The Simpsons

[J. Allen]

It looks like a lot of folks are in agreement as to the general time when the show lost it's edge. Looks like quite a few people think it's still good. I would agree and now that I think about it should have rephrased the voting option on that last one a bit better.

J.

[Mr Light]

I feel that the last 1-2 years have been an improvement over the past decade.

[T.Geiger]

The show had a noticable downturn in quality around season 12.5 for me. But I can pinpoint the exact episode where the entire thing jumped: S13E06 "She of Little Faith". Lisa became completely insufferable at that point and the show took a big hit for it. Also the first season I didn't keep the Treehouse of Horror from.

In my opinion, the five worst seasons, in order: 17, 20, 1, 19, and 13. I do give the first season a lot more respect than the other four in that list, but it wasn't really the same show it became even just a season later; it was written more like an 80's style family sitcom. I've kept only four episodes from it, all of them for classic moments / scenes.

I find season 18 to be quite the anomaly though. While no return to the golden era, its a noticeable improvement from the seasons surrounding it. Easily one of the better post-gold seasons.

[Thespeckledkiwi]

When Mike Sully took over. Shows became...uneven and ended weirdly. Just non-linear and non-sense plot lines. It got better after Al Jean took over for Sully.

[Newspaper Taxi]

The episode "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot" of season fifteen is when I made a mental decision not to watch the Simpsons anymore. It really seemed heartless to me -- the way they killed off cat after cat; the way Homer was getting violently hurt while being in the robot suit.

[J. Allen]

Homer stopped being a good guy with misguided ideas and terrible planning and became a heartless boob who was callous and selfish in every way. There was a fine line regarding Homer, to keep his humanity, but they crossed it completely and never looked back.

J.

[Zion Ravescene]

^^ I think, despite their better judgement, the creators secretly wanted Homer to be more like Peter Griffin.

[Praetor]

^^I think you hit the nail on the head, Z.

[Too Much Fun]

CaptainCanada wrote:

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I'd have been horrified if they had stopped at season eight. They did tons of brilliant stuff after that, including Homer's Enemy, arguably the funniest episode of the show.

Uh, "Homer's Enemy" was in season 8. People blame Mike Scully for the show's decline because it started to falter in season 9 when he took over, but I think it was doomed at that point no matter who took over. Few shows can stay fresh even after five seasons. That "The Simpsons" maintained such a high degree of quality after 8 was an amazing achievement and the creators of the show should have quit while they were ahead, but they got greedy.

[Zion Ravescene]

^^^ This I agree. That Mike Skully happened to be showrunner from seasons 9 to 12 may imply a causal relationship to the decline of quality of the show, but I think it's more complicated than that, with many factors playing a part.

I will say that I do agree with Matt Groening's criticism of the episode "A Star Is Burns" (from season 6) which led to him removing his name from the opening and closing credits of that episode - as well as being merely a tie-in with The Critic, it just simply wasn't a particularly funny or good episode in itself. (Thank goodness for the episode that followed it, though... )

[Tyre]

Zion Ravescene wrote:

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I will say that I do agree with Matt Groening's criticism of the episode "A Star Is Burns" (from season 6) which led to him removing his name from the opening and closing credits of that episode - as well as being merely a tie-in with The Critic, it just simply wasn't a particularly funny or good episode in itself. (Thank goodness for the episode that followed it, though... )

I always thought "A Star is Burns" was underrrated, but then again I saw it years after it aired and was unaware of the existence of The Critic.

The show seemed to start losing its luster in Season 8, but it was still a strong season for the most part. Season 9 is where things began to fall apart; about half the season was really good (Lisa's Sax, Bart Star, The Joy of Sect, Das Bus, Girly Edition in particular) and the rest of it was... not (The Cartridge Family, All Singing All Dancing, and Bart Carny were really terrible, and Treehouse of Horror VIII was a huge drop-off in quality compared to the ones that preceeded it). Seasons 10-12 was awful except for a few episodes, but 13-14 took steps towards watchability before falling off again. I stopped watching completely after Season 16.

[J. Allen]

Personally, one of my favorite episodes is "Homer the Vigilante", which comes out of the Fifth Season (one of my beloved and favorite seasons).

J.

[Kegg]

Zion Ravescene wrote:

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I will say that I do agree with Matt Groening's criticism of the episode "A Star Is Burns" (from season 6) which led to him removing his name from the opening and closing credits of that episode - as well as being merely a tie-in with The Critic, it just simply wasn't a particularly funny or good episode in itself. (Thank goodness for the episode that followed it, though... )

See, I thought that episode was fantastically funny and one of S6's many highlights.

"On closer inspection, these appear to be loafers."

"Just connect it to my veins!"

However, I am something of a Critic diehard as well, and I hunted down that series basically on the basis of my love of this episode. I enjoyed that series an unreasonably great deal.

Besides, Matt Groening, with Bender's cameo on the Simpsons and a teenager committing suicide because Futurama cancelled, is he really one to talk?

...yes, yes he is as that wasn't a whole episode. But shush.

[tharpdevenport]

Season 7, for me, is when I started not enjoying some episodes. I basically tuned out shortly after that, only contuining with the Halloween specials, because even they were good despite the rest of the bad season, then one day,I forget which season, the Halloween specials started sucking really badly. I don't might a slight decline, one episode good, then the next season terrible. And it was terrible again the next season, so I dropped the series all together. At this point, it's a fucking joke well beyond it's prime. It is quite sad, really.

I've said this stuff here multiple times, and I have also said this before here:

Anybody who's never seen the series and decides to judge it by tuning into it now, or any of the re-runs from the last ten years, makes me feel fucking embaressed to even be a fan.

[Jono]

Kegg wrote:

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See, I thought that episode was fantastically funny and one of S6's many highlights.

"On closer inspection, these appear to be loafers."

"Just connect it to my veins!"

I agree.

I'd add Burn's entire movie and the Boo-urns moment were also very funny and were my highlights for the episode. Also in my house we got a lot of run out of the Mexican equivalent joke.