The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
02-18-12, 04:18 PM
#1
DVD Talk Legend
Thread Starter
The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
Spoiler:
Pretty big milestone tomorrow night. I can't believe it's been on this long. Stopped watching a few years ago, but will definitely watch this one. Been watching old episodes recently and have noticed how many characters smoking. I can't recall Family Guy or other fox animated shows doing that.
02-18-12, 04:20 PM
#2
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Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
'The Simpsons' at 500: Show runner talks angry Homer, Julian Assange
"The Simpsons" will air its landmark 500th episode on Sunday.
To put that into context, that's roughly 200 straight hours of show (minus commercials), stretched over 23 seasons, with hundreds of guest voices from Oscar winners, world leaders, esteemed novelists and notorious international figures. It's become a billion-dollar industry for the Fox network and made millionaires of its creators.
Executive producer Al Jean has been with the show since the beginning. He worked on the first episode to air in 1989 ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire") and has been through two stints as show runner: during the third and fourth seasons and again from the 13th season to the present.
PHOTOS: 23 seasons of 'The Simpsons'
To celebrate 'The Simpsons' reaching 500 episodes, Fox held an 86-hour showing to break the world record for longest TV marathon. Is it strange to have people watch your work under stressful conditions? [Viewers competed to see who could last the longest — for a $10,500 prize.]
Yeah. It’s the kind of thing they do to brainwash people. [Laughs] I don’t know if that’s what we were intending when we were writing these little half-hour comedies. I just pray they don’t have a psychotic break when my credit comes up.
Was there a plan from the beginning to feature Bart as the star of the show?
Well, he was the one that really popped with the general public first. I think with the writers it was always slightly easier to pitch Homer ideas because Homer was an adult male and he was somebody they could relate to. But Bart’s a great character. Two of the episodes that center around him and the school are still really popular. There was never a conscious change. We just do episodes that we think are funny and there’s always a point where we think "Hmm, we had too many Homers in a row. Let’s break it up." I like doing Lisa ones too. They're all great characters.
Have you seen the character dynamics change over the years?
My goal is to keep the characters the same. The situations change, but you're seeing the reaction of a basic family to what happens in the modern world. Homer was originally a little angrier and got a little dumber. I’m trying to take him back toward the angry end of the spectrum. With Lisa there's always the danger that she gets to be a know-it-all. You try to back off from that. She's an 8-year-old kid, too.
Has the style of comedy changed at all over the years?
When we were running it in Seasons 3 and 4, we tended to do more cutaway humor. We also did "The Critic," which came out at around the same time. That style has caught on and I think we do less of it just so we stand out a little more. But in terms of the pace of the show, it sped up after Season 2 a little bit, probably just because the first two seasons were coming with no animated precedents. There was never any conscious effort to change things. I think the show is fast-paced now because television just is faster paced. You even watch live-action shows like "30 Rock" and those shows have been influenced by our pacing and style.
So you're on for two more years at least?
Right. We're going to do 559 episodes but that's not necessarily the end.
Have you ever been tempted to throw out the playbook and go in a different direction?
I don’t think so, because you can do that in individual episodes. We just did a Christmas episode set in the future where Bart and Lisa are parents. But I think if you threw it out and completely change the template — say, where you aged everybody and Bart and Lisa are in high school — people would go, "That's it, that's where the show is different. It's not what I like." If we were going to do that, I think we would rather just end the show and do an animated show about high school students.
Is running the show down to a science?
It's never an exact science with comedy because you never know what's going to work. And when you get to the table, jokes you think are great bomb and jokes you're not sure about do really well. We have 20 writers. We have two rooms going at all times. The biggest production changes have been in animation. Where digital coloring has taken over. Where there are just so many faster and sharper things we can do with the animation than we could do in the original years. With writing, the two biggest changes are one: Google. Just researching something is so much easier than it was 20 years ago.
Has the time it takes from writing to airing the show shrunk?
No. It's about the same. Eight months to a year from conception to air. What's changed is the amount of change we can do with the animation in that period, but the production schedule really is sort of the same as it's been since Season 4.
"South Park" famously does a show in a week and puts it on the air the day they finish.
Yeah, they have a totally different process.
Have you ever been tempted to do that?
