Overrated episodes

Portrait of a Lackey on Fire, My Octopus and a Teacher, I'm Dancing as Fat as I Can and Looking for Mr. Goodbart have mixed receptions, what the hell are you saying?

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they're "overrated"
 
Sandboy said:
Portrait of a Lackey on Fire, My Octopus and a Teacher, I'm Dancing as Fat as I Can and Looking for Mr. Goodbart have mixed receptions, what the hell are you saying?

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they're "overrated
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I know that. Overrated also means I don't like an episode as much as others. I've also seen some praise levyed towards these episodes too.
 
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Just to throw it in there, I still don't quite get the hype around Bart Has Two Mommies. The only bit in it that makes me laugh every time is Marge pretending to be a Star War
 
BarttheBigBadWolf said:
I know that. Overrated also means I don't like an episode as much as others. I've also seen some praise levyed towards these episodes too.
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"Overrated" is not a term to say when you don't like something that others do. Overrated is a term that applies to things you don't like and you can't understand why others do.

Also, just because you've seen some compliments doesn't mean they're overrated. Just for one example, 'My Octopus and a Teacher' may have a fan base but that doesn't equate to everyone liking that episode. As the most recent discussion that arose in the opinion thread of season 34, It does not mean that this episode continues to have a mixed reception. So no, it doesn't qualify as overrated because the reception is pretty uneven.
 
I don’t really care for Homers night out bc it’s a weak premise: marge misunderstands causing into a marriage crisis that is probably the worst part about going back to season 1 is has WAY too much of these and it seems rush at the end just bc Homer seemed sorry enough to give a speech doesn’t mean he wouldn’t do it again especially how much of these crisis we got! Overall it’s a 4 out of 10
 
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This thread is odd.

A lot of the episodes I'm seeing on users' lists seem to be episodes from the Scully or early Jean era that are largely considered to be mediocre at best.

At the same time, there's no real way to quantify "overratedness". I don't have the numbers to prove that Bart Has Two Mommies isn't beloved (and I don't think anyone does), but my perception is that it's not and it's usually considered so-so, so how it could be "overrated" isn't clear to me.

An example brought up in a previous thread might be Last Exit to Springfield. This episode is frequently cited as the GOAT and the series at its pinnacale. It is a great episode. It would not be my personal choice for the #1 spot.

I wouldn't say that "overrated" is defined by not understanding why others like something. I understand why people considered Last Exit to Springfield to be the greatest episode of all time. I just don't agree with that, so in my opinion the way it is rated is too high. Hence, overrated. Overrated does not mean the episode is bad and it does not mean I don't get why people like it. It means that it is held in a higher esteem than I would hold it in. Then again, I feel sometimes like this is similar to my spiel about "aged poorly", in that overrated is a harsh term, and it implies the episode doesn't deserve its rating or that the person who finds it overrated doesn't like it (which is not the case for how I feel about Last Exit to Springfield).

I would also say that referring to seasons 13-17 as a "Silver Age/Renaissance", an opinion I encounter on this forum sometimes, is overrating that era. This opinion is not common outside of niche Simpsons superfan circles though.
 
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@Nitsy Yeah I noticed that about most of the post-classic episodes mentioned here. In general, most post-classic episodes aren’t even that well liked, so how can you call them overrated? However, anytime I see some article like “10 Modern Simpsons episodes just as good as Classic Simpsons” that’s when I call BS. *Those* are the Modern Simpsons episodes that are grossly overrated, mainly by Modern Simpsons apologists. Episodes like HOFP, Brick Like Me, Flanders’s Ladder, and Thanksgiving Of Horror often make the cut. Are these just as good as classic Simpsons? I doubt most people would say that. Even the most die hard apologists of Modern Simpsons would probably admit they can’t be compared with the best of the classic era. At best, they’re better than average for the seasons they aired in.

Some episodes that people mentioned in this thread don’t even appear in lists like those and are forgotten by almost everyone. Like you mentioned, Bart Has Two Mommies is usually considered another ho-hum episode from season 17 and is mostly bland, inoffensive, and forgettable. If anything from season 17 is overrated, it’s definitely the Seemingly Never-Ending Story, which I recall actually won an Emmy. Must have been a very slow year. I’ll admit, the concept for that episode sounded interesting on paper, but when I watched it, it’s just another Modern Simpsons episode that doesn’t leave much of an impression on me.
 
I never liked holidays. Jenda is a bitch, Bart's kids have no personality and bland designs (Bart with combed hair or Bart with glasses), Milhouse is useless, Zia is just a grump, I can't even remember what Marge did besides force people to pose for Christmas cards. Only Homer and slightly Lisa and Bart (this is the one where they have a heart to heart in the treehouse right) come out looking good. And we continue the Maggie won't talk gag that is just boring and played out by now. And Maggie Jr looking just like her is also lazy.
 
I consider two episodes, "Marge vs. the Monorail", and, "Cape Feare", to be overrated.

They're okay episodes, they're not my very favorites, but I don't hate them, either.
 
Sandboy said:
"Overrated" is not a term to say when you don't like something that others do. Overrated is a term that applies to things you don't like and you can't understand why others do.

