Why did The Simpsons become so terrible? I don't mean why in the sense of what is the show doing that isn't funny...

Why did The Simpsons become so terrible? I don't mean why in the sense of what is the show doing that isn't funny, we all get in what way the humor is falling flat, I mean why as in why did a show that was so good become so fucking bad? What happened behind the scenes? I became so curious lately since the nosedive was so precipitous and the best I can find is a post on nohomers saying that when Mike Scully took over less care was taken in writing the episodes. Does anyone have more details?

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It's the same thing to happened to Spongebob and Fairly Oddparents. A show has a good run and it's time for it to end, but the show also happens to make a lot of money on name alone. So why bother trying when it's possible to scrape the bottom of the barrel and still make millions off of it?

I don't think it's as simple as the show running its course. Spongebob might not be funny anymore, but NeoSimpsons is ACTIVELY, offensively unfunny. And what's more Spongebob has the handicap of being a kid's show with certain gags being off limits, it has a smaller cast of established characters, the premise in general just doesn't allow for anything but wacky humor, etc. It has a ton more handicaps and thus it's more justifiable to say it has run out of shit it can do. Simpsons has nosedives in EVERYTHING, including fucking animation. It's an across the board decline and nowadays it features some of the worst writing on television. It's just not a natural progression, or at least it doesn't feel like it. It just feels like somewhere along the way there was one big fuckup that sent everything off course to where it is now.

nothing lasts forever and creativity is limited. How many individual shows have you watched that haven't started to dive around the 10th season? Remembering The Simpsons had 20-25 episodes per season and is at about 225 episodes at that point. You simply run out of ideas and have to start taking them from other sources like pop culture and media. Not saying it's an excuse but it was going to happen. Look at spongebob season 3 was already at 60 episodes but each episode was 2 stories making it 120 already.

Original stories and ideas are infinite but good ones aren't.

It's bad because people watch the Simpsons now just because it's the Simpsons. Why bother? The show is not going to get any more popular, and it's not going to get any less popular, so just keep making it half-assed and keep making money off of it.

The show dragged on, the original writers left, the writers who replaced them were people who watched the show and always wanted to be a part of it without truly understanding what made it good originally. Repeat a couple more times and the show has devolved into its current state.

Its going on 27 seasons bro, its the longest running animated series on western television, no shit its going to get trapped in a formula and then eventually get getting trapped into formulas into a formula until it warps into a parody of itself

No show got worse than Spongebob after the movie, this is not a contestable fact. You'd have to be completely nuts or stupid to think Spongebobs quality didn't turn it into the most unfunny piece of garbage after the movie aired. it is a significant drop in quality from the last episode that aired before the movie, Spongebob went from one of the greatest animated shows of the 2000s into the worst after a single movie. Its all because Stephen Hillenburg wanted the series to end after the movie but Nick didn't want to lose their biggest cash printer

Literal child detected. Have you even WATCHED The Simpsons?

The thing with the Simpsons is, a lot of writers did leave, but a lot of writers also stayed. Why I think the Simpsons has lasted so long is overall because I think most of the shows writers stuck it through, they maintained creative control over the series pretty much since its inception. So its easier for them to adapt the show without jarring audiences like what would happen if a completely new crew took over. The Simpsons of today is NOTHING like it was before, but I think the reason is less that its gone stale and more of the fact the writers recognize the changing demographics and their expectations. This is something that is not easy to do, and many shows have failed at doing this. But the Simpsons still manages 5 million views an episode, and this is a day and age where hardly anyone watches traditional TV. So they must be doing something right


It took many seasons for the Simpsons to decline, SB managed to do it after 1 movie

Family Guy made it to the scene and then got canceled, but the torch of random humor was just there and they decided to grab it.
For a creative team that hated the show so much at the time, The Simpsons certainly took a lot from it.

deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/

The series is no longer in the hands of the people who made it great. You've got a bunch of different writers, many of whom have no connection to the show when it was good except for being loyal viewers.

I'm so tired of hearing this over and over again, it almost makes me want to watch the new episodes out of spite

Simple: They kept on making it after they started running out of ideas because it was profitable.

Season 3 has 37 episodes, and that's counting each 11 minute story seperately.