No. I'm not saying it's not good for them, but I just think we do what we do. And be true to ourselves. With certain modifications due to technology, that's what we do. There was even a big debate whether we should switch from ink and paint to digital coloring and the reason that was a settled issue is because there was no one left doing ink and paint. It was like being the last person riding the horse on the freeway.
What process do you have set up to keep track of past jokes or gags or plots?
Just my brain and the other writers' brains. We have a show log, where you can search by the keywords, but no there's no Simpson-Vac 3000. It's just me and Matt Selman, who has an excellent memory for that. Usually something slips by us, but not too often.
How do you get the more reclusive personalities to be on your show, such as Thomas Pynchon, Banksy or, in the 500th episode, Julian Assange?
We have these wish lists, and our casting director Bonnie Pietila is amazing at tracking down Pynchon, Banksy, now Julian Assange. And usually it's that we’re "The Simpsons." Maybe they have a kid that loves it. Maybe they loved it as a kid. Because we are who we are, it's how we get so many people.
What’s it like to interact with them?
With Banksy it was very bizarre. I never actually met him nor even spoke with him. I communicated only through email with an in-between party. Julian Assange, I only talked to him over the phone and directed him via satellite. It's really getting into the land of James Bond. On Banksy I couldn't even tell you if he's a man or a woman. If you put him on a courtroom bench, I couldn't identify him. I assume he's a man, but I don't know.
Was there any push on your part to find out?
No. I was just happy to get him on the show, so I didn't want to do anything to harm that. I always had this feeling that some day I'll be walking down the street and he'll say, "Hey, it's me!"
Was Pynchon done over the phone?
Nope. Met him. Met his son. He’s really nice. Pleasant guy. Did not want his face depicted in the episode and he did the show twice. Matt Selman has a funny story. He met a guy at a party and the guy was a little disdainful that Matt was a TV writer and the guy said, "Well, I'm writing a PhD thesis on Thomas Pynchon," and Selman said, "Well, I was talking to him on the phone today..." And that pretty much ended that discussion.
Is there any piece of "Simpsons" merchandise that went too far?
I generally like the merchandise. There have been bootleg things that have been hilariously ugly. In Spain my wife saw some "Simpsons" rolling papers. So there’s some crazy knockoffs out there.
You are at episode 500. When you hit 200, one producer famously said, “We’re halfway there.” Do you talk about milestones in the day-to-day process?
The one thing we pay attention to, we do keep track of our place against shows like "Gunsmoke" and "Lassie." When we passed "Ozzy and Harriet" it made us the longest-running sitcom. Now it's us and "Lassie" is 588 and "Gunsmoke" is 633 or something. We have an outside shot at "Lassie," but "Gunsmoke," I don't know. That's really a longshot. They did a lot of episodes. But you know, I don’t think back when "Gunsmoke" did its 500th episode, I don’t think they made any kind of deal out of it.
Your experience of the industy must be so different from other writer friends you know.
It's completely bizarre. I’m grateful that the show enabled us to ride out what was a real depression in sitcom work in the last decade. It was very, very difficult for a lot of my friends. Fortunately, I was able to get some of them on this show.
What are your memories of working on the first episode?
The first one that aired was "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," which is a title I suggested, actually. It was a script by a freelance writer named Mimi Pond. And it was really rewritten by Matt Selman, Sam Simon, Jim Brooks, Mike Reiss and myself. We were trying to be sort of satirical of the kind of Christmas show you'd see on series all the time. It was definitely very sad throughout. Everything that happens to Homer is bad. And at the very end, he brings the dog home and it's a great gift even though he didn't realize it. I remember I had pitched this one joke I was really proud of. We were trying to think of a line for Homer where Marge says “What's the name of the dog?” and I pitched Homer saying "Number 8 — I mean Santa’s Little Helper!" And Jim Brooks laughed and I thought, "I made Jim Brooks laugh. That's great. That's really a thrill."
It was not originally intended to be the first episode. It was the eighth one we recorded. But because on the first one, the director did not do a great job — the animation was just off and he tried to add scatological jokes — we decided to hold off and premiere with the Christmas episode directed by David Silverman, one of the really great directors of the show. And when I saw it put together, I thought, "This is by far the best thing I'd ever been a part of."
