Conan O'Brien gathered a bunch of glory era Simpsons writers together to talk about their experiences working on the show for his web talk show Serious Jibber-Jabber. The writers present are Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen, Jeff Martin, and, of course, Conan O'Brien, who wrote for the show himself in its fourth and fifth seasons. It's 81 minutes of Simpsons writers talking to each other, so enjoy!
CollegeHumor cut together every clip of someone playing a fake video game in The Simpsons. I mean, they probably missed one or two, what with there being 500 episodes of the show to sift through, so take it easy on me, commenters.
Here's a still from last night's new Simpsons episode, which featured one of the characters wearing a "Je Shirt" – the novelty Jay Leno/Che Guevara T-shirt line created by Jason Woliner of Human Giant and Eagleheart fame. The shirt was worn by the host of a Pawn Stars-y show that Homer is watching at the top of the episode. The reference was probably lost on the vast majority of the Simpsons audience but it's pretty great that Woliner's novelty T-shirt joke from three months ago has now been immortalized on The Simpsons. I bet this almost makes up for the novelty T-shirt line completely destroying his life.
First hired to write for The Simpsons at the start of its ninth season in 1997 (it's now in its 24th season and it's currently 2012, for those of you who aren't keeping score), Matt Selman never thought his job on the show would last this long. Over the years, Selman has risen to the ranks of executive producer and become one of the most prominent writers in Simpsons history. This Sunday, The Simpsons is airing an episode written by Selman that'll be of interest to comedy geeks everywhere because Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, and Patton Oswalt are guest starring as The Simpsons' cool new neighbor family from Portland. [...]
As part of The A.V. Club's ongoing series "TV Club 10," they tried to rank the 10 most "representative" episodes of The Simpsons today, choosing a string of episodes that best summarize the show. These aren't what they find to be the best episodes; they're the ones that best sum up everything the show can do (and can't do). With 500+ episodes to choose from, it's a rather daunting task (The A.V. Club calls it a "fool's errand"), but here's their list:
Just in time for the new season of Mad Men, here's The Simpsons' Breaking Bad parody. It's the opening couch gag to this Sunday's episode and makes use of one of Breaking Bad's best meth-cooking montage songs, "Crystal Blue Persuasion." This could have easily been a full episode of the show, but it makes for an action-packed, super long couch gag.
Over the past few weeks, Vulture has been holding its "Sitcom Smackdown" tournament, pitting a bunch of amazing shows against each other in a bracket to determine the best sitcom of the past 30 years. The Simpsons won yesterday, narrowly beating Cheers. Seinfeld, Community, Roseanne, Arrested Development, and Sex and the City also made it pretty far in bracket. Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz wrote the argument for why Simpsons is the better of the two excellent, very different shows:
A decade-plus past its prime, The Simpsons has a stronger presence in American life than Cheers, Seinfeld, Community, or any other sitcom you can think of. Since Matt Groening’s show debuted in [...]
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Sure, there were plenty of primetime animated series before The Simpsons, but they were few and far between in the late '80s and the influential Fox show singlehandedly led the charge in bringing cartoons back to primetime (and adult audiences) after over a decade-plus absence. The Flintstones was the first significant animated comedy to air in primetime, debuting on ABC in 1960. After it went off the air in 1966, there wasn't another one until another Hanna-Barbera series, Wait Till Your Father Comes Home, which aired in syndication from 1972 to 1974 and didn't [...]
This whole self-created fiscal cliff crisis is both complicated and simple at the same time: complicated in that it involves a whole slew of specific tax hikes and spending cuts that, if enacted, would have a huge effect on the economy, and simple in that it's just a bad thing that congress created in order to force themselves to actually do their jobs and they really hate that the time is now upon them to deal with it. Why stress about something you have no control over that'll almost definitely be taken care of in a satisfactory-enough manner when you can just have reliable old heartless billionaire Monty [...]
The spec episode of The Simpsons that comedy kingpin Judd Apatow wrote 22 years ago is finally getting made next season, Apatow announced in a nice, long interview with former Simpsons writer Conan O'Brien yesterday. Apatow revealed onstage at a screening of his new movie This Is 40 earlier this month that the first thing he ever wrote was an unsolicited episode of The Simpsons during the show's first season in 1990, with the episode revolving around Homer acting like a kid again after a hypnotist has a heart attack in the middle of performing on him. Homer then becomes carefree and irresponsible and best friends with [...]
Last year, Conan O'Brien launched his web series Serious Jibber-Jabber, a longform interview show that's seen him sitting down for hour-plus chats with the likes of Judd Apatow, Jack White, and Nate Silver. On Monday, he's debut a new episode that's a roundtable interview with a bunch of his fellow Simpsons writers. O'Brien, who served as a Simpsons writer/producer during its fourth and fifth seasons before leaving to become a talk show host, chose Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jeff Martin, and Jay Kogen to join him for the discussion, which, from the looks of this trailer, will be a rollicking good time.
If you're hoping for a sequel to 2007's Simpsons Movie, it looks like it's gonna be a while – if it ever happens. Speaking at an entertainment symposium this weekend, creator Matt Groening seemed pretty unenthusiastic about another movie based on the show, now in its 24th season. On the topic of the first movie, Groening said, "It took us four years, and it killed us," adding that the movie "stole animators from the show" and took up other resources. You'd think that the movie grossing over $500 million worldwide would prompt everyone involved to rush to make a second one, but that's not the case. Director [...]
Mike Scully is living proof that if you just spend your childhood watching TV and have no college degree or any other marketable skills, you can always fall back on show business.
[Full disclosure: the preceding line was Scully’s invention. Hey, sometimes you take an assist from a professional comedy writer, especially one as accomplished as he is.]
Scully is a television writer and producer perhaps best known as the showrunner for The Simpsons Seasons 9 through 12. Since then he’s had stints producing and writing for shows including Everybody Loves Raymond, Parks and Recreation, and The New Normal, where he’s currently a co-executive producer.
Scully’s won 6 Emmys, [...]
Not content with dominating three of Fox's "Animation Domination" sitcoms every week (Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show), Seth MacFarlane will be adding a fourth to his list: The Simpsons. Entertainment Weekly reports that MacFarlane already recorded a guest spot for the show's 25th season premiere, set to debut in the fall of 2013. Here's what EW says we can expect from the episode:
In the episode, titled "Dangers on a Train," Marge mistakes an Ashley Madison-type website for a Dolly Madison-type cupcake site, not realizing that it’s a destination for married people to arrange affairs. While on the site, she encounters the charming Ben (MacFarlane), who [...]