Appealing to the lowest common dominator isn't right. I guarantee there's many who still watch it for the name alone.


That's because they don't have standards anymore, user. As long as it makes money, they don't give a shit about what crap they push out.

Go ahead faggot, you will only be hurting yourself.

This. Saying "they ran out of ideas" doesn't cut it.

Look at how badly the execution of the gags have gotten in the newer episodes, is there any reason why they couldn't have done the same gag only with the subtlety that the show used to have?

Speaking of shows with hundreds of episodes I am planning on watching South Park. What seasons should I watch and what seasons I shouldn't(as in which season are dogshit horrible). I realize that much of the humor is about what happened in that year, but I don't think this would become much of a problem.

I don't usually watch south park. Yes, that is usual with south park satire the current years.
The best episodes I like are always about the show itself.

The first Season is must it's all about South park characters and the movie.

Pff conformists

They lost all their good writers and the ones they have left have their scripts rewritten by the idiots in charge to become the unfunny garbage that goes on tv

On the joke side of it….Its incredible just how unfunny it is.

I think this could be only possible with multi stage refinement, to be sure that the joke is the worst possible joke there can be.

I'm not saying it to be trendy. It's really fucking bad television, go ahead and watch that shit if you don't believe.

I'm so tired of hearing this over and over again, it almost makes me want to get cancer out of spite

None of South Park is necessarily 'dogshit horrible', at least not to the degree that The Simpsons is now. If you're looking for seasons to avoid, Season 2's not that great, Seasons 16-18 aren't spectacular although there are some good episodes here and there.

can I get an example?

I'd wager that there are about 5 million bars in the U.S. that just leave it on in the background for people to watch when there's not a sports event.

The FLoTUS1 episode is really bad. Most of the newest episodes featuring Lisa as the main character (read: most of them) usually are, but this one and the episode where Lisa dyes her hair black to appear smarter are so bad you could use them as a textbook example of how not to write humor.

Basically, Lisa becomes depressed because (literally) "every1 is dum but me lol", and writes a blogpost about how much better she is than everyone else in her organic agriculture blog (if I recall correctly) and how nobody understands her genius. She soon gets a comment on her blog from flotus1 about how she must remain strong, for she is not alone in being a stronk independent wymyn who needs no man. Fast forward the rest of the episode (since this is mostly a side plot), and Michelle Obama appears out of fucking nowhere in the middle of Springfield's Elementary School with a helicopter. Michelle explains that she was flotus1 (First Lady of the United States) and that she had to choose that name because flotus was already taken; Ralph appears with a swimming ring with no explanation given and makes a lame pun about how he named himself flotus because he floats. There she gives a speech about how everyone should treat smart people like Lisa better because they are smart and basically better than you, and proceeds to compare her younger self to Lisa. Some other characters comment on how they were also top of the class, and then Michelle and her bodyguards proceed to leave, but they can't open the helicopter's door because it got stuck. Michele Obama proceeds to open it because she is a STRONG INDEPENDENT BLACK WOMAN WHO NEEDS NO MAN, and the episode ends shortly after that.

I am not making any of this shit up. It's the most unfunny, least subtle scene you could ever expect to see on TV. I'm fairly liberal leaning and this shit made me viscerally offended. Not all episodes or sketches are this bad, but this is more or less the formula modern Simpsons are following taken to the extreme.
The following things are present during all new episodes, they just aren't as bad as when they want to put Lisa as the writers' mouthpiece
Imagine Family Guy's random humor, but predictable and without the insanity of that show's jokes. That's the modern Simpsons episode

Seasons 1 & 2 of South Park both kind of suck. Best watched for geneology purposes, but there isnt much of a good reason other than that to watch those seasons (or really 3 for that matter, though it is better). Show got better and better up until season 14-ish, whichever season was the one that coincided with the release of "Six Days to Air", when the creators got full of themselves and put out a shit season or two (or three)? Last season was essential, though. They really got their shit together with that one. The one just prior was good, but last season was fantastic. Grounded Vindaloop is one of my recent favs from the newer seasons. Anyhoo, all that being said, there is a "dogshit terrible" episode or two of SP, specifically the one where Clyde's (SP?) mom dies. They stole a joke from Daniel Tosh and made a whole episode out of it… It was in the shitty seasons, for reference.

