The Simpsons cleanup

It was brought up over at the complaining cleanup thread that The Simpsons and its subpages are in need of extensive cleanup. The pages have a habit of attracting lots of complaining about Seasonal Rot, as well as certain controversial episodes such as The Boys of Bummer and My Sister, My Sitter that are themselves complaining magnets. I also see complaints about specific characters on the pages as well.

With this in mind, I am starting the cleanup thread for The Simpsons so that the complaining can be cleaned up, along with any other issues that come up with the pages.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Well here's the page image and quote for The Simpsons S18E18 "The Boys of Bummer":

The quote is bashing the episode.

Edited by RustBeard on May 9th 2021 at 8:43:30 AM

The following entries in Recap.The Simpsons S 9 E 3 Lisas Sax and YMMV.The Simpsons S 9 E 3 Lisas Sax seem to be exaggeration of Homer and Marge's actions.

• Parental Favoritism: Homer and Marge are very quick to dismiss Bart's school problems when Dr. Pryor tells them that Lisa is gifted and it winds up being Bart who "solves" his own problem by being a Class Clown while Homer and Marge focus more on getting Lisa an outlet to nurture her talents when they can't afford an expensive preschool. Bart being five years old makes this a rather sad bit of foreshadowing to how Homer and Marge seem to play ping-pong with which child gets their undivided attention.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Homer willingly sacrificing his own happiness to purchase Lisa a saxophone in the past was meant to be a heartwarming moment, with Marge even calling him a good father for doing so. However, the fact that both he and Marge gave up on Bart so quickly when it was clear he was having trouble in school makes it look more like Parental Favoritism has been in play and that his antisocial behavior is in large part due to their neglect of him.
• The Woobie: It's very easy to feel bad for Bart in this episode. In the beginning of the flashback, he was very eager and enthusiastic about going to school. But when he got there, his teacher wrote him off as a lost cause and was cold and condescending to him for no apparent reason other than sheer malice. Which made Bart even contemplate suicide. Fortunately, Homer and Marge at least tried to get therapeutic help for him. But then, when they saw Lisa's blossoming intelligence, they (especially Homer) were all like "Screw Bart; Lisa needs a slightly better education."

My thoughts:

• Parental Favoritism could probably be rewritten to focus more on Homer brushing aside Bart's problems to focus on Lisa (as he does explicitly say Lisa is "the wave of the future"). Right now, it's very ranty.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic should be cut. It's just complaining that Bart was seemingly neglected by his parents, even though his story shows him finding happiness by becoming the class clown at school. So, it's not like Bart continued to spiral into depression like the earlier scenes showed.
• The Woobie is mostly fine. Just the last few sentences need to be lopped off due to complaining.

Edited by chasemaddigan on May 9th 2021 at 12:15:37 PM

I made the changes you suggested.

Now, Fridge.The Simpsons features the following entries:

