Dethroning Moment of Suck (Darth Wiki)/Western Animation/The Simpsons



Being a Long Runner, it's only expected to have a few slip-ups here and there. Let's hope its famed Negative Continuity can wipe these out of existence.

Keep in mind:
 * Moments only, no "just everything he said," "The entire show," or "This entire season," entries.
 * No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
 * No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
 * Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
 * No ASSCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

"Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy and Scratchy was the worst episode ever. As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me. Bart: For what? They've given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. If anything, you owe them. Comic Book Guy: Worst. Episode. Ever."
 * The premiere episode of season 22 is what got me off the series entirely. The Glee cast was guest starring, so I thought: Maybe this'll be an interesting episode. Unfortunately, this episode wasn't the least bit exciting. Lisa's plot about the performing arts camp was stupid. I mean, if she wants to be creative and artsy, why doesn't she just play her saxophone? Bart and Homer's subplot was just boring and dry, causing me to skip over it. To make matters worse, the Glee cast only appears for a few scenes. Fox, here's a tip; if you're going to hype someone up to be on a show, give them something to do.
 * That was a big problem with the episode. The hyping up of the Glee cast guest star, combined with the episode title (Elementary School Musical) implied a musical episode, possibly parodying Glee or High School Musical. But no, they get about ten seconds of screentime, which made it painfully obvious that FOX was just trying to get people to watch The Simpsons using the popularity of their newest big-hit show. It was just as bad with The Cleveland Show where the Glee cast got hyped up in the promos yet got even less screentime than they did in this Simpsons episode, if you can believe that.
 * And there's the fact that the promos ignored the other guest stars, who actually had an active role in the plot.
 * "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily".  dies in a horrific, over the top manner, leaving poor   a wreck. Add on that the episode itself wasn't very funny, and you've got one of the most depressing episodes of the series.
 * What really propelled this episode into Dethroning Moment territory wasn't so much the fact that  died. After all, the episode where   died was handled beautifully, and you'd think the series would be able to do an even better job with a semi-regular character. But no -- they took that setup and turned it into an episode about Homer setting up   with a series of wacky and horrible new girlfriends. I almost hope the writers made this episode as a Take That towards , because I simply can't imagine why on earth they would think it was a good idea to kill off   and then gloss over her death in favor of comedic shenanigans involving Homer.
 * "The Seven-Beer Snitch". For me, this was the episode that pretty much signaled the shark was nearby. It had a few good laughs here and there (even though it hit us over the head with We're Still Relevant, Dammit!), but I'm afraid it just raised too many questions. And these are them: How do you turn a weirdly shaped concert hall into a prison? How come Homer's friends and acquaintances were able to get prison warden jobs just like that? How come they shaved Homer's head even though he has very little hair to begin with? How come the law and order savvy Lisa didn't come to her father's rescue? How come Bart was so dumb in this episode? And who green-lit this episode? Don't get me wrong; I like the zany humor the Simpsons are famous for, but there are limits.
 * E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt): The plot itself is pretty funny, but after a while you realize that Homer never used to be that stupid. Soon enough he'll need a wheelchair in season 25.
 * "Homer vs. Dignity". The infamous scene in which Homer is anally raped by a panda bear. Not that the rest of the episode was any better (The Other Wiki even notes on the page for it that it's often considered one of the show's worst episodes), but that one scene made me so disgusted that I can't even go back to watch classics from the 90's, let alone anything made since.
 * While most of the Homer getting mutilated jokes in the later seasons were pretty bad, Homer getting his intestines ripped out by a badger in "A Tale Of Two Springfields" was just the worst in my opinion. This isn't South Park or Family Guy where characters can be messily killed only to come back later, Homer isn't Kenny, the regular episodes of the Simpsons are supposed to have some basis in reality. Keep the Happy Tree Friends type humor in The Itchy and Scratchy Show and Treehouse of Horror, don't let it bleed into the actual plot. I feel bad that The Who showed up in such an awful episode.
 * Okay, that's enough new stuff, let's dive into season 3! In "I Married Marge", after Homer gives a rather stirring speech about his 3 kids and how he loves them, I actually felt touched. However, it just got flat-out obliterated by the next sentence! When Marge returns from her pregnancy test, she happily reveals that she is not pregnant, and she and Homer high-five, thus saying "fuck you" to the kids he was "blessed" with! Jerkasses much?
 * Now that you mention it, that was surprisingly mean of Homer and Marge. Back in "Lisa's First Word," they were happy to welcome Lisa into the family. Then in "And Maggie Makes Three," at first Marge was worried about the news of her pregnancy with Maggie would ruin Homer's new-found happiness, but as we saw in the very nice ending, it all worked out in the end. But this part makes my brain hurt. I knew status quo was God, but God, is this harsh.