I want to watch it for the Nietszchxkte aspect of it, but it does sound rather pompous and boring in the context it comes from…

I see where the problem is.

If you want to torture yourself then go ahead.
Clearly millions of other people already do, so whether you watch it or not is meaningless.

Read the fucking post, dumbshit.

I knew this was going to happen and I still put it in the post. Read the rest of the post, though; maybe you will understand why your shitpost makes absolutely no sense, unless you are implying The Simpsons are good in any way.

You know he's just trying to turn the thread into political shitflinging contest #37531563288553, and doesn't actually care what you have to say, right?
Don't fucking respond seriously to posts like that, imbecile.

I like to call that create incest. It's why most of any entertainment these days is shit and why there are so man reboots and remakes no one had asked for.


The difference between SpongeBob and Simpsons is that SB dropped so massively in quality that it's unbelievable, whereas Simpsons was dropping gradually. SB had three great seasons and an awful movie, but the movie can be forgiven because writing for a movie is much different than writing for a TV show. But after the movie SB became unfunny, disgusting and downright disturbing. There is an episode where Mrs. Puff is trying to get SpongeBob literally killed, and it's not implied or anything, it's explicitly what she wants. There is also an episode where Plankton is hosting a Roman-era style colosseum where everyone in the city is getting excited to see someone getting killed in front of their eyes (again, not implied). Only when it turns out that this someone is Patrick does SpongeBob do a 180 and tries to save him. How fucked in the head do you have to be to put shit like that into a children's TV show?

*creative incest

More like two good seasons and one that was the beginning of the end

You know what's funny? Krusty was a joke in Simpsons once. Now he's a representative.

Like 90% of the supporting cast

I mean as in: A pathetic clown who was funny once but now is a sad, frustrated guy whose humor is too harmless to impress anyone and who keeps making unfunny references to stay current.

Are you familiar with the Ship of Theseus? It's a philosophical paradox that examines the idea of identity.

The short version goes like this: If you replace all the parts on something, one at a time over the years, is it still the same thing?

So, if you replace even one part, when does it become something different? Is it half? Is it less? More?

Now, apply that to the production team for the Simpsons. Over the years the writers have been replaced, animation studios changed, techniques, equipment, executives, and so on.

Fundamentally speaking, it's still the same as it ever was: An animated cartoon about a dysfunctional family. Look deeper and you find that it's become a very different entity. It looks familiar, but it's become something else entirely. A gradual change made possible by the gradual replacement of key talents that made the show so special during its first few seasons.

Sometimes I wonder… do we think it's terrible because it's actually terrible, or just because the 90s were friggin awesome and the 2000s are utter shit.

But to be honest, I mostly hate Simpsons for neither questioning, nor insulting ANYTHING. It lives on current trends like a stupid Minecraft-Video-Uploader and is just as exciting to watch. Like the Lady Gaga episode? Everyone is celebrating the questionable life of young pop stars, even friggin Lisa, that hypocrate whore! Or that Apple episode (isn't all Simpsons episodes nowadays apple episodes?), where ending up in debt despite being underage is played for laughs.

The worst thing was, when after Apple-references in all episodes over and over, one scene full of Apple product placement has one of the characters (Wiggum?) say: "Haha if we go on like that, people might think we're advertising for Apple."
They were one wink away from seeming like shady assholes.

I know I friend who hasn't realized how low the Simpsons are now, he matured enough from those dubbed parodies of Youtube, from Sandler/Ferrell films, from every fucking 90s thing and yet he doesn't realize that the zombie simpsons suck mayor fucking donkey balls, shit he even downloaded the F2P lame ass app where you can build your own Springfield and everybody knows the beat'em up game was far more better.

Contratry to popular belief, Skully is not the main reason for the Simpsons losing quality.

