The Simpsons Junkie

Hi, I'm The Simpsons Junkie aka. South Park Nerd from my earlier blog. Last year I watched every single episode of South Park and then gave a short review for them. Now I'm doing the same project on The Simpsons.

I stated back in the South Park blog that "I love South Park, think Simpsons is good also". Wow. I only said that? I remembered that I had said more about the Simpsons, but apparently that's all I said on the whole blog. But now that I'm seven seasons in watching all of the episodes, I think that what I said is the understatement of the year! The Simpsons fuckin' rule!

It's actually funny that my activity peak for the South Park blog was May. What is it with this month that get's me doing nothing but watching cartoons all day everyday? And I mean it. That's pretty much having been it for the past few days. I've literally been junkiefied (is that a word?) by The Simpsons. I watch them constantly, feel physically bad when not watching them, think about them all the time and can't sleep because of that This happened during my first time watching through the South Parks too. I just have some weird trait of becoming obsessed about cartoons once I start watching them. Whenever I manage to fall asleep, I dream of the Simpsons. I'm not kidding, I've had dreams about The Simpsons for four nights in a row. That never even happened with the South Park!

Watching all the South Parks was a breeze. I watched all the 12 seasons that were out in late 2008 in about a week. That was pretty intense time, I would sit watching South Park for hours and hours.. Now some is happening with the Simpsons, but no hope that I could get them watched that fast. I mean, there 461 episodes! South Park just barely hit 200. Even if I'd watch a season in a day which would take around 10 hours it would still take over three weeks. Since I'm going to follow the self-inflicted rule of reviewing episode only after watching it twice, I won't be posting reviews any time soon. I'd say it will take at least a month before that.

Anyway, I felt forced to start this blog already because my head is just bursting if I'm not writing any of my thoughts down. So let's examine the differences of The Simpsons and South Park shortly.

Whereas South Park is a very funny show with good, plot-derived humor and a barrage of funny shit, The Simpsons is much more emotional show. I don't remember becoming very emotionally involved ever while watching South Park, so my main focus when reviewing it's episodes was plot-composition and jokes. With The Simpsons I've already got my eyes wet multiple times which will probably make the review process more complex. You can have an episode with only couple of good jokes, pretty standard plot but yet it can feel like you're witnessing best moments of tv-history because they manage to put so much emotion into it. When The Simpsons pull it off, they pull it of good I'm already considering on some of most memorable episodes, whether I'll rate them 10. I'll be using the same weird rating system I used for South Park. Here it is for reference:
1 = Pretty bad episode. If I remember correctly, there's only couple of these.
2 = Still bad for a South Park/The Simpsons, but If I have 22 minutes and nothing better to do, I might as well give it a watch and be entertained.
3 = Fairly decent episode. In my head, this is the lowest "positive" rating. If I liked episode overall it will be 3 or over.
4 = Good episode. Might ever be a minor classic, but doens't quite life to it's potential.
5 = The bar for "average" was set pretty high, since rating 5 episodes are all very good already. They just lack little something to make them really great.
6 = Great episode, unique or just so funny that's it's really either a classic, or I just liked it really, really much.
7 = I'm not finding enough superlatives and there's still few ratings left. This it definitely an excellent episode, and a clear classic.
8 = One of the best episodes ever.
9 = Absolutely amazing episode, that I can't get enough.
10 = Perfect episode - so far to be seen and I doubt any will ever get this rating.

If I'd be forced to convert them to normal ratings, it would probably seem like this:
1 = <5
2 = 5-6
3 = 7
4 = 7.5
5 = 8
6 = 8.5
7 = 9
8 = 9.5
9 = 9.99
10 = 10!!

Or something. So.. Yeah. Anyway, it's very top heavy rating system and rewards for the great episodes.

So which one is better show? I would not touch that with a ten feet clown pole.

I'll be back, now gotta watch some Simpsons.