 * "The Frying Game" was actually a pretty decent episode (although the "Screamapillar" thing at the beginning was pretty stupid) right up until the final show-wrecking scene. It featured a very powerful Tear Jerker moment with Homer strapped to the electric chair, about to be wrongfully publicly executed for the death of an elderly woman for whose murder he has been mistakenly blamed, bringing the viewers to the edge of their seats wondering how he'll get out of this one ... and then the writers pulled the worst Ass Pull in the history of television by declaring that it was all part of a reality/game show called "Frame-Up," in which a "murder" takes place that the selected "contestant" is blamed for (the murderer and victim are both actors), and the "contestant" is not told they are on a TV show until their faux-execution. Chief Wiggum even pointed out to the hosts that they caused serious trouble in the town by tying up the legal system for the sake of their show (none of the local authorities knew about the TV show either...). There was still a chance to save this train wreck by having the characters logically react with revulsion to the tastelessness of the whole thing ... but instead the writers went with an "Everybody Laughs" Ending, with everyone - even Homer himself, who thought he was going to die for a murder he didn't commit- finding the whole thing hilarious. "Worst episode ever" indeed.
 * "The Great Money Caper": There's a perfectly logical explanation for this, and that explanation is - Hey, everybody! SURF'S UP!
 * G.I. D'oh. I can't even accurately describe just how bad this episode truly was, even by significantly lowered "Modern Era" standards. Between the heavy-handed political agenda to the appalling waste of guest-star Kiefer Sutherland's talents to the single-worst continuity error in the history of the series (in the third act, there's a scene with Lenny in his car talking to a soldier about the troops marching through Springfield when he's suddenly half-crushed by a tank. Then, in the very next scene with no indication that any time has passed, the same soldiers march into Moe's looking for Homer and find Lenny sitting at the bar with Carl and Moe without a scratch on him. Given the overall horridness of the episode, this was just the snot icing on the turd cake, but still. And the animation on this scene was sub-Season One level, which leads me to believe that something else was cut at the last minute and this unfunny sight-gag was spliced in), not to mention the fact that every "joke" fell completely flat and the third act with the Looney Tunes "homage" took the show completely off the cliff.
 * G.I.D'oh. It's hard to follow the directions to the letter and pick a specific moment because it's not one particular scene or joke that's over the top offensive, it's the whole concept. "Springfield is statistically the nation's stupidest city and even they're too smart to join the army". You know, even Family Guy managed to do the whole anti-war anti-Dubya thing without writing an episode that might as well have been: "Dear US Armed Forces. Fuck you. Sincerely, The Simpsons writers."
 * Doc Yoshi: I personally found the Looney Tunes "homage" rather funny and thought it the episode's saving grace. But as the "that's all folks" appeared on the screen (looking like something I'd see in a YouTube Poop might I add) it dawned on me that it's really out of place on this show. I'd expect such a moment on Family Guy but not on this show.
 * ChrisDV: The most insulting aspect, to me? Family Guy had the exact same plot device (Stewie & Brian joining the army after trying to get Chris out of joining) in an episode that aired around that time, only they didn't even so much as insinuate that people serving on the frontline are complete idiots, whereas here, it was a goddamn plot point! When you're making Family Guy look respectful, you've got problems.
 * Jazzy And The Pussycats. That pointlessly long sequence where Bart just slavishly recreates the video to the White Stripes' "The Hardest Button To Button". Unfunny, tedious, and shamelessly shoved in to scream "Hey! We're still hip, you know!", it's the very essence of worthless padding.
 * The Flight of the Conchords / Glee crossover episode Elementary School Musical. The premise was stupid, the characters were so obviously shoehorned in they stuck out like a sore thumb, the songs were godawful. I gave up before the second act and didn't look back.
 * The problem is that, while I've never seen Flight of the Concords, it's obviously that the stars have a widely different sense of humor than The Simpsons does. It just doesn't work.
 * In "A Star is Torn", the family is in the Farmer's Market picking up organic food. When they're convinced to have it as dinner, Marge picks on up saying the cringingly bad line "Broccoli, you've just been promoted from side-dish to entree!", cue a very bad attempt at an Adam West Batman parody complete with a badly angled camera zooming out of from the very top of the dining family making the entire gag incredibly cringe worthy in its forced humor and awkward.