Also, just because you've seen some compliments doesn't mean they're overrated. Just for one example, 'My Octopus and a Teacher' may have a fan base but that doesn't equate to everyone liking that episode. As the most recent discussion that arose in the opinion thread of season 34, It does not mean that this episode continues to have a mixed reception. So no, it doesn't qualify as overrated because the reception is pretty uneven.
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I think its very possible for something with a mixed reception to be seen as overrated. In fact I'll give one. The Simpsons Movie. A pretty good movie, yes. The last time the show was good? Absolutely ridiculous, even a decade ago.
 
I did not care for “Holidays of Future Passed” at all.

I could get analytical on why I didn’t care for The Simpsons Movie even though there were some strong ideas floating around in there, but the bottom line is it was miserable. The whole runtime of the movie is spent destroying Homer’s relationships with his family, specifically Marge and Bart, in a way that the film goes out of its way to make feel definitive and final (Marge leaves him and tapes over her wedding video, Bart abandons him for Flanders and doesn’t even want to spend his dying moments with him). Then the movie spends about ten minutes slapping the family haphazardly back together so there can still be a show. It’s such an uncomfortable watch, it’s like a thesis on why the family should break up with a quick “just kidding” right before the credits. Maybe I’m sensitive but I loved the complicated yet close relationships Homer had with his family in the 90s episodes and it was just sad to see how far things had fallen. When they jumped Springfield Gorge I was going “How dare this abusive version of Homer call back to a moment of such unselfish parental love.”

Also, blaming him for getting the town put under the dome was so stupid, that was just about the only thing in the movie that you couldn’t blame him for. It was everybody’s fault the lake was that bad and they’d only stopped dumping at all because Lisa warned them. So what, you’re going to run her family out of town because her dad was the last straw? I wouldn’t care, because this is classic Springfield, except the writers seemed to agree with them.
 
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Going back through this thread I want to express my frustration with “Barthood,” an episode I loved the look and concept of (the designs of the characters at varying ages were brilliant) but had so many writing issues with. Very tell-y dialogue aside, it just seemed sad to have this great chance to explore Bart’s life as a bigger picture and then conclude that Homer and Lisa are the worst things in it. How are you seriously going to decide that the problem with Homer and Bart’s relationship is that they’ve never bonded? They’ve got issues for days, but that ain’t one of them.

I’m thinking specifically of a scene where Bart’s a teenager, Marge is leaving to take Lisa on a trip, and she tells Homer to try and spend some time with Bart because it might be his last chance to form a close relationship with him. You could do the exact same scene with Marge saying “you guys have barely talked since he started high school” or something along those lines, and it would still be a strong conflict, but the stakes are just raised so high in a way that doesn’t relate to the show.
 
CousinMerl said:
'A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again' I still find one of the most overrated modern episodes, unpopular as that opinion seem to be. It is one of the more popular HD era episodes and is hailed as one of the best post-classics (it made onto the Top 30 Best HD Episodes list as well) but I just don't see this great modern episode. It has a very good premise and started out good with some really good moments and humor, but around halfway in it turned pretty contrived, cartoonish and mean-spirited and I just couldn't get into that.
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I agree Bart was at his worst. He said he did it for his family but I didn't like what he did.
 
sideshow ken said:
I agree Bart was at his worst. He said he did it for his family but I didn't like what he did.
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It wasn't Bart I had a problem in that episode ('A Totally Fun Thing'), seeing as I did like his portrayal overall even though he went too far (especially ignoring every else suffering, despite living in a delusion), it was the other stuff that got too over the top & cruel & nonsensical in the last third (topped with the family being left to die in the arctic, which just didn't work for me. Then it's all magically solved off screen by having the family somehow getting back home, which was kind of lazy. I wish they would have gone less Scully-like goofy & silly).

I will say that I probably like it more now than I did before, but it's mostly just due to the first two thirds that are pretty solid.
 
I like “A Totally Fun Thing” a lot and appreciate it as one of the more thoughtful and original HD era episodes, but I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t first seen it when I watched it for a class where we read the David Foster Wallace essay it’s ostensibly based on (about being on a cruise ship). The essay is about how the sheer excess of pampering on a luxury cruise is kind of despair-inducing because it feels like some kind of weird attempt to cope with being mortal (with a lot of great commentary on what an authoritarian environment it actually is when you can’t do anything for yourself), and it just has such a specifically 90s Simpsons kind of bite that I can’t help but wonder what the show would have done with it around seasons 6–8. I think they would have made an all-time classic piece of satire about the vacation industry we’d still be talking about today.

As it is, the episode could have been financially backed by Big Cruise Ship—it plays the cruise as really being everything it’s cracked up to be, with the conflict all stemming from Bart’s fear that it’s a high point he’ll never rise to again. It’s an episode that does an excellent job doing exactly what it aspired to do and ultimately serves as a meaningful meditation about taking life as it comes, but I can’t help but feel like it could have stood to poke a few more holes in the cruise ship’s perfect edifice (other than by forcing an apocalypse on board, which doesn’t really satirize the cruise because that would get pretty hectic anywhere). You could probably still do the Bart plot the same way, the kid loves plenty of things that are severely flawed. He loves Krusty the Clown!
 
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