So you knew right off the bat that it was good?
Yeah, but I didn’t go "500 here we come!" It was just a thrill to work with Jim Brooks.
You've said that any given episode retains at most 40% of the original writer's draft. Is there ever a case of the script coming in perfect with the first draft?
AJ: There's never been a script that's been above 40%. Episodes that have been pretty high were "Homer the Heretic" by George Meyer, one I did called "Lisa's Sax." Recently, there was one Matt Selman did. Even then, we're going over them over and over again. Adding things on.
At this point, you must be able to know right away if something is right for a character or not.
It’s still tough. There's always the dangers. Homer too stupid? Lisa too much of a know-it-all? Once we had Lisa being too mean to her parents and Yeardley Smith pointed out that wasn't right. Moe has a tendency to be too sinister. With Flanders there's a tug of war. What a Christian is has a little bit of a different meaning now than it did 20 years ago. Certainly, what you think when you see a Catholic priest has changed. So Flanders’ character we've made him sometimes a little right wing and sometimes not but he's a good guy at heart. I always say you'd much rather have Flanders as a neighbor than Homer.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...e-al-jean.html
"The Simpsons" will air its landmark 500th episode on Sunday.
To put that into context, that's roughly 200 straight hours of show (minus commercials), stretched over 23 seasons, with hundreds of guest voices from Oscar winners, world leaders, esteemed novelists and notorious international figures. It's become a billion-dollar industry for the Fox network and made millionaires of its creators.
Executive producer Al Jean has been with the show since the beginning. He worked on the first episode to air in 1989 ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire") and has been through two stints as show runner: during the third and fourth seasons and again from the 13th season to the present.
PHOTOS: 23 seasons of 'The Simpsons'
To celebrate 'The Simpsons' reaching 500 episodes, Fox held an 86-hour showing to break the world record for longest TV marathon. Is it strange to have people watch your work under stressful conditions? [Viewers competed to see who could last the longest — for a $10,500 prize.]
Yeah. It’s the kind of thing they do to brainwash people. [Laughs] I don’t know if that’s what we were intending when we were writing these little half-hour comedies. I just pray they don’t have a psychotic break when my credit comes up.
Was there a plan from the beginning to feature Bart as the star of the show?
Well, he was the one that really popped with the general public first. I think with the writers it was always slightly easier to pitch Homer ideas because Homer was an adult male and he was somebody they could relate to. But Bart’s a great character. Two of the episodes that center around him and the school are still really popular. There was never a conscious change. We just do episodes that we think are funny and there’s always a point where we think "Hmm, we had too many Homers in a row. Let’s break it up." I like doing Lisa ones too. They're all great characters.
Have you seen the character dynamics change over the years?
My goal is to keep the characters the same. The situations change, but you're seeing the reaction of a basic family to what happens in the modern world. Homer was originally a little angrier and got a little dumber. I’m trying to take him back toward the angry end of the spectrum. With Lisa there's always the danger that she gets to be a know-it-all. You try to back off from that. She's an 8-year-old kid, too.
Has the style of comedy changed at all over the years?
When we were running it in Seasons 3 and 4, we tended to do more cutaway humor. We also did "The Critic," which came out at around the same time. That style has caught on and I think we do less of it just so we stand out a little more. But in terms of the pace of the show, it sped up after Season 2 a little bit, probably just because the first two seasons were coming with no animated precedents. There was never any conscious effort to change things. I think the show is fast-paced now because television just is faster paced. You even watch live-action shows like "30 Rock" and those shows have been influenced by our pacing and style.
So you're on for two more years at least?
Right. We're going to do 559 episodes but that's not necessarily the end.
Have you ever been tempted to throw out the playbook and go in a different direction?
I don’t think so, because you can do that in individual episodes. We just did a Christmas episode set in the future where Bart and Lisa are parents. But I think if you threw it out and completely change the template — say, where you aged everybody and Bart and Lisa are in high school — people would go, "That's it, that's where the show is different. It's not what I like." If we were going to do that, I think we would rather just end the show and do an animated show about high school students.
Is running the show down to a science?
