I agree with the graphic.
However, I recently completed a straight watch-thru of every Simpsons episode, and while watching the lackluster episodes from seasons 20-30, I have to acknowledge one thing:
Quality of the show and its writing have noticeably improved since around Season 32.
The most recent episodes feel more centered on the family and much less on bizarre cameos and really outrageous situations. It actually feels like a show about the Simpson family and treats the characters more age-appropriately.
I donβt like that they lost/recast established voices of minority characters (Apu, Carl, Dr. Hibbert, etc), I do think the quality and the focus of the show is much better than it has been in almost 2-decades.
The first two sub-6.0 episodes are clip shows.
"Another Simpsons Clip Show" is the third episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 25, 1994. In the episode, Marge reads a romance novel in bed, and it prompts her to have a family meeting, where the Simpson family recall their past loves in form of clips from previous episodes.
"All Singing, All Dancing" is the eleventh episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 4, 1998. In the fourth Simpsons clip show, Homer claims he hates singing, so Marge shows family videos of musical numbers from previous seasons. The episode is in the form of a sung-through musical, featuring spoken dialogue only at the start and end of the episode. The original material was directed by Mark Ervin and written by Steve O'Donnell. It was executive produced by David Mirkin. It features guest appearances from George Harrison, Patrick Stewart and Phil Hartman, although these are all clips and none of them recorded original material for the episode.
Comedy has changed in 31 years. So has humour in general, and so has writing.
The Simpsons is never going to be the same as it was over the seasons because that's not how culture works. Meanwhile, the reviews are mostly coming from long time viewers who lament that it's not like it "used to be".
Shows change. Get over it.
Isn't it also just because it's old and people get bored of it? People crave new things, and even if it's just as good as in the beginning, it'll get lower ratings because it's not new anymore.
I remember quite some years ago i was like "i'm finally going to watch southpark". And people were already complaining about how the latest seasons were worse than the first seasons. Watched a ton of seasons in a short period, and honestly can't say the later seasons felt any worse than the first ones when you're not bored of the series yet. Now so many years later when i watch some more southpark, it's not as fun as when i started watching it since the "it's new and exciting" feeling is long gone.
The last few seasons had a big jump in plot quality imho, with some exceptional episodes. But also yes, 10 years ago entire seasons felt comparatively bland & empty. I also feel like I would rate early seasons a bit lower today than at the time.
Would love to see this mapped to who the primary writers and producers are on each episode. I wonder if there are patterns.
The Simpsons started as a parody of the (back then) dominant family sitcom that reinforced traditional values, where the family is led by a wise man who maintains the family and everyone else follows along in a traditional patriarchal hierarchy. Once that era got buried and they swallowed the thing they were mocking, The Simpsons slowly became self-referential, which made it a much harder show to write.
I was a major adult fan in my twenties who worked with people who could finish a Simpsons joke when anyone started a line from the show. I remember coming in and sadly announcing that I thought I didn't like the show anymore. That was in the oughts. It had been in decline for a while at the time.
The graph represents my experience with The Simpsons. Back when they got their movie for the 10th anniversary, the serie was already struggling with the audience. I believe that was the point where they changed the animation to a horrible 3d rendering and, at least in my country, the started having troubles negotiating with the original voices we all grew up with.
Honestly at this point I believe I haven't missed much from the series since the 9th season. They should just let it die at this point, as they should've done it in 2007.
Nice graph!
By the way, any reason to share this here rather than !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world, as you did for the Boeing one? Genuinely curious
I mean, they themselves called it.
Since when are IMDB ratings a serious metric of quality?
I actually stopped watching when I stopped wathing most over the air. the problem is the streaming free options being to convoluted with the gatekeeping. once I miss epsiodes im just sorta out.
I just started a rewatch of The Simpsons. I was only planning to watch the first 10 seasons though, juat because of the drop off in writing quality.
Never been an afficionado of the Simpsons. Always been watching passively to have background sound. So always a pleasure to have more and more episodes to watch.
