1) The Simpsons are going to… cable! FXX, the recent comedy-focused spin-off of Fox-owned FX network has claimed the first cable rights to The Simpsons in a massive, $750 million dollar deal (though this could rise as new seasons are produced) that includes over 530 episodes (and counting). This is the biggest off-network deal in television history, adding another record to the long-running series. Perhaps even more intriguing is the deal’s inclusion for online streaming on the soon-available FXNOW mobile app as well as via video-on-demand. More details on the deal and scheduling are sure to emerge before the syndication begins next August.

2) An even bigger deal may be soon on the horizon as Time Warner Cable appears to be on the market with interest from both Comcast and Charter. First, the Wall Street Journal reported Charter Communications Inc. was nearing an agreement to raise funds for the purchase, a move that falls in line with Liberty Media’s John Malone’s (which owns 27% of Charter) recent pushes for cable consolidation. If that wasn’t enough, CNBC reports Comcast is also interested in a deal for Time Warner Cable, a move supported by their shareholders. This officially makes Time Warner Cable the belle of the ball, as TWC stock jumped to a 52-week high amid the purchase chatter. The FCC hasn’t said anything yet because of course not. But one has to wonder what role they’ll play.

3) Speaking of those guys, the FCC, under newly-appointed chairman Tom Wheeler, has voted to raise the cap on how much foreign entities can own of broadcast stations, both radio and television. Currently, there is a 25% cap on how much foreign companies can invest, a level current commissioners are described as outdated.

4) A new study out of (the) Ohio State University and Annenberg Public Policy Center has found the level of gun violence in PG-13 films is now greater than R-rated films. The study looked at 945 films from 1950 to 2012, noting an overall increase in gun violence and a marked increase in PG-13 rated films since that rating’s inception. The authors call for new restrictions from the MPAA as related to gun violence, particular in those lower rated films.

5) Two of the most iconic pop culture figures of the last 50 years, Superman and James Bond, have now had long-standing copyright lawsuits settled. First, Warner Bros. won an appeal case against the estates of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, ending a copyright claim filed back in 2003 and giving them complete control. Next, MGM & Danjaq have now acquired all copyrights for James Bond after settling with the estate of Kevin McClory, who opened the case 50 years ago after claiming he proposed the idea for making a Bond film to creator Ian Fleming.

6) A big courtroom victory for Google and fair use as a federal judge has ruled Google Books is considered fair use and “provides significant public benefits.” The case had been active for nearly 10 years, when a coalition of authors and publishers started the case in 2005. The ruling will surely move to appeal, but the precedent for fair use is powerful and will certainly have impact beyond just Google’s service.

7) From lawsuits ending to one just beginning: the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) held a conference where they announced their intention to take legal action against music lyric websites, claiming the sites profit from copyrighted works through their ad revenues. The publishers have targeted 50 websites and sent takedown notices, claiming they will not push for legal action unless the requests for heeded.

8) A new wrinkle in the enduring, critical lawsuits against network streaming startup Aereo as the National Football League and Major League Baseball have taken a side against Aereo, claiming they will move all of their games to cable if Aereo is found to be legal. This “friend of the court” filing with the Supreme Court aims to sway judges and show support for the multiple broadcasters taking Aereo to court. Barry Driller, a major investor of Aereo, doesn’t seem fazed, claiming the NFL is “just making noise.”

9) In the same week Sony released its next-generation video game console Playstation 4 with over 1 million sales, the company announced plans to cut $100 million from Sony Entertainment, making the company leaner and more focused. A large part of this will be reduced film production, a move Amy Pascal says will create “a more equitable balance between risk and reward.”

10) It probably won’t lead to Obamacare level criticism, but Barack Obama hasn’t made friends with some visual effects artists. After it was announced President Obama would visit DreamWorks Animation studio for a speech and visit with Jeffrey Katzenberg, visual effects artists at the company have planned to protest the visit due to the increased outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries.