• The episodes where Bart is shown at his absolute worse such as Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie and Love is a Many Strangled Thing leads to the joke that Homer’s strangling of Bart suppresses many of his sociopathic tendencies. However Bart only started acting out after Homer and Marge had punished him then let him off. Even the episode that many people consider Bart’s Moral Event Horizon follows this principle Bart only started manipulating them after Marge told him not to do his homework. Now look at Bart does when they either follow through with their punishment or ignore him completely. In Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie he eventually becomes a Supreme Court judge, in the Parent Rap he always gets on the honor roll, while in Postcards from the Wedge he attempted to destroy the town. This shows that Bart is not a brat he’s self destructive. His parents only seem willing to give him attention when he’s blowing something up so that’s what he does. And in those rare times when it looks like they are about to act like real parent and punish him for his bad deeds or make him do his work only to turn around and say forget it he makes his opinion known.
  • This actually makes a lot of since Homer and Marge do seem to only notice Bart when he’s doing something bad. In Bart of Darkness when he broke his leg the just locked him in his room and even after noticing that this was having a negative effect on him they still left him there by himself. This would also explain animosity towards Homer and Skinner. In Lisa’s Sax, Homer outright said "Screw Bart, Lisa needs our attention!" And Skinner never showed his face until after Bart started acting out.
  • This also leads to a good Freudian Excuse for Bart’s Flanderization Marge went from a mother who would sit down with her son to help him study when was expelled to the point where the school let him back in to someone who casually and repeatedly states that he will never amount to anything but a homeless bum. Homer went from a father who would risk his life to stop his son from doing an idiotic stunt to one who would throw his son into a lion’s pit. Is it a wonder why Bart went from Book Dumb to someone who just doesn’t care?
  • The entirety of the Simpsons is one big screw you to Bart especially with its repeated use of Recycled Script both Lisa’s Sax and Black-eyed Please involve a member of the Simpson family (Bart and Lisa respectively) being bullied by their teacher however while Homer and Marge did everything in their power to help Lisa even recruiting Bart. They completely ignored Bart. Also Bart has repeatedly and selflessly aided Lisa even going so far as to sacrifice himself so that she wouldn’t be expelled yet as On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister shows she doesn’t even remember let alone acknowledge them.
• The sheer level of Bart’s Parental Neglect. Whenever something bad happens to Bart Marge will either downplay of flat out ignore it for something else. When Burns hit with a car she equated the "hardships" of his injuries to the $5 she pays him to take out the trash every week.
  • Marge never says a word edgewise regarding the fact that her son was working at Maison Derriere, implying that the reason for her vendetta with the burlesque house (and Belle) is more important than this fact. When Lisa begins collecting animals due to being jealous over Bart being a better musician, Marge was more upset over the fact that she had to give the animals away after one of them crippled Bart than the fact that Bart was crippled. When Lisa was born, Marge did nothing to ensure that Bart didn't feel neglected, even though she had previously expressed concern that he would be jealous of Lisa.
  • Marge is repeatedly shown to be just as abusive as Homer. Just like him she quickly gave up on Bart when it was clear he was having trouble in kindergarden. In fact as the series when on she was the more likely of the two to give up on him when put in the same situation (such as learning to discipline him). She’s also more prone to tell him that he will be a Future Loser. Her Parental Favoritism also reaches the point of sadism as she’s not only convinced Bart to give up something he loved and made him a better person, but also stay crippled because Lisa couldn’t handle the fact that he was a better musician and him continuing to be so somehow be cruel. She then twice turned around forced him to play instruments he didn’t want to. She’s even kicked him out of the house because he didn’t take her side in an argument. However, because she’s not physically violent or overtly negative, Bart is Momma's Boy.
  • Perhaps one of the best examples of just how badly Bart is neglected is the infamous Simpson gene. Bart will never amount to anything, nor will any potential brother, son, nephew or grandson that he will ever have because every male in his family has what amounts to a degenerative condition that will cost him the bulk of his intelligence. Does he get any sympathy for this? Nope. Because they were too busy congratulating Lisa for the fact that she wasn't affected by it.

These were also made by the person behind the aforementioned edits, and I say we remove them.

Found this example in The Simpsons S18E18 "The Boys of Bummer"

• Double Standard: The town turns against Bart to such an extreme degree that Moe vilifies Homer for not using a condom to prevent Bart's conception, and when Homer stands up for Bart the crowd turns on him until he takes their side (which he does almost immediately, calling him a "choke artist"). However, none make a similar accusation regarding Marge not taking the pill and when she confronts the mob, none attack her and she single-handedly convinces them to stand down. Some see this as a gender-based Double Standard, adding to the sour reception of the episode since Marge is spared vilification from doing the same things that Homer gets attacked for.

This just seems like complaining. It also just seems like an audience reaction, rather than something that actually happened in the work, considering the way its written.

EDIT: I'm surprised "My Sister, My Sitter" wasn't brought up in that first example. Especially since there was a lot of complaining related to Bart's behavior in that episode.

I want to do an entry about that reaction, but I don't know which item would fit. Shouldn't there be an item about audiences hating a well-established character, but only for a single episode?

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 9th 2021 at 8:43:34 AM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

For one there's no change in portrayal for Bart, he's either sympathetic or isn't, not consistently unsympathetic so you can cut the Moral Event Horizon example.

And I agree with this cleanup and part of the reason I started the Woobie Cleanup four years ago was to fix the Simpsons page.

Edited by Klavice on May 9th 2021 at 6:17:03 AM

I've never seen anyone complain about the town's Double Standard regarding Homer and Marge. That seems like one troper's personal opinion.

There's a lot of hate directed towards Joe LaBoot on The Simpsons S18E18 "The Boys of Bummer". I recently removed a bunch of examples that called him evil. Here are some examples I feel are compliany, but I wasn't sure if I should remove them:

• Hypocrite: LaBoot chides Bart for his fumble despite not only doing the same thing himself years ago, but doing it much worse when he supposedly disfigured the first lady. This might fit better under Hypocritical Humor since it is Played for Laughs.

• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Grampa Simpson belittling LaBoot. To say he deserves every last bit of it would be an understatement.
  Grampa: You stink, LaBoot!
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Abe booing Joe LaBoot, especially considering that LaBoot set off the latter half of the episode by driving Bart to tears.

TheArtifact.The Simpsons and WereStillRelevantDammit.The Simpsons are filled with complaining.

Kirby is awesome.

The latter is especially complain-y, even after many of the nitpicky, natter-y, negative examples were shortened or removed back in December 2020.

