The Prisoner Review: Intro

Concurrent with the early days of this blog, I wound up having my love for The Simpsons rekindled. With this in mind, around September 2013, I decided to take on one of the show’s most controversial eras – the widely condemned Mike Scully era, stretching from Seasons 9 through 13-ish.

As I began my slow, slow investigation of the Scully years, though, a thought occurred. For there was this one episode that I discovered had been a send-up to this old show, called The Prisoner. It was this weird, cult-ish thing that one particular episode, “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”, parodied. There was a bubble, an island, a numbered society, and what not.

Thing is, many Simpsons bloggers, from what I recall, haven’t watched the show. That doesn’t make their points invalid, but it does make me wonder… is there a niche I can fill when reviewing that particular episode? In that, I could watch The Prisoner as a completely new viewer, then analyze this episode with a new look at a show often cited as a cult classic?

Well… you can probably guess my answer.

Sketching The Next Several Months of The Review Nebula

Hey, look – I posted for the first time in a week and change!

Yeah, sorry about that. I have no real excuse this time. I got a bit caught up in World Cup action (really, Germany?) and took some advantage of the nice weather here on Long Island… but really, those aren’t even great excuses.

Simply put, I think I hit something of a writer’s block with my recent review, for reasons that will become apparent when it posts tomorrow morning. Don’t worry, the next few things I’m reviewing should pique everybody’s interest.

Scullyfied Simpsons: Season 11 Preview

Taken from Wikipedia

“Does anybody care what this guy thinks?” “NO!”

Well, here we are… Season 11 of The Simpsons. We are halfway through the Mike Scully era. And from the looks of things, I think we might be staring down the doldrums here.

I mean, consider that this season premiered just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the first full episode of The Simpsons. The show had spanned through the 90s, had made it through both the Bush Sr. and Clinton eras, saw the rise and “fall” of Grunge, and even was one of the few shows to cross from the pre-Internet and “Internet” generations. There were and are people (myself included) who have never known the world without The Simpsons on TV.

But success can’t last forever.