And finally, two silly stories from a silly industry:

The Internet exploded this week when it was reported an “It’s A Wonderful Life” sequel was being planned. In a surprising twist (like in the movie!), Paramount announced it would fight any proposed sequel, claiming any project would require a license from the studio. With the film possibly dying a quick death, we will all have to ask an angel to show us a world where this sequel did, in fact, get released.

Mike “The Situation” “The Stupid Nickname” Sorrentino of Jersey Shore ‘fame’ is under federal investigation as the U.S. Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas for company records from businesses Sorrentino owns like MPS Entertainment and a clothing line. I would make a joke about this, but I don’t know enough about this ‘celebrity’ to say something witty.

Springfield was a little sadder when Marcia Wallace passed away on October 25, 2013 at the age of 70. Wallace was beloved for her role as fourth grade Springfield Elementary School teacher, Edna Krabappel. First appearing in “Bart the Genius”* way back in the second episode of The Simpsons, Mrs. Krabappel would evolve into one of the more sympathetic characters in The Simpsons universe over the show’s twenty-five years.

Sure, we loved her trademark: “HA!” (for the nostalgic, check out this great montage on YouTube). And it would have been easy enough for the writers to have Mrs. Krabappel play the part of a one-gag heavy-smoking, solitary-drinking, unlucky in love middle-aged school teacher stereotype. But what endeared the character in the hearts of fans was a decidedly more human side – in the award-winning flashback episode “The Seemingly Never Ending Story,” a younger and more idealistic Edna Krabappel breaks off her relationship with Moe for the sake of helping a lost cause student to succeed: Bart Simpson.

And it was the Bart-related plot-lines that showed Edna Krabappel at her most touching. In “Bart Gets an F,” Bart has to pass a history test and studies — even on an Act of God snow day — only to get a 59, still failing by a single point. When we talk about the “Golden Age of The Simpsons,”we usually aren’t just talking about the quality of the jokes. Our favorite Simpsons moments had an undergirding of genuine heart that was rarely, if ever, seen in an animated sitcom:

“I tried. I really tried. … This is as good as I could get! And I still failed! Oh, who am I kidding? I really am a failure. [sobs] Oh, now I know how George Washington felt when he surrendered Fort Necessity to the French in 1754!”

In our first glimpse of a more complex character, Edna takes pity on Bart and awards him an extra point through showing applied learning and letting him pass (even if he does end up staying in fourth grade for another two decades or so).

Although her long relationship history became something of a running gag in the later seasons, Edna Krabappel’s finest hour may well have been the 1992 Emmy award-winning “Bart the Lover.” What starts out as another mean-spirited Bart prank by answering a personals ad posing as Gordie Howe, ends up being one of the most touching of all of The Simpsons episodes with an emotionally poignant farewell for the ages:

“Dearest Edna, I must leave you. Why, I cannot say. Where, you cannot know. How I will get there, I haven’t decided yet. But one thing I can tell you, any time I hear the wind blow it will whisper the name Edna. And so let us part with a love that will echo through the ages. —Woodrow”

Unrequited love may be the stuff of classical comedy, but a teacher that genuinely loved her students, and was in turn loved by them, was more heart-warming than early Simpsons fans may have expected.

In an animated universe that always famously eschewed continuity, the development of Edna Krabappel into a more complex character was a welcome change. Perhaps the biggest swing in her character arc was the on-and-off relationship with Principal Skinner, which really was perfectly cromulent in its own way at the beginning (“Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!”). And in proof that fans had indeed grown a soft spot for Edna Krabappel, in The Ned-Liest Catch, viewers voted for a happy ending after all, to keep “Nedna” intact.

According to show runner Al Jean, Edna Krabappel is “irreplaceable” (as of this writing she had appeared in 178 episodes) and will be retired as a character later this season similar to the loss of Phil Hartman and his characters, Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz in 1998. Worth noting, is that while rumors from the 25th Season have involved a major Simpsons character being killed off, Mrs. Krabappel was not the character in question despite previously being the Vegas favorite (because people will literally gamble on absolutely anything). Mrs. Krabappel’s last appearance before the character is retired is scheduled to air later in Season 25.

