Rate and Review: "The D'oh-cial Network" (PABF04)

[Friz]

so homer invents a daughter that invents a facebook, and then his dad breeds an alcoholic hippo but then doesnt show homer the alcoholic hippo which i think makes grampa really rubbish. why didnt he show homer the hippo? it made me feel bad for him but it still had some good homer lines 5/5

[Homer the Vigilante]

because it's quasi-illegal and could get the board in trouble you homophobe

I'm not fucking retarded. I'm JUST retarded, and I know why we can't do that here. And I have nothing against gays. Yeah.

[lionelhutz123]

They should also stop trying to parody real-life stuff that happens in real life. I mean this stuff has been going on in parking lots before, we all know what happens; why would we need to see it happen on The Simpsons. Moments like these make the show seem less like comedy and more like watching events you could encounter if you'd just go outside in your home. Who needs to drive to a shopping center or a theme park when you can just watch The Simpsons and catch our version of it?

What? It's down to earth satire of real-life things that made comedies like this or Seinfeld incredible in the first place. The classic era would only be about half-good if they weren't commended for this. The execution here of the parking lot however, is awfully forced and dragged out, but that doesn't mean that one of the most common forms of satire should be shunned entirely.

[Dark Homer]

I'm not fucking retarded. I'm JUST retarded, and I know why we can't do that here.

so why did you ask

And I have nothing against gays. Yeah.

aside from using gay as a pejorative I guess

[Zombies Rise from the Sea]

What? It's down to earth satire of real-life things that made comedies like this or Seinfeld incredible in the first place. The classic era would only be about half-good if they weren't commended for this. The execution here of the parking lot however, is awfully forced and dragged out, but that doesn't mean that one of the most common forms of satire should be shunned entirely.

I have to agree, somewhat forgot about Seinfeld when I was writing that and it is a good example of real-life satire done right. Point I made here is that The Simpsons seems to be doing this only to be "relevant" in the minds of viewers, as in "Hey, this is pretty relevant; why not include that into the episode." The parking lot thing has been going on for decades, The Simpsons could of satired it earlier (they may have done so in "Itchy & Scratchy Land".), hell; even Seinfeld could of satired it earlier. So why satire it now?

I'm not saying that it should be shunned entirely, I just hate it when it's executed in a forced and obvious way.

[Captain_Smiley]

At least it was better than last week's episode.

[Mr. Krikt]

Dear god, why did I watch this episode. When I heard about it I thought "no, for the first time in ages, I'll just skip it". I guess the writers finally saw the South Park episode. Seriously, the bit where Lisa's walking through the playground seems to be her realizing the same point that Stan makes.


This episode was so good, here, have two lists.

So random!

• Bart's a skateboard! xD
• Blocko!
• Lenny is addicted to Disney dolls!
• "As a food and pillow." Yeah, zoom in here, that was so hilarious.
• "Kearney will get a face full of ass-shrapnel." "Damn, I got asshrapped!" Am I supposed to laugh because he basically said what Bart did?

General

• Why did we need to watch them close the confectionery stand? All they needed to do was to flip the sign.
• Where the hell did Martin come from when Jimbo's beating up Bart?
• Nelson turns the room into a mess but when he leaves, the nerds/dorks/whatever are virtually on top of their chairs. Just what I've come to expect from the Simpsons.
• This Skinner exchange is so awkward. Then the same thing happens with the "hippo" exchange.
• "This is the latest and greatest computer... for the next three weeks." Apple don't update their computers every month. This is like when people complain about new iPods when they're updated once a year.
• I was convinced the guy who was waiting for the parking spot would reappear. They spent so long on it and it wasn't funny. This is after the long couch joke.
• "Wait a minute, grown-ups are on this?" This is right after Bart defriends Skinner.
• The most confusing thing is how the episode's resolved. Lisa closes her website (and let's pretend she didn't Mark Zuckerberg previously and the epilogue addresses other social media sites exist) and somehow, because her peers return to their previous lives, she's their friend? How? Why? Gratitude that she closed the website? Just terrible.
• Even the court scenes seemed to be padding the episode out. The same thing could have been accomplished through Lisa witnessing the devastation on screen. That's not to say simpler is better, but the court environment didn't provide anything.

This episode was heavily padded with the couch gag, hippo dialogue, Skinner and Chalmers exchange and so on and yet it still ends 18 minutes in. They even "jokingly" address how short it was. Honestly, they should be embarrassed. This episode could have been developed. Instead, we're treated to an incest joke and Dark Stanley's theme.
Honestly, I'd love to see someone strip down the nonsense like Homer bumping into the tram three times followed by Maggie and see how much decent content that this episode contains.

Can't wait to read what everyone else thinks.

Edit:

Why not? It's totally gay that we can't do dat!

