I noticed right off the bat that the show's producers had changed as of the last 2 new episodes. And also that there are now more of them. I immediately noticed the show's writing got sucky real fast. The earlier shows were fast paced with lots of witty dialouge. Now it's down to picking out characters and writing unfunny scripts around them
This syndrome hit the Simpsons, but not untill after many years. This show has suddenly turned into unimaginative and unfunny crap.
It's so obvious.
jdc
The earlier shows were funny, but they crammed too many characters into them and spent the first season sorting them all out and inserting them into their little "niches."
Huh?? Tonight's episode was character-based, but most of the episodes this season ("Parasites Lost," "War Is The H-Word," "Amazon Women") have been structured around multiple castmembers.
Sorry, but the show is almost undeniably at its peak at the moment, even though tonight's episode was a bit subpar compared to the quality of the other episodes this season.
Huh? The 2 shows prior to tonight's were absolutely some of the most fast-paced episodes in the series. All of them had tons of witty dialogue.
Season 2 and now 3 are a big improvement over season 1. Season 1 did good for getting everything off the ground, but they had some trouble finding the right tone and pace. Even the witty season 1 episodes were often slow-paced, and the lesser of season 1 had the most awkward humor the show has done so far. From season 2 on they have been incredible. Great animation, plots, and by season 3 I notice they have the personas and balance of the characters down more perfect than ever.
Could you be a little more specific? Almost every episode has always had a focus on one specific character, with minor involvement by other characters. No different now. And these scripts are hardly unfunny. They're filled with more laugh-out-loud moments than any other show on television.
Tonight's sagged a little. It tried too hard to integrate different past characters and covered territory on sex and romance the show has traveled before with more insight. It was basically built on the same themes and ideas tons of other episodes were in the same format, it just wasn't as inspired or creative. It's more in a class with Brannigan Begin Again, The Lesser of Two Evils, and Bender Gets Made. The last 3 episodes before it were near-masterpieces in a class with A Flight to Remember, The Problem with Popplers, and Put Your Head on My Shoulder. To scream about some imagined quality difference taken place in a matter of 3 episodes is ridiculous in and of itself, let alone when the varying levels of quality of these episodes obviously compare with the past season.
-Eric Sansoni ([email])
"What I'm trying to communicate is that I'm willing to do nudity, no extra charge!" -Bill McNeal, Newsradio, 1998
You may be happy now that the characters are no longer new and it's all more orderly. Maybe now you can look forward to 12 minutes of an obvious unfunny setup being excruciatingly stretched out another 12 minutes with characters that you have down perfect. From now on...this show will be a formulated "Party of Five" type show that will dig into the "Futurama" grab bag of funny references to keep it going.
The show has been handed over to new producers. Funny none of you responded to that. The earlier shows...Matt Gronig and maybe 2 others were the producers. The show is on auto pilot now that ppl like you are enamored of this show. As expected.
Look at the Simpsons...it takes 4 minutes now to get past the credits for all the new producers.
"Eric S." wrote:
Because I just assumed you were grabbing at straws with that. It was too ignorant a comment to waste time on. The show has *not* been handed over to new producers. I have no idea why you could come to this conclusion. David X. Cohen has been the exec. producer since the earliest development of the show. AFAIK every show this season has been written by someone who has already written shows. A couple new writers/producers have come on this season just as they did in the last. A couple of these are Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein who worked on The Simpsons from season 4-8. 90% of the producers are the original staff and I'm not aware of any that have left. So this is just one more area where you have no idea what you're talking about.
-Eric Sansoni ([email])
"What I'm trying to communicate is that I'm willing to do nudity, no extra charge!" -Bill McNeal, Newsradio, 1998
Thanks Comic Book Guy for telling us all "how it really is." If it weren't for people like you, I wouldn't know what to like on television.
BTW - writers get a producer credit on the show. That's why there are so many, just like the first couple of seasons. If you're going to troll, at least do the research.
And it's Groening - rhymes with raining.
Or as he wrote in "life is hell": rhymes with complaining.
. Have you ever heard of the term "labored" with regards to TV scripts? That's is instantly how I percieved the writing of the last 2 shows.
"Let's see, how can we kill 30 minutes next week showcasing one character? You either see how the show now plays out using time wasting unfunny plot movement or you don't. Before I knew it, 21 minutes had passed with Bender still on his "date". Gimme a break You either see how hackneyed the show's plot/dialogue has gotten or you don't.
