Dear Frank,

When was the last time you watched a new episode of The Simpsons? Yeah, same here — a long time! At this point, I would guess that I have only seen a third of the episodes produced to date, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you remember that there have been almost FIVE HUNDRED EPISODES of The Simpsons. That is a lot of episodes. Perhaps too many! Who’s to say.

But while you, me and most comedy snobs have abandoned the show at some point in the last decade, The Simpsons has continued to turn out episodes with a continually impressive roster of guest stars. Last season alone they had Cheech and Chong, Halle Berry, Hugh Laurie, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, a whole bunch of other people…

And this season, they had Neil Gaiman, which is what brings us together today. Frank, ostensibly I’m telling you about a recent Simpsons episode because revisiting the show this late into its run makes for an interesting intellectual exercise. But the real reason I’m writing this is that despite the fact that I’ve been a tremendous fan of his work for over a decade, Neil Gaiman has started annoying me over the last year or so, and I need to spend a thousand words or so working out why that is. Sorry, Frank. We’ll get through this together. Read the rest of this entry →