I don't think 'regular people' have much of an opinion on some guy who did a cartoon once in 1991.

Well, "regular" as defined by the communal standards of "people who frequently express opinions via the internet".

I don't really see much of a John K influence in the artwork here. Maybe in the animation itself, but that kind of goes back to Don Martin, and if you really want to stretch it, Les Clark too. I loved the original Ren and Stimpy but I remember seeing one of K's shorts at a Spike and Mike's years ago (I think I was 16) and just feeling uncomfortable.

So is the joke here (and in the teaser; you better believe I'll watch it even though it'll be a trainwreck) that the shows are the same? I'm sure you all have seen it, but the South Park episode nailed it pretty well with "The Simpsons Did It." Thing is, the petri dish thing wasn't a Simpsons original. I think it was the Twilight Zone, and was probably around before that. That's just what Harold Bloom would describe as the anxiety of influence. There are some similarities, obviously, but those are sort of TV tropes. It'd be like comparing All in the Family to the Jeffersons, which was a legitimate spinoff, but calling it a ripoff: Archie's a good-hearted man but let's face it, he can't deal with the change his children want to see. The Jeffersons plays off that but deals with racial tension in pretty much the opposite way. It's not exactly the same as Scooby Doo and Jabber Jaw, or even the Flintstones and the Jetsons. The nuclear family trope is pretty common but let's look at the facts: Santa's Little Helper doesn't talk, nor does Maggie, and Homer's drinking friends, at least until I stopped paying attention to the show, were very peripheral. Homer would have thought bubble flashbacks, but they were separated from reality, unlike Family Guy's, which was very removed from reality. I mean, for a cartoon, the Simpsons is pretty realistic. Homer has to take a hallucinogenic "pepper" for the writers to go exploring, whereas Peter can just kind of do it when he chooses. They can also kill off a beloved character and the baby can go back in time and change it. I'm not necessarily defending either. I'm indifferent to later Simpsons and FG's just kind of "there," but I don't see them as even comparatively the same. Bob's Burgers is more like the Simpsons than FG is. PS I like Bob's Burgers.

I'm not really seeing the Don Martin, unless you're considering Don Martin's influence on Ren & Stimpy and Family Guy. (besides, wasn't Don Martin a cartoonist, not an animator?) The John K influence is in the style of animation; the propensity for the art style to change abruptly, and the characters to go all gross-faced and scary at random times. You see this a lot these days, particularly in amateur animation, although it sometimes bleeds into mainstream animation too, like Adventure Time or My Little Pony. John K was neither the first nor the only animator to inject his work with grotesque surrealism, of course, but he was by far the most successful and influential.

"I think it was the Twilight Zone, and was probably around before that."

Wasn't exactly in TZ; there was an episode ("The Little People") where a couple astronauts land on a planet where everyone is microscopish-sized, and Claude Akins has to keep the other astronaut from being a dick. That's as close as TZ gets.

This video needs more Blails.

Cartoon Network had a show I've never seen called Mad that animated Martin's work. I never watched it but you're right. Martin was never an animator himself. I also see what you're saying. The one that always got to me was the episode where Ren and Stimpy pretend to be babies and the typical Bob Dobbs dad guy gives them a hug. I'm not sure if you see his face but it zooms in enough to see the razor burns on his face and skin flakes flying around. Not to mention the fact that Ren went from baby size to probably the size of a hamster in 10 seconds. I don't think there was much of that before John K. If the Simpsons did it it was simply because of miscommunication, but John K's was very intentional.

(I mean there was but not in mainstream animation. Arg. We need an edit button.) :)

John K did not invent gross-out humor. There's nothing in Ren and Stimpy that hadn't been done before.

I said he wasn't he first. But he was one of the first, and hands down the most influential, to contextualize gross-out humor in that way (visually, through the use of sudden, spastic, even disturbing shifts in art style and character expression). Gross-out humor is as old as comedy itself, but animated gross-out humor, drawn in a style reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy, that was pioneered by Ren & Stimpy.

Still better than what it's parodying.

I never really cared or followed The Simpsons or Family Guy. I have seen the occasional episode and while they are not amazing I have had an occasional chuckle.

If you spend a large number of hours "parodying" something that you consider stupid and come out with an end product that is objectively more stupid and less funny than what you are supposedly making fun of, you have not raised yourself to some intellectual pedestal because "OH MY GOD YOU HAD THE REVELATION THAT THESE MASS MARKET SHOWS ARE NOT VERY GOOD", you are just a moron who spent a large number of hours making a turd.

Kinda like what I did with my comment up here only worse.

Thing is, when I was a kid the mass marketing sort of turned me off. But it also seemed a lot bigger than it is these days. Pretty much everybody I know is aware of the Simpsons, but in some cases can't even name everyone in the immediate family. That's a far cry from "Do the Bartman." Back then, I didn't get the jokes. It was a cartoon and was marketed that way. Ironically my parents wouldn't let me watch it, thinking I'd become Bart or something (we didn't have UHF but I found ways) and now they think it's funnier than I do. I've said it before, but for a while there, it was the greatest sitcom ever. In a way, I'd like it if this were the final episode. They just destroy themselves and we move on. I'd gladly watch a new Groening project.

The Simpsons is one of the most important TV shows ever and has contributed to our culture, our language, and our most reflexive, kneejerk assumptions behind Bush I/Clinton-era mass media. The Simpsons fundamentally changed the rules of the entire game and has contributed nearly as many words and phrases to our common vocabulary as Shakespeare or the Bible.

So fucking of course PoETV thinks it's overrated. Of course.

Ay Chihuahua, vote Gary Hart in '92, man!

Eat my shorts.

It's dumb but I liked it as much as I liked Bart the General. I probably should've used the 2-4 star option though.

"Dharma and Greg the Bunny"

"Vinnie and Poochie's Excellent Adventures"