When I watched last night's episode of the Simpsons, it made me think of the problem with very long shows. So the Simpsons are on season 23, 23 years of the Simpsons.
Think about it like this : 496 episodes have aired. That's more days than in a year. Nobody gets older so it's a sort of weird time warp that is operated where nothing ever changes.
But that's what sitcoms do. They keep us in an unaltered reality where time has stopped. Sure, the seasons change and the family celebrates different holidays and keeps up with the times with technology, cultural and political references.
But what I appreciate with the Simpsons is that sometimes, not that often, they come out with a "future" episode where the children have grown into adults, Marge and Homer are much older and in some cases divorced. Last night's episode was interesting in that respect. Is the "normal" reality of the family getting so overused that they need to go in the future to find some new plots and stories for the each family member ?
Many have criticized the Simpsons's more recent episodes as not being as good as the older ones. I don't think the writers and creators aren't trying as hard, but I do think that the expectations most of us have are getting way too high. This is a big problem with shows that last this long and especially with Sitcoms. You must keep everything the same and after 23 years and almost 500 episodes, things get a bit stale.
Yet, I imagine a world where these shows would break off at some point and renew the whole series. Scrubs tried to do that with their last season which did not end well. But it's not because it didn't work with Scrubs that it couldn't work with the Simpsons.
I don't know... They could let Maggie get older and maybe, maybe get her to talk. I don't know, I don't write shows.
But what I was really thinking is that they could do something completely different and turn the show into a very intense series, not a sitcom, where the family killed somebody together. Build on that a sort of murder mystery with detectives that are one week from retirement, change the colors of the show to get that "film noir" grain, cut the jokes and just have fun with it.
"And if my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine" because I would go against what a Sitcom is "supposed" to be. But sometimes I crave for something new and something that breaks the rules. Transcend expectations with great transgression.
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Thank you,
TRJ
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