Agree with this for the most part. I'll give it a chance, saw the first episode, not great but it had a few jokes that worked, some background sight gags. Some potential there, less than 5 hours to watch, I'll give it a few more episodes.
Just finished episode 1. It was okay -- not brilliant, but it had its funny moments. As I said before, I like the fact that the lead characters are aspiring to something better rather than just being dissolute slobs and underachievers like the usual Groening protagonists. I mean, okay, Bean is kind of a dissolute slob too, but if anything she's an overachiever at it, and it's an act of rebellion rather than just laziness. Nice to see the return of the Futurama animation style and much of its voice cast, though I wish they'd brought back Christopher Tyng to do the music; Mark Mothersbaugh's work is not impressing me.
I missed this myself until I saw it mentioned in the show's Wikipedia article, but the finale had a post-credits scene: Spoiler: Finale post-credits scene Elfo's body washes up on a shore and two arms reach out and lift him out of the water.
Thoughts on episode 3: Spoiler I would’ve liked the opening sequence better without the implication that they left that woman to drown. That’s too dark for my tastes, and it doesn’t fit a narrative where a demon is trying to corrupt the protagonist but hasn’t fully succeeded yet if practically the first thing she does is let someone die. I mean, that goes way, way beyond being only mildly corrupted. Besides, that noblewoman was probably as repressed and trapped in her life as Bean feared becoming (given that she apparently never learned to swim), so it seems it would’ve been more in character if Bean had been less callous toward her. It seemed to me at one point, toward the end of the throne-room scene after Bean and the others were caught, that John DiMaggio put a bit of Archie Bunker into the king’s delivery. Or maybe it was Sergeant Carter.
Once the story arc kicks in, the show gets a lot better. I'm now looking forward to season 2 (whichever one that is). The vocal talent included Matt Berry and Noel Fielding, I was pleased to hear.
We're six episodes in. Watching with my wife and eleven year old son. They've liked it all the way through, I thought the first four episodes were something of a chore to get through. But, with episodes five and six, it seems like they are hitting on all cylinders.
Caught the first episode, and I was surprised that it was funnier than my expectations, which were admittedly pretty low, just accounting for how I didn't necessarily love Futurama when it first started. It was actually several years later before I discovered how much better it was than its first season (which I would learn to love later). The first episode's Futurama format wasn't a pro or a con for me, but there were a couple jokes thrown in there were I definitely thought, 'This is Groening comedy in top form.' I think overall I'm going to really like this show by the end, but probably not as much as Futurama. I was really off-put by his reaction to The Problem With Apu, and felt that he really, REALLY missed the point. I was afraid that Groening had kinda...lost touch, I guess is the best way of putting it? That the humor would be too outdated because his opinion on that particular subject was, to me, outdated. I was afraid that he moving too far into cringe territory.
People call these Groening's shows, but how often does he actually get a writing credit on any of them? He creates the characters and premises and designs, but it's generally other writers/producers who do the bulk of it, or so it seems to me.
That's how I felt, too. Not only does he not seem to understand the fundamental issues (or even the purpose of The Problem with Apu), he doesn't even seem to have any interest in understanding the issues. Fortunately, as Christopher already covered, Groening doesn't have as much direct involvement with Futurama and Disenchantment beyond the initial development (not far from what J.J. Abrams does with live television). Futurama was essentially David X. Cohen and Ken Keeler's show and Disenchantment is essentially Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley's show. Hell, if a quick look at IMDb is to believed, he hasn't even directly written that much of The Simpsons and not since 1996.
Yeah, it was the willful ignorance that put me off. It was as if he only heard about the problem second or third hand and that was the reaction he stuck with. I remember clearly in The Simpsons dvd commentary many times Groening said, "I didn't like this idea," or "I was completely against this idea," and sometimes, "I really hated this," but always with a chuckle. He only really seemed to have a strong hand in the show the first few seasons. I think by the time they had the crossover with The Critic he had given up most control.
I believe so. I remember watching it with my friend and both of us going, 'David X. Cohen!' during one point, lol.
Yeah, he is, but I don't know how big his role is with the production team (other than as a writer). Wikipedia lists him as a producer instead of an executive producer.
The thing about the Simpsons is that it designed the majority of its characters in the early 90s, when cheap stupid racial stereotypes were the norm on television, then times changed and it was stuck with all those characters. Like, there's some jokes Craig Kilborn made on the Daily Show pretty much every night that are just as bad or worse than Apu. Stuff that if he said today he would be canceled tomorrow, but in 1998, it was like "Whatever, that's just comedy". Will check out Disenchantment soon.
I dunno about that. Even back in the '90s, I always felt that The Simpsons embraced its ethnic stereotypes a lot more blatantly than most shows -- along with other stereotypes, like its portrayal of the elderly. Of course, it portrayed every character type in an exaggerated and unflattering way -- most professionals were portrayed as incompetent, corrupt, or clueless, and it was something of an equal-opportunity offender, though I felt that its ready embrace of stereotypes was a lazy and cheap way to go for a joke. It's hard to remember now that The Simpsons is seen as this cozy, routine, traditional thing, but at the start, it was a very transgressive, boundary-pushing show, infamous for defying the normal standards of good taste on TV. It embraced being controversial and tearing through the envelope. So, yeah, there was plenty of ethnic humor like this back then, but not on commercial TV as a rule, not to the same degree that The Simpsons took it. The show (along with other FOX shows at the time) broke down the barriers of what was considered polite and acceptable on mainstream TV, for better and for worse. Heck, if anything, The Simpsons' ethnic humor was a throwback to the tradition of exaggerated ethnic stereotypes in vaudeville, radio, and classic cartoons -- Chico Marx, Mr. Kitzel, Speedy Gonzalez, etc., not to mention all the minstrel-show black stereotypes of the era. If anything, The Simpsons was often poking fun at the absurdity of the stereotypes themselves rather than using the stereotypes to be insulting.
I guess it's a little more so than you saw in some comedy, but I quote this sketch from Craig Kilborn, after Derek Jeter and Mariah Carey broke up. "They were both half Mexican and half Irish, a combination that left them too drunk to get high." He continued. "You think that's racist? Yeah, it's called comedy." He continued to do variations of the same joke with every other racial stereotype he could think of, just as examples. I'm not saying it's okay, just that it was considered normal.