 * I have heard quite a few times Lisa was a Creator's Pet, and I though these people were exaggerating, until I got to watch "Million Dollar Abie". So Grandpa becomes a bullfighter and Lisa, surprisingly, protests because that means he's murdering poor, defenseless bulls. So what does Grandpa do? Frees the bulls and lets them run wild on the city, San Fermin-style. The bulls wreck the city and hurt, kill and maim lots of innocent people and Luigi, but they aren't getting killed, so Lisa is happy! Didn't they use to lampshade this kind of ending rather than play it straight?
 * What? No mention about the rest of the episode? It was essentially a Prototype Boys of Bummer, just replace Bart with Grandpa. So we get scenes like Firemen tossing him into a burning building, and a tasteless Ipod/Suicide Machine joke (A DIEPod. Ha Ha Ha.). That episode truly made me feel miserable after watching it.
 * To me, the biggest problem with that wasn't the ending, it was Lisa's line about always supporting her grandpa. Abe has been the butt of all jokes for the family since the show's early days, Lisa included (minus an episode or two). They could have at least given us a scene between Abe and Lisa earlier on in the episode, but as it is, it just comes off as Lisa using emotional blackmail, and taking an episode that was focused on Grandpa and made it about herself.
 * My beef with the episode was the first act, wherein Grandpa mistakes the commissioner of the NFL for a robber when he stops at the house for directions, thus costing Springfield its dreams at an NFL franchise. Now that's just unfair - yeah, Fiction Isn't Fair, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
 * In "Donnie Fatso", Fat Tony dies, which leads to his near identical cousin, "Fit Tony", to taking over the Springfield mob. He then proceeds to gain a lot of weight, turning him into the new Fat Tony. This has to be the laziest example of the Reset Button / Status Quo Is God I've ever seen. It's like the episode where Lisa got a cat which would be Snowball V, but they called the cat Snowball II to save on a new dish, except that time, the writers at least acknowledged the ending was a cop-out and had a joke about it.
 * I think the episode "To Surveil, With Love" truly showcases what idiots the people of Springfield are; first it's when Homer leaves his duffel bag that Mr. Burns had wasted plutonium put in without his knowledge: when people notice the unattended they panic as if an army of Heartless just showed up, and when the police get in involved their only "rational" course of action was blowing it out with a nuclear explosion. Afterwards they quickly assume that it's terrorists without even considering that Mr. Burns or his plant whose nuclear activity has caused problems in the past may have had something to do with it. And then there Lisa's story after she joins the debate club; a snarky brunette bashes on her and calls her a Dumb Blonde, and soon after the whole town actually pegs her as being one, even though they have acknowledged her intellectual superiority to her annoyance many, many times. Worst Case of Aesop Amnesia Ever! And then after she dyes her hair to prove how the debate people were judging by hair color she then makes a speech about stereotypes and when she says that all old people aren't bad drivers Abe just happens to crash into the very wall of that building. Whew!
 * Many of the take thats directed towards fans are especially mean-spirited, but none more so than the following exchange from the season eight episode, "The Itchy And Scratchy And Poochie Show":


 * The show wouldn't be the Cash Cow Franchise it is today without its fans, who are exposed to the ad-breaks that fund the show's initial run and who loyally purchase the DVDs, comics and other merchandise. The above dialogue is a disingenuous and ungrateful statement that downplays the fans' role in the show's success and its history, and as a stab at critics of recent episodes' perceived decline in quality, accuses them of not being in a position to criticize a "free" TV show.
 * The Scorpion's Tale... I'm not sure what Herzog and Richardson, the guest writers, where thinking in a story where eyeballs falling out of their sockets would be funny and fuel a storyline. I mean, I'm fine with the Halloween episodes, but holy crap that's a terrifying to even conceive, let alone make into a comedy.
 * For a long time I felt that the quality of the show was in decline, but I recently saw "Love Is a Many Strangled Thing" and loathed it more than any episode I've seen for a long time. After tickling Bart so much that he causes him to wet himself in public (and leads other countries to laugh at America because of it), Homer is enrolled in a father enrichment class, and shocks the doctor teaching the class when he reveals how often he strangles his son. The doctor brings in Kareem Abdul-Jabaar to routinely strangle Homer and teach him what it feels like to be Bart in those situations. Homer swears never to strangle Bart again, which leads to Bart taking advantage of this and causing as much trouble as he can. Marge asks the doctor (who has now ended up homeless for reasons I can't quite remember...probably a political joke or something) to try and patch things up between them. Bart pushes the doctor to his limit, causing the doctor to strangle him personally. Homer and Bart then sue him for what little he has left (which is all kept in a hollowed-out tree), and pat themselves on the back for ruining his life. Enjoy your happy ending, people!
