The Daily Ping

FROM: dave
DATE: Saturday November 20, 2004 -- 8:33:01 am

Sorry, can't / won't help you on this one. It's still one of the best shows on television, because the bar, especially for comedies, keeps getting set lower and lower.

FROM: Robert [E-Mail]
DATE: Saturday November 20, 2004 -- 8:43:11 am

I agree with Dave. Nothing on network TV can touch it, even in its current lagging state. Anyway, they won't end the show until after the put out the movie. So sit back and enjoy a few more years of the show!

FROM: Dave Walls [E-Mail]
DATE: Saturday November 20, 2004 -- 9:22:58 am

Havent they had enough episodes where everyone dies? I've seen at least 3 episodes (Halloween eps not included) where everyone dies.

FROM: Mario500 [E-Mail]
DATE: Saturday November 20, 2004 -- 1:35:56 pm

"Moving On Up.....Finally" The Final Simpsons Episode (Part 1 and 4)


The Prologue:

The future appears bleak for our favorite Springfield family, after all how episodes focusing on long drawn out elements can the loyal viewer take. If you managed to take them, you were one brave soul, but there comes a particular time in every long running series' life that viewers must know that our characters will live on to explore bigger and better things, even after the show in long gone.


Summary:


Subplot #1: “Job Not Wanted at Springfield Elementary”

A new school is finally here for Springfield Elementary and both Bart and Lisa must endure a daily change in the daily routine, but budget crunches, the retirement of Superintendent Charmers, and Skinner obtaining that high valuable has resulted to only one conclusion: Mrs. Krabapple now teaches 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. Just when you thought Bart and Lisa attending the same classroom wasn't their only worry, but the thought of no principal for the majority of the school year puts a damper in Bart's plans. Not only Lisa was the first to break the news at the Simpson home, but for the first time ever she said....

"Marge, we need a principal immediately!”

Subplot #2: "A New, Yet Clearer Rod"

With Marge busy searching and handling the temporary duties of a principal of Springfield Elementary, Homer must tend to Maggie, Santa's Little Helper, and Snowball II while "managing" a bigger position at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, and all is made possible at the expense of a letter from Mr. Burns' "ailing mother". This so-called death bed letter would turn out to be a prank created 20 years ago and it comes back to haunt a certain Springfield resident. Oh yeah, and he's closer to Burns than anyone can get.


Subplot #3: “A Job Actually Wanted….?”

It only took a simple story sharing session at Springfield’s retirement home for Abraham Simpson to escape retirement and return to focus on the hobby of writing. After writing and publishing a non-fiction tale on 3 of Springfield’s most corrupt officials, Abe’s popularity reached the likes of Ken Brockman’s “Smartline”, Krusty’s 4:00 PM program, and Springfield City Hall. With threats ahoy at Springfield Elementary, Nuclear Power, and Mayor Joe “Diamond” Quimby’s reign as mayor, Abe couldn’t stand no more and decides to expand life after retirement by calling the decedents of the now deceased members of “Hell Fish” to form “Hell’s Fish and Pearls” to take back Springfield government to the people, with Moe’s Tavern and Duff Beer as their financiers. Their only opposition is shockingly the Reverend Lovejoy along with Marge’s entire family. As for their unaware financiers, Fat Tony and his gang, plus an entire Burns family fortune stolen under Homer’s watch.

FROM: ken
DATE: Sunday November 21, 2004 -- 12:21:16 am

Well, i do not agree with dave because there are good things coming out, have any one ever seen anything with ali g in it? or family guy? chapelle show is funny, maybe because you are all in ur 20's or 30's and i am still a teenager, well i guess it's like when u mature so does the simpsons, because i seem to find the older shows funnier than the new ones, but i mean after like 15 years they must run out of show ideas

FROM: Paul
DATE: Sunday November 21, 2004 -- 8:49:46 am

Show me anything in my original Ping that says I think the show should end.

Just an exercise, people, just an exercise... put your pens and pencils down....

FROM: Ryan [E-Mail]
DATE: Sunday November 21, 2004 -- 11:29:46 am

Maybe they were just remembering this:

I'm a Simpsons fan, but I think it's time to hang it up. It just isn't that good anymore.

:)

FROM: Joseph
DATE: Monday November 22, 2004 -- 5:09:24 pm

One nice thing about the Simpsons, they haven't done the ol' "Let's Remember" bit, where the characters just sit around and rehash old footage from old episodes. But, if they did (I'm not really a Simpsons encyclopedia), I'm sure it would be presented in spoof form.

How to kill it? Do what all shows do played by real actors and actresses do: start changing characters permanently. Have Marge be "played" by another cartoon "actress" with a different drawing and voice, but have none of the other cast members notice. Then, have Bart, Lisa and Maggie grow up and not be cute anymore. Let's have Bart try to get a job as a teenager--he'd sort of be a "Friends" Joey-like character, but with a wicked acid tongue. We'd tire of the young adult Bart quickly.

Lisa can have her spin off show where she rules on the college campus. Do we really want to see the episode where Lisa sleeps with her Oxford Don only to find out the he's a skirt-chasing academic fraud? Oh yeah, shows like this last forever.

Let Maggie grow up and be absolutely mundane. I'm yawning already.

You also have to start losing the timing, date the set, and of course, one of the cartoon actors has to die, and the show will have to scramble a rewrite to have the character "die" on the show--like what happened with John Ritter.

Pretty soon, we'd all be sick of it. I think we stop liking shows that we once liked because we no longer recognize them. That's where cartoons can always deliver.

The Simpsons would just do the above, but make it an episode only, and actually be mocking the average sitcom and exalting in its own unique form of ever-lasting life. The show would be back to ,eh, normal the next week. The super resiliency is why it remains, even if it is not quite as good as it used to be. We still recognize it and enjoy it, even if not as much as we used to. It taps into that part of us that never grows up, and the best part is, it doesn't have to ever grow up itself.

I suppose one of the voice actors could die, or the look could change. This is the main reason I find modern renditions of the Flinstones so unappealing. The Fred and Barney of the Pebbles commercials are not the Fred and Barney I knew as a kid. The bear some resemblance, but they don't look or sound the same. The Flinstones did do a grown up Pebbles and Bam-Bam, where they were teens; SUCKED. There was even a Charlie Brown cheapo Saturday morning cartoon I once caught a glimpse of. The drawings and the voices were all wrong. SUCK.

The creators of the Simpsons know too much of these failures to try to change the look of the Simpsons that much. They've probably got hundreds of episodes already recorded in advance in case some change in the voice actors happens. Of course, they could probably generate the voice these days.

I'm afraid the Simpsons can have many last episodes and still not die.

FROM: ginger AL
DATE: Thursday January 13, 2005 -- 2:59:32 am

Bart wakes up in hospital bed years older, and is greeted by the rest of his family- all older including Maggie- who tell him he's been in a coma since he beaned his head trying to steal a bust stop sign at age ten (the original opening sceene) and the last 15 years were a dream.

FROM: Weston Thomas
DATE: Wednesday January 26, 2005 -- 9:02:43 pm

The simpsons has always been a favorite of mine, but lately it has become a rehash of old ideas and un-funny jokes. The sad reality is that when you have made the some of funniest moments on network TV come alive, you eventually can no longer top them.