Every Simpsons Couch Gag ever... Well, not qui-i-te, but gettin' there

May 15, 2008 12:51 AM

Couchbot

Previously, What Took You So Long ?

posted by y2karl (23 comments total)

fuck that one acid trip back in '69
posted by dawson at 1:05 AM on May 15

that was fun. I liked all the references to couch gags.
posted by farishta at 1:50 AM on May 15

Also of interest, a massive catalog of mistakes.
posted by farishta at 1:51 AM on May 15

This show has been on TV since I was two year old. Think about that. I have learned my native language, come of age, learned to drive, and moved out of my parents house. And during that period the Simpsons were making new episodes. It just boggles my mind every time I think about it.
posted by hellojed at 1:57 AM on May 15

I don't get it.
posted by nicwolff at 1:59 AM on May 15

I like the bit where they sit on the couch.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:51 AM on May 15

I started getting dizzy after watching this for a bit. But I laughed at the Escher reference. The rest of them just went by too fast!
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 3:34 AM on May 15

I have learned my native language, come of age, learned to drive, and moved out of my parents house. And during that period the Simpsons were making new episodes. It just boggles my mind every time I think about it.

Me too. But whenever I see Ernest Borgnine.
posted by hal9k at 4:16 AM on May 15

That was funny! Now, who are these "Simpsons"?
posted by not_on_display at 4:29 AM on May 15

Okay, show of hands, who first read this as "Crotchbot"?
posted by Spatch at 5:14 AM on May 15

hellojed: "This show has been on TV since I was two year old. Think about that. I have learned my native language, come of age, learned to drive, and moved out of my parents house. And during that period the Simpsons were making new episodes. It just boggles my mind every time I think about it."

To be fair for the last ten years or so they've been making new episodes, but not good episodes.
posted by Science! at 6:00 AM on May 15

woot monty python foot!
posted by Mister_A at 6:05 AM on May 15

To be fair for the last ten years or so they've been making new episodes, but not good episodes.

The parallel with my life is unnerving.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:48 AM on May 15 [2 favorites]

Man, as politely as I can say it, fuck Bay TSP. I can't imagine what it feels like to be making a buck working to stall the next innovation of media and commerce by being a narc lackey to the "old film studio cartel" system.

[grumbles about not being able to see lynnster's originally SLYT]

[recognizes the hypocrisy of being pro content creator and pro content protection yet still being against Bay TSP by labeling them narc sellout expletives]
posted by cavalier at 7:26 AM on May 15

Woah, which episodes had claymation (w/ Gumby), Legos, and the live action family?

It's hard enough trying to decipher all the cultural references they drop in those couch gags, but all of them at once? That was ridonkulous. I'm... a little dizzy.

Also, feeling a little old here. Old enough to remember when The Simpson's was a big huge deal, and that nothing like it had ever been done before. A primetime, network broadcast cartoon? For adults and children?

You kids with your satellite-cabled Tivos and YouTubes, your South Parks and Family Guys just can't understand how big of a deal this was, nor how subversive it was in the culture of the late 80s and early 90s. Thank you Mr. Groenig.
posted by loquacious at 8:34 AM on May 15

This show has been on TV since I was two year old. Think about that. I have learned my native language, come of age, learned to drive, and moved out of my parents house. And during that period the Simpsons were making new episodes. It just boggles my mind every time I think about it.
posted by hellojed at 4:57 AM on May 15

A man enters his home, removes his coat and drops it on the worn sofa. Across the room, he flips a switch on the television. As the old console TV warms up, he moves to the kitchen, dropping his keys on the peeling laminate table, as he's done countless times before. He pulls out one of the two vinyl chairs his parents brought home from the furniture store when he was a little boy. He moves to refrigerator, and pulls out a bag of bread, mustard, and a yellow packet of bologna. Grabs a plate. He sits in the chair and makes himself a sandwich. Bologna and mustard on thin white bread. The chair across him sits empty, as it has for years. He remembers trying to climb into it for the first time after his mother brought them and home with the table from the new furniture store. He always remembers this because it makes him smile that he was so little.

Since you were two years old and the Simpsons have been making new episodes, he has watched his shows on his console TV and he has eaten his bologna sandwiches. He used to look out the window while he ate, but at some point he closed the blinds. Now the room is dark save for the yellow glow of a single forty watt bulb. But he still eats his sandwiches, and watches his programs, and the days and years pass by outside.

You went to school, you learned to drive, you loved and lost and laughed and cried. He ate his sandwiches and did what was asked of him. Never more, never less.

But now you are reflecting back on those years, and so is he, the mutual reflections pinch the fabric of our world together, and for a moment you and he are brought together. You find yourself standing in that yellow kitchen across the table from him, with all the passing of the years since you were two compressed and packed into the room with you.

Yellow plastic bologna packets and yellow plastic mustard and plastic wrapped bread from all those years have returned to fill the room. The table is empty save for a single bologna sandwich. He sees you see it, and in sympathy glances down at it. The latest iteration of a long series. The limit approaching infinity.

His bologna sandwich. The slices of bologna confined inside the slices of bread. The squared circles. Slices of time, meted out with precision and regularity.

He looks at you, and speaks. Quietly, as if explaining.

"My mother used to make these bologna sandwiches for me. I don't even like bologna that much..."

And it crushes down on you, unbearably. The grief. The regret deferred. A boy at a table and his mother in the kitchen. Love meted out in slices over all those years. Since you were two years old.
posted by Pastabagel at 9:53 AM on May 15 [2 favorites]

Bologna sucks.
posted by Science! at 10:07 AM on May 15

Sorry, unless you fry it. Then it's OK.
posted by Science! at 10:10 AM on May 15

This show has been on TV since I was two year old.

Sure, jump on the bandwagon. If you were really cool, you would have been watching the Tracey Ullman shorts when you were 0.
posted by Gary at 10:26 AM on May 15

Reminds me of Every Episode, Every Shot,

in which every episode ever made of "Starsky & Hutch" was broken down and categorised by shot containing a certain cliché or well-known concept - i.e., one disc had all the sequences of the show in which a doctor appeared, another disc would be labelled "Every Restaurant" - you get the idea. I actually though this was pretty clever, and it's the first work of conceptual art I actually liked.

This is great. Thanks!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 2:03 PM on May 15

Ummmmmmmm...

Yay for being old?
posted by Samizdata at 6:18 PM on May 15

Yay for being old?

Damn right! What, you think it's easy to make it into old age?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:45 AM on May 16

very cool
posted by caddis at 9:45 AM on May 16