 * This troper just saw the episode "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge" again and hated it with the big waste of a character for Otto who predictably chose heavy metal over his fiancee which was the beginning of Flanderization for Otto, Marge feels pity and lets her stay, which began many horrible plots in later seasons. Then after that, Marge suddenly goes Out of Character and becomes a jealous wife, which escalates into her trying to kill said fiancee, and she has to be arrested. Then at the end,it turned out Marge was right and she goes crazy again, when suddenly, some doctors appear and blow tranquilizing darts into her neck, and Homer helps, thankinf the doctors. After being established as a loving, but bumbling husband, this is what Homer does now? And there wasn't a subplot.
 * Just a minor thing, but the thing that pissed me off most about that episode was the fact Otto's fiance' has a hissy fit at him inviting Poison to play at their wedding. Yes, because noone wants Poison to play at their wedding. The thought is just absurd.
 * Mypods and Broomsticks, the episode that involves a small Muslim family moving near the Simpson family and Bart becomes friends with the boy in the family. Everyone already knows how ignorant and stupid Homer has been for years, but does it really justify Homer believing that the family are freaking terrorists, based on their religion and the silly stereotypes dramas play on TV? This was just sinking to a low beyond any level that existed.
 * While the previously mentioned plot about the Muslim family wasn't great, one of the reasons that I don't watch any of the new Simpsons episodes is because of the episode's other plot. It involves Lisa getting a new "MyPhone" from "Mapple", which is run by Steve Mobs (geddit?). It's just a bunch of stale, bland, unfunny pop-culture references. This episode is pretty much just the boring epitome of "We're Still Relevant, Dammit!"
 * "Million Dollar Maybe," the one with a subplot where Lisa buys a Nintendo Wii for Grandpa and the other people at the Retirement Home. As a result of playing the Wii they start to get more energetic and demanding. So the Jerkass employees there "destroy it to make their own jobs easier". When Lisa calls them out on this they coldly tell her off, and then... Nothing! That's it! The subplot is dropped leaving a message of "Hey old people, this is what you have to look forward to, fuck you." I have never been able to enjoy a recent Simpsons episode since.
 * A lot of people hate That '90s Show because it fucks with canon, but I hate it because it made me unbearably angry with Marge. In the flashback we are shown that Homer worked a job he hated so that he could support Marge and pay for her to attend college. How does Marge repay him for this unbelievable kindness? She belittles him, pretty much cheats on him and then dumps him for her tool of a professor because "he embarrasses her". Now she does see the error of her ways but she only returns to him after he becomes a rich and successful musician so we get the Unfortunate Implications that that's the only reason she is returning. Now Homer Simpson is far from a perfect husband but he has made it clear over and over again that he loves Marge more than anything and this episode was the first I ever questioned what does he see in her? You know you've made someone unlikeable when Homer comes across as more mature and responsible than them.
 * American History X-cellent. You know the part where Homer, Lenny and Carl make insulting comments directed towards Smithers behind Smithers' back? The comments about how Smithers is way too soft and letting them take advantage of him by actually being flexible and accomodating towards them, unlike Mr. Burns? Yeah. Ungrateful bastards.
 * Lisa the Drama Queen. I've hated the show for quite a while now, but this episode is the bottom of the barrel. Basically, Lisa befriends an English transfer student named Juliet and together, they create a make-believe world. It's been mentioned many times before, but Simpsons should not be attempting to copy Family Guy, and yet, here we are, with an episode making fun of a real life incident where two girls killed someone. No. Just...no.
 * I recently thought of the episode where the family goes to Africa ("Simpsons Safari," from season 12), gets lost, and winds up at a chimp preserve. It appears that poachers are stealing the chimps, but it turns out that the "poachers" are actually with Greenpeace and are saving the chimps from the scientist (a Jane Goodall expy) who runs the preserve: she's actually using them for slave labor to mine diamonds for her. When confronted, she bribes the family with diamonds, while cackling and sporting a crazed look (showing that isolation and greed has driven her over the edge). And what do the Simpsons do? Take the bribe and let the chimp-torturing nutjob go further down the goddamn chute. (except Lisa, who just complains about it). You really gotta question their morals when they prefer getting rich over getting a person mental help.
 * The last episode of season 20 "Coming to Homerica." Basically, a nearby town called Ogdenville (which was mentioned before on season four's "Marge vs. The Monorail" and on season nine's "Bart Star" with the "Ogdenville Wildcats") goes bust (thanks to the tainted barley used to make Krusty Burger's latest sandwich) and the Ogdenvillians move to Springfield and take over physical labor-type jobs, doing a good job of it. Initially, Springfield welcomes them, but then the Springfieldians worry that the Ogdenvillians are influencing their culture, so they build a wall to keep the Ogdenvillans out, but then they realize they miss them and build a door in the wall. It started out as a decent episode with some funny gags, but sadly, it devolved into ham-fisted political commentary with a badly executed aesop that's been done before, better, by this show and others.
