Ten Years of The Review Nebula!

Has it really been a decade already? Hot damn!

As the title suggests, today marks 10 years since I first posted on the blog that would become The Review Nebula. What a decade it’s been.

One of the shows I covered concluded. Another two shows started and ended. Another show that I partially covered has kept going well beyond any measure of sanity. Another one has stopped and started and stopped and I don’t know what the hell is going on with it right now. I became interested in another show that I covered because of one of the aforementioned shows. I moved from Blogspot to WordPress. I started a Twitter account to promote the blog. I abandoned Twitter after finding it a redundant endeavor and finding new site ownership a bit eccentric for my tastes.

And that’s just the stuff that directly involves this blog!

All I can say is this – thank you. Thank you very much for reading my reviews and musings. For those of you who have commented, thank you very much. I can only hope that I can give you some level of insight into what fuels my pop culture interests, or at least a brief moment of levity in your internet surfing. And we sure as hell aren’t at the end!

Movie Review – The Simpsons Movie

Five. Hundred. Posts. Wow. Major thanks are in order for all of you, readers and commentors alike. You have helped keep this silly little blog a very fun hobby over the past several years. Now, as we hit post 500, we formally close out a major era in this blog’s history by reviewing the movie of a franchise that, arguably, started it all.

Please note that the screencaps for this movie were found on the Animation Screencaps website.

“I can’t believe we’re paying to see something we get on TV for free. If you ask me, everybody in this theater is a giant sucker… especially you!” – Homer Simpson, questioning the victory lap for the franchise that is The Simpsons Movie

Premiere: July 21st, 2007

Written By: James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Scully, and Richard Sakai

Directed By: David Silverman

Plot: Lake Springfield is an environmental nightmare waiting to happen, as you would expect from a town populated by clowns and which has a power plant that constantly flaunts regulations. What puts it over the top into the aforementioned nightmare zone? Homer’s antics result in him dumping a metric ton of pig waste straight into the lake. The town is quarantined, and once the cause of the disaster is revealed, Homer Simpson becomes public enemy #1. He and the family manage to escape, but they slowly drift apart as Homer proves himself more and more trapped by selfishness. All the while, the town of Springfield slowly starts to lose its grip, giving EPA head Russ Cargill the opportunity for a major power grab… a destructive one that almost brings an end to the Simpson family by proxy.

Review:

The Simpsons Movie.

Let’s take a second to dissect those three words.

Much has been written about the legacy that The Simpsons has left on American pop culture. It’s arguably the most influential animated television show since The Flintstones (at least) and possibly the single most influential American television show since All in the Family. Some could make an argument that it surpasses those two series in terms of sheer cultural impact – The Simpsons feels like a truly global phenomenon, with many phrases entering the lexicon in the Anglosphere and characters becoming pop cultural icons.

All this from a show that was literally doodled in the office before the pitch meeting for a sketch show so Matt Groening wouldn’t have to give up the rights to his underground comic strip Life in Hell. It is probably the most marketable western franchise in modern history, up there with Harry Potter and Star Wars. And no matter where you stand on the “quality debate”, the fact that there are almost 700 episodes of the show really reflects the staying power the show has in the national consciousness. Hell, even if you’re more cynical about the state of the show like I am, at least 175 episodes are among the best television of all time.

There had to be a movie. You don’t let a TV show that practically prints money go away without at least an attempt at a theatrical release to make Rupert Murdoch even richer. Do you?

Well, it took 18 years, but they did it.

And when I first saw the movie… well, I was hyped! This titan of American television finally going to the silver screen. Indeed, I felt quite satisfied walking out of the theater way back when.

But that was 13 years ago. My tastes have shifted considerably since then. Arguably, I’ve become a “Simpsons snob”, particularly since 2012. (Lady Gaga broke me.) In fact, I can’t recall the last time I ever sat down to watch the movie before preparing this review – it was a morning showing on FX if I recall correctly, and I saw it no later than 2015 if my memory serves me correctly. In effect, I get to watch a movie with some of the nostalgia of youth cleansed off by a nice heaping bowl of reality.

But is it really, now? Is The Simpsons Movie one late-stage gem from the most transformative show in American History? Or is it the nail in the coffin, proof that this franchise became everything it once mocked, and the moment the series realized it could run on autopilot indefinitely?

Five Years of The Review Nebula

…whod’ve thunk it?

Five years and two days ago, if you told me that I would be regularly updating a review blog of my favorite TV shows, I would have laughed at you.

Then I got assigned a class project to start a blog and post assignments on them (assignments that have been lost to the etches of time), was given the option to post whatever else crossed my mind onboard, and the rest is history.

Yeah, my first reviews were pretty thin on actual content – it wasn’t until 2014 when I really began emphasizing the actual review of my reviews – and my opinions on some episodes covered may have shifted quite a bit. (I would probably have been less caustic against “Time Travelers Pig” and probably a bit more critical about “Boyz Crazy”, but that’s more in hindsight.) Still, to look back at what I’ve accomplished so far…

…and really, it’s all thanks to you guys. Every single person that’s read my reviews, that’s followed this blog, from London to LA, Warsaw to Wellington, through the name changes and the URL moves, I can’t thank you enough. I might not be the most clicked-on blogger out there, but that doesn’t lessen the thanks I have for you guys.

(Also, mad thanks to Rebecca Sugar, Matt Groening, Alex Hirsch, Gene Roddenberry, Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, and everybody else involved, all for creating the subjects of these silly little reviews. Even when I’m critical of the end result, it’s you lot who make the art and put it out for public analysis. Mad kudos to you guys.)

A toast to the lustrum, and hopefully the blog will thrive to hit the decade mark.