Purple monkey dishwasher.

*fun obscure Simpsons trivia: Marcia Wallace also voiced Ms. Mellon, the gifted school teacher in the same episode; her only other character.

A half hour later, I re-read the scene as an intertextual jab at the second episode of Allen Gregory, a new animated series following The Simpsons. The title character (voiced by series creator Jonah Hill) is a precocious seven-year-old with two dads. His parents are a study in gay stereotypes: Richard (French Stewart) is natty, nasty, gossipy, and shallow; Jeremy (Nat Faxon) is a sweet if hapless hunk. Allen Gregory harbors a desperate crush on Principal Gottlieb, a gruff and gray-haired woman who towers, buxomly zaftig, over the boy in their scenes together.

Allen Gregory announces over the school’s public address system that he has a sex tape featuring the principal and himself. While the claim goes over classmates’ heads, back at home, Richard gleefully counsels his son on PR tactics. At school, the mousy guidance counselor, who turns out to be Gottlieb’s husband, becomes more concerned that the tape might be real than he is with the boy’s hypersexualization. Meanwhile, Richard banishes friends of their adopted daughter that he finds insufficiently attractive. Jeremy coaxes him to respect the girl’s choices, and the girls are invited back only to be subjected to more of Richard’s mockery.

In short, the series is as invested in humiliation as the cattiest zones of reality TV, and I struggled to find the comedy in Allen Gregory situations. According to the philosopher Simon Critchley, one of many who have offered such a definition, “humour is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and the way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality.” Not any old expectation; not just any actuality. “The genius of jokes,” he writes, “is that they light up the common features of our world.”[1] But there is a paper-thin line around comedy. When an attempted joke obscures rather than “lights up” the machinations of power, that line is breached, and sidesplitting laughter may turn to gut-wrenching disgust.

The pairing of The Simpsons’ scene of fleeting pedophilic wordplay with Allen Gregory came on a day in which, already, a lot of ink had been spilled and bandwidth consumed regarding news emerging from State College, PA. On November 4, a grand jury had indicted a former defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team on forty counts related to sexual abuse of minors. (I resist naming him here, despite how frequently his name and picture are appearing in the press, in deference to his legal right to enjoy the presumption of innocence.) On November 5, the suspect was arrested, and the story dominated the weekend’s news, occupying front pages and sports pages alike. Two other university officials were charged with perjury in connection to the grand jury. Allegations emerged suggesting that the beloved coach Joe Paterno, who had led the Nittany Lions since 1966, also may not have responded adequately to an assistant coach’s report that he witnessed the retired coordinator sexually assault a young boy in team facilities.

For days afterwards, I found myself mulling over the ongoing newsflow from Penn State against the backdrop of Fox’s Sunday night “Animation Domination” block of purportedly “edgy” programming, which has (as much as I hate to admit it) become less innovative vanguard than regressive curmudgeonry. (McFarlane’s October 31 Family Guy episode, “Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q,” stirred up critique from several quarters for trivializing domestic violence — and for lacking almost entirely in humor.) I was reminded of Janet Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives (1983), which recounts a battle over the legacy of the founder of psychoanalysis. In brief, a renegade psychoanalyst suggested that, in defiance of data accrued in his daily practice, Freud prematurely abandoned his original seduction theory, which identified the all-too-common trauma of childhood sexual abuse as source of adult neuroses. If the allegation was correct, Freud purposefully displaced evidence of the uncomfortable actuality of the sexual exploitation of children with fabulized Oedipal fantasies locating incestuous desire in the child’s imagination and normalizing it as a developmental stage. Established figures in control of the Freud Archives took issue, and drove the young upstart from their ranks, protecting the founder of psychoanalysis from criticism.