A slightly detailed history of the show is found here. It is a short e-book length blog series
deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/

Part II – Show Business Is a Hideous Bitch Goddess
5 – The Retirements
6 – The Deaths

These are the main reasons why the quality dropped steeply.
More details if you read or (me listen) to the book in pic related: AL JEAN IS THE CULPRIT.
He saved the simpsons by making the writing staff into a factory. The writers must come up with jokes at a timely manner at a certain number of quantity. The stories are written as quickly as possible to satify the demands of Fox meaning that the intelligence or creativity had to be pushed aside. This why Liza turned to a much more misery-inducing characters because they did not have time to think of ways to challenge her viewpoints. Formulas like Liza found a new friend was kept using, because it is an easy way to construct the story around.

Duh. The show started to really go to shit when he got made showrunner

I would argue that it already go to shit many times when Skully is made showrunner. But Jean is the one that made such insulting shit today.

The same thing happened with Doctor Who - twice! The whole crew of the show in the early-mid 80's were probably fanboys who had watched nothing else since they were growing up, so it got increasingly "insular" and making endless, pointless call-backs, then got cancelled.
The new Doctor Who was created by people who had only seen the original as little kids, so "got" it better than people who had grown up watching it. Unfortunately rabid fanboyism did to the new Doctor Who in 2 years what it did to the original in 20, and all audiences but Tumblr bailed again.

They also americanised,dumbed it down (though that's basically the same thing) and started pandering constantly.

80s Dr who was fucking hillarious and nonsensicall. Made want to know what a 90s MDMA inspired Dr who be like

I used to watch the Simpsons on Channel 4 in the UK where they would not show newer episodes. I've realised that I've never seen this new bad simpsons.

Another issue with Simpsons is, that they've all become assholes.

Homer:
Back then he was ignorant because he was dumb, now he's ignorant on purpose. Which means he doesn't give a shit about Marge or his kids anymore. He even directly insults his kids in harsh ways. He e.g. calls Bart "unwanted" in one episode and even at times insults Lisa for her wise-assery.

Marge:
She was once a naive housewife with strict, Christian values. Now she keeps cussing, has become a total slut and cheats/ intends to cheat on Homer on several occasions. She also lacks patience and seems constantly frustrated and nagging (unless this episode is about her and Homer discovering yet another fetish, of course). I saw her drink beer in a never episode. Can't recall that she ever did that after her time at school, especially since she's a potential alcoholic. Also: Screw that backstory retcon with Nirvana. I would have liked the episode if it turned out Homer made it all up, but no, it's canon now. And next week it turns out they'd been all gay and black in an orphan school in their youth and had plastic surgery to yellow. Because that's what Simpsons does now, rips off years old ideas from funnier shows to spread tolerance.

Bart:
Bart is literally mentally retarded and has become the Peter Griffin of this show. All he does nowadays is having "Bart GF of the week" episodes. I can't even talk about Bart, isn't it sad? I can talk about countless great Bart moments from the 90s. I remember nothing from the newer episodes I've watched… except that moment where that asshole waited for Santa with a toy gun, because he wanted to shoot Santa for not getting him a bike the year before. Yeah… so much for lessons he learned in e.g. the episode where he accidently ruined Christmas.

Lisa:
Once, Lisa annoyed others with her knowledge, but she always had something positive in mind. Often, she sacrificed her opinions and ideas for the good of others. Nowadays, she's wrong most of the times, complains just for the sake of it, even admits at one point that she does it just to get attention. She's a typical SJW, all her episodes are terrible and anger inducing (remember how the episode where she becomes a vegeterian was handled back then… yeah compare that to today's intolerant Lisa). During the mentioned Christmas episode, she wanted to steal the tree, because she's a tree hugger. She NEVER did that before and she always respected her family.
Also, her annoying hypocrisy, following trends, pop stars, marketing manipulation and Apple.

Maggie: They even ruined Maggie. She's become a murderous psychopath (Stewie ripoff?!), ruining the "Who killed Mr. Burns" punchline forever.

Santa's Little Helper: Just exists to ruin his owner's life and you just wanna drown that fucking dog.

didn't she do that in every second episode of the first few seasons?

...

the Simpsons went to shit when I was still in college.

I'm old enough to be your dad now.

Tell me a story, daddy!!

Good show, m8. Spot on.

I used to like watching it on Channel 4 for that reason. Then I realised that Channel 4 will censor stupid shit and now, to add insult to injury, they show the shit episodes too.

I can think of one early episode where Marge thought about cheating on Homer, the one with Jacques the bowling instructor.