It's never an exact science with comedy because you never know what's going to work. And when you get to the table, jokes you think are great bomb and jokes you're not sure about do really well. We have 20 writers. We have two rooms going at all times. The biggest production changes have been in animation. Where digital coloring has taken over. Where there are just so many faster and sharper things we can do with the animation than we could do in the original years. With writing, the two biggest changes are one: Google. Just researching something is so much easier than it was 20 years ago.
Has the time it takes from writing to airing the show shrunk?
No. It's about the same. Eight months to a year from conception to air. What's changed is the amount of change we can do with the animation in that period, but the production schedule really is sort of the same as it's been since Season 4.
"South Park" famously does a show in a week and puts it on the air the day they finish.
Yeah, they have a totally different process.
Have you ever been tempted to do that?
No. I'm not saying it's not good for them, but I just think we do what we do. And be true to ourselves. With certain modifications due to technology, that's what we do. There was even a big debate whether we should switch from ink and paint to digital coloring and the reason that was a settled issue is because there was no one left doing ink and paint. It was like being the last person riding the horse on the freeway.
What process do you have set up to keep track of past jokes or gags or plots?
Just my brain and the other writers' brains. We have a show log, where you can search by the keywords, but no there's no Simpson-Vac 3000. It's just me and Matt Selman, who has an excellent memory for that. Usually something slips by us, but not too often.
How do you get the more reclusive personalities to be on your show, such as Thomas Pynchon, Banksy or, in the 500th episode, Julian Assange?
We have these wish lists, and our casting director Bonnie Pietila is amazing at tracking down Pynchon, Banksy, now Julian Assange. And usually it's that we’re "The Simpsons." Maybe they have a kid that loves it. Maybe they loved it as a kid. Because we are who we are, it's how we get so many people.
What’s it like to interact with them?
With Banksy it was very bizarre. I never actually met him nor even spoke with him. I communicated only through email with an in-between party. Julian Assange, I only talked to him over the phone and directed him via satellite. It's really getting into the land of James Bond. On Banksy I couldn't even tell you if he's a man or a woman. If you put him on a courtroom bench, I couldn't identify him. I assume he's a man, but I don't know.
Was there any push on your part to find out?
No. I was just happy to get him on the show, so I didn't want to do anything to harm that. I always had this feeling that some day I'll be walking down the street and he'll say, "Hey, it's me!"
Was Pynchon done over the phone?
Nope. Met him. Met his son. He’s really nice. Pleasant guy. Did not want his face depicted in the episode and he did the show twice. Matt Selman has a funny story. He met a guy at a party and the guy was a little disdainful that Matt was a TV writer and the guy said, "Well, I'm writing a PhD thesis on Thomas Pynchon," and Selman said, "Well, I was talking to him on the phone today..." And that pretty much ended that discussion.
Is there any piece of "Simpsons" merchandise that went too far?
I generally like the merchandise. There have been bootleg things that have been hilariously ugly. In Spain my wife saw some "Simpsons" rolling papers. So there’s some crazy knockoffs out there.
You are at episode 500. When you hit 200, one producer famously said, “We’re halfway there.” Do you talk about milestones in the day-to-day process?
The one thing we pay attention to, we do keep track of our place against shows like "Gunsmoke" and "Lassie." When we passed "Ozzy and Harriet" it made us the longest-running sitcom. Now it's us and "Lassie" is 588 and "Gunsmoke" is 633 or something. We have an outside shot at "Lassie," but "Gunsmoke," I don't know. That's really a longshot. They did a lot of episodes. But you know, I don’t think back when "Gunsmoke" did its 500th episode, I don’t think they made any kind of deal out of it.
Your experience of the industy must be so different from other writer friends you know.
It's completely bizarre. I’m grateful that the show enabled us to ride out what was a real depression in sitcom work in the last decade. It was very, very difficult for a lot of my friends. Fortunately, I was able to get some of them on this show.
What are your memories of working on the first episode?