 * "Homer the Father". Why? Because Bart, in order to get a freaking mini-bike, deciding to.
 * The anniversary of the Simpsons, and here's Lisa and the show snarking about Fox News. How original, guys. A left-leaning show making snark at the expense of a conservative news source? The same conservative news source that was ignored by such shows prior to its rise in the ratings? New and exciting! *facepalm*
 * "No Loan Again, Naturally" is when this troper just flat out gave up on the Simpsons. Essentially, due to Homer's stupidity, the family loses the house and Flanders, out of the kindness of his heart, buys their house and lets them stay, agreeing that they only have to pay him what little they can come up with. Being the jerkasses that they are, the Simpsons' take advantage of his kindness—abusing their stay as tenants—to the point where they make him out to be the bad guy to the town. Once he kicks them out he feels sorry for them and lets them return. That's it; the Simpsons are never called out for their douchey attitude and to top it all off Flanders now has a lawsuit because he showed kindness.
 * Saddlesore Galactica. Really, the whole episode, as it seemed cruelly calculated by the writers to raise the ire of anyone who criticized the show. However, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt; even though I didn’t laugh once during the first two acts. Then comes the third act, where it’s revealed that jockeys are really Keebler™-like elves who live in an underground cave beneath a tree. Who perform a horrid musical number. And, as though they hadn’t added enough insult to injury, they managed to cap the episode with a predictable “Bill Clinton Is Promiscuous” gag. This episode didn’t merely Jump the Shark, it pole-vaulted over it.
 * The Boys Of Bummer This episode can be boiled down to "Bart goes through a Humiliation Conga courtesy of everyone in Springfield because he didn't catch an easy pop fly". How the writers thought that Bart getting insulted and humiliated by the whole town for something so minor was the least bit funny or entertaining is beyond me, and then there's an Overly Long Gag, unfunny gag with everything getting in the way of Bart hitting a home run after the town decides to give him another chance, when he finally does hit a home run, I would've been content if the episode just ended, but of course the writers had to throw in a really lame future flash-forward gag to end the episode, combine all that with the lousy idiotic subplot with Homer And Marge, and you have a real shit-sandwich of an episode that should have never made it past the storyboard stage.
 * I have to add - it goes beyond simple humiliation. It was nothing short of pure, unadulterated hateful rage, that would have been horrendous towards a fully grown man, let alone a ten year old boy. It gets so horrific that when its obvious that Bart has gone properly, clinically insane, and he's climbed a water tower, Chief Wiggum tells him to jump. He does. And when he's lying in hospital, critically injured, an angry mob forms outside to yell at him more, despite the fact that he attempted to take his own life.
 * "I, D'oh Bot" for the whole subplot of Snowball II dying (and III and IV), essentially trying to make a joke out of pet mortality.
 * Dear FSM Almighty, "Lisa the Simpson". Basic plot: Lisa finds out that the family has a gene that basically makes you go through Alzheimer's around age eight. At the end of the episode, it turns out that it's only on the Y chromosome, and thus, only men can get it. Let's disregard the incredibly faulty ideas about genetics this episode has, the continuity that prior showed Bart and Homer being Book Dumb and having a crayon lodged in his brain, respectively, as well as successful automaker and inventor Herb Powell being a Simpson, and Abe Simpson demonstrating extreme battlefield competence, and simply note that it ends on the note that all men in the Simpsons family are doomed to basically become drooling idiots and there's nothing they can do about it. But not Lisa, so apparently this is a happy ending. Yep, Bart is never going to have a decent career and he's probably going to fail at every endeavor, and Homer was destined to that fate from the start, but Lisa can solve that brainteaser. Whoop-de-friggin'-doo. The worst part is that they could have had it end with Lisa accepting the gene, and Homer for giving it to her. But no-oo. Lisa must be Always Right.
 * Pretty much agree on what you said. It seemed that everything's okay as long as Lisa's happy. If it's any consolation to you, the episode showing that Homer had a crayon in his brain was aired after this episode, and the Simpson Gene was never mentioned again. For once, thanks Negative Continuity.
 * While I quite enjoy even the most notorious episodes, the one episode that pissed me off in the show's 22 (soon to be 23) seasons is "HOMЯ" where Homer gets the crayon removed from his head, making him much smarter. The episode starts out good, but totally goes to hell at the end of the second act, where he tries to help the Power Plant by giving a safety report, but accidentally gets it shut down for maintenance, with Mr. Burns nonchalantly breaking them the news. What follows is the most contrived version of Flowers for Algernon Syndrome syndrome I've ever seen. All of his friends hate them over a sacking that wasn't even his intention, the town shuns him just because everybody else is an idiot, and Homer himself decides to get Moe to put back the crayon, even though he's already formed a bond with the always-smart (if not always butting in) Lisa. How the fuck did this get an Emmy when The Powerpuff Girls and Futurama did not?
