Nerdy Rant 2: how the greats fell

I recently (in the last month) have, for the hell of it, watched the newest of episodes of Simpsons. now I knew it would be shit, it ain't been good since series 9 back in the day but i thought, hey, lets see. now I wasn't surprised that it was hitting the controversial issues like Muslims post 9/11, oh wait, that would have worked 7 to 8 years ago, yep its poor but only recently have i actually appreciated why its poor as its happening on family guy. the problem: focus on one character.

If anyone has actually watched Simpsons recently, it has become completely focused on Homer, latest episode, Homer leaves Maggie in dangerous play pen, Episode before, Homer regrets not becoming class president, episode before that, Homer thinks Muslims are going to blow up springfield, the list goes on and yeah, there usually is another story but no effort is put into it and its become annoying. whats more tragic is the much loved Homer Simpson who, in his hey day, was actually funny, has kind of become like a friend of mine at uni; trying to make jokes which aren't funny in order to get the attention on him.

The same is becoming true with Family Guy; all episodes are becoming revolved around Peter, Peter does a TV show, Peter robs his in laws house, Peter turns gay, Peter has gone from being an actually funny random character to becoming rather obnoxious because there's always some dumb ass joke, like when he whispers behind meg about annoying she is to the the TV show and after he does it, he looks around the door to see her, ITS REALLY BAD. There is an episode with O jay Simpson and I am not even going to touch it, not because its "controversial" but I have been told it has been the worst family guy episode and this is from people who LOVE family guy.

Now I hope its just a lull as there have been several series that have had this, South Park had a lull for a series with a load of crap movie parodies every episode, scrubs had a bit of a let down during the 3rd series, it happens, they get better but then there's the tail of the Simpsons, the greatest most significant series that just went to hell.

On a more positive note, I got to say South Park is on top form. Ive actually really enjoyed these series, i watch a couple every few weeks and scrubs has been pretty decent, nothing spectacularly bad or good but fun to watch. I know that its a bit of an imbalanced subject matter wise but the Simpson and Family guy thing stood out for me.