Popcorn Culture
Ruminations on TV Shows, Comics, And Music
The Simpsons In Significantly, Significantly Fewer Seasons, Season 1: The Bart And Homer Show5/14/2021 Despite being on air for only a little over half as long, The Simpsons have almost as many episodes in its run as Doctor Who. It's The Longest Running Primetime non-news show Ever. Not the longest running cartoon, or the longest running four-fingered yellow people show, the longest fictional program in primetime TV ever. And it's there because it used to be Excellent, and then it was pretty okay, and it's still sometimes watchable. At the beginning of the year, I put on episode one in the background while I worked, and I went all the way through season thirty-effen-one. It was A Lot. And I remembered way more episodes than I imagined I would. Possibly because I had a coworker in the early 2000s who had Seasons 1-10 or so playing in the store we worked at on a fairly regular basis. I thought, How Would I Begin To Make This A More Watchable Endeavor While Not Skipping Too May Classic Pop Culture References? Well, I made a system. Because continuity isn't important very often, I allowed myself to play around with the order of the episodes, so that if there were seven great Bart episodes in a row, but no good Lisa episodes for a while, it wouldn't feel too repetetive. I think, unlike most series, The Simpsons really benefits from having more structure to its watching order. Starting in Season Two, I lock down the formula a bit tighter, but in Season One we establish that every season is fifteen episodes, the fifth episode of every season will have Bart's name in it, the ninth episode of every season will feature a secondary character (almost always Flanders but not exclusively Flanders), the tenth episode will almost always somehow include Sideshow Bob, and the season will close with a Treehouse Of Horror. Again, Season Two will present even more rules, but this is a good start. Season One: |
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