 * Double, Double, Boy in Trouble, the one where Bart has taken his obnoxiousness Up to Eleven, then he switches places with a rich boy who looks just like him for a cheap Prince And The Pauper plot. When he literally has gone too far, after 1.) Losing his parents $50,000. 2.) Ruining Marge's best dress by shooting cat urine onto it. 3.) Starting a fight with Lisa in the car. He finally, during the party Lenny was throwing for everyone, unleashes an army of vacuum robots on the party patrons. After all this, he gets punished. Later in the episode though, when his doppleganger is at his place? Marge completely forgets that Bart is being punished. That's the moment right there--Bart gets off as a Karma Houdini yet again.
 * "MoneyBART" has an opening sequence directed by graffiti artist Banksy, who interpreted the usually-something-we-have-made-fun-of-thing, the Korean animating process, as a fucking sweatshop. The result is this utter clusterfuck. No matter what you may think of the Ke$ha opening, this one is the one to blame for being nothing but pointlessly depressing.
 * To the whole baseball episode(when Lisa coaches), the way she acts seems to indeed, suck the fun out of the game. Sure, they won multiple times, but she acted worse than usual, and even fired her own brother just for scoring out of a different plan. What if the pitcher didn't do the 2-3 ball throws and threw strikes?
 * The first time I noticed a sharp decline in quality was "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes". In this episode, Homer discovers the Internet (for at least the second time and about 5-10 years too late for it to be topical), and starts a website full of fictional nonsense. One of these theories turns out to be true, and as such he is dragged to an island and kept there as a prisoner. This was an homage to the bizarre cult TV series, 'The Prisoner'. What made it so disappointing for me was that it only became an episode about The Prisoner halfway through the episode, so there was no clear focus. Furthermore, The Simpsons has always made sense despite the Negative Continuity, whereas this episode dispensed with any reason or logical narrative, and ended with the entire family hallucinating and imprisoned on an island. There was nothing remotely clever about the episode to redeem it, it was just 20 minutes of pure nonsense. Whereas previously they emulated shows using The Simpsons' trademark style or worked references into the narrative, this was just parody for the sake of parody.
 * The B-Plot for the episode with Homer and the James Bond Expy. So, Bart is finally fed up with Nelson taking his lunch money, so he takes a hint from not-Super Size Me and tricks him into eating a month's worth of Krusty Burger, fattening him up and making him slower. Lisa catches wind of this and thinks Bart is wrong for doing that. So, Lisa helps Nelson get into a muscular build and the episode ends with him continuing his bullying rampage. What the fuck? So, fattening someone up is bad, but letting someone continue bullying is A-OK? And no, Lampshading it does not make it better!
 * A definite Dethroning Moment can be found in Lisa's subplot in the episode "Sleeping with the Enemy", where she develops anorexia. Yeah, you read that right. An eight-year-old girl, hating herself that much. A potentially fatal illness. Well, you could probably make it funny in a Gallows Humor-sort of way, but the thing is even though The Simpsons is indeed satire, it just isn't dark and edgy enough to support that kind of humor for very long. So it pretty much ended up going "Hey look, a deeply depressed child loathes her body and is binging on cake! Uh... wacky, huh?" What makes it worse is that Marge, normally the most involved with the kids, only takes notice of Lisa's disorder in one scene and doesn't seem to do much to help her get through it. Adding more insult to injury is that here, Lisa's disorder is portrayed seriously, while in the later episode "The Heartbroke Kid", Bart almost eating himself to death was more or less Played for Laughs.
 * I'm afraid I can't recall the exact point I stopped watching the show (I stuck with it for a little while even though it'd stopped making me laugh) but I think it must've been "On A Clear Day I Can't See My Sister". I was never that fond of Lisa but good God, she was terrible in that one. The plot has her serving Bart with a restraining order and using it to bully him. Repeatedly. She pokes him with a long pole (with a Phillip's Head on the end that hurts him) and uses it to make him eat his lunch outside in the rain, be taught by Groundskeeper Willie in a tool shed, and sleep on the edge of the property. What the writers seem to forget is that while Bart is a brat, he's not really a bad kid, and he gets a lot of Pet the Dog moments (remember the Hockey episode from season six with that montage of sweet moments between him and Lisa?). Lisa is never punished for doing all this to Bart and it's all treated as something he deserves, and Bart is only let back into the house after he builds a statue of Lisa and tricks her into thinking he's going to worship it. And no, Marge does nothing to stop this save lightly pleading with Lisa over it, even when her son can't come inside the house and is living with wild dogs. This just goes beyond the general unpleasantry the writers have been playing into something nasty.
