On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:44:00PM -0500, Reggie Bautista wrote: > The writing quality has been going down all season, IMHO. It hasn't been as > clever, as coherent, or as satisfying as it has been in most of the past > years of the show. :-(
Yeah, it does seem to be slumping, doesn't it? I wasn't all that impressed with last year's episodes, either. In their "prime" the writers seemed to have this wonderful balance of chaos and structure. Most of the best episodes start out travelling along one story line, then a number of absurdities happen, and the rest of the episode follows a completely different story than the beginning. Add in a steady stream of hilarity and you've got a wonderful Simpsons episode. Starting a year or two ago, though, the writers seemed to lose a handle on the kind of insanity that would "work" in an episode. Things are still as absurd as ever, but it just isn't wrapped together quite as nicely as it could have been. Many of the episodes kind of careen around a bit with entirely random events, without the "glue" that seemed to keep the episodes together previously. Still, some of them slip into the groove. I thought last week's was brilliant (where Homer starts taking Medical Marijuana), and I actually enjoyed the Rio episode quite a bit. But anyway, I'm babbling incoherently now, so I'll stop. :P -CJ -- WOW: Nyctitropic | "Let us rain some DOOM upon the filthy heads apocalyptech.com/wow | of our DOOMED enemies!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] | - Zim
