I love, as has been documented it, King of the Hill and The Simpsons. Probably as a result of that, I've often wondered if the animation industry, particularly on some current cable stations to which I have do not have access, has passed me by. How many products of genius, not held hostage to formulae established by traditional family-based sitcoms, am I missing out on through the years? This was probably the impetus behind, after simply stumbling across it in Netflix, shooting Harvey Birdman up to the top of my queue based on the potential of the brilliant concept alone.
Well, I made it through the last of the six episodes last night, and was reminded of what I sort of discovered during my brief foray in to Family Guy: Gags, freedom from convention, and irreverance are great, but they can only carry you so far. Underlying King of the Hill and most seasons of The Simpsons was/is a soul. Something that unifies the individual scenes and ties them together with some sort of universal humanity. Not sure how else to say it, but that pure satire without this element is nothing more than a book of knock knock jokes, however clever. Watching Birdman, I laughed but I did not love.
That said, The Scooby Doo & Shaggy episode was really a hoot, and well worth seeing.
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I can definitely understand that. I do watch Family Guy when I can and occasionally am rewarded with a piece of brilliance that the middle seasons of The Simpson provided almost every week. The Family Guy episode about the FCC was really good. Chunks of the episode are floating out there on YouTube and unlike most FG episodes it hangs together extremely well.
When FG is not brilliant, it is almost always funny.
I agree. I haven't watched KOTH recently, but man! that show is SO darn GOOD!! Definitely rivals the Simpsons when looked at as a whole. The Simpsons had numerous lows to go along with their numerous highs, KOTH seems to be pretty darn consistent.
I really havent see the Simpsons since the late 90's. I can't stand the pink wall color of the house. Is one man that stupid? I lost touch with what use to make me laugh in that show.
I love the King of the Hill. I see reruns often. I can relate better to it than I can with the Simpsons.
Glad that you still enjoy it Dan.
I only watched a couple of first-run Simpsons episodes in probably the last six years, myself. I remember them losing their touch and putting out a few stinkers sometime in the later 90s, then kind of getting back on track. My impression now (and, obviously, I'm hardly an expert on recent ones) are: still great, but a little too much lowest-common-denominator in the humour, and way too many guest stars. And maybe not as much soul.
I guess I'm speaking of love for the Simpsons for what I remember it being in its best of years.
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