Grow up.

[Zombies Rise from the Sea]

Honestly, I'd love to see someone strip down the nonsense like Homer bumping into the tram three times followed by Maggie and see how much decent content that this episode contains.

You don't need math to know that if you strip out the minutes of nonsense, it'll equate to an 11 minute segment ; similar to one you see on [adult swim] (not in content) or one of those children's shows that pairs it up with another segment.

[Mr. Krikt]

You don't need math to know that if you strip out the minutes of nonsense, it'll equate to an 11 minute segment ; similar to one you see on [adult swim] (not in content) or one of those children's shows that pairs it up with another segment.

You're probably right. In fact, I was wondering if the Simpsons might fare better as two 11 minute stories. Regular Show picks totally random subjects but adequately develops them within its allotted time. However, the Simpsons writers pick a subject and then work out how to fill up 22 minutes (or in this case, failing, despite starting with a long couch gag). It really does feel stretched.

What I would like to do is compile a list of blatent time-filling:

• Lenny randomly living in the shopping center.
• Alcoholic hippo dialogue.
• Skinner's hornet honey.
• The "In Memoriam" for the giftcards.
• Homer and the tram.
• ...etc.

Some of them are just clearly ridiculous, others just seem stretched to fill time.

[Kayla]

I know a lot of people were down on Greatest Story D'ohed and last week's ep. But this had to have been the most embarrassing episode in a very very very long time. I don't even know where to begin. I don't even think the staff was proud of it based on the padded couch gag and the short show recognition at the end, with a sketch that might have been cool if they hadn't already done it in Yokel Chords. The Social Network parody from that Krusty episode last month got dragged and retreated into an attempt at a full episode here. Re-using that much material within three episodes has to be a new record. The only genuine laugh for me was Lovejoy agreeing with Beaker. The other social media jokes were obvious as hell. The mall intro was surprisingly full of misses. And there was basically no story to this episode at all.

Last but not least, KILL THE FOUR ACT FORMAT immediately! The third act wasn't even two minutes long! Alright, enough steam blown off. This was bad.

i agree with this almost entirely. i spent most of the episode playing on my phone, and asked why the fuck i rewatched it. mapple jokes, lame puns relating to real life products, this felt like a parody of modern episodes rather than one itself. this episode and last week's have gotten my hopes down. holidays of future past is one of the best episodes in years, and IMO it's a modern classic. the 500th episode is coming up soon and i have little faith at this rate. prove me wrong. D-

[Kiyosuki]

I like how this episode was so boring that it not once, but twice actually called itself out on padding itself with absolutely useless scenes. So not only did it have a lot of uselessly padded on scenes, but it had to waste even more of its runtime pointing them out. When all the vindictive wasting of your time is stripped away, what's left? Now that's a depressing conundrum.

Though I don't know if I can fault the writing so much, it's just a really boring topic to begin with.

[Homer the Vigilante]

so why did you ask

aside from using gay as a pejorative I guess

Well I AM a retard, so...

[Boris Johnson]

I think it would be a much better episode had it been like The Computer Wore Menace Shoes.

[Bartesque]

I think it would be a much better episode had it been like The Computer Wore Menace Shoes.

So would almost every other HD episode.

[Bella Drape 'er]

I think it would be a much better episode had it been like The Computer Wore Menace Shoes.

To be honest, season 12 is dominating season 23 right now.

How unbelievably sad is that?

[Bleedin' Gums Murphy]

Very.

[Bella Drape 'er]

Anyway, this episode was another terrible Al Jean outing.

I vomited at the couch gag, and was in A&E by the second act. 1/5

And seriously, can the writers think of 22 min good stories anymore? They clearly just want to give up with that and turn each episode into a series of hit and miss shorts.

[Mr. Krikt]

Has anyone else talked about Mrs. Glick being in the court scene?
I mean, why kill a character and then have her appear a couple of episodes later?

[Comicshow MolemanBob]

I thought this was actually a pretty funny episode for the nine or so minutes that actually had anything to do with the episode! I mean seriously look at the list below...


*Long opening

*Courtroom scenes (This could have easily been a normal episode with no reason for Lisa to tell the whole story from the beginning)

*The scenes in the stores at the mall

*The Patty and Selma scene at the Olympics

*The black screens with writing on them ('Groundskeeper Willie was not in this episode' 'Mr Burns received money although he didn't do anything')

*The random short story at the end


Take all of this out and you get around ten minutes of actual story. Not good. This could have been a really great episode if they cut the stuff above out and actually gave the story more depth and emotion...

[Jesse Pinkman]

this is the only episode i can think of that didn't make me laugh. once. every other shit episode, like Greatest Story ever D'ohed, at least gave me a laugh or two. this was just abysmally bad. 1/5

[D DEBBS]

M-E-H...at least it was better than last week's ep!

