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I love how much of a struggle this seems to be for them to push out, as if they're not the ones who butchered the episodes to begin with. Why no app support yet? Why only the first 7 seasons? Ridiculous.

Sad news on future DVD sets of The Simpsons - it sounds as if, according to a tweet by Al Jean, no more Simpsons sets will be released due to "the collapse of the DVD market", and "all commentaries will be done for FX now".

This is kind of shocking - obviously sales were decreasing year-over-year as the show's better years are further and further in the past but surely the actual production cost is really low, especially given they'll still be recording commentaries anyway?

He did say in a reply tweet that there is still a possibility of everything being released as a complete set when (or if) the show goes off the air, which would be a huge failure because anybody who has that kind of dedication surely would not want to rebuy literally eighteen seasons for a massive cost.

Unless it's Blu-ray.

There is a possibility of The Simpsons getting licensed to Olive Films like King of the Hill, but I doubt it will include any extras...

Also according to Al Jean, the streaming apps for Android/iOS will include the 4:3 versions of seasons 1-20 by the end of April.

That's not TOO surprising I guess. Who seriously wants to own Season 18 (or whatever they were on) of The Simpsons on DVD or BD?

I'm not really a huge fan of collecting TV shows on Blu and DVD, unless it's a show I love unequivocally like the first 10 or so seasons of the show. This would be more of an outrage if they stopped at season 5 rather than whatever one they are on by now.

David M. wrote:That's not TOO surprising I guess. Who seriously wants to own Season 18 (or whatever they were on) of The Simpsons on DVD or BD?

I would, always for the commentaries if not so much for the episodes. In fact I'm a little annoyed as they were just getting to the seasons of episodes that I've not seen before, as I decided to wait for the DVD/Blu to be released! As someone mentioned in that Twitter feed, the downloading aspect with commentaries might be fine within the US but it would seem to leave international (being selfish, UK) viewers out in the cold somewhat.

It's amazing, in my experience, how quickly the commentaries turned from incredibly informative and listenable and entertaining to grating as soon as the quality of the show shifted. It's very difficult to enjoy writers chuckling along with an episode, commenting on how mediocre jokes were devised and how they pulled off the coup of getting Kid Rock to guest star.

domino harvey wrote:Fox suggested they transition to their shitty MOD program and Al Jean (rightly) shot 'em down

That's not what he's saying in that tweet - they brought out a DVD of Season 20 with no extras whatsoever, and he is saying that they put a stop to those years ago because they were a lesser product than if they got to them in time.

You're right, I saw it linked from another source as saying so and didn't read the initial tweet he was replying to closely enough. My mistake!

Sounds like a huge bluff to me.

mfunk9786 wrote:Sounds like a huge bluff to me.

Bluff, snap judgement, or otherwise, I can't say I'm surprised. Harry Shearer has long been outspoken about how he feels the cast, though handsomely-rewarded, were being taken advantage of by the producers. And Shearer is a bit of a prickly fellow, apparently.

Shearer is a notoriously toxic personality off camera and he wouldn't have been doing this job for 25 years were it not for a feeling on some level that he's being adequately compensated for it. He's bluffing.

They are seriously recasting? Because people don't already joke enough about how awful modern Simpsons episodes are?

Indeed. If Shearer leaves you lose like half the characters, and I doubt you could properly replace their voices without it sticking out. Stupid Sexy Flanders will be nowhere near as sexy voiced by someone else.

A bummer. They'll probably turn the replacement into an awful contest or something.

Oddly, an episode of the show features a joke about recasting voice actors on the sly. Someone is griping about voice actors, and a strange-sounding Flanders walks by the Simspons' window and says something about how producers can just replace the voice actoers without anyone being being able to notice the difference. Another instance of the show being bizarrely prophetic.

I have no idea which episode it's from or what the story-context of the joke is, though.

(The show has bled together so much in my memory that I'm half-convinced I'm horribly misrembering some of the show's stranger jokes and scenarios and that it can't be actually be that weird. Turns out it usually is, though.)

On a happier note, here's Rick and Morty's upcoming couch gag.

That final line killed me.

Feiereisel wrote:A bummer. They'll probably turn the replacement into an awful contest or something.

Oddly, an episode of the show features a joke about recasting voice actors on the sly. Someone is griping about voice actors, and a strange-sounding Flanders walks by the Simspons' window and says something about how producers can just replace the voice actoers without anyone being being able to notice the difference. Another instance of the show being bizarrely prophetic.

I have no idea which episode it's from or what the story-context of the joke is, though.

(The show has bled together so much in my memory that I'm half-convinced I'm horribly misrembering some of the show's stranger jokes and scenarios and that it can't be actually be that weird. Turns out it usually is, though.)

No one can tell the diddly-ifference