I really liked Just The Two Of Us, in fact it's one of my favorite mid-run Fairly Oddparents episodes - I really like the idea of one of Timmy's shortsighted wishes making someone go crazy, and I really like that they did it with Trixie who barely ever gets any real development. I thought the fact that the joke was that Timmy thinks "being the only two people on Earth is romantic" when it's really "being the only two people on Earth is soul-crushingly lonely" was pretty nifty, especially with the idea that Trixie really doesn't take total and utter solitude well.
It's like in going insane, Trixie became an odd version of Only Sane Man. The main serious issue with the episode (that I can remember) was the constant gender role / relationship gags, which at that point of the show Cosmo was belting out like way too much.
But still, I always figured most of the hate it got was from the shipping crowd - since it's not like the series doesn't tweak it's characters' personalities for the sake of funny and the plot all the time.
edited 23rd Mar '14 9:09:07 AM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Burns is supposed to be a villain, though. Of course he's going to get away with bad things. Besides, The Simpsons isn't a kids' show. There don't need to be morals about good and evil. The (mostly) adult fanbase have learned about those things long ago and we also learned that bad people get away with heinous acts sometimes. That's life.
This episode isn't infamous for being hated anyways. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
edited 23rd Mar '14 9:32:06 AM by redhed311
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
A very interesting defense of the episode.
I figured the shipping crowd were 99% of the people who ramble and rave about this anyway.
Crap. You're right...
Back to the drawing board with that one.
edited 23rd Mar '14 9:42:10 AM by Aldo930
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Song Of The South: The blacks in the movie.
I just can't see anything that's supposed to be racist about Uncle Remus and the other. And no. This isn't about Values Dissonance. This movie has been called racist since day one for cry of god.
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I think it's the way the movie completely fails to acknowledge that all the black people in the movie are slaves to the white family and the idyllic way it portrays their lives.
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
The movie apparently takes place after the Civil War.
Technically the slaves wouldn't be slaves.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Calling them "the blacks" probably doesn't help.
Yeah. Uncle Remus can leave the plantation at will, so they were only workers.
The movie didn't address it, so i can relate on why some people thought that they were slaves.
Still, the fact that those Afro-Americans were treated nicely and took some big role in the movie made me think that the backlash against the movie's nothing but one hell of Political Correctness Gone Mad.
Still just awesome like that
It still whitewashes history, in a sense, though. Just because they were free doesn't mean they were then treated fairly, paid fair wages, lived in relative comfort, were perfectly okay with still being subservient to whitey, etc. And the fact that the actor who played Uncle Remus was barred from attending the premiere of the movie (you know, the movie in which he starred and sang what would become one of Disney's most popular songs) doesn't help matters.
Insert witty 'n clever quip here.
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
Well, it was the 40s. You couldn't really do that in a movie back then.
That also explains why James Baskett couldn't attend the movie; it was the 40s, he was in the South, segregation was still on the books. Sad, but true.
He did get an Oscar though.
edited 23rd Mar '14 6:47:31 PM by Aldo930
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Still just awesome like that
Honestly, I'd say they should've maybe tried a different framing plot for that movie then. I'm sure there's something they could've done in, say, a more recent time period...eh, on second thought, I'm not sure there's much that could've been done to dash away its less-than-stellar implications. But then, you're right, it's something that was kind of standard for the time, so eh.
Insert witty 'n clever quip here.
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
That actually was the framing device for the old Uncle Remus stories that the movie was based off of.
So I'd say they were trying to be accurate to Joel Chandler Harris' work.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
It's freakin Disney. And they made a movie about a man interacted with an animated Rabbit. What do you expect? A super gritty movie about the oppression of Afro-Americans?
Oh, and your statement about the whitening of history also showed that no matter what this movie did at it's time, it will always be considered as racist. This movie portrayed blac-um, Afro-Americans in a good way, and plenty of critics and audience reacted as if this's the most offensive thing in the world.
There's a reason for why Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales.
edited 23rd Mar '14 7:31:38 PM by Fakhrulez
Still just awesome like that
Just...stop.
I'm on high gear, baby. Nothing can stop me.
Still just awesome like that
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
When talking about Song of the South it has to be kept in mind that the film was based off of the old Uncle Remus books by Joel Chandler Harris; in those books Uncle Remus was also a free slave on a plantation who had a lot of time for telling stories featuring animals to white people.
The film is rather faithful in how it takes the stories, setting and character of Uncle Remus and adapts them into a coherent story.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
I just hit the max speed, and i just realized something:
Movies about fast-talking blacks who calling whites white-trash, shooting people for penies, drugged to overdose, and living in a shithole are somehow less offensive than a movie about a Caucasian kid befriended an Afro-American grown man who telling stories about a Rabbit and his predators.
Yeah. You can relate toward the former because they portrayed things accurately to history.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Depends on how the movie portrays said blacks in said conditions because life really is that shitty in some places
Oh really when?
And no one try to help the case of Song Of The South by that logic...
Stuffs like Commando Duck and Der Fuehrer's face are far, far more offensive. They portrayed their enemies in the worst stereotypical way in those Propaganda shorts.
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
There was a war on, and it was common practice to do that to your enemy at the time.
Besides, "Der Fuehrer's Face" is a very catchy tune. Especially in Spike Jones' version. And it's hilarious to hear Donald Duck start heiling Hitler!
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Not all those shorts are propaganda. They common, but people also realized on how bad war is. Things like Donald Gets Drafted were pure satire or just for laugh.
And i can agree that Donald Duck heiling Hitler while screwing caps on artillery shells is hilarious.
For the love of God, this is most ass-backwards commentary on race I've ever seen.
Fortunately the writers caught on to the fan reaction on FOP and made season 9 more or less like season 1 & 2.
Not all dreams are meant to come true, otherwise there would be a lot of dead people.