When did The Simpsons get bad?

[Prowler]

I think we all can agree that The Simpsons don't have the same quality as they did back in the 90s.

Why did this happen? Gonna speculate changes in the writing staff combined with the show being on air for such long time resulting in the creativity tank running dry.

But what's the point where The Simpsons became a bad show?

A lot of people say that the 1997 episode The Principal and the Pauper was the turning point/jumping of the shark moment, but I don't think I agree with that. I was still enjoying The Simpsons up until 2003 or so. The early 2000s seasons certainly felt "different" from classic Simpsons seasons, but I definitely enjoyed the episodes still. Even if there were less great episodes on average.

Around the mid-2000s, I stopped watching The Simpsons. And didn't even watch the movie. Tbh that's more or less when icbrgna noticing online criticism for The Simpsons. Which surprised me a bit.

Anyway around 2009 or 2010 I saw a few episodes of the latest season... and they weren't good. One was about ipods, which were called mipods on the show. Another one was about Homer inviting a Muslim couple over for dinner and then accusing them of being terrorists or something? Neither episode was funny and just seemed... off in comparison to The Simpsons I grew up watching.

So I'm guessing somewhere around 2004-2009 the show lost a ton of quality.

What do you think?

[Anarchistguy]

I personally stopped caring about this show about around seasons 9-10. ( 1997-1998 )

[superstaff]

If it's like most other places on the internet, the overwhelming answer you will get is season 9-10.

I tend to agree with this myself. I think season 9 is when the decline began, and the show's gotten worse, and worse, and now it's just unwatchable. Sometimes people will tell me, "Oh, but the Lego episode is funny!" or "Hey, the episode that parodies 24 is pretty hilarious!" but.......meh. I don't...really care about those premises once I read about them because they're just gimmicks, gimmicks meant to mask the poor overall quality of the show now.

On another note, it doesn't help that the show used to be a biting social commentary in the 90s, and has now been reduced to the writers agreeing that Apu is a 'bad character' rather than satirizing the situation in a clever way, like how the original seasons likely would have.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by superstaff

If it's like most other places on the internet, the overwhelming answer you will get is season 9-10.

I tend to agree with this myself. I think season 9 is when the decline began, and the show's gotten worse, and worse, and now it's just unwatchable. Sometimes people will tell me, "Oh, but the Lego episode is funny!" or "Hey, the episode that parodies 24 is pretty hilarious!" but.......meh. I don't...really care about those premises once I read about them because they're just gimmicks, gimmicks meant to mask the poor overall quality of the show now.

On another note, it doesn't help that the show used to be a biting social commentary in the 90s, and has now been reduced to the writers agreeing that Apu is a 'bad character' rather than satirizing the situation in a clever way, like how the original seasons likely would have.

Is that the Flsncrest Enterprise episode season? I liked that one.

[superstaff]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Is that the Flsncrest Enterprise episode season? I liked that one.

I believe so.

I don't hate season 9 as much as some do, though I think this the pinpoint of when the writing began to get lazier, and the show was losing steam.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by superstaff

I believe so.

I don't hate season 9 as much as some do, though I think this the pinpoint of when the writing began to get lazier, and the show was losing steam.

Well I don't think the series got bad overnight. So perhaps it was around the late 90s where the first signs of decline began showing. But took some years for it to hit rock bottom.

When I was a kid my brother taped every single Simpsons episode he caught on TV. We had about 25 VHS tapes with Simpsons alone. But our VHS players died over a decade ago, so it's been so long since I've marathoned the first 12 or 13 seasons.

[AquaParade]

I fully agree with Season 9 being the last great one. Even then, it's on the decline, but still great.

I can watch those first 9 seasons for the rest of my life. They're so good! And the drop-off is easily noticeable around that time period, but I can still occasionally enjoy episodes from beyond season 9.

[Prowler]

Every couple of years or so, you hear a rumor of The Simpsons finally getting cancelled but it never happens.

Even if it doesn't get very high ratings nowadays, I bet the series is living off its brand name recognition at this point and some people who have been huge fans since the 90s probably still stick around out of habit.

