In defense of The Simpsons

*Sigh* I never thought I would have to write this. Here goes anyhow. One of my favorite shows of all time "The Simpsons" stands at the threat of being cancelled. This is despite other shows of the same nature (Family Guy) having 2 or 3 spin-offs running smoothly. This is sad. Whenever I defend The Simpsons in public or whenever I hear The Simpsons being talked about in public lately, a lot of people accuse it of not being funny anymore, and having grown stale. More recently, people have said that Family Guy is a much better show and that Simpsons should be cancelled to leave more space in programming to that show.

I'm sorry but that is just not true.

Like a lot of other kids of my generation, The Simpsons were one of my first mature satirical influences. These were dark times in Scandinavia, only 3 channels and most of them only showed local bad comedy or reruns of The Muppets Show to trick you into having a glimmer of hope that the monopolic channels might actually show something of quality for a change. Then, in 1995, a channel called TV3 burst onto Danish television, showing all of the sugarcoated American nonsense from the 80's that everyone missed if they didn't get it on VHS. Sooner or later, Simpsons started getting shown on Danish television and when I became old enough (Around 8) I was hooked. The family was dysfunctional as hell and reminded me alot of my own family. And as they say, truly good comedy makes people laugh at themselves. This is perhaps why Homer Simpson may be dumb and egotistical, but unlike Peter Griffin he actually cares about his family and will do anything he can to make them happy.

That's what I like about The Simpsons, and why I don't really care about Family Guy. Family Guy is just a collection of people who's cherishment of one another is dependent on comedic value. The charactirazations of the Griffins feels like easily modeled high concepts, with only few steadfast characterpoints that isn't thrown to the wind unlike the rest of the charactarizations if a joke calls for it. A very easy example lies in Peter. Peter is supposed to be catholic, but this is only brought up when it's convenient. Instead he goes and does all sorts of stuff like creating a church dedicated to The Fonze. If the creators intention with Peter Griffin was to make fun of catholics, they failed miserably.

I'm very fond of South Park, we know who the characters are, and although they're completely bizarre they don't just go and do stuff that they really... wouldn't do. For instance, we know that Cartman is a anti-semitic asshole of a kid, so we know that he's not suddenly gonna go pick flowers and dance around in a tutu.. unless brainwashed of course.

I see Simpsons as a classier South Park (No dancing poop), and a valuable asset to the comedic scene. And Family Guy? Uh.. Am I the only one that feels like I'm watching some animation a fanboy made to a stand-up perfomance? It doesn't really feel like a show.