If someone doesn't believes how bad Zombie Simpsons are, watch just one episode - "D'ohcial Network". It is a perfect storm of shittiness. It's like they were writing the episode, realized halfway through that they won't be able to think of any way to make conflict or resolution for it, and instead of scrapping it, they just went on with it. It just screams "Eh, we don't care about it".

Did they always do that though? I remember spongebob having scenes obviously cut on CITV but I didn't notice any when I was a kid watching the Simpsons. Perhaps that's a new thing?

But she didn't. Now she turns being lesbian on and off whenever she wants.

I miss the 90's. Or perhaps more correctly, I miss having the optimism and lack of cynicism that came with being a 10 year old boy.

I had Sky

This man is to blame.

Funny how you mention Spongebob, the simpsons literally stole a joke from that show:
"The world's tiniest violin"


Parody of the main does a better job.

he means the series total i think

It's two million, and falling

That's was always a saying

I've realized they rip off complete plots from e.g. Family Guy (black heritage, except even more bs than Family Guy).

But what annoys me most is that they got too much stuff going on in episodes. They throw a shitton of visual gags at you and hope it works and you can't keep up. It's like binge-watching Fairly Odd Parents on coffee.

It lacks structure and doesn't follow the plot properly (most likely because most of the time, there isn't any). Often I don't even get what the A-plot is and suddenly the episode ends with everything being unresolved. As if whole episodes are basically Family Guy flashback jokes - here's a funny situation, there, that's the episode. I'm especially talking about the episode where it turns out that Edna and Flanders (awful unlikely plot point overall) secretly married.

All the chaos makes the episodes just obnoxious to watch.

That was zero funny. I show you funny.

Elaborate.

I always imagined a 90's Doctor Who being like a combination of Jonathan Creek and the X-Files.

why would anybody make that?

Fucking Jesus

Does anyone have the webm of Squidward's toenail?

I'm watching it now.
Fuck me they're definately in bed with apple.
There's something about the current generation and the way companies pander to them that makes we want to fucking throw up.
So I essentially have no experience with New simpsons or Zombie Simpsons.
I admit I laughed at some jokes, others felt like they should have been funny but the excecution and timing was poor, and others were just a bit shit. Also what the fuck is up with those unrelated jokes at the end?

No, she had a guy who tried and failed to seduce her when she felt lonely and neglected. Now Marge actively looks for people to cheat on Homer with at the drop of a hat and then gets cold feet because the writers don't want to break the status quo

Well la-de-da.

Watch the episode "Four Regrettings and a Funeral" and vomit. This made me stop watching Simpsons.

In short: At one point, Homer makes fun of Apple. But I guess the writers felt bad about it, so the final quarter of the episode is basically the episode becoming a friggin commercial for Apple, while the characters are like "It's not like this is a commercial for Apple, ha ha.", and it even solves the conflict!

I shit you not this is the worst thing I've ever seen in a cartoon, and I got it from one of the most celebrated cartoons ever.

This.

There was an episode a few years back where Grandpa or somebody tells a story about the Simpsons' ancestors, and how one of them was black. All I remember about is after that's revealed, Bart says "So that's why I'm so cool!", Lisa says "And that's why I play the sax so smooth!", and Homer says "And that's why I get payed less than my coworkers!"

A slave actually. And Mr. Burns was his owner.

Because ha ha, Mr. Burns is rich, a nazi and a slave owner. That's the joke.

Simpsons is always a product of it's time. Shity times - shity Simpsons.

Yeah exactly.

I seriously doubt thar, some of the couch gags have 2 million views on YouTube

They also say Lisa doesn't have to feel bad that her entire family is white anymore, and that Grandpa knew one of their ancestors had been cucked by an slave but never said anything because lol old people are racist

