Poats Written By Actual Adults

Intv7
I can't because I only saw that episode once, strongly disliked it, and never saw it again. I don't remember much about it, other than it was bland and not funny. I think Homer's Enemy is my least favorite of seasons 1-8, then Monorail and the "pink shirt" episode are next in line. Monorail is not entirely unmemorable, it's just grating in its unstructured, undisciplined approach to comedy. It's too desperate to get laughs, and doesn't let its story and characters develop and breathe. In that way, it's a lot like Conan is in interviews. He often tries to interject forced comedic remarks when the moment doesn't call for it.


Intv7

Monorail was an early harbinger of the show going in the Family Guy-direction. I still think they do many episodes now where they try to stick to their traditional model, but they have trouble making them funny or unpredictable. The thing that's really missing is how intelligent the characters used to be. Bart was an underachiever, but he was brilliant at coming up with naughty schemes. Starting around season 9, they started writing him as a dumb, immature kid most of the time.


Intv7

And that's where your argument falls completely off the rails, no pun intended. The ONLY reason The Simpsons was successful, and original, is because it was the first cartoon comedy that was basically written as a live-action show. There were SO many rules and restrictions they imposed on themselves to force their writing to be disciplined, structured and restrained. It's so easy to have a cartoon character's eyes bug out and hair jump off their head to show emotion. But because The Simpsons banned most of those impossible, cartoonish things, it forced them to develop their characters in much more subtle and humanly relatable ways. It's much easier to relate to a dog that acts like a real dog you might have had as a pet than one that talks like Scooby Doo. Yes, they used some slapstick that stretched the bounds of what was realistic. Homer might have pratfalls that no human being could survive, but he would feel pain and possibly be injured. But comparing it to any other cartoon comedy, The Simpsons followed more rules based on what was possible in the real world than any before, and most to this day.

One of the places Monorail goes wrong is with the overly broad characterizations lacking in subtlety and nuance. That's the biggest thing that makes it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. Then Leonard Nimoy teleporting, and the cringe-inducing sight gags at the end, are the rotten cherries on top of the spoiled sundae that tells you the writers officially decided that, for some unknown and inexplicable reason, none of the carefully considered rules built into the series bible mattered that week.

Any day that The Simpsons writers use the phrase "it's a cartoon" to justify something is a day they write an episode that contradicts what the show's creators wisely intended the series to be from the beginning. And I certainly hope someone gets fired for it.