 * Justin_Brett: And here's the best part. At one point Lisa says if she can remember three moments where Bart was nice to her, she'll lift the restraining order. Well, no problem, right? Most fans could name three off the top of their head (including me: Lisa It's Your Birthday, the Hockey episode, and buying Bleeding Gums Murphy's record for her), then the character who experienced those things herself should have no problem, right? Nope. She thinks as hard as she can, and can only come up with two, both of which only came from that episode. Negative Continuity shouldn't count when it's only being used to let some poor kid be a punching bag for a little more.
 * Like most of the current episodes, the quality of Treehouse of Horror is in decline, but most have their moments. In "XXI", the first segment about board games was alright, the second one with Marge and Homer rescuing the drowning man said to have murdered the people on a previous boat was pretty good, except when Homer goes Ax Crazy, and it turns out to be Maggie's imagination but the Twilight parody was the worst. In "Tweenlight", Lisa falls for a young vampire after he stops a bus from hitting her... and a bike...and a car...and another car...and a segway. As Lisa and Edmund jump between trees, Milhouse sees this, becomes insanely jealous and turns into...a poodle. Edmund comes to the Simpsons' house with his father, Dracula (why not?). Lisa and Edmund fly of, and Homer and Dracula chase them to "Dracula-La land", and ask the Count for help. Edmund wants to bite Lisa, but Homer saves the day by killing them when they drink his blood due to the cholesterol in his blood. Fat jokes are made, Otto is a stoner and the Simpsons are incredibly embarrassing. Who could have thought a Twilight parody could be so bad?
 * Smapti: What turned me off this episode is when the Edward character, out of the blue and apropos to nothing in particular, shouts "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!" at the top of his lungs. Inserting a Tommy Wiseau joke into a sketch that has nothing whatsoever to do with The Room is just lazy writing and smacks of We're Still Relevant, Dammit!.
 * He didn't even say the line to the actual Lisa who was standing right in front of him, making the moment all the more frustrating.
 * The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly. Bart and Milhouse pull a prank which involves screwing the nails out of the school and causing walls to fall off. Milhouse accepts the fall for it, and gets suspended while Bart doesn't come clean. Okay, so then Bart promises to visit Milhouse every day until his suspension is up. He then falls for a girl named Jenny, and they start spending a lot of time together, until Bart forgets to visit Milhouse on a rainy night. As punishment, he then invades Bart's life in a very harsh way, until eventually he forces Bart to confess to Jenny about how he isn't who she thought he was. And she dumps Bart, leaving him as a crying mess. Then Milhouse pretty much makes up with Bart with no reprimandation. I felt so bad for Bart there, he made a simple mistake and then it just gets jacked. Thanks, Milhouse, we all know that people like it when you cause your best friend to lose a relationship.
 * The Greatest Story Ever Doh'd was the moment I realized the lighthearted and funny comedy I grew up with had died forever. I'm of the firm belief that Lisa is possibly the most vile individual in Simpsons history - she makes Mr Burns look like a kind, thoughtful and sensitive man (just read some of the other Lisa examples on this very page to further back up my claims). So Basically, Bart ends up getting chased by a girl who watched him vandalize a sacred wall and ends up getting rather violently kicked in the groin; now arguably he was being a dick and deserved it. Later on however, Lisa with full knowledge of this incident and the fact that Bart was probably still in pain despite not outwardly showing it, sadistically hits him in the groin again because she wanted his airplane seat. She shows absolutely no remorse and even laughs at the sight of her brother crumpled in pain on the floor beside her. Yes, she's eight years old and yes, that's what eight year old girls often do but we're talking about a character who used to be portrayed as a caring pacifist violently attacking a boy who, whilst frequently naughty, has been shown to genuinely love and care for her on a vast multitude of occasions.
 * "Exit Through The Kwik-E-Mart" where Bart tagged degrading pictures of Homer as payback for locking him in a cage (and then kicking him out when he was getting comfortable). He did it because Marge missed an important call on her birthday and took it out on Bart because he bought the rabbit that chewed the phone cord. In the end, Homer is humiliated, so what's the problem? We're apparently supposed to feel sorry for Homer. Yes, we're supposed to feel sorry for somebody who committed child abuse by locking his son in a cage. Then it turns out . Marge convinces the cops not to arrest him, but he's punished by getting locked in the cage again. Also, the subplot with Apu and the grocery store competing with him was completely pointless to the rest of the plot despite the misleading episode title.