[Boris Johnson]

It's not like Al Jean is a bad writer. He's a good writer.
He just has terrible, TERRIBLE managerial skills.

[uruguayo]

Good episode, lots of laughter, I don't liked the final with londres 2012.
Somewhat slow episode but a good plot. 4/5

[horatio huffnagel]

So, basically what I am hearing from most of you people is you don't want them to satire anything recent, semi-recent, or in the past? What can this show take reference from? Seriously, read through this review thread, these writers cannot touch anything! I liked this episode. It gave me laughs and a good story. It obviusly had a lot of filler, some of it too long, so I agree with most of you there. However, most of it was great. I loved the short at the end, The courtroom scenes were not filler. In fact, that was the one part of The Social Network they parodied very well I thought. Lots of good little jokes, (i.e. shakespeare, ralphisms, some of the memoriam giftcards and Burns' lawyer, both in general and his book), and the bigger, longer, ones worked for me, (jeeves, hippo). The look on Bart and Jimbo's faces as they beat the Martin pinata was just divinely hilarious. The twin boat race was bad. I wish they would have had any sort of buildup to that if they were gonna have that in the story. It could've been funny. Also, Otto riding bart was stupid. I'm with the majority who didn't like that part. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I gave it a 5/5 in the poll but I see from my post here that that rating isn't fair. So, 4/5 easy. More like a 4.6/5 for this guy.

[Mr. Krikt]

So, basically what I am hearing from most of you people is you don't want them to satire anything recent, semi-recent, or in the past?

No, they can satire things when the plot and jokes are entertaining without knowledge of the source material. Episodes used to be accessible by kids as well because they didn't need to know about Glenn Beck and the Tea Party to find the episode funny.
Satire requires some sort of intelligence as well; it should be an opportunity for the Simpsons to provide some observational humour. Instead, we're supposed to laugh because they've drawn yellow versions of presidential candidates.

Anyway, in regards to this episode, they're parodying a movie from 2010; over a whole year passed between it releasing and this episode being broadcast. Of course they can reference previous media but The Social Media isn't a classic. It's not a movie that people will watch or think about five years from now. I didn't see the movie so the court scenes, without any amusement to find in them, seemed absolutely superfluous.
South Park often cashes in on latest trends but their turn-around is a week or two; they're able to cash in on the fact that the issues are fresh on people's minds. Better yet, they do satirize the subjects. The Simpsons seems to think that recreating something with Homer makes it worth laughing at.

Perhaps it's the saturation as well. We've had Mad Men, Avatar, Glenn Beck and now The Social Network this season (so far) and not one of them has felt like more like satire/parody than "Simpsonization" of a trope. It seems like desperation when they choose to parody something and only manage 16 minutes and even then, it seems poorly padded.

[horatio huffnagel]

I like your argument Kirkt. I totally see your point and I agree with you on the avatar being a bad parody. I liked the Mad Men parody. That wasn't good satire but I found the parody of it very amusing. So, I guess I agree with you on that as well. I have not seen Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson yet, so I don't know what I think of that yet. My big disagreement with you is that The Social Network is in fact a great movie that does have staying power. This is just my opinion, but I think it will be remembered five years from now and The D'oh-cial Newtwork is a great parody of that great movie. That is probably why we disagree on this issue so much.

[HMS pinafore]

I like your argument Kirkt. I totally see your point and I agree with you on the avatar being a bad parody. I liked the Mad Men parody. That wasn't good satire but I found the parody of it very amusing. So, I guess I agree with you on that as well. I have not seen Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson yet, so I don't know what I think of that yet. My big disagreement with you is that The Social Network is in fact a great movie that does have staying power. This is just my opinion, but I think it will be remembered five years from now and The D'oh-cial Newtwork is a great parody of that great movie. That is probably why we disagree on this issue so much.

The problem is that this was not a satirical parody at all, it was a sub-par retelling of the social network with the shells of the "Simpson cast" with their characterizations changed to reflect the movie. I have no problem for them to satirize things, just their lack of satire in doing so.

[Boris Johnson]

Maybe they shouldn't focus story lines around modern stuff, but simply mention modern culture when there's space for it.
When you focus the story on something specific in modern pop culture, all energy and drive is lost. You have a shell of a story.

[The Governor]

So, basically what I am hearing from most of you people is you don't want them to satire anything recent, semi-recent, or in the past

You can't say we're criticizing the satire when there is none.

[The Spruce Moose]

yeah we sure hate satire. That's why Sideshow Bob Roberts, Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish, A Fish Called Selma, Bart's Inner Child, Homer the Great, Homer Badman, Much Apu About Nothing, Mayor Quimby, Chief Wiggum and Birch Barlow are all so disliked