I’m not a Simpsons geek but I’ve watched many, and I don’t pore over all the interweb discussions of the show but I do understand there’s a strong undercurrent (maybe just a current) of “Of course these new episodes are fairly lame, why can’t they be great like they used to?”
This seems like a topic that might well have been covered here, more than once, but my search didn’t turn it up. So I’ll impose on the cognoscenti to tell me:
(1) Why were the “old” episodes awesome but the “new” ones are lame? Recycled plots? Worse characterization? Lamer jokes? Worse writers?
(2) What is the dividing line? Which season?
I guess one obvious possibility is that they’ve mined most of the plausible family drama/comedy storylines so that now they’re basing plots around weird gimmicks.
The only vague impression I personally had is that the very early episode focused on what a bad boy Bart was, including all his dumb catchphrases which bored me and now seem largely retired, and that they didn’t at first work the full extent of Homer’s idiocy, gluttony, alcoholism, etc., which I find pretty amusing, in, so from my perspective, some of the later-on ones where those ratios have been recalibrated benefited from that evolution.
As one of the obviously huge Simpsons fans on the board, I’ll agree that the show isn’t what it used to be- although the show is still entertaining, I agree that the earlier episodes had a certain je ne sais quoi to them. If I had to hazard I guess, I’d say what the old episodes had that the new ones didn’t were time. The producers often comment on the DVD commentaries that the episodes have been getting somewhat shorter over the years because commercials are taking up more time. There does seem to be a definite difference timewise between older and newer episodes- the older episodes had a lot more time to set up scenes and situations, whereas the newer episodes seem more “rapid-fire.”
It’s generally believed by the fans that the quality started to slip starting in Season Nine, which had one of the most controversial episodes of all time, “The Principal and the Pauper,” which is about Principal Skinner being an impostor. (The DVD commentary of this episode is one of my favorites of all time, as the producers have an interesting discussion as to why exactly the fans were so up in arms about the idea and what their goal was- in my opinion, it’s not really that bad of an episode.) The era overseen by Mike Scully (seasons 9-12) in particular are sometimes considered the “dark ages” of the show- fans often complained about, among other things, the poor episodes written by Ian Maxtone-Graham, who infamously stated he had never watched the show before writing for it and also commented that fan’s opinions didn’t matter (and is indeed responsible for a lot of stinkers- although he’s gotten better in the past few years), Homer’s increasing stupidity even by Homer levels, which they referred to as “Jerkass Homer” (which has been satirized on the show), and the increasing episodes taking place in foreign locales, with Homer usually announcing “The Simpsons are going to [exotic locale]!” (which was also satirized by the show). The Al Jean era, and particularly the era after the release of the movie (which was a fine piece of Simpsonian art and everything it was expected to be), has seen an increase in quality, and a number of episodes, in my opinion, feel like classic-era ones.
Chris Turner’s book Planet Simpson (which, despite the author’s own personal biases and comparisons which I can’t really relate to, is probably the best book written on The Simpsons and its influence on pop culture), divided the Simpsons into three eras: The Early Days (Seasons 1-3), the Simpsonian Golden Age (Seasons 4-8), and The Long Plateau (Season 9-present), with “The Principal and the Pauper” indeed marking the point that the Long Plateau began. I have to agree with Turner in these era markings- the early episodes are experimental and rather hit or miss, eventually getting into the swing of things, and then declining in quality somewhat. I will, however, agree with what Turner says about the episodes of the Long Plateau era, which paraphrases what many fans have been saying for years: “Still, the average Long Plateau episode is a wonderful thing compare to the overwhelming majority of the comedies that have polluted the TV and movie screens of the West over the last several decades.” It’s become as cliched as “The Simpsons are going to…” but it’s true: even the Simpsons at their worst are better than anything else on TV.
I’d have to disagree with you and Turner, mobo. As far as scripted TV comedy goes, I think both Arrested Development and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have been (or were, in the former’s case) consistently funnier than anything The Simpsons have done in at least a decade.
I was a huge fan, and still watch occasionally, but I think the writing has definitely lost the old edge and I groan at more jokes on the new episodes than I laugh at. It’s almost painfully unfunny a lot of times now, and even at its worst it used to be clever and good for at least a laugh or two each episode.
I’d agree that there are some rough patches out there, but the Simpsons have been on for so long and they’re still a quaility show. I said this a long tome ago, and I stick by it: The very worst episode of the Simpsons is far better than the very best episode of Mama’s Family.
Early Simpsons was all about pop culture, wit, biting satire, and liberally seasoned with homages. Then they lost the satirical edge and slipped into mockery, which requires much less wit to execute.
Satiric Simpsons: “Grandpa, didn’t you wonder why people were sending you checks for no reason?” “I thought the Democrats were in power again!”
Mocking Simpsons: “Look at the funny Australians and how funny things are in this funny place!”
It is all summed up in a Buster Keaton quote: A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.
Whoa, “Bart vs Australia” is a great episode. A more accurate example would the the Brazil episode. Australia was a little satire, and a little parody/mocking, in a nice mix. The Brazil one, on the other hand, was just bad mocking.
“They have monkeys in the streets!”
“They have inappropriate childrens’ shows with boobs!”
“They take people hostage!”
And I’ll disagree that Simpsons are better than anything else right now. As mentioned, Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hilarious (though I’ll admit it has a smaller niche audience,) but there are still other comedy shows I find better than current Simpsons. *Venture Brothers[i/], South Park (most of the time), Scrubs, and maybe some others I can’t think of now.