The first one that aired was "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," which is a title I suggested, actually. It was a script by a freelance writer named Mimi Pond. And it was really rewritten by Matt Selman, Sam Simon, Jim Brooks, Mike Reiss and myself. We were trying to be sort of satirical of the kind of Christmas show you'd see on series all the time. It was definitely very sad throughout. Everything that happens to Homer is bad. And at the very end, he brings the dog home and it's a great gift even though he didn't realize it. I remember I had pitched this one joke I was really proud of. We were trying to think of a line for Homer where Marge says “What's the name of the dog?” and I pitched Homer saying "Number 8 — I mean Santa’s Little Helper!" And Jim Brooks laughed and I thought, "I made Jim Brooks laugh. That's great. That's really a thrill."
It was not originally intended to be the first episode. It was the eighth one we recorded. But because on the first one, the director did not do a great job — the animation was just off and he tried to add scatological jokes — we decided to hold off and premiere with the Christmas episode directed by David Silverman, one of the really great directors of the show. And when I saw it put together, I thought, "This is by far the best thing I'd ever been a part of."
So you knew right off the bat that it was good?
Yeah, but I didn’t go "500 here we come!" It was just a thrill to work with Jim Brooks.
You've said that any given episode retains at most 40% of the original writer's draft. Is there ever a case of the script coming in perfect with the first draft?
AJ: There's never been a script that's been above 40%. Episodes that have been pretty high were "Homer the Heretic" by George Meyer, one I did called "Lisa's Sax." Recently, there was one Matt Selman did. Even then, we're going over them over and over again. Adding things on.
At this point, you must be able to know right away if something is right for a character or not.
It’s still tough. There's always the dangers. Homer too stupid? Lisa too much of a know-it-all? Once we had Lisa being too mean to her parents and Yeardley Smith pointed out that wasn't right. Moe has a tendency to be too sinister. With Flanders there's a tug of war. What a Christian is has a little bit of a different meaning now than it did 20 years ago. Certainly, what you think when you see a Catholic priest has changed. So Flanders’ character we've made him sometimes a little right wing and sometimes not but he's a good guy at heart. I always say you'd much rather have Flanders as a neighbor than Homer.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...e-al-jean.html
02-18-12, 05:41 PM
#4
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
Once the big networks start to have "seasons" like cable shows (thing South Park with 13-14 episodes spread out over two blocks several months apart), they'll be able to keep The Simpsons running basically forever, since they'll be doing so few of them at one time.
02-18-12, 05:46 PM
#5
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I never comment in Simpsons threads and don't watch new shows anymore. It's not surprising that after all this time they've run out of ideas. Do old ideas get recycled often? This synopsis sounds exactly like that Old Springfield/New Springfield episode.
I'm not dumping on the show. I just haven't been interested in it for like 15 years. I still enjoy the old episodes. I'm just curious how often old ideas get recycled. It must happen a lot considering how long it's been on.
I'm not dumping on the show. I just haven't been interested in it for like 15 years. I still enjoy the old episodes. I'm just curious how often old ideas get recycled. It must happen a lot considering how long it's been on.
02-18-12, 06:12 PM
#7
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
Same story, haven't watched in years but I might catch this one. Crazy that Lassie and Gunsmoke are still ahead of them. Had no idea.
02-18-12, 06:14 PM
#8
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I never comment in Simpsons threads and don't watch new shows anymore. It's not surprising that after all this time they've run out of ideas. Do old ideas get recycled often? This synopsis sounds exactly like that Old Springfield/New Springfield episode.
I'm not dumping on the show. I just haven't been interested in it for like 15 years. I still enjoy the old episodes. I'm just curious how often old ideas get recycled. It must happen a lot considering how long it's been on.
I'm not dumping on the show. I just haven't been interested in it for like 15 years. I still enjoy the old episodes. I'm just curious how often old ideas get recycled. It must happen a lot considering how long it's been on.
The show ran it's course eons ago but it's remarkable it's aired this long. I don't think we'll get to 600, honestly. That's another 5 seasons roughly and with the way contract negotiations tend to go with the principle voice cast I find it highly unlikely.
02-18-12, 07:51 PM
#10
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
There's a person in my office who wasn't alive at a time when The Simpsons were not on the air.
It's a damn impressive run.
It's a damn impressive run.
02-18-12, 08:46 PM
#12
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Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
Will watch this one.
Every Bart Chalkboard quote:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesged/all...sentences-41ea
Every Bart Chalkboard quote:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesged/all...sentences-41ea
02-18-12, 09:50 PM
#13
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Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I had a much older brother and sister whom I remember watching the show with as far back as I can remember. It'll be weird when this one finally goes off the air...
