
Pinpointing the Moments “The Simpsons” became less Cromulent - gwern
http://diffuseprior.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/kalkalash-pinpointing-the-moments-the-simpsons-became-less-cromulent/
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jaimebuelta
I get baffled by the fact that it looks like the current opinion of the first
seasons of The Simpsons gets valued into the 7-8. I saw that previously on
IMBD

To put this in context, that's the same as Smallville
([http://www.geos.tv/index.php/index?sid=161](http://www.geos.tv/index.php/index?sid=161))

Now, I enjoy Smallville (I really do), but I can watch old episodes of The
Simpsons laughing along the way and quoting them almost line by line. It's
probably the ONLY TV Show I can watch it over and over without growing old.
I've seen some episodes more than 10 times, and they are still brilliant.

Other than the fact that, yes, probably is not as good as it was, I still
think is weirdly under appreciated in ratings these days, not sure way. The
first seasons are GOLD. Are part of the basic vocabulary all over the world.
They are innovative in terms of cartoons in ways that they are not easy to see
now (in particular, the first seasons tend to use the "camera" in ways that it
was never been done in cartoons, or even real action movies)

When it started, they started to show it up in Spain late at night as "cartoon
for adults". My mother watch ONE episode, and decided that I NEEDED to watch
it (I was a 11 year old kid at the time). That it was SO GOOD it will be bad
to miss it. So I'd watch it next day through the wonders of VCR.

I sincerely think that The Simpsons is The Best. TW Show. EVER.

It's just that we are so used to have it around, that we don't see it...

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spb
The article ends a lot more abruptly than I was expecting. It says what the
failure points were, and then it completely stops.

By what I've come across, I think this site has the best in-depth analysis of
the rise and fall of the Springfield empire, of the type that I was expecting
from that article:

[http://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs1/](http://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs1/)

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jesuslop
Just quoting from 4F12 season 8 (itchy & scratchy & poochie show):

COMIC BOOK GUY Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst
episode ever! Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes,
registering my disgust throughout the world.

BART Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?

COMIC BOOK GUY As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.

BART What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free.
What could they possibly owe you? I mean, If anything, you owe them.

COMIC BOOK GUY (pause) Worst episode ever.

~~~
sehugg
It's kind of funny to read the reviews posted on USENET immediately after the
episode -- the irony is not lost:
[http://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/4F12](http://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/4F12)

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mcfunley
I'm sympathetic to the idea that classic episodes were superior. But when the
classic episodes first aired, there were literally five channels in most
homes. Simple rating trend analysis is doomed. The world around the show has
changed too much.

~~~
maxerickson
The ratings used in the article are per episode opinion surveys, not
television viewership ratings.

~~~
increment_i
Not to mention the 'five channels' thing is off the mark. Cable television was
more or less entrenched by the 1990s.

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ecopoesis
The author asserts that the new episodes are stale, and then in the very next
sentence says he hasn't watched a new episode in ten years. Pretty hard to
take anything he says seriously after that.

This hipster affectation that older things are always better is quite
annoying. People complain about SNL in the same way: the current cast is
always considered terrible. Yet, five yeas later we inevitably look back on
the older era with nostalgia.

The current incarnation of The Simpsons sucks, because it's always sucked. You
just only remember the good parts of the old episodes because of the
fallibility of human memory. This selective memory makes the good old days
seem better then they were.

~~~
malnourish
While I agree about SNL, I strongly disagree about The Simpsons, and I
recommend reading Zombie Simpsons [0] if you're interested in reading about
the downfall of The Simpsons (and how in many respects, it's not The Simpsons
at all).

The show absolutely did not suck. You may have never liked it, and that's
fine, but the show has had incredible impact, was well written, and was
groundbreaking. There are legitimate reasons for not the change in The
Simpsons, notably a drastic change in showrunners and writers.

[0][http://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/](http://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/)

~~~
jghn
I remember around 2000 or so discussing that part if the problem was that the
writers then had pretty much grown up watching the show, leading to it staling
a bit. 15 years later that's even more true now IMO

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TillE
I was curious about those three sharp dips in the first section. Turns out
they're all clip shows.

I'm pleased to see this aligns with my own opinion of a slight decline in
quality around S9/S10, followed by genuine mediocrity.

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lexcorvus
If you really want to appreciate "The Simpsons", be sure to seek out the
original episodes. The syndicated versions have been edited to squeeze out
extra time for commercials, and some of the best jokes ended up getting cut.

~~~
porsupah
It's a frustrating practice, and indeed, not limited to the Simpsons - even
Doctor Who has suffered from cuts, on BBC America, of all places.

SNPP, perhaps not surprisingly, has a catalog of Simpsons syndication cuts,
arranged by season:

[http://www.snpp.com/episodes/scg.html](http://www.snpp.com/episodes/scg.html)

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Pxtl
I remember as a kid the sudden collapse. It happened _really_ fast - in season
8 it's a solidly good show, and by season 11 it's unwatchable. I'd always
assumed that the best of the team switched gears to work on Futurama (which
came out during this period).

