The Simpsons is not as good as it used to be.

Me stating the above statement would be like saying "a fish only survives in water" and "I like saying the word bung", ie, a total statement of the obvious, but it had never struck me just how much The Simpsons deteriorated until I watched an episode from Season 20, "Wedding for Disaster", today. Bearing in mind that I hadn't seen an episode of The Simpsons since late 2008, and the ones I had seen then had all been the good ol' reliable season 7-9 episode repeats on C4, I was shocked by what I saw.

Firstly, the opening sequence has been tweaked, and not for the better. Matt Groening has bunged a bit more danger and mischief about, but I felt it went overboard. There was a time when The Simpsons was this lovely little PG, occasionally 12-rated animated comedy that I could watch with my brother Tom, but now it's trying to make itself as a more family-friendly South Park, which surely is a contradiction in terms. The opening credits scared me.

The actual episode itself wasn't that bad, though the premise was awfully thin. As with all The Simpsons episodes, it begins with something and then the plot modulates to relate to The Simpsons family. Here, it started with Reverend Lovejoy's announcement of the visit of a Parish member. Said member brings bad news for the Reverend, which is that, since his failed attempt to pay for his recertification with a credit card that was maxed out on poker debts, his holy behaviour for the past three months are worthless. One of these activities was to remarry Homer and Marge (we get a cheeky 30-second flashback via a photo album of a scene that I've seen many times), et voila, the constantly-strapped-for-money suddenly find the time and funds to have a third wedding.

In planning her "best" wedding, this time round, Marge gets a little excessive (think Monica in Friends when she was planning wedding), and inadvertently shuns her spouse. When the wedding day actually arrives, Homer is nowhere to be found, and Marge blames herself, thinking it was her hyper-organized, overbearing bossiness that scared him off. In fact, Homer Simpson has been kidnapped. The ever-wise Lisa Simpson cottons onto this, and, finding a key with the initials "SB" attached to it, she and her brother Bart (not irrationally) go on a witch-hunt for Sideshow Bob, believing him to be the proprietor. But, in fact, it turns out to be a pair of people that have kidnapped their dad, two people who are a lot more closer to home..



There are amusing moments in this episode, but the parts that evoked no larfs from me at all were when Homer was locked in a Saw-esque dungeon, and was forced to eat a chili-sauce flavoured lollipop to get through to the key inside it. Such a level of cruelty was a bit severe for a The Simpsons episode, and the people who did it, though it has often been common knowledge that they weren't keen on the big ol' boy, seemed somewhat uncharacteristic. Overall, episode 2015 of The Simpsons left me a little confuzzled and pining for the good, more innocent days.