I could expand on Bart a bit. In early seasons he's pretty much a rascal but had his limits (See: the Christmas episode, the one where he dates Rev. Lovejoy's daughter, the military school episode) but then with each coming season the "writers" forgot Bart was supposed to not be 100% asshole. Case in point: One of the jokes in one of the new episodes involved a sort of throne and if Maggie sat there it would result in heaven on earth or something. Cue Bart sitting on said throne, sky turns red, thunders and skulls and other doomsday parafernalia.
Homer's not only ignorant on purpose now, but also seems to spout random facts that contradict him being supposed to be dumb.
Not even the Treehouse of Horrors episodes are safe, relying mostly in movie parodies and more graphic gore.
Hell, I recall them reusing a couch gag, particularly the "Simpsons go anime" one. Compare the first one (with the family as near worldwide pop culture icons: Ultraman, Jun the Swan from Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets. Sailor Moon as much as I hate it and Astro Boy) to the new one where most dress as flavors of the month (AoT, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece being the closest one to such status). The only thing they got in common is Maggie as Pikachu which is retarded considering Pokemon hadn't had the same impact over the course of 10 years.

This reminded me of the fucking edgy Satan dog cartoon that I've seen a few vids of.

Remember that episode where Lisa makes a movie ridiculing her family and is absolved of any fault at the end of the episode for no reason whatsoever?
Man, I can believe how shitty The Simpsons have turned

Meaning the status of pop culture icon. Polite sage.

Treehouse of Horror was always parodies, their virtue was that they were parodying classic horror movies and twilight zone episodes instead of random contemporary movies.

I swear handstab must have learned his moral code from zombie simpsons.

Incidentally, this same principle is why so video games suck now too.

I used to be a Who fan, and I sort of see it a bit differently. Won't go into names because as I just want to boil down what happened with that show quickly to people who weren't there.

Between 1963-1980 seasons, the show had a regularly rotating roster of production personnel from a wide variety of backgrounds; hippies, soldiers, scientists and everything in between. As such episodes produced from this period tended to have a well of creative potential to draw from, and they didn't take the show too seriously (though they did have the occasional dark story for fun). This included people who actually got some fame in their day like Terry Nation and Douglas Adams.

Now starting 1981 the BBC picked a new producer who turned out to be the last one. He hated using all the people who'd been doing the show the last two decades because he thought it had gotten in a bit of a rut (and he was sort of right) and tried to only use a cadre new creative talent when he took over (with a few exceptions). In the beginning this worked out pretty well and several interesting stories came about from this, but after a season or two some of the people who got in turned out to be either easily influenced by Hollywood trends or were the fanboys mentioned earlier. Sometimes both. As a result stories started becoming increasingly autistic and formulaic. This could have been fixed somewhat if the producer had left after a few years but the person running the BBC at the time wasn't a huge fan of science fiction (let alone Who) and had a fetish for gardening shows so internal politics ensued that made that difficult.

By the time the show was shitcanned in '87 it was regularly referencing episodes that aired in the mid 60s that didn't really exist anymore because the BBC lit them all on fire (well, many of them; some of them were saved by one particularly autistic fan). They also had managed to attract the (for lack of a better word) proto-Tumblr crowd. They would have been all on there if it had existed at the time but as it stands they sat around coffee houses with their fingers up their behinds. And shitposting on Usenet, too.

Anyway the BBC decided to let them write licensed stories not long after the show went off the air and they gradually pushed out the remaining old guard and even the people who were around during the 80s. Moffat, the current showrunner, knew them and RTD (his predecessor) operated with them as well (RTD wrote a book around this time too IIRC).

Anyway, as a result they managed to gain control of the creative direction of the IP after not only a decade of books, but also the start of an audio story line and the occasional Flash animation stories. This state persisted when the show was brought back on the air. Since that was around 2006-2007 (there's that year again!) when that all happened the resurrected show, given the people staffing it and writing for it, naturally attracted a new generation of psychotic fans who were now also of the Tumblr persuasion and thus able to make who was around in the 80s not look like complete spastics in comparison. After a fairly solid return series, the show started going off the rails increasingly as fan autism and bad production choices mounted. I'd say by the time Matt Smith's second year begun, if not before in his first year or even towards the end of Tennant's run, it had more or less settled into the situation it's found itself in for the last several years and shows no signs of getting any better.

Anyway TL;DR, the show basically has been completely gutted about 4-5 times now (if not more) and doesn't even resemble it's state a decade ago, let along any part of the original run.

I thought you were talking about something else at first.