Likewise, even as alleged victims in the Penn State debacle continue to come forward, Allen Gregory grabs the microphone, and propositions the principal. For a time, it appears that it is children that abuse adults, sexually and otherwise. Recalling Critchley, we might say that “expectations and actuality” are disjoined, relations between “the way things are and the way they are represented” are upended. But the joke falls flat. Instead of illuminating “the common features,” however distressing, “of our world,” Fox has, in this instance, rolled out only obfuscating, acid unfunniness that stings a little bit more in light of still unfolding events.

This is an impressive use of a paratext (commenting on other paratexts, no less!).

The Simpsons’ opening sequence always offers fun variants in the blackboard and couch gags. Some of Bart’s blackboard lines have been provocative (such as “I did not see teacher applying for welfare”), but we mostly know what tone to expect. As with all opening sequences, it’s a familiar totem. Messing with opening sequences is thus always interesting, and here it’s especially effective. The tone changes, the color changes, and it’s prolonged – way beyond the length of most couch gags. It’s also made clear that this is from a different author (hence the Banksy tags all over the first part of the sequence), which makes it all the harder to work out who is talking here. Is FOX in on the criticism? Is Matt Groening? The whole Simpsons crew? While we might be familiar with guest directors on television shows, this is the first time I’ve heard of a guest director of an opening sequence. Once it’s over, no less, the show returned to business as usual. While the clip above doesn’t fully convey the effect of this, its cut from a dying unicorn back to the peppy Elfman theme song gives us a hint of it, since it’s transported us so far away from The Simpsons and The Simpsons opening sequence that we know that going back is awkward and feels wrong. What I like about this is that it makes the audience complicit – now that we’ve seen this criticism of the show’s production, we’re just going to go back to watching an episode about a little league baseball team? What does that say about us – not just about Rupert Murdoch, FOX, and The Simpsons – and about our role in facilitating all this?

The sequence therefore poses a dilemma and a problematic that must be solved or reconciled. It requires discussion. After all, the other part of this is that it leaves us wondering who signed off on this. Immediately afterwards, given the sequence’s attack on FOX, I started seeing many, many variants on Twitter and blogs of the following sentiment, “Wow, I’m amazed FOX let that on.” First, let’s dispel a myth – FOX can’t decide what goes on The Simpsons. James L. Brooks negotiated a “no notes” policy into the show’s contract, so FOX can either play something or cancel the show; they don’t get to nit-pick. But in pointing that out, I’m nit-picking. Since what’s important here is not whether FOX did know about and approve the sequence, it’s how this makes people think of FOX differently, especially when so many people likely believe FOX either approved it or didn’t know it was happening. So, once more, it requires some unpacking.

And finally, it leaves us with uncomfortable questions about Groening and co. How are they complicit, and are they simply making this a joke so that they and we can say, “Oh yes, that is bad, isn’t it? But we know about it, so it’s all okay. Let’s just get back to business as usual, shall we? Pass the Cheetos”? I was left with many conflicting responses here myself, on one hand thinking it was a brilliant statement, on the other hand feeling deeply uncomfortable that this is the show’s response to its labor practices – making an opening credit sequence rather than actually fucking doing something about them. Yet, the contestation of authorship in which the sequence engages leaves us wondering whether the American animators (who are largely responsible for the couch gags, by the way – these rarely involve the writers) can do anything about The Simpsons Factory. Those American animators, after all, aren’t a wonderfully privileged lot – they’re paid more than their Korean counterparts, for sure, but they’re still jobbing animators, who FOX makes pay huge sums for their own artwork if they want to give a cell to a kid or friend for a present, for instance, and who are hardly tearing around Burbank in their new $80,000 sports cars. As such, the sequence not only draws our attention to the deeply problematic labor practices that surround the show, but also to the contested and conflicted nature of production and authorship, reminding us that there are many different people involved, and inviting us to ask who precisely does what, and how much control anyone has.

Inevitably, the sequence’s critics dislike it because of their own answers to the above questions. But for me, the sequence works precisely because it doesn’t offer its own answers, instead posing a whole slew of questions. That may piss a lot of critics off, as satire often does when people want cute, simple answers, but this is Bart’s blackboard, not Beck’s.

