Whisky Van Gogh Go

I think the big problem with The Simpsons is that the world that they were, in effect, called into existence to make fun of just doesn’t exist anymore. That post-Reagan, pre-Clinton, pre-Internet Bush I America, with a consensus culture shaped by a handful of TV networks and huge media superstars, just doesn’t exist anymore… I would argue that, like “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the show preemptively destroyed the ’80s cultural legacy in such a way that no one would ever be able to celebrate the decade without a cool sense of distance and irony.

… Something about the characters using Twitter or reading George R.R. Martin doesn’t jibe with their basic naiveté. In a way, it’s kind of like what the Beatles would have been like if they’d never broken up after 1970s and kept putting out LPs every couple of years, at least into the ’90s. At first that sounds pretty wonderful. But then you think about what would have probably followed, at least in one form or another: glam Beatles, disco Beatles, cokehead L.A. Beatles, metal Beatles, hip-hop Beatles, ambient Beatles, grunge Beatles, nu-metal Beatles. That’s basically what’s happened to The Simpsons.