The Simpsons: The Thirteenth Season

Now in its third decade, The Simpsons is a televisual and cultural phenomenon that is regarded by most people as one of the greatest TV shows ever made. It arguably hit its peak quite some years ago but, even with recent output being far from its zenith, the sheer quality of the writing, animation and voice acting knocks spots off things like the Seth McFarlane shows Family Guy, American Dad and the desperately poor spin-off series, The Cleveland Show which, in my opinion anyway, suffer from repeat viewings and the law of diminishing returns in which each successive series is worse than the last.

Anyway, The Simpsons just keeps going and going with a great episode to compensate for every few mediocre ones and, with the actors now amongst the most highly paid on television, it shows no signs of stopping or suffering a marked drop off in quality. As usual, this 13th season comprises 22 episodes beginning with the traditional Treehouse of Horror anthology and ending with a fine episode involving Homer, the mob, a Sopranos reference and a further character development about Maggie. Anyway, the episodes are:

Treehouse of Horror XII
The Parent Rap
Homer the Moe
A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love
The Blunder Years
She of Little Faith
Brawl in the Family
Sweets and Sour Marge
Jaws Wired Shut
Half Decent Proposal


The Bart Ones What It Wants
The Lastest Gun in the West
The Old Man and the Key
Tales from the Public Domain
Blame it on Lisa
Weekend at Burnsie's
Gump Roast
I Am Furious (Yellow)
The Sweetest Taboo
Little Girl in the Big Ten
The Frying Game
Poppa's Got a Brand-New Badge


So, what should have you expect from this 13th season? Well, many wild and wacky adventures including a return for Artie Ziff who is now a multimillionaire and wants to 'hire' Marge to relive his senior prom, Homer becoming addicted to medicinal marijuana, Apu cheating on Manjula with the Squishee lady, Moe returning to bartender school and leaving Homer in charge of the bar, Bart (accidentally) stealing a police car and being tethered to Homer as a result by Judge Constance Harm (Jane Kaczmarek), Lisa growing tired of her church and converting to Buddhism and Homer having to drink through a straw and being unable to speak after breaking his jaw on a statue of Drederick Tatum and having his jaw wired closed.

As per usual there are a whole host of celebrity voices including Pierce Brosnan, Reece Witherspoon, Carmen Electra and Stan Lee.

There really isn't a dud amongst the 22 episodes, with the possible exception of Gump Roast, which is another clip show, and they all manage to be inventive, funny and topical with jokes about (then) President George W Bush and living in 'Cheney's America'. As with the previous 12, I found this an extremely watchable and incisive, witty and cynical show with its heart in the right place and (quite possibly) America's favourite family surviving despite every obstacle thrown in their way.

The Disc

Extra Features
As per usual for a DVD set of The Simpsons, each episode comes with a commentary involving different members of the cast and crew so they never become samey or tedious, involving different writers, directors and actors who each have their own opinions and recollections of the season, that particular episode and what it was like to be involved.

As this release is Ralph Wiggum themed, there are a series of featurette throughout the five discs about the dumbest character on the show with a great (though short) selection of 'Ralphisms' and one that concentrates on his life.

There are a selection of Simpsons-themed commercials for Burger King and a fascinating featurette showing the many Simpsons video games dating back to 1991.

Also, as per usual, there are a selection of deleted scenes, multi-angle animation featurettes and an introduction from Matt Groening.


The Picture
This was broadcast when Fox was still showing The Simpsons in 'square vision' and with the old, familiar introductory sequence and, although the Region 2 release is never as sharp as the R1 set due to the NTSC-PAL transfer, it is still extremely good with bright colours, no obvious blurring of colour bleeding in the faster moving sequences and, for a standard definition release, pretty crisp edges.

The Sound
The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack is very good and, although it is predominantly dialogue dominated, makes occasional use of the front and rear surrounds for the score, ambient sounds and explosions or car chases when the action moves quickly from one angle to another.

There is a decent selection of subtitles which are: English HoH, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish.


Final Thoughts
A recommendation one way or the other probably won't sway the target audience as you probably know whether you're going to buy this one or not and whether you're going to buy it as soon as it is released or several months down the line when the price drops. This season is as good as the one that preceded it and the one that follows and, if the recent output is anything to go by, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will be releasing these sets until after 2020!

Needless to say, this is a fine selection of episodes with some real crackers and others that are just 'good'; the writers have set such a high bar that it is very easy to disappoint but you just have to remember how good the 'mediocre' episodes are compared to other contemporary animated series. One of the highlights for me is when Homer is laid in bed going through all of his previous occupations, giving Marge enough time to get undressed, put on her nightdress and rollers in her hair (he mentions employee at a nuclear power plant only in passing)!