There is nothing worse then watching a critically regarded and personally beloved TV show fall victim in its later seasons to mediocrity, characters that were once iconic in their representation of the high standards of what the show once meant now a hollow vehicle for poorly written dialogue and increasingly nonsensical, contradictory situations. The Simpsons may as well be dead.
Indeed, if the career of Eminem could be likened to an increasingly outdated animated sitcom Relapse would be somewhere around the overlong stretch to say... the fourteenth season. The clever writing of long ago has long been exhausted, everyone involved is clearly bored with what they are doing and fans have been claiming well into the earlier seasons that amongst countless re-runs the show had already lost its magic touch and sucked now. Oh well.
Yet somehow the project has been given the green light to continue on and will be begrudgingly hacked out despite the very conscious act of flogging a dead horse. Hell, Eminem once ruled the world and is still a big name in the business, if a few passable singles are conjured up after you count all CD sales, merchandise, radio slots etc there is an assured profit at the end of it all. If your critical acceptance has already reached an all-time low, why not scrape for the bottom of the barrel in the name of making a few more bucks while you can? Why not just sell your soul?
Everything that once made this show a force has been thrown to the winds. The satire used to be incredibly poignant, tragic and humorous all at once, affecting the listener in the best way possible. A dysfunctional world was painted through it's storytelling, often exaggerated for emphasis but cleverly written and still grounded enough in everyday life to provoke us and make us think. Sure, it didn't hit it's stride until a little bit later in the game and whilst the injection of pop culture references could be seen as cloying it was handled well and wasn't overbearing. It was a shock to the stagnant output of its era and worked on many levels, not just one. It is not a far stretch to say that in terms of consistency
Relapse doesn't work on any level. Which is unfortunate.
Much like the depressing feeling you get watching Homer Simpson written into completely unfunny and irrelevant situations, Eminem's role on
Relapse provides the same kind of hollow spectacle. Hints of the greatness that used to be threaten to break through at times, but it never quite does. Even on it's own merits nothing on
Relapse stretches past mediocrity enough to warrant given this more then a single listen. It feels like slow death.
