[8.0/10] And there it is -- the last great Simpsons episode. That’s probably an overstatement. In the ensuing two decades of so, the show would bust out the occasional improbable bit of outstanding television. But “Behind the Laughter” feels like the last buoy of the show’s golden years, the last bit of brilliance it coughed out into the world until the show became something perfectly fine most of the time, but never quite the same.
It works because it plays to showrunner Mike Scully’s strengths. There’s not really a story here, beyond a semi-generic rise and fall where the scaffolding of the Behind the Music parody does most of the heavy lifting. Instead, this is a joke-a-thon, one where we’re not even seeing the standard versions of these characters. Freed from the bounds of storytelling and characterization, the things that otherwise doomed the Scully era and the show itself during that period, the writers’ room gets to just be funny, and wrings more laughs than the rest of the season combined.
Some of that comes from the spoofing of overserious, salacious music documentaries. The way the show manages to write the overstuffed dialogue of Behind the Music with a satirical edge, and come up with over-the-top imagery to illustrate the narration is fantastic. Even if you’re not familiar with the source of the spoof, it fits for heavy-handed entertainment industry docs of all types. At the same time, the show does a good job of parodying the standard rise-and-fall narrative tropes. Some of them are a little easy, but spoofing rockstars’ skyrocketing fame, spendthrift ways, and addiction and dysfunction was fertile territory for comedy.
I also appreciate the show’s trademark meta gags. Joking about the over-reliance on guest stars and physical humor is welcome, and self-aware bits about how horrifying it is that the show’s arguably most famous gag is a father strangling his son once you stop and think about it. Baking in the real life criticisms over loony plot twists and wacky gags shows at least some acknowledgement on the part of the series, which is appreciated.
Overall, this is probably where the show should have ended. It could have left a self-reflective legacy that ends on a laugh, if not necessarily a deep examination of the series or its characters. “Behind the Laughter” isn’t perfect, but it’s consistently funny and just a touch sweet, which would have closed things off with enough dignity to call it even.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2019-01-19T23:34:31Z
[8.0/10] And there it is -- the last great Simpsons episode. That’s probably an overstatement. In the ensuing two decades of so, the show would bust out the occasional improbable bit of outstanding television. But “Behind the Laughter” feels like the last buoy of the show’s golden years, the last bit of brilliance it coughed out into the world until the show became something perfectly fine most of the time, but never quite the same.
It works because it plays to showrunner Mike Scully’s strengths. There’s not really a story here, beyond a semi-generic rise and fall where the scaffolding of the Behind the Music parody does most of the heavy lifting. Instead, this is a joke-a-thon, one where we’re not even seeing the standard versions of these characters. Freed from the bounds of storytelling and characterization, the things that otherwise doomed the Scully era and the show itself during that period, the writers’ room gets to just be funny, and wrings more laughs than the rest of the season combined.
Some of that comes from the spoofing of overserious, salacious music documentaries. The way the show manages to write the overstuffed dialogue of Behind the Music with a satirical edge, and come up with over-the-top imagery to illustrate the narration is fantastic. Even if you’re not familiar with the source of the spoof, it fits for heavy-handed entertainment industry docs of all types. At the same time, the show does a good job of parodying the standard rise-and-fall narrative tropes. Some of them are a little easy, but spoofing rockstars’ skyrocketing fame, spendthrift ways, and addiction and dysfunction was fertile territory for comedy.
I also appreciate the show’s trademark meta gags. Joking about the over-reliance on guest stars and physical humor is welcome, and self-aware bits about how horrifying it is that the show’s arguably most famous gag is a father strangling his son once you stop and think about it. Baking in the real life criticisms over loony plot twists and wacky gags shows at least some acknowledgement on the part of the series, which is appreciated.
Overall, this is probably where the show should have ended. It could have left a self-reflective legacy that ends on a laugh, if not necessarily a deep examination of the series or its characters. “Behind the Laughter” isn’t perfect, but it’s consistently funny and just a touch sweet, which would have closed things off with enough dignity to call it even.