For me the final nail was Saddlesore Galactica. At the time I had no idea that
there was all this drama between writers and fans in the newsgroups, as I'm
sure most fans were similarly unaware. So there's this episode that seems to
be deliberately, aggressively bad. That seems to revel in its absurdity and
clumsiness. And it delibrately lambasts itself as "worst episode ever". I had
no idea that this was some kind of in-joke "gotcha" against the newsgroup - at
the time I'd assumed they were just celebrating all their own bad ideas as a
gag theme episode.

In hindsight it looks like they tried to mock the "comic book guys" of their
fanbase and instead seemed to just prove them right. It's almost a sort of
drama-queen meltdown, not something you'd expect from a group of
professionals. And following Saddlesore, this new almost _deliberately_ bad
flavour of writing became the new normal, so it didn't even stay the "worst
episode ever".

Saddlesore Galactica and the following episodes were the shark-jump moment for
me.

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karmacondon
The new Simpsons episodes are not awful. I don't think anyone wlll say that
they prefer the new seasons over the older ones, but that doesn't mean that
the new seasons are objectively bad. Whatever is said about the show, it still
has the market cornered on Ivy League level humor. The best jokes are just
_smart_ , I would dare to say smarter and more insightful than any other
television show. Fraiser at its best wasn't nearly as intelligent as some of
the Simpson's throwaway jokes.

There used to be one truly inspired joke every few episodes. Now there might
be only one or two per season, but they're still there. The Simpsons remains
on the air because there are some things that can only be done with the right
combination of deep wit and animated insanity. It's ok to make references to
the classics or philosophy if you follow it with Homer getting hit in the
groin. Plenty of shows are funny, animated or intelligent, but I can only
think of one show that is the best of all three of those things.

Anyone who hasn't watched The Simpsons in ten years should tune in to a few
new episodes. You'll laugh, at least once. There will probably be something
that makes you think just a little bit. Nothing is ever as good as it used to
be, but there are definitely worse ways to spend 30 minutes.

~~~
freshyill
I watched _every_ episode in order last year, so I have some fresh
perspective, and I agree completely. there were seasons that were much worse
than I remembered (11-12, and things definitely got better. I wouldn't say the
current episodes are 4-8 quality, but roughly 9-10, which is still pretty
good.

Anybody who says the show sucks today needs to give it a chance. They'll be
pleasantly surprised.

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tzs
Despite any decline, every season from 15 on has averaged just a bit under 7
at IMDB, with about 1/3 of each season in the 7.3 or 7.4 neighborhood.

People who call for The Simpsons to be cancelled because they think it is not
as good as it used to be are, frankly, insane. The proper measure of when to
cancel a show is not how it compares to its own past, but rather how it
compares to what is likely to replace it. The average _bottom_ third of
current Simpsons seasons is still better than the typical new Fox show.

It's interesting to see how perceptions of old episodes change. For example,
3F02, "You Only Move Twice", where Homer goes to work for Hank Scorpio, is
seen today as one of the best episodes of the series. On IMDB, it has the
lowest rating of season 8.

9F10, "Marge vs. the Monorail" is the lowest rated season 4 episode on IMDB,
but now is on most of the "best of" lists for the series.

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cpwright
With the advent of every Simpsons ever, I've been watching it much more
recently; and still find it funny, though maybe a little less so.

I wonder if as the family and Springfield drift more from the "average"
family, it is harder for the show to be funny/relevant.

The Simpson's family stays constant, but the average family has changed over
the last years. When the Simpsons first aired having 3 kids, with a mom at
home was pretty normal. Now, at least in the circles I'm associated with, most
mothers work; especially when you are likely to have the persistent money
problems that are the focus of so many episodes.

~~~
bjourne
Has the Simpsons financial situation ever been reasonable? They survive on
only Homers salary which can't be that great. Still, they own two cars and
live in a two-story four bedroom detached house in an average size American
city. On top of that, Homer has enough disposable income to get wasted at
Moe's Tavern almost every night. In the show they are labelled as poor but it
really doesn't seem so.

~~~
Pxtl
There was a time when a man working in industry in a small city could support
a family on his income. That was back when Matt Groening was a kid, so that's
how the Simpson's family is structured - when Groening started the show, he
was really just writing about his own childhood through Bart, transposed into
the early '90s, ignoring the economic realities of the '90s.

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laumars
Graph TV plotting the ratings of each Simpson's episode and season trend line:
[http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0096697](http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0096697)

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LeoPanthera
The most interesting thing I learned from this is the existence of GEOS:
[http://www.geos.tv/index.php/select](http://www.geos.tv/index.php/select)

I've always used IMDB ratings to compare TV shows, I wonder how they compare?

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nnnnni
I consider the movie to be the end of the series, but it was definitely going
downhill before that point -- looking back on it after reading this article, I
would have to agree with his findings. Homer vs NY was the last good one.

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lotsofmangos
And in other news, will analysis of phase changes in the coolness of tv series
ever jump the shark? Statistics after the break.

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lnanek2
wow, light gray text on white background makes this pretty much unreadable...

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iguana
This is the best headline I've ever read.