 * Season two's "Bart vs. Thanksgiving". Sure, Bart did do something stupid like ruining Lisa's project, but what does Marge do? Yells at Bart that he ruined Thanksgiving! And after that, instead of just explaining what he did wrong and trying to make things easier, Marge yells at him more to apologize. No. Just...no. No way am I ever watching that episode.
 * Let's not forget when Homer blames her for Bart running away, she sticks by her actions, telling him to "ask any syndicated columnist".
 * I know some might disagree with me but I absolutely hate the Christmas episode "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace". It's about Bart accidentally burning down the Christmas tree and presents while the family was asleep and, in panic, hiding it from his family by making them think it was a robbery. The townspeople luckily enough give them more then enough compensation for the damages and everyone is happy...Until they find out on TV the melted remains of the tree/presents...Okay so naturally the next act should be Bart getting forgiveness, right? Nope! even though Bart, on camera no less, admitted to accidentally burning down the tree and lying. Cue the next act where were treated to several hard-to-watch scenes of Disproportionate Retribution where the whole town hates them in different ways,   Wait, but It Gets Worse when the Simpsons return home to find a lot of cars parked outside the house, and Marge, thinks that the townspeople have forgiven them. Well they have,   ...What!! And that's how the episode ends in probably one of the most sickening acts from the town of Springfield next to their treatment of Bart in "Boys of Bummer." What's worse is that , heartwarming music plays in a lesson I'm assuming is "at least they have each other" but it is still done in such a poor way and it makes the town of Springfield look like a town of Karma Houdinies!! It is the one Christmas episode that I can never watch and one of my least favorite Simpson episodes. I know that it was supposed to be a Black Comedy (which I don't usually mind) but I didn't find it humorous in the slightest.
 * You're not alone on this. I found the idea of the entire town looting the house to be quite possibly the biggest slap in the face to an already mediocre episode. And saying it's a Disproportionate Retribution would be an insult to the idea of Disproportionate Retribution. Quite honestly, it makes the town look like complete jackasses and unlikeable.
 * I have to talk about a moment from one episode that really rubbed me the wrong way. In "Bart The Murderer", the episode begins with Bart waking up to what's supposed to be a great day: he has his homework done (Which, knowing Bart, is very rare) and his school is going on a field trip to a chocolate factory. However, the entire first act pretty much makes Bart a Cosmic Plaything: he steps on a plastic dinosaur waking up, his dog eats his homework, he misses the bus and has to walk to school in the rain, gets hit with a ball during recess, can't go on the trip due to forgetting his permission slip, has to stay at the school and lick envelopes, and has to ride his skateboard home (again, in the rain). One of his skateboard's wheels falls off, and he winds up at the door to the Legitamite Businessmen's Social Club, where Fat Tony and his gang resides. Now, that's not what the DMOS is for me. The DMOS is how Lisa acts during this entire first act. During the scene where Bart misses the bus, as the bus drives away, we see a shot of Lisa waving goodbye to Bart with a smug grin on her face. She could have easily told the bus driver to wait for him, or at the very least, tell the driver to stop, but no! She doesn't do anything! Then, at the chocolate factory, Lisa says "I think is something Bart would've really enjoyed, but it's the only way he'll learn." Learn what?! What did Bart do wrong here? All the guy wanted to do was go on a trip! Ever since then, I couldn't stand Lisa anymore. And the newer episodes only make her worse in my eyes. I'd go into that further, but some examples have already been listed here.
 * This troper can't stand watching episode Lisa's Sax, except the moment where Homer decides to buy Lisa her saxophone instead of an air conditioner. Why i hate this episode? Three words: Bart's Preschool Teacher. We see that in his first day of school, Bart has trouble with the alphabet. What does she decide to do? Help and support him? No. She simply says that he will get a lot of F's and then fail in life. And when she read Ugly Duckling to class, she said that there is a hope for everyone. Bart asked if there is a hope for him. She coldly says "No". Her treatment made Bart miserable and turned him into prankster he is today and even made Bart consider suicide, when he was just a five-year old, judging by the drawing Bart made. What makes it even worse is that Bart was happy and innocent child, who was enthusiatic about going to school, but this bitch made him miserable and ruined his life. Without her Bart would have made it high as Lisa. And worst of all, she is a Karma Houdini, because she wasn't show to have punished for her actions.
 * Lisa's Sax was one giant What Could Have Been for Bart, huh?
 * The part of the Season 23 finale, Lisa Goes Gaga, where Moe Syzlak gets hit by a train. Why? Because now everyone who just saw that will have something to worry about all 2012 summer until Season 24, and we'll never get to find out if Moe died or not.


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