HOW THE SIMPSONS CHANGED NARRATIVE.

HOW THE SIMPSONS CHANGED NARRATIVE. For a long time, Mary Jane and I considered The Rockford Files to be the best television series we had watched. Then, recently, we watched a rerun. Those were simpler times. The show had charm, but the plot was simple compared with the multiple plot lines that we are accustomed to today. I attribute a lot of the current audience expectation of and comfort with complexity to the Simpsons, which has run for years and shaped a generation. The shows are crammed with jokes, many of which can be noticed only on watching the episode again. Joe Posnanski identifies a number of the inside baseball jokes on last week’s episode.(A deadly accurate example: in an argument over whether Cliff Lee or Zach Greinke is a better pitcher, one fan argues that Greinke is better than Lee “[b]efore the fourth inning, after a road loss, in a domed stadium.” I have participated in discussions like that and read a lot of analysis like that.) Posnanski asks: “I wonder how much fun [the writers] have over there putting in these little details they know 99.999% of the people won’t notice, but will drive the other .001% mad.”