Kiyosuki
Profound Sadness
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2006
- Messages
- 4,411
I don't hate the show really, but it's undeniably not as good as before. There are some who venemously hate it now, but many others are either just neutral to it or have moved on if they're not big on the change and I sort of fall in with the former. It's not like you either have to despise it and be questioned for doing so or love it absolutely.
For me personally, the thing with the "It hasn't gotten worse it's just different" argument is that it assumes that something can never change for the worse, just "change", which is silly. I've tried to judge myself before on whether or not I'm letting nostalgia cloud my judgement on something, and with this show I just can't see no matter how hard I try this just being just a new version of something old, it comes across to me as something just tired. Sad thing is that I don't think the show had to have aged this badly personally, I think things could have gone down better.
There's all sorts of reasons why and I'm gonna turn this into a text book if I go that into it, which I kind of don't want to do, but I will say that one thing that I think was sort of lost along the way was the show's propensity to twist expectations. It's never been hard to guess what happens at the end of an episode, thanks to that status quo, but often times I feel like the show at unexpected times had a great ability to twist the general expectations most would maybe have of a character and what they represent, or the subject matter. Like the AV club did a great little review of Oh Brother Where Art Thou (Where Homer first meets his half brother), and went on about how it twisted the old trope of the average joe being wise and teaching the rich guy a thing or two. It didn't turn out that way at all of course. There's other stuff, like things just getting more obnoxious and playing the status quo for a joke a bit too much, and the characters getting more and more gimmicky which is sort of the saddest thing for me sometimes but at the end of the day...I think the current show just sort of takes itself at face value a lot more, trying to just be an entertaining cartoon and that's where it sort of lost its spice I think.
It is true that it's been on for more than 20 years now but this stuff started way before that, and like I said I don't think it had to age quite this way, but it did. A little more personally too I find it kind of bittersweet, I feel like this show sort of became what it originally set out to be against. It may have helped sell more merchandise, but I feel like what made it something special's being lost in there somewhere now years later. It's now one of those things to be anti-establishment towards. I know after all these years that's inevitable, but considering I grew up with this show it still feels a little bad no matter what. I don't hate it per se, I still watch it every now and then, but I can never get over how it's gone as far as them even making a theme park ride of this show. It's a little surreal to me.
For me personally, the thing with the "It hasn't gotten worse it's just different" argument is that it assumes that something can never change for the worse, just "change", which is silly. I've tried to judge myself before on whether or not I'm letting nostalgia cloud my judgement on something, and with this show I just can't see no matter how hard I try this just being just a new version of something old, it comes across to me as something just tired. Sad thing is that I don't think the show had to have aged this badly personally, I think things could have gone down better.
There's all sorts of reasons why and I'm gonna turn this into a text book if I go that into it, which I kind of don't want to do, but I will say that one thing that I think was sort of lost along the way was the show's propensity to twist expectations. It's never been hard to guess what happens at the end of an episode, thanks to that status quo, but often times I feel like the show at unexpected times had a great ability to twist the general expectations most would maybe have of a character and what they represent, or the subject matter. Like the AV club did a great little review of Oh Brother Where Art Thou (Where Homer first meets his half brother), and went on about how it twisted the old trope of the average joe being wise and teaching the rich guy a thing or two. It didn't turn out that way at all of course. There's other stuff, like things just getting more obnoxious and playing the status quo for a joke a bit too much, and the characters getting more and more gimmicky which is sort of the saddest thing for me sometimes but at the end of the day...I think the current show just sort of takes itself at face value a lot more, trying to just be an entertaining cartoon and that's where it sort of lost its spice I think.
It is true that it's been on for more than 20 years now but this stuff started way before that, and like I said I don't think it had to age quite this way, but it did. A little more personally too I find it kind of bittersweet, I feel like this show sort of became what it originally set out to be against. It may have helped sell more merchandise, but I feel like what made it something special's being lost in there somewhere now years later. It's now one of those things to be anti-establishment towards. I know after all these years that's inevitable, but considering I grew up with this show it still feels a little bad no matter what. I don't hate it per se, I still watch it every now and then, but I can never get over how it's gone as far as them even making a theme park ride of this show. It's a little surreal to me.
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