Discussion MoralEventHorizon / WesternAnimation

My entry for Lightning Dust crossing the Moral Event Horizon was zapped on the basis that she didn't actively try to kill Rainbow Dash's friends. In said scene, Lightning pressures Rainbow Dash into creating a tornado for a team exercise but it turns out the former can't bring it under control when it gets too large. The tornado sucks up the rest of the Mane Six and Rainbow Dash leads the rest of the academy into saving them. Completely absent is Lightning Dust who cheers for Rainbow Dash after all of her friends were saved. Rainbow Dash chides her for her recklessness but not once does she show any remorse for her dangerous behavior. Her actions may have not been intentional but Lightning Dust showed complete apathy to putting five ponies in danger and didn't even try to rescue them.

With that said, did Lightning Dust cross the MEH or is the entry invalid?

** Homer Simpson is a known Karma Houdini, and depending on who you are, there are numerous candidates for his Moral Event Horizon crossing moment. One of the earliest front runners (for him and quite possibly the series) is the episode "Homer's Enemy." In this one, Frank Grimes, a well meaning, hard working coworker who also has terrible luck, winds up receiving the horrific consequences of Homer's increasing stupidity. This involves being humiliated, demoted, and ultimately killed, for the horrible sin of not being a jackass in the town of Springfield. Homer Simpson, meanwhile, gets laughs throughout the episode, including at Grimes's funeral. Josh Weinstein, the showrunner at the time the episode was created, comments on their being a "generation gap", where the episode was panned by longtime (at the time) viewers, but subsequently liked by people who grew up with the show. For many older fans, this marks the point where the Simpsons crossed over from pointed, relevant, biting satire to plain old mean spiritedness and dead baby humor ala Family Guy, and Homer Simpson went from well intentioned but flawed and dull human being, to a criminally malfeasant monster.

Ok, I see this is going to devolve into a Simpsons fan edit war, so I'm going to put my rationale for adding this up here, add it back to the main discussion, and then people can do whatever with it, so long as they just admit that they are fanbois, as opposed to making up pretend reasons that aren't consistent.

For a lot of people (myself included), this was when they ceased caring about the character development of anyone in Springfield, Homer included. While the show had been headed that way for some time, the driving thrust of this episode was "Springfieldians (Homer especially) are generally horrible people, and not only do they not get punished for it, they prosper and get wonderful laughs and yuks out of it." It wasn't so much that the show had never had this theme before, but the way it was executed in this episode was one of special note for everyone involved, even the producers. Not only was the Moral Event Horizon crossed, this episode invoked the Eight Deadly Words for a lot of people.

To say that this isn't a Moral Event Horizon because characters were redeemed later on presents a number of problems. First off, whether or not the character was redeemed is ultimately your opinion. Homer Simpson is a perfect example of being "crossed by the line" - being the same jerkass he's always been to the point where he jumps the shark because it's no longer funny, he should know better, and everyone but him has moved on. We can have a long debate about that, but that raises the second point: if Homer gets out of this because of "redeeming moments", then there just shouldn't be entries for anyone on this show, save one time throwaway characters like Russ Cargill and Sideshow Bob's brother. This is an ongoing show (at the time of this writing), and pretty much everyone who has done terrible stuff in this show has had numerous redeeming moments later on. Even evil ass Montgomery Burns has had one or two moments of decency and outright heroism in the show. People in this show commit horrendous crimes, and are then seen rubbing elbows with their victims a season or so later. I am hard pressed to think of a recurring Simpsons character who was so terrible that they never had a redeeming moment, or was always presented as evil throughout the shows entire run.

So I'm putting this back up there, please don't tell me a bunch of BS about how Homer is a nice guy later on, or the episode isn't that bad, unless you're willing to just take the entire damn show off this page while claiming that the show is just as fresh and new and wonderful as it ever was. Thanks.