Personally, I think that aside from “The Principal and the Pauper”, season 9 is really good. I’d go so far as to say “The City of New York vs Homer Simpson” and “Lisa the Skeptic” are bona fide classics.
I really think it all has to do with Homer’s downfall as a character.
Old homer had his heart in the right place but was just incompetent as a father, husband, employee. But he wasn’t a complete idiot. Just lacking in certain areas.
Now when I watch it, he seems to only do stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things. He just seems completely idiotic now.
Another example I can think of where this happened to a character was Eric Matthews on Boy Meets World. At first he was an older brother, smart guy, but he ran into alot of problems because he didn’t think things through enough. By the end though, we was borderline brain dead.
The Simpsons are generally funny. When I was but a mere lad, there was a late night TV show that was reputed to be really, really funny. It was called Saturday Night Live. It had its moments, but it was not as funny as advertised, and I knew it even then. Still, it beat anything else that was on. Honestly, I think people who say the SNL or The Simpsons has gone downhill aren’t smoking as much pot as they did when they were younger and watching TV and downing junk food.
You never forget your first, and that’s a big part of it. There are newer fans who see season 12 as their starting point. That’s the Simpsons they grew up with, and even though I see those as very lean years, they like it.
I don’t believe the old ones are awesome and the new ones are lame, though: right now I think the show is the funniest it’s been in about 12 years, and I’d rather watch most new episodes than many episodes from season one or two. (I see mobo85 said mostly the same thing; we usually agree about this stuff.)
Depends on who you ask. Some people apparently thought seasons four or five were much too silly and that it only got worse from there. I find that astounding.
Yeah, there’s something to that. Any new episode is likely to be at least somewhat similar to an old one in some fashion. After 430 episodes, it’s unavoidable.
Of the list you gave, the main problem you gave is “worse characterization.” They can’t repeat themselves, so character traits get more extreme over time - Homer gets dumber and more selfish, Flanders gets more religious, Moe gets creepier, Burns gets more decrepit, and so on. I don’t mind all of these changes, but some aren’t positive and some are just distracting. If you can’t take the characters seriously in some contexts, they lose their humanity. The showrunners often talk about the “screw-you” endings that started showing up around season nine and are still around today, although not as much as a few years ago. Many of these endings are weak and unfunny.
I also think that these days, the writers sometimes confuse pop culture references with jokes. Not a major failing, but you didn’t see that in the best seasons. Tastes have changed and so has the show.
The show started to get more Homer-centric around season three. It was a good change, although sometimes I’m still impressed by the satire of the kids’ world in the earliest years.
This is hard to argue with. Swartzwelder is amazing and I need to read his books. Then again, George Meyer is still around and hasn’t lost a step.
The newer ones seem less plot driven, and more…just out there. It seems like they’ll sacrifice realism for the sake of a joke now. I’m not saying they NEVER did that back in the day, but it felt more grounded. It got less and less so as the series progressed. (I still think Principal and the Pauper was a bad idea). But they could be surreal at the same time (El Viaje de Nuestro Homer). Even when they were doing out there plots, it all felt…grounded, somehow. Like there was a plot. I feel like nowadays, there’s a lot of emphasis in cartoons in general in jokes at the expense of plot (Family Guy, American Dad).
They have so many minor characters with defined gags, and they used to be very adept at using them within the context of the plot in clever, but they seem to rely too much on non sequiturs now.
Another problem I’ve noticed with recent episodes is that many of them end on a bizarre note, like they just ran out of time and tacked something on that they pulled out of their asses. It’s SNL syndrome, in a way - you’ve got a whole plot built up and you get to the punchline and then keep going and it just sort of fizzles out.
I haven’t seen the Simpsons in quite some time, I stopped around Season 9 or 10. I remember a big problem being that the writers were lampshading everything. That is, they thought they could get away with bad/repetitive writing as long as they had the characters wink at the audience and go “Get it? We’ve already done this joke before!”
I grew up watching the Simpsons. But from my perspective what happened to make the Simpsons less funny was South Park (and Family Guy also, but especially South Park). It’s edgier, cruder, braver, wittier, and just funnier. So by comparison the Simpsons looks lame now.
I think there may be a little regression to the mean involved as well. During the “golden age,” whenever exactly that was, the show was about as good as it could be, with whole episodes that had nary a dull moment or a gag that fell flat, and plenty of heart too. It’s as though there was no where to go but down.
I think it’s hard for any creative work or artist to go on for a long time while maintaining the same level of freshness and inventiveness and consistently high quality. I can think of other entities* that had roughly the same career trajectory of Early Years/Golden Age/Long Plateau (although “plateau” may be misleading, since the quality during those years was so uneven, with some episodes that were relatively crappy followed by others that were quite good).
This is certainly a factor. Hell, the even made fun of a movie that did the same thing. It a season…12? episode, and not a good one at that, Homer gets smart from a crayon removed from his brain. Goes against everything we know already (Simpson gene, and the fact that we have seen MANY X-rays of Homer’s head without Dr.Hibbert’s thumb there to “cover up” the crayon,) but even then, they acknowledged that bad[ comedy was just recycling cliches and making random pop culture references. In the wedding scene Homer watches, the guy goes “Is that your FINAL answer?” and it has the guy falling into the cake, the douchebag fiance played by Bill Paxton, etc… and Homer makes fun of the movie for doing that.