i love the simpsons. it's the perfect television show. even when it's a poor episode in comparison to some of their others, it's still worthwhile viewing and still much better than most television.

so with that said, i will say that i was disappointed in last night's episode on same-sex marriage. not that they made fun of that, because they make fun of everything. all is fair game on the show and that's fine. and just that they took on the issue is a major plus and shows that they are way ahead of the curve than most of television. i give them major credit for being so good as to write about the subject at all.

but there were three problems with last night's episode that saddened me:
1) the disclaimer at the beginning. what's up with that? i'm sure that was from fox rather than the simpsons crew, so i don't fault the simpsons team, but still, it was distressing and stupid.
2) when it was discovered that a woman was really a man, they really missed the boat on handling a possible transgender issue and just went soft on the issue. they could have made the episode even more forward-thinking but writing something along those lines, but instead they kept it at a middle-america level. whatever.
3) but most importantly, the most distressing part of last night's episode was that they chickened out fundamentally. for a year or so we've been hearing rumors that the simpsons was going to 'out' a regular character and they would be married to someone of the same sex. well, instead of actually going through with a same-sex wedding of a regular character, they chickened out and had the partner turn out to be opposite sex. that ruined the context of having a same-sex wedding episode. it should have been written different to where they really had the wedding and they got married, and then something happened or whatever.

either way, i give them total props for having the episode in general-- no one else is-- and for 'outing' a character. (we all knew she was and now it can be a real part of the show from now on) but still, i feel as if an opportunity was handled less-than-par and could have been a lot better.

all that said, i still love the simpsons.