Futurama Cancelled: Get Over It
It seems like every single website I go to I find everyone "damning Fox" and getting up in arms about Futurama getting cancelled. And I can't help but wonder: who cares? I honestly don't care that Futurama was cancelled. Now don't get me wrong, I love Futurama, but what is the huge tragedy about Futurama being a short, good series? Futurama ended respectably without a single bad episode, and kept a good sense of continuity and its original artistic vision and integrity right up until the end. Futurama was put to rest while still being watchable and un-embarassing for all of its fans and people involved in making it and wasn't completely dragged out until it wasn't at all funny. Which brings me to my point (respect my segue):
The Simpsons sucks now. I'll repeat the sentence: The Simpsons sucks now. Allow me to reiterate: The Simpsons. Sucks. Now. Allow me to explain that statement: I said "The Simpsons sucks". I didn't say "The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be but it's still the best thing on TV". Also notice that I said "The Simpsons sucks now". I didn't say "The Simpsons sucked during the 'Mike Scully era' but now it's really improving that Al Jean is in charge". Some of you are probably thinking "Mike Scully? Al Jean? WTF?". Basically, Mike Scully became executive producer of the Simpsons during season nine and completely ruined the show by turning it into the half-hour super-wacky poorly-written guest star-filled hyphen-hyphen random-fest that you see today. Al Jean became executive producer of the show during season thirteen and kept the same streak of shit that Mike Scully started, possibly even made the show worse, but because the fanboys hate Mike Scully more than they are able to actually realize the shittiness of the show, they claim the show has improved since Al Jean took over. I honestly thought the thirteenth season of the Simpsons was the absolute worst ever, and that's before I knew about all the "Mike Scully/Al Jean" whatever crap. I can't make a judgement about the fourteenth season of the Simpsons (the season that just ended) because I honestly only watched about seven episodes that whole year, and they were the seven worst episodes of the Simpsons I have ever seen.
Seasons 1-8 of the Simpsons were all great. I would review them seperately but what would be the point. Up until season eight, the Simpsons was the best thing not called "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" on TV. Season nine was also a great season with some of my favorite episodes of the series although that was the season that the show started becoming shitty. Season ten was another good season, worse than season nine but the good things about the show just barely outweighed the bad. Season eleven was pretty much a waste of time with every season getting exponentially worse after that. In fact, I'm going to list every episode from season eleven and after that I actually liked.
Season 11:
Beyond Blunderdome
Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner
Treehouse of Horror X
Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder
Missionary: Impossible
Behind the Laughter
Season 12:
HOMR
Worst Episode Ever (:irony)
Children of a Lesser Clod
There you have it, every episode of the Simpsons that I genuinely enjoyed in the last four years. I didn't leave off seasons 13 and 14 by accident, neither of those seasons had an episode that I thought was any good at all. In fairness, I stopped watching the show about a third of the way into season fourteen, but season thirteen was in my opinion the worst season by by far. Gump Roast marks the first time in history that I watched an episode of the Simpsons without laughing once, and definitely not the last. I really hate it when people say "The Simpsons is still the best thing on TV". It's not. If season 11 was the first season, no one on earth would say it was the best thing on TV. The Simpsons is just coasting on "It is the Simpsons". If an episode was just a half hour of Homer taking a shit and it didn't have Mike Scully's name in the credits everyone would love it (thank you Doug for that joke).
Fuck, I tried to make a page about how much I hate people complaining about Futurama getting cancelled and it ends up becoming a rant on how the Simpsons sucks now. These days just about everything I do becomes a rant about how the Simpsons sucks now. But the point I was trying to make when I started this page is that it's really not that big a deal that Futurama got cancelled. Unlike the Simpsons, the show didn't last long enough to get handed down and handed down until it just became ran by comittee like any other sitcom. Futurama started off great, and ended better than it started. I'd rather have five awesome years of Futurama than have 30 years with only the first ten being worth a damn. So the show will never see Fry getting raped by a space-panda. Let's get over it and enjoy Futurama for its awesomeness, and not regret that it never did jump that shark. On a side note, I really hate my website.