The Simpsons

I sat through an entire episode of the Simpsons on Hulu this morning.

This was probably the first episode I've seen in over a year, and the first episode I've actually watched in its entirety in far longer than that. What used to be the smartest, wittiest, and most outrageous show on television slowly became "just kinda funny," until it kept sinking and became unwatchable. But, I suppose, that's too be expected after 20 years.

Seriously. Twenty years. And that doesn't even count the year or two it spent as a reoccurring animated short on the Tracy Ullman Show, before they eventually got their own Christmas Special, then a series.

Twenty years.

Is it because it's so cheap to produce, with most of the animation done these days on computers or by animators in Korea? They certainly haven't been spending all of their money on acquiring a great writing staff, I'm sorry to say, since the show has been so terrible for so long.

But this episode was kinda funny. I mean, I laughed more than a few times. The story was clever and the writing was witty, with more than enough jokes that worked every few minutes. It wasn't as outrageous, as sharp, or as honest about real life than, say, the best episodes from 14 years ago, but it was funny. Maybe I'll even watch a few more on Hulu later to see if this episode was an exception or if the series is finally coming back around.

Also, it looked great. Are they airing this in HD now? The colors and detail in the animations looked better than I remember, and it was in widescreen. Also, they redid the opening sequence, but that may have been done years ago for all I know. It seemed pointless, since the old one was classic. I guess they wanted to redo it in order to show off the huge cast of extended characters. But was it really important to showcase people like Disco Stu in the intro? Nobody likes Disco Stu.

Anyway, here is the entire episode if you want. It's a fun way to spend twenty minutes or so: