I turn 48 in a couple of weeks. I was 11 when The Simpsons began.
I have not watched it since the late 1990s, seen no more than clips in almost 30 years. And yet, it makes 20+ episodes every single year and is apparently going to continue to do so for a few more years.
What will trigger the end of it? Death of one or more main cast members? Just Harry Shearer or Hank Azaria, who do numerous characters?
Television ratings can not be that good for the show at this point. It is somehow profitable enough to still produce full seasons and to pay the voice actors a huge salary.
So what do you think will happen? What will trigger its ending?
It will end when they studio hires a new mid level manager who controls the money, and he has a grudge because it isn’t the same as it was when he watched it as a kid, so he kills it out of spite.
Other than with the death of Dan Castellaneta or Julie Kavner, (and maybe not then, with the Rise of AI) that show will outlive us all.
I can’t say for certain it will ever actually end, but in the hearts of long time fans, I think the “end” will likely come when a quorum of the original voice cast has retired or passed away. Exactly how many and who I couldn’t say between Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, or Harry Shearer, but just one won’t be enough, nor will it come down to the very last one.
Unless they have an exclusive in their contract, no voice actor is irreplaceable. Whether by talented impersonator or (as noted above) AI manipulation, replacing voice talent is easier than replacing a writing staff or art department.
One of my brother’s college friends writes for the Simpsons. He said once that he wanted to leave years ago, because the show had gotten stale and he didn’t feel creative there any more. But the money was just so good and so reliable he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
Rick and Morty replaced their main voice guy(and show creator) and I’ll be honest, I’ve forgotten they did. The new voice actors are excellent and almost identical.
I personally don’t know how The Simpsons will end—but I know how it started…for me, anyway.
I was a fan of Matt Groening in the late ‘80s when I was in college due to his Life in Hell comic strips, which I thought were subversively funny.
In the fall of 1989, I went to an Animation Festival at an artsy movie theater near campus. It included several of The Simpsons shorts that had been on The Tracey Ullman Show. There were probably six or seven of them scattered through, and I thought they were hilarious.
A few months later, I heard that The Simpsons were going to be in their own show. I told everyone I knew they had to watch it, because I had seen the shorts. One person I asked me if it was like The Flintstones.
Anyway, I helped get the ball rolling at my school. There was a crowd watching in the commons of my dorm every Sunday evening until I graduated (and presumably beyond).
It’s our normal “on in the background” or “sleep noise” show so I generally catch parts of episodes all the time. Pick a random season and let it play until some certain point, repeat later. So it can be anywhere from the first episode to some period in I’d guess the mid to late teens season before it gets “meh” and we go back to one we’ve seen hundreds of times but is still enjoyable. So of the “new” episodes maybe I’ve seen a small handful including some real duds, and there seems to be some good ones even after it “went bad” (nobody can agree when that is, but if you say season 10 GTFO). But haven’t seen the vast majority of the newer ones and probably won’t ever, not much interest.
Kavner’s voice is unfortunately going so it’s a bit of an uncanny valley. All the black characters got the VA replaced already, including Kevin Michael Richardson who is great in everything but I don’t know how those voices are now. I think Apu has been basically sent back to his home planet with Poochy?
There was an episode where they joked they’d make them forever, I’m not certain but I’d bet good money it came out in the first half of the show’s run. I’d hope they stop after Castellaneta leaves.
It’s certainly the longest running US animation show, longest running comedy, etc. And most of the longer running shows are news, sports, religious, live comedy, or contests. Just a few ahead of it in similar categories.
Ratings aren’t nearly what they were for the show in its early seasons, no, but then, ratings for broadcast/linear TV shows, in general, are a fraction of what they were before the rise of streaming.
And, yeah, it’s undoubtedly still profitable, for at least two reasons:
It’s probably relatively cheap to make, as TV episode production goes, thanks to digital animation
The series and the characters are still popular for licensing and syndication, so those are additional revenue streams.
I remember a fairly recent episode (last 6 or 7 years) where they went to Seoul and one of the places they passed on the street was the Simpsons Animation Studio.
There’s a new Simpsons movie coming out next year, so unless it’s a total flop, it will probably boost the popularity of the TV show and allow it to coast a few more years.
Oh yeah, kind of in the same category as the rest in that there’s high cast turnover in many cases and new characters. Doctor Who too, which intentionally changes its main character though it’s supposed to be the same person. I’d count that one as a continuity more so than soaps, although it’s also had hiatuses.
Hopefully it never will. I don’t watch it religiously on Sundays like I once did (heck, Fox keeps moving it around). I walk an Earth without David Bowie or Ozzy Osbourne, having the Simpsons around keeps the world almost feeling stable-ish.