It gets weird when they spoof movies that could be done in a normal ep, like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

It amused me.

don't do it, you'll only hurt yourself


I enjoy Capaldi but fucking hell has he been given some horseshit to work with.

Damn… that episode where Bart and Lisa go to military school. Now THAT is a perfect example what went right with the Simpsons back then. They supported each other and apologized if they made mistakes!

The throne episodes is also one of the worst episodes I've ever seen. And I didn't think Treehouse of Horror could be ruined which still gave me hope, but the one with Homer becoming Spiderman, which was just random pointless shit happening as if noone wrote a script was one of the worst things I've seen in a cartoon.

Also, those overrated current Couch Gags. They are awful if a guest artist doesn't make them (which is the best thing about Simpsons overall now). The 70s action show couch-gag La-Zy Rider is equally lazy flash animation. Intros where they rip off anime or Disney style look unauthentic and awful. Overall, the scenes where they switch styles are not only a ripoff of Family Guy, but they should be ashamed for being worse.

Yeah, and it was so stupid how the plot started. Overall an okay episode, but on the other hand a copy-paste (like so often… all of the Simpsons except Homer went to ballet so far) of the episode where Homer has to decide between Barney's movie and a football to the balls.

I mean, the world's tiniest violin where it's actually real gag.


We can only hope, also read the comments, people are still defending the simpsons

In the Spanish dub, this joke was changed to something like "and that's why I learn more slowly than my coworkers!".

Spanish dubs are like that. We have some localization that changes or adds some jokes, but it's often done to make up for puns lost in translation, and the best of all is that they are not afraid to make it offensive if the show calls for it.


That joke was funny. What was not funny was that joke in which they imply Bart murdered a hobo.

There was a book written about this topic, called The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized Biography, which explains many of the behind the scenes details of the show. What happened, besides the showrunners running out of ideas, was they made Mike Scully the head writer, but they also split the original writers' room into two separate rooms, killing the exchange of creativity that usually occurred when there was only one room of writers. The network forced them to hire a bunch of new writers while splitting them into two rooms because they wanted to turn the writing portion of episode development into less of an interesting brainstorm session between some of the best comedy writers in America, and turn it into a factory that produces mostly bland but safe episodes. Also if I remember correctly from that book, it is also stated that the network forced the staff to try to cram into each episode 4 different story arcs rather than the usual 3, which meant that more creative energy was distributed towards trying to tell too many stories within the time frame of about 23~24 minutes.

It also doesn't help that Matt Groening is a big turd. He was nothing more than some indie comic guy who accidentally became discovered by a relatively new tv channel, Fox, that was interested in competing against well-established networks. There is actually a story of the writers toying with the idea of revealing what is underneath Marge's iconic hair at some point, with Groening, seriously, suggesting a big pair of bunny ears, as a tie-in with his comic Life in Hell. Later, as The Simpsons experienced a meteoric rise in popularity, Groening himself became inundated with vast amounts of money that few people, especially artists, especially indie comic artists, ever see. He soon became a huge marketing machine, signing off on a bunch of stupid merchandise just so he can make even more money, on top of what he was receiving from the show itself, not really seeming to care about the slowly dwindling quality of the show as the years wore on.

My mistake, probably more like two story arcs per episode being ramped up to three

...

It's always cringey when fanfic portrays villains that are laughably incompetent in canon as omnipotent monsters who turn Earth into a dystopia or whatever.

I remember it happening a lot on Sky weirdly, even when they were reshowing old episodes on the same network scenes would be noticeably missing for no apparent reason. It was odd for a post watershed, satellite tv channel.

I'm nostalgic for watching the Simpsons on Sky while eating Dominos pizza with my Dad while Mum worked nights. Fun times.

That's because those are actually better than the show itself.

I miss the occasional sympathetic Mr Burns moment.

You might be right.

I'd agree with everything but the last point and say that Pokemon has held onto it's cultural legacy relatively well over time. It's done much better than other 90's fads like Tamagotchi, or even similar (better) shows / games like Digimon.

RIP in peace.

I remember the Ghibli couch gag not looking quite right.

I don't blame Groening at all, I'd cash out once my show became a sinking ship too. Hell if Simpsons was only ever a side project I would have cashed out anyway.