Besides...I thought I made it clear. This "product" has been handed off to others. It was funnier and had lots more happening in 30 minutes.
jdc
Rich Bunnell wrote:
jdc wrote in message news:[email]...
Ugh. Watch the credits, idiot. No names are gone. Maybe a small one here or there, and there are some new ones, but everybody's still around! You can't just dislike an episode and using your dizzying intellect make up a moronic story about how the shows original producers left.
Do a little research. It's fun, and you don't end up saying things that are blatantly wrong!
-Fraggler?
I'll have to admit that I'm starting to agree. While the holdovers (Save "Cryonic") were good, some of the Season 3 episodes are a bit dissapointing in my mind. "Amazon" was pretty good, but in my mind, it's beating a dead horse to the "Mother's Day" episode, which not only had a hilarious sex scene, but twisted it with Farnsworth and Mom being the doers. "Amazon" had great potential, but was pretty tame. "Parasites Lost", I'll admit, is getting better by the viewing, but a lot of the dialouge was a bit forced, and episodes like "An X-Mas Story" captured good humor and sincere emotion with a good level of satire still there. The newest one has only gotten one viewing, but I'm surprised that it was the first Futurama episode I haven't really laughed at. Many of the sort of political jokes from the second Season were very devoid from the recent ones. I know you can't really judge Season 3 now, but I do feel pretty dissapointed with almost every episode I've seen this season.
~DarthArada~ "Snuh!" Homer Simpson "We have all the time in the world..." ~George Lazenby/James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" MUSSOLINI TO EMBARK ON CHEST EXPANSION CAMPAIGN ~The Onion
There's no reason to compare Mother's Day and Amazon unless your only criteria for liking an episode is to compare their most sexually charged scene. I found Amazon much funnier overall. Mother's Day had a great plot but was bogged down with tons of sight gags about various robots and machines jumping around and doing silly stuff. Amazon did a lot better with poking fun in a well-rounded way at a traditional sci-fi plot.
I felt X-Mas Story was one of the most forced episodes in terms of story structure. I didn't find the Fry/Leela emotion very sincere, and it didn't help that it was abandoned halfway through for a fight scene and then all but forgotten by the end. The only way that emotional content would have worked would have been to heavily satirize all those saccharine Christmas specials. It felt more like it wanted to become one but wouldn't commit enough of the plot to pull it off. Parasites Lost is just completely one of the most thrilling episodes done to date. I am not a huge fan of the way it ended, but there have been other episodes like Put Your Head on My Shoulder where the first 2/3rds were masterful and momentum quickly gave out in the last third. The action-themed stuff in Parasites doesn't compare to the tame cat-and-mouse chase of X-Mas Story.
What political jokes? The Nixon episode was the only one to have a major political theme. Other than that we've had episodes devoted to Willy Wonka parodies, sewer creatures, etc. There have always been jokes on all aspects of society thrown in, but there is absolutely no difference to be noted in that respect in recent eps. Heck, Amazon had jabs at gender politics, and last night's poked fun at union politics! Although I wasn't thrilled with the last ep, I did laugh out loud several times, more than on any other show you can find on the air. The trouble was all the meat of the ep was in Bender's disguise subterfuge, and to get to that point and get back they had to tread through a lot of old ground.
-Eric Sansoni ([email])
"What I'm trying to communicate is that I'm willing to do nudity, no extra charge!" -Bill McNeal, Newsradio, 1998
<What political jokes?>
I'm sorry, I'm using a bad terminology. Nevermind that.
<I felt X-Mas Story was one of the most forced episodes in terms of story structure. I didn't find the Fry/Leela emotion very sincere, and it didn't help that it was abandoned halfway through for a fight scene and then all but forgotten by the end. >
Of course, they won't be able to tie it up, as Fry and Leela's relationship is a running thing. Still, I think the scene did touch me, what should of been accomplished, while a lot of stuff in Parasites Lost (Save the holophone sequences) were very much just written down on paper.
~DarthArada~ "Snuh!" Homer Simpson "We have all the time in the world..." ~George Lazenby/James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" MUSSOLINI TO EMBARK ON CHEST EXPANSION CAMPAIGN ~The Onion
Stardate Mon, 12 Feb 2001 08:23:09 GMT ... written on Mars by the contented jdc :
How you "instantly" perceive things is not necessarily a good guide for life. The pragmatic and impulsive forming of ideas will inevitably lead to confusion and misinformation. Besides, if you think Sunday's episode was labored as far as TV scripts go, you are not familiar with TV.