… Yet I also feel obliged to tack on a concern with the racialization at play. It has yet to be confirmed that the Korean animation studio is a “sweatshop,” as depicted here – yes, its workers make less than Americans would for the same task, but the leap from this to “sweatshop” has always struck me as racialized (we don’t call production studios in Vancouver or Prague “sweat shops,” for instance), especially when some critics slip and think the show is animated in China or (as a reviewer of my Simpsons book insisted) in “South East Asia.” The sequence’s creation of an undifferentiated, silent and obedient, animal-torturing Asian here only exacerbates that racialization. The Simpsons is animated in South Korea (not the North, as the uniformed head of the studio here might suggest), dolphin-killing would seem to be Japanese, and pandas – along with much construction of toys – are Chinese. Yet they’re all in a big Asian factory (albeit also housing a unicorn, and hence clearly fantastical). Sadly, this aspect of the sequence doesn’t offer itself up for discussion, and much of what I’m seeing online skips over it entirely.

Politically engaged, “discursively integrated” comedy has become quite the buzz topic both within the television industry as well as the academy, with all sorts of attention being paid to programs like South Park, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show etc.  The modest topicality of The Simpsons broadly framed immigration debate episode “Much Apu About Nothing” in 1996 now seems quaint in comparison to South Park’s mocking of a presidential election the very night after its completion. Nowhere is this expectation for up-to-the-minute political satire made more apparent than in last week’s The Simpsons episode “The Greatest Story Ever D’ohd.”  I’m quite sure the episode, which features an extended vocal cameo from Sascha Baron Cohen, had been in the pipeline for quite awhile.  Thus, it’s probably not fair to read the storyline, in which the family visits the Holy Land, against the contemporary backdrop of U.S.-Israel relations.  Just the same, it’s impossible not to.

The episode’s narrative is not terribly ambitious, beginning with Ned Flanders taking on the challenge of saving Homer from his various Deadly Sins and ending with some nonsense where all of the characters think they’re the messiah.  There are a variety of Jewish jokes in the shticky Mel Brooks tradition (The Wailing Waldorf Hotel etc.) as well as a chase scene that rumbles through all the Jerusalem sites you’ve maybe heard of.  The heart of the episode is Baron Cohen’s turn as an Israeli tour guide who, while spot-on and funny in its way, probably doesn’t translate too well for people who haven’t been on a Birthright Israel trip.

What’s so striking about the episode, however, is that while it aired in the midst of what many analysts are calling the biggest rift between Israel and the US in decades, there’s really nothing of political import or contemporary relevance.  There’s a sign hanging in the airport that reads “Welcome to Israel, Your American Tax Dollars at Work,” a reference to the $2.4 Billion in American aid that goes to Israel but not necessarily a critical commentary.  There’s also Baron Cohen’s passionate explanation of Israeli aggressiveness where he proclaims that if Americans traded in Canada for Syria as a next-door neighbor, they’d understand why the Jewish State might seem a little on edge.  Also nothing new.

The word Palestinian doesn’t come up even once, which perhaps isn’t surprising but is pretty good evidence of the lack of teeth in the episode’s writers’ room.  No matter what your political perspective, any satirical picture of Americans in Israel needs to at least engage with the question of conflict and the US’s place in it.  I’m not suggesting that a show on Fox is going to be doling out radical politics, but the absence of something so central makes you wonder who thought the episode was worth writing.  This is particularly apparent in a week during which Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all directly addressed the topic, with the President making direct American demands on the Israeli government arguably for the first time since George H.W. Bush’s term of office.

Really, it’s unfair to ask an animated sitcom, a hugely labor intensive mode of television, to directly engage with real time politics.  It’s just not possible.  But when South Park is pulling it off and a variety of live action shows are pushing boundaries on a daily basis, it makes you question the wisdom of a show like The Simpsons even trying.  The news cycle is simply too brisk for a show with a traditional production schedule to keep up.