The show was a slap in the face to all long-time loyal Simpsons fans who've been watching it since it started in 1989. I kept watching it in disbelief. It was kind of like watching a train wreck, but I wanted to see it through to the end to see if this was actually supposed to be a real flashback, because I kept hoping it wouldn't be real, and Marge would wake up saying, "Homie, I just had the strangest dream!" But alas, it wasn't.
As so many people have already stated, this episode completely destroyed all pre-established history of the Simpsons from past episodes. Now I know, I already heard the rebuttals about how the characters don't age and there's no continuity on the Simpsons, but until last night the one thing you could trust is that the writers wouldn't mess with already pre-written history. I just always assumed the characters were frozen in present-day time to equate for the non-aging thing, but the history such as how Homer and Marge met (in high school in the 70s, Marge went to the prom with Arnie, she realizes she likes Homer, she beeps at Homer on her way back and lands up picking him up as he's walking on the side of the road-"Alright, alright, I'll walk in the mud", remember?) or Marge being pregnant with Maggie in the 80s (Bart was a toddler and jealous of his baby sister Lisa getting all the attention-Lisa's first word is Bart)-this is classic show memories and you don't mess with them. When you mess with character history, you are also messing with character development, and that's unforgivable.
They want a tribute to the 90s? The show was on the air all throughout the 90s-in fact it was its heyday where the show was not only great but also pure comedic genius-the best thing on TV at the time. Most of the episodes were chock-full of pop culture references. Seasons 2-10-right there-there's your tribute to the 90s. They would have been better off just re-showing one of these episodes then resort to the atrocity that was last night's show. In fact, long-time fans of the show might remember that they already did a show that was a perfect parody of the 90s-it was called Homerpalooza. And the ironic thing about it is, if I recall, Bart thought Homer was uncool because he didn't like 90s music and all his music was old, so Homer tries to prove them wrong by taking them to a rock concert that was making fun of Lollapalooza. And the grunge is in there-Cypress Hill and Smashing Pumpkins are in it-as well as the crowd swaying, stage diving, sarcastic cynical teens, all of that. And that's why I cringed when I heard Bart make that absolutely asinine comment in the beginning of last night's show, "The 90s, never heard of it." WHAT!!!
With last night's episode, the writers pi--ed all over the long-cherished memories of long-time Simpsons fans of happier episodes gone by. The sad thing is this used to be a show that would never stoop to such lows and unlike other shows on TV, had huge respect for its audience. Now with this episode it has shown great disdain for its audience. The only thing that could have saved it was a little bit of self-referential humor that would have been like winking at the audience to say, "Hey, we know this is completely wrong and we just completely ignored the first 10 seasons of the show", such as comic book guy popping up and saying, Wait a minute...are we to believe that Homer and Marge were dating in the 90s while clearly in past episodes it was established that...." in that self-important, know-it-all tone of his. But they didn't even do that.
As far as I'm concerned, the writers have effectively killed the Simpsons as of last night's episode. The show is now dead and unless they somehow do something next week where they formally revoke last week's episode and say "let's all forget last week's episode ever happened, and it shall be banished from our memories and never be spoken of again under punishment of death", ala The Principle Skinner is not really Principle Skinner episode, then I don't think I'm going to be watching anymore. You can't mess with fans memories. The writers of this episode should be ashamed of themselves.
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