He cashed out in like the second year

In the 90s Sky would censor shit. I think since the 2000s they've shown Simpsons mostly uncensored, odd as that is to say as there's not much to censor. Which is why Channel 4's censorship is so stupid, they censor the most innocuous shit.

But Groening's name is on Futurama too? How awful could he be? If anything my respect for George Lucas has gone up, he's a greedy hack by normal standards but compared to Disney he's practically an uncompromising auteur.

Gotta level with you guys, I'm an old man that stopped watching Simpsons circa 2000, but on the very rare moments I happen to catch an episode, it's sometimes alright. Then again, that hasn't happened in like five years. I can't even imagine what the show could possibly be at this point. If Principal and the Pauper were the pilot episode, it would still be one of the top 5 longest running American TV shows.

I once spent a very long illness watching the Simpsons from Season 10 and to the most recent I could get my hands on. I progressively got worse and had a few instances where I felt death's grip on my shoulder. It was a nightmare.

Why would you want to feel worse? Why didn't you just watch the best ones?

I was foolish and I did not know. You also can't take back your choice when you're stuck in a bed.

Have no fears
We've got stories for years

The irony is, what they play as a joke in that episode mostly became reality.

They had a robot Marge in a daydream sequence of Homer's.

When was that clipshow? Simpsons had a fair few fad and celebrity episodes pretty early on. They weren't too bad when they mocked it well and usually had the celebrities being washed up weirdos. (Mark Hamill)

yeah that'll show us!

I do not think that the book placed much or any blame on Mike Scully. Maybe I need to listen to it again, but if I remember it correctly, the author defend Scully that the seasons he was in charged of are now classics compared to the new ones.

The people that were interviewed already stated that the creativity were already waning during Oakley and Weinstein run. During the run of those two, the writers worked extremely long and extremely hard but were able to be much less productive than the previous seasons, i.e. spending over 24 hr and able to came up with only one mediocre joke. It was also the time when the show became more cartoonish and outlandish but the quality were struggling and succeeded at remain. The writers thought the shows were at its twilight and were experimenting which is why we have poochie and Frank Grimes to discuss the state of that show in the moment.

By the time, Mike Scully took over in season 9, many of the writers left to find better work as you see in the graph in . Scully is a fine writer and a respected leader but he did not have the arsenal of writers that the previous show-runners had. He relaxed the working environment so that the writers can have a life while coming up a joke. Writing the Simpsons used to be extremely long and hard, even the best writer John Swartzwelder have to have 50% of his works rewritten. With the workload relaxed, the shows began to be more experimental. That is why Scully era is the downfall, but considering the context, all he do was slowing the sinking ship.

Al Jean is the one who saved the show and introduced that two rooms structured and moved it into a factory work ethics. If it was handled with care like the golden ages of the simpsons, it would took forever to write a mediocre episode and the show cannot survive. Time is money

Who wants to bet they had Dan redub finished footage to exploit the flavor of the month?

I just watched a canon episode where Marge wants a baby and it turns out that, via sperm donation, Homer has about 100 sons.

Holy shit that's just awful.

yeah sure it is the family guy show i remember

Had to check to see if this is real. And unfortunately it is.


Holy shit. It like the Barney being a (high quality) sperm donor gag but repeated with Homer.

It could also contradict with the "how Maggie was born" episode when he and Marge were happy they she wasn't going to have a 4th child (at least in that moment in time).

Also brings up the idea that Homer had the initiative to donate/store his sperm for future use (or Marge could have told him to).

But with Barney it's funny.
With a main character after all those years and in context, it's friggin terrifying.

Also: Yet another plot ripped off from a cartoon that originally spawned because of Simpsons, American Dad (the episode where Francine tries to force Stan to impregnate her and when it doesn't work, steals his sperm from the sperm bank, which he didn't donate, but froze for later use).

Also, the baby plot was shoved in last second, while 75% of the episode originally was about them getting a new car (which I bet they don't have anymore in the following episodes).

To me, it sounds he had lots of women impregnated without her friggin knowledge, making him an even worse character.

A few episodes before that, he's helping a woman give birth in an elevator (?) and secretly meets her and the kid, which is named Homer as far as I remember, and he didn't friggin tell Marge either.