02-18-12, 11:35 PM
#15
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Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
^Considering they average a weekly global viewership of over 150 million viewers and have 40 million plus fans on their Facebook page, well, someone acknowledges they're alive and kicking. 
I've been watching pretty much non-stop since The Tracy Ullman Show days ...even stuck around when the writing took a nosedive around season 10. Although I do think the quality of the last few seasons has dramatically improved. They're obviously not consistently churning out the quality episodes they did during the early years, but there's still a few gems every now and then. I'd even rank a few from recent years as some of the all-time best. I could certainly think of worse ways to kill 22 minutes on a Sunday.
I've been watching pretty much non-stop since The Tracy Ullman Show days ...even stuck around when the writing took a nosedive around season 10. Although I do think the quality of the last few seasons has dramatically improved. They're obviously not consistently churning out the quality episodes they did during the early years, but there's still a few gems every now and then. I'd even rank a few from recent years as some of the all-time best. I could certainly think of worse ways to kill 22 minutes on a Sunday.
02-19-12, 07:43 AM
#16
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
02-19-12, 07:46 AM
#17
DVD Talk Hero
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I knew that Gunsmoke was the longest running primetime show. I didn't know that Ozzy and Harriet had a long run that was tough to beat.
Last edited by Nick Danger; 02-19-12 at 07:52 AM.
02-19-12, 09:28 AM
#19
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
With this milestone episode, I'm sure that a lot more people are going to be commenting this week. For the past few years, it has been the same small number of people leaving comments after each weekly episodes and half of them, have been about how the quality is so bad these days.
I still watch this show and I still like it. Yeah, is not the same quality as the early seasons but then again few shows ever had quality writing like the Simpsons did.
Here's hoping for another 500 more episodes
I still watch this show and I still like it. Yeah, is not the same quality as the early seasons but then again few shows ever had quality writing like the Simpsons did.
Here's hoping for another 500 more episodes
02-19-12, 09:51 AM
#20
DVD Talk Legend
Thread Starter
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I remember a long time ago there was talks of a Simpsons spin off where each episode would focus on a different character. I always thought that was a great idea but nothing came of it.
02-19-12, 10:51 AM
#21
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
Wow 500 episodes is a huge milestone for sure. I probably started watching around 1996 or so and have watched pretty constantly since. There were a few years in college where I didn't catch the show as much due to working on school stuff or just being busy with work but I started watching again the last couple years or so and have caught up on a lot of what I missed.
I gave my opinion on the show in an episode thread from earlier this season and still stand by it. The show isn't the classic it once was but I do feel like the last few seasons or so the show has managed to pick it's quality back up somewhat. Plus with as long as the show has been on it's pretty hard to keep it as fresh as it was in it's prime. It is pretty crazy to think how long this show has been on the air though and it's going to be a sad day when it finally is over.
I gave my opinion on the show in an episode thread from earlier this season and still stand by it. The show isn't the classic it once was but I do feel like the last few seasons or so the show has managed to pick it's quality back up somewhat. Plus with as long as the show has been on it's pretty hard to keep it as fresh as it was in it's prime. It is pretty crazy to think how long this show has been on the air though and it's going to be a sad day when it finally is over.
02-19-12, 02:03 PM
#22
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I would've like to have seen the live action Troy McClure movie that was in development when Phil Hartman died.
02-19-12, 02:46 PM
#23
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Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
I still love this show but I wouldn't mind seeing it end at a nice number like after season 25 is finished or something.
02-19-12, 07:04 PM
#24
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: The Simpsons 500th episode 'At Long Last Leave' 2/19/12
What did it say right below "The Simpsons" when the show first started? I walked into the room right when it started and only caught a glimpse of it.
"Bart's earned a day off."
I don't know if that was all of the prior Couch Gags or not, but it sure was cool to see all of them in a row like that. Culminating in the mosaic was a nice touch.
"Bart's earned a day off."
I don't know if that was all of the prior Couch Gags or not, but it sure was cool to see all of them in a row like that. Culminating in the mosaic was a nice touch.
02-19-12, 07:14 PM
#25
DVD Talk Legend
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