Also, it has (thankfully) been removed now, but as recently as mid-2020, there was an example that wasn't just an outright lie, but a ROCEJ violation. It stated that in Season 27's "The Burns Cage", Smithers was made 100% gay (and not just in love with Burns) to "cash in on the gay rights craze to look woke and PC in light of its Seasonal Rot". Smithers has been gay since the 90s, and calling it "the gay rights craze" is incredibly offensive, not just to Smithers, or the show itself, but to real-life LGBT+ people, since it implies that being/supporting LGBT+ is a "fad".

I'm so glad that the example was removed, but this is the sort of thing we should look out for; WSRD and other such tropes whose examples go beyond complaining and straight into violation of ROCEJ territory.

I know it has been removed since, I was merely using it as an example of how complain-y some entries can get (especially for a show that's as much of a complain magnet as this one), and how they can fly in the face of ROCEJ if they go far enough.

Edited by Shadow8411 on May 10th 2021 at 10:17:01 AM

That caption on The Boys Of Bummer should be removed, as it is too bashy. I know it's been brought up, but I just want to give it some attention.

Edited by callmeamuffin on May 10th 2021 at 6:36:59 PM

Come play Character Uplift Game!

Not sure why you're bringing up an example that was removed a long time ago, but okay. Just seems like you just want to wonk about an example despite being old news.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 10th 2021 at 6:34:13 AM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

LaBoot is simply a Grumpy Old Man and far from the main problem with the episode which people seem to think he is. The Springfield citizens making Bart go crazy is OOC Kick the Dog. And as said before, most of this stuff needs to be rewritten with a neutral, non biased stance.

I went ahead and changed the Hypocrite example to Hypocritical Humor. I went ahead and looked through the history of the recap page and noticed that many of the examples claiming LaBoot was evil were added by the same troper, Noob Master. I wonder if this is just one person's vendetta against a character.

Thats the same person who was complaining about something in Caillou that didn't happen.

Speaking of that show, I'm still wondering when we're going to get that preschool show cleanup, but that's another topic for another time.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Interesting. Well since it appears that the hate for LaBoot seems to be coming from a very Vocal Minority, can I go ahead and delete his Catharsis Factor example? I was hesitant to delete it because it seemed like fans of the show genuinely hated him, but it looks like his hatedom is very fringe.

Since my Fridge entries argument has been buried, I need an answer: can we remove them for being too bashy?

I think those Fridge entries are a prime example of people using the Fridge subpage to complain and/or exaggerate certain aspects of the show they dislike. The "Simpsons is one big Screw You to Bart" and "Marge is just as abusive as Homer" entries should be the first to go for how over the top they are.

Not sure about the rest, but if you removed them for complaining, I doubt anyone would mind.

I took care of the entries you've mentioned. Now we just need an answer from another party for the others.

Is it bad that I actually wouldn't mind keeping the "Boys of Bummer" image caption because it's actually a pretty clever Stealth Pun (as it works in the context of the episode as well)?

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I'll admit it's clever. Do I have permission to delete the Catharsis Factor entry for LaBoot? Given how much of his hatedom seems to be a Vocal Minority, this seems like the view of a few people and not an opinion held by the family at large.

The Simpsons - Lisa Marie Simpson has this:

• Dangerously Short Skirt: Lisa's red sundress, apparently. In "Pork and Burns", she states her dress is "mighty short" (if only because she only had a saxophone and underwear).

That can get a little creepy.

Kirby is awesome.

Related to , the P5 Cleanup pile and lewdness issues thread cleaned up a bunch of Panty Shot entries on Simpsons episodes. I found one in WMG.The Simpsons and we weren't sure if it should be removed in whole or in part.

---

Lisa seems a little too young to wear a strapless dress, yet Marge buys them because they're similar to the dress she used to wear herself as a kid. The female clerk was too eager to show the clothesline because she thought Lisa was a "pretty blonde party-girl" with her red dress and pearls. Also, Lisa is aware her dress is "mighty short", because it was made to show off her legs more, but also more prone to Panty Shots.

---

My initial thought was remove the Panty Shot pothole, another person thinks the last sentence as a whole should probably go, but also noted that if the show itself made a joke satirizing how young girls are sexualized, it's not inappropriate to reference it.

Another person brought up this thread so I thought I'd bring it here for opinions.

From the same page as

Magic Skirt: Lisa's trademark red sundress; especially egregious as it's a dress with no waist, which should logically fall all the way down to her shoulders whenever she's upside down.

Kirby is awesome.

From The Simpsons S 32 E 8 The Road To Cincinnati:

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Steamed Hams reference the writers hinted at appears in the background as a restaurant, but Skinner and Chalmers don’t even notice.

Is this a valid example, or is it just nitpicking, especially since "meme reference that wasn't acknowledged by characters" is not the same as "underused/wasted potential plot (or plot point)"?