20 years and still funny
Having worked at a local Fox affiliate eons ago, I knew the value of how good The Simpsons were; especially when, at one point, they were the best rated show on the Fox network. I was a lucky SOB as I had complete access to nearly every show up to the newest season (yes, I had great lunches watching re-runs).
As an avid admirer of The Simpsons, I did see a drop off with the comedy somewhere between seasons 12 through 16. The show tended to get a bit preachy and it strayed away from the stupid comedy that made it what it was. I’m not sure if it was the loss of writers or the loss of ideas, but there was something lacking. It certainly didn’t help that Family Guy was booming on all cylinders and digging into The Simpsons‘ ratings. Well, as everything worked out and the universe finally decided to balance itself, The Simpsons survived the down period, at least in my mind, and roared back with one of the best seasons I’ve seen in a while. I am talking about the 20th season of the show.
What’s even better is that the Groening and crew brought their ‘A’ game with this particular season. To boot, they put it in high-definition, which is the first time The Simpsons has made it in that format to the home.
Things to expect in this season are a lot of Homer. While Bart certainly took the cake in the first few seasons of the show, the show has mostly been driven by the stupidity of Homer Simpson. He brings the same ‘A’ game in this season. You get to see him live in a tiny apartment, bet against Lisa’s intelligence (and win) and you get to see a wonderful introduction to Treehouse of Horror XIX (it’s funny, it’s gross, it’s perfect). There are a lot of good things going on here in this season and it doesn’t get preachy one bit. What it does is learn from the ‘preachy’ previous seasons and incorporate the opinions of the creators in a unique way. For example, in the Coming to Homerica, you get the subject of protecting one’s borders from outside/foriegn peeps. While it could have certainly gone in a different, more serious direction, the episode itself is completely comedy driven and at the same time informing people how bad of an idea it is to keep people out of America. When the show doesn’t take itself too seriously, I really do enjoy the messages it’s sending out. I don’t mind the preachy nature of comedy, especially when it’s done as well as this.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this season and couldn’t really find much wrong with it. There wasn’t a single episode that bored me, which wasn’t the case in previous seasons.
Now, as for the fact that’s on blu-ray that’s something special. In terms of visuals i think it looked sharp. Certainly it couldn’t match Disney’s Snow White or Pinnochio, but it certainly did look very clean and sharp. It was a ‘great’ job at putting this animation into an HD format, but certainly nowhere near perfect. There are some occasional artifacts, but it is to be expected. I think it was the right time to put this on blu-ray as it would cost an insane amount of money to clean up past Simpsons to get the close to the quality presented here. The audio is damn good too, which is always a wonderful plus. When people spend time on audio and video in regards to blu-ray, it’s a huge plus.
Another great aspect of this on blu-ray is that you get two discs. You read that right, two discs for an entire season of The Simpsons. You don’t have to deal with anymore of those weird packaging decisions or have to deal with stuffing DVDs back into very tight slips; all of it is cured with two disc holders. I love blu-ray for this.
If I have to knock this collection a little it would be for the single feature included (it’s not excused because it’s in HD). I want more for this special occasion. I want a lot more features other than the guy who starred in Super Size Me to do a documentary. Don’t get me wrong the documentary is good, but I just want a little more. The other knock on this blu-ray is the menu. I’m a visual guy and I need a visual representation of what I’m about to see. The DVD menu system for past seasons had some sort of hint of what’s on each disc. This menu only gives you the name of the episode and continual sketching of Simpson’s characters. While certainly neat to watch, it’s quite useless. It would have been nice to have an episode guide as well (like they include in the DVD sets).