Reviews: Premature take on Simpsons, Season 7

This is technically not the way I want to do these things. My rule is to finish something, and then review it. Technically, I have four episodes to go on the DVD first. That being said, I did of course finish this season, back when in it was on television. Back when the syndicated Simpsons was worth watching, I saw pretty much every episode again a half dozen times or so. I may not remember which episodes were which season, but I easily can recognize one by name. More importantly, this is the closest I can get to a reviewable product. The latest video game hasn't been finished, nor the latest book, and I didn't even buy any music in time for a review.

So Simpsons it is, and this is an important season. It is, in some ways, the final Simpsons season, or at least the final one that counts. Okay, that's not entirely fair. There are plenty of quality episodes in later seasons, from the James Bond parody and the Insanity Peppers to the Behind the Music spoof many, many seasons later. But this, to me, is the last "pure" season. It's here that the excellence, or at least quality, of a Simpsons episode is guaranteed, sight-unseen. Later seasons could not make that promise. Some episodes from season 8 on were awful, quite simply. And they weren't the "even a bad episode of Simpsons is better than 90% of television" awful, either, unless you simply assume 90% of television is simply unwatchable, which I admit is possible, since I don't watch it.

But I came to praise Simpsons, not bury it! I mean, I can't; no one can. That show will be on until the end of days. After the nuclear war, the cockroaches will curl up in front of the TV to watch it while eating Twinkies. In the first post-Bomb episode, Homer will get a new job.

Season seven, despite a few weak but not awful episodes, was consistently excellent. Like every season of the Simpsons, though, it's impossible to comment on the overarching plot. There is none. There barely is any theme, but nonetheless there were seams that started to develop this season. In a way, it felt like the series' universe was falling apart, as expectations of character and story started to become false. For example, there was the episode where Lisa learned that the town's founder, the creator of Springfield itself, was a fraud. But that's minor compared to the way the story itself began to warp and self-reference. It was in this season that Sideshow Bob, the criminal genius, started with a scheme to destroy the entire city in an atom bomb, and ended it so defeated that he was rendered nothing but a joke for the entire last third of an episode. The other characters had to play down their abilities and were even bored with his antics. He just no longer mattered.

But the one that really gets me, the one that I wish the show really explored further, was the episode where Bart and Lisa accidentally got Itchy and Scratchy cancelled. At the end of the episode, they find a solution (though we never hear it,) but by then, the day was saved! By two never before seen incidental characters. Who look like first season Bart and Lisa. The episode ended with our main characters unsatisfied because, for once, the universe righted itself without their efforts. That's pretty damn zen, if you get right down to it.

I wish the show considered what it was doing here more; the repetition of the sitcom formula, now seven years old, was being recognized by the very characters, and it was breaking down. This is a fundamental aspect of the Simpsons universe, as much as the planet, skies, air, ground, etc. were. The ramifications, especially for a clever show like the Simpsons, were endless. Instead, we got...this.

I have reached the point where I won't hide my disdain for later Simpsons seasons. Oh, habit and hope have motivated me for longer than I should have; it wasn't until the last season or two where I didn't regularly watch every new episodes. But I can't say I truly enjoyed the show in a long time. It's not as bad as it's ever been; it's been years since we had jockey elves and Homer being raped by a panda. But the soul is long since gone, the characters empty vestiges of their past selves (except for sometimes Lisa, actually,) and the jokes repetitive and flat.

My review, therefore, is tripartite. The Simpsons, season 7: A. The Simpsons, as it is: C on a good week. The Simpsons, as it could have been: Unprecedented. A glorious end that both questions the very nature of the traditional sitcom and is hilarious. To summarize, let me tell you what I watched tonight was on. There was a new episode of the Simpsons on tonight. At that time of night, I watched an episode twelve years old and that was seen countless times instead. I laughed my ass off.