply one is better than the other. A season is made up of between 20 and 25 episodes, which is a pretty wide spectrum of stories and jokes and animated bits and things that burrow their way into your psyche and lodge themselves there permanently.
If you had to be stranded with just one season on disc, which season would that be?
Disclaimers: I think I chose this topic for a series of easy outs: I could correspond with Norm about Pynchon and Murakami for days; I could correspond with Dad about Murakami and the Yankees for days; I could correspond with Dan about films and video games for days. So, I thought an easy way to get us started would be the Simpsons. Also, on a more personal note, I have many seasons on DVD, and have watched them in the last five years, so it's more fresh for me than it may be for you guys. But, and I was considering this, information about the show is easy to come by. And it's fun to think about.
It's a pretty trivial Opening Salvo, for sure.
If you guys have other stuff you want to talk about, feel free to let loose your own Opening Salvos.
Best Season: For me it's between Season 4 and Season 7, with a lean towards Season 7. Season 8 has the insanity pepper episode, and the Grimey episode, which made it hard to look elsewhere. But Season 7: Radioactive Man the Movie; Flanders tries to baptize the Simpson kids; Homer turns into a big fat dynamo; Bart sells his soul; Lisa stops eating meat; George Bush moves in across the street; 22 short Springfield stories; the Flying Hellfish; and one of the sweetest episodes between Bart and Lisa ever, a summer spent at the Flanders beach house are some of the highlights. And there are more awesome episodes I didn't paraphrase.
Season 4, starting with "Kamp Krusty" and ending with Gabbo knocking Krusty off the air, is chock full of classic episodes, the beginning of the foundation of a great show starting to stretch into really creative places. Season 7, to me, is that fully realized dream.
So, that's that.
Well, I posted the first post, so why not the first comment, too?
ReplyDeleteFirst, no discussion of "The Simpsons," that mirror on late-20th Century America, can be trivial. Their images and words are important, and even if they sometimes sink into the trivial, they're fucking brilliant, always.
I happen to be the proud owner of Season 7 on DVD, through Dan's generosity, and it's the only season I have. The Treehouse of Horror episode features advertising logos that terrorize Springfield (the giant Bob's Big Boy with his angry face filling Simpson front door), Groundskeeper Willie terrorizing children's dreams, and Homer gets stuck in a three-dimensional ... dimension, "the worst place ever." Season 7 also featured Sideshow Bob trying first to destroy Springfield with a nuclear bomb, and ends up trying to kill Krusty with the Wright brothers' plane. And I discover, through the magic of the program guide, that Season 7 also features Homer's bowling team, which pitted its skills (in spite of Mr. Burns's insistence on joining it) against another team that featured "the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked." And Marge wonders where Bart ever hears such language.
There are other episodes that we have not mentioned (how about Bart on the road and Homerpalooza?) that certainly rank this season as in the discussion as the best. Other seasons feature brilliant episodes, to be sure, but I hardly think it's coincidence that this was the season Dan decided to get for me after long and arduous consideration.
Okay, get used to pointless comments, guys. The Yankees and the Simpsons both do that to me. I get all worked up and forget the original reason for typing this shit up.
No real issues with that, but I have trumped you both. As my opening First works it out...
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