Something occurred to me recently: while Family Guy's spent the last couple seasons trying to focus on actual plots and characters instead of just cutting away to references to other things and general weirdness, Simpsons has been going in much the opposite direction.
And, while Family Guy has had limited success focusing on its characters (because its cast consists of Brian, Stewie, and a bunch of one-note gag characters), Simpsons has pulled off some pretty good shit when it's broken form. The couch gags by Banksy and John K were both excellent, and the best episode of last year was Angry Dad: The Movie, entirely on the strength of its pastiches of cartoons by Aardman, Pixar, et al. And that Muppet episode wasn't bad either.
So of course one of the many things that's vexing about The Simpsons' general lack of quality is that it really is just a couple of fresh ideas away from being GOOD.
I'd love to see them continue with stuff like this. To hell with the stock sitcom plots, I want more weirdness. I want them to get more surprise artists, even if it's only to storyboard a single scene.
The latest Treehouse of Horror comic is phenomenal, and it's because they got a fantastic indy comics artist to do it in a different style and play the whole thing up as an homage to the EC era. (Which actually describes most Treehouse of Horror comics, but they played it up even more this year.) I realize it's a lot more expensive to change up art styles in a cartoon than a comic, but the show's got plenty of damn money no matter what Fox may say.
The other problem is, they pay their writers shit. Presumably that's why all the best ones are off doing more lucrative things now. I'd love to see a season 25 where each classic writer scripts an episode -- one for Brad Bird, one for Conan O'Brien, one for Jason Schwartzwelder, and so on -- but that's only slightly more likely than Phil Hartman coming back to the show.
More's the pity.
