Channel Surfing: The Simpsons - "Simprovised"

Welcome to a new column called Channel Surfing, in which I sporadically look at current TV shows and talk about them. These are not ones that I care to write weekly recaps for and are instead reflections either on the episode, the series, or particular moments. This will hopefully help to share personal opinions as well as discover entertainment on the outer pantheon that I feel is well worth checking out, or in some cases, shows that are weird enough to talk about, but should never be seen.
Ever since season 23, The Simpsons has evolved to a certain stage of their lifespan. Having presumably done everything, the show began to turn into an art show. No really. Episodes became shorter as the team made room for longer couch gags that featured animators from Bill Plympton to Robot Chicken to more absurd ones like Rick and Morty and the notorious Don Hertzfeldt segment that opened "Clown in the Dumps." Even the tail end of an average episode began to pave the way for more creative animation and tangential segments, such as the nonsequitor opening of "Sky Police" in which Chief Wiggum gets a jet pack before the story transitions into an unrelated gambling story. To say the least, The Simpsons has become mostly a series of creative ideas strung together with stories often being secondary. 
The one advantage is that this particular season has seen some progress in the right direction. Earlier this season, the series did its first non-"Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episode. Now in its penultimate episode, it tackled the idea of doing live animation. It's an unfathomable concept, and one that fits right into the novelty that is the past few years. If nothing else, it would join the LEGO episode for what would be revolutionary technique. What the final product provided was not necessarily a let down, but it does have its unfair use of misdirection that unfortunately underwhelms a decent idea. Much like how "Clown in the Dumps" promised to kill off a beloved character only to have it be the inconsequential Krusty's father, the idea of this episode live is something that should be taken with a grain of salt. In a 22 minute episode, only three minutes are dedicated to this idea.
To the writers' credit, the "Simprovised" episode that lead into it fit the theme nicely. With Homer forming stage fright, he joins an improvisation group to overcome his fear. The story itself is conventional, and one that has been done better on You're the Worst and BoJack Horseman. However, it still raised issues as the minutes dwindled down as to when the live portion would begin. Speaking as it would have voice actor Dan Castellanetta improvising as Homer for the first time on TV, it seemed like a big deal not only to know what he would say, but how the animators would get around the corners.
Considering that the series has explored the ideas of motion capture before, there's a certain disappointment with the simplicity that followed. As mentioned in the opening credits, callers would ask him questions. The only conflict really is that it's essentially Homer sitting behind his desk for the three minutes as the questions were asked. In fairness, the show did attempt this on both west coast and east coast live feeds, so the results differ based on your location. The west coast has been reported as being a lot crisper, and without any nuanced problems involving routing phone calls into a live production (trust me, radio has this problem every day). Still, it was a ho-hum thing that delivered some laughs, but failed to live up to any hype. It was basically Castellanetta doing improv for three minutes. Thankfully, it was enough in character.
For what it's worth, this isn't something that happens often. In fact, that's the general appeal of the live aspect. However, it still does feel like The Simpsons in execution nowadays isn't as great as The Simpsons in hype mode. The only real thing that was live was Homer's mouth. Most of the other proponents were random gags that walked across the scene, as if even the animators realized how achingly dull the live aspect was. The one question now is if the show will ever do it again, or at very least inspire other shows to do similarly live gigs. 
It is likely that the disappointment is more from how minimal and inconsequential it was to the story. Technically, it was an admirable idea, and one that paves the way for more interesting uses hopefully in years to come. For the time being, the episode remains more reflective of the creative period of The Simpsons where most things are just a collage and not one coherent plot. It isn't a total waste of an idea, but even if the three minutes had some justification to the plot besides being improvised, maybe then it would be easier to embrace. It was fun, but between months of advertising and an otherwise solid episode, it just didn't amount to much that shows the show at its best. In a season that has been pretty strong, it's sad that their gimmicky moments don't quite click as well as they should.

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