The Simpsons

I watched a full episode on Sunday for the first time in at least a decade. It’s still pretty damn funny and I plan to start watching again. It’s still smart, silly, irreverent, touching and insightful. At least this particular episode was.

 

I'm in it for the stellar copywriting.

 

Hank Azaria addressed the Apu thing pretty well.

Hank Azaria Says He’s Willing to ‘Step Aside’ From Controversial Apu Role

“I think the most important thing is to listen to Indian people and their experience with it,” Azaria said. “I really want to see Indian, South Asian writers in the writers room…including how [Apu] is voiced or not voiced. I’m perfectly willing to step aside. It just feels like the right thing to do to me.”

Azaria said he understood the controversy surrounding his character. “It’s come to my attention more and more over the past couple years,” he said.

“The idea that anyone young or old, past or present, being bullied based on Apu really makes me sad,” he continued. “It certainly was not my intention. I wanted to bring joy and laughter to people.”

 

When I catch it from time to time, it's pretty good again. But there was a period of time there in seasons in the teens to the 20s that between the guest stars on a weekly basis and the characters becoming unmoored from what made them not only funny but relatable, it was damn near unwatchable. I was waiting for an unironic Poochie sighting for a couple of those years.

 

So will the person who voices Bart now how have to be male since how can an adult woman possibly understand what it means to be a 10-year old boy?

 

Nice work by Matt Groening. He's officially turned into the asshole he used to make fun of.

 

I don't know that he has turned into an asshole. At the beginning there was conflict among the creators and I think Groening's attitude was part of it.

 

If you watch the source material of the complaint (why would anyone ever do that?), one of the key facets was that Apu was nearly the only representation of Indian culture on American tv for a long time.

The world isn’t running short on white male perspectives of any age.