Kinda like a lot of the WWE fans left are people who grew up with it in the 80s and 90s and have hated it since 2001 for the most part, but yet keep on watching it out of habit.

[Anarchistguy]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Kinda like a lot of the WWE fans left are people who grew up with it in the 80s and 90s and have hated it since 2001 for the most part, but yet keep on watching it out of habit.

Basically around the time of post WM 17 and the company changing its name to WWE

[Leo656]

I think the Fake Skinner episode was the sign that things were heading south, but I still liked several episodes that came out in the subsequent Seasons. It got "zanier", which was far from what the show was originally created to be, but there were still a few good episodes.

I'd say early-2000s is when it got irredeemably bad. They very blatantly started copying Family Guy's humor, and I actually love Family Guy more than most people but The Simpsons isn't that, and shouldn't be that. All the main characters got Flanderized, and nobody had any depth anymore.

Once they had to start using the "sliding timeline" to dance around the fact that the show had been on TV too long, it started getting really bad. The older episodes about Young Homer and Marge in the 70s and 80s were classics, but the newer ones where they were young in the 90s and 2000s were just godawful. Then they decided to just stop doing Present-Day stories seemingly altogether, and fell in love with the Future Timeline stuff where Milhouse was a zombie and whatever other horse sh*t. There's a whole fleshed-out timeline with the Future Simpsons now and it's f*cking terrible.

They also just started blatantly sucking off celebrities at one point, and it was really unbearable. That Lady Gaga episode is one of the worst episodes of TV ever made, period.

The movie was another problem. They waited way too long to do it - anytime before 1995 was the right time, and anytime after that was past the point of anyone caring about it - and it wasn't even very good. What should have been the crowning moment of the entire Simpsons saga ended up being just one more reminder that it had long outstayed its welcome. Who even remembers the movie, or what it was about? All anyone remembers is the stupid Spider-Pig gag, and that's because both Then and Now it's all the commercials talked about. The movie isn't "bad", it's just... there. It's like drinking flat Ginger ale, it goes right through you and leaves no impression at all.

I empathize with the writers, as they always said part of why they'd never done a movie sooner was because they couldn't figure out what it would even be about... but the movie they made only hammered home that, yeah, they REALLY had no idea what the movie should be about.

Realistically, it probably should have ended right around the year 2000 and had the movie come out then as the big send-off.

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Every couple of years or so, you hear a rumor of The Simpsons finally getting cancelled but it never happens.

Even if it doesn't get very high ratings nowadays, I bet the series is living off its brand name recognition at this point and some people who have been huge fans since the 90s probably still stick around out of habit.

Kinda like a lot of the WWE fans left are people who grew up with it in the 80s and 90s and have hated it since 2001 for the most part, but yet keep on watching it out of habit.

I think the Disney buyout has given it new life, as crazy as that is. I remember reading that it was one of the top-viewed programs when Disney+ launched and I heard the showrunner say that this "season" of Simpsons has more content than any other one, if you include the shorts and specials they've been doing.
I wonder how well merchandise does these days.

I can see Simpsons sticking around for quite a while longer. Maybe even becoming like Mickey Mouse and his crew, over time, popping up in one form or another, even if the show, as we know it, morphs or goes away.

For me, it will be hard to recognize it once the main voice actors are gone. I don't watch all the new episodes, but I can enjoy them on some level when I do tune in, because the the characters still feel relatively intact, due to the great voice work.

[sdp]

Around season 3, when they shifted from Bart to Homer is when the shows soul was compromised for cheap laughs, which kept détériorating over time, you can argue that happened in S9/10 but it was when the show shifted focus that it was one inevitable mthat everyone would become parodies of themselves

[Prowler]

This brings up another question...

What was the first ever Simpsons episode with a celebrity guest star that wasn't good?

I remember disliking the Mel Gibson episode. That was the first episode of season 11, it seems.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Kinda like a lot of the WWE fans left are people who grew up with it in the 80s and 90s and have hated it since 2001 for the most part, but yet keep on watching it out of habit.

I thought WWE was fine right up until 2008 when they officially went PG, and again from 2015 through to 2019. I've never developed a 'second wind' with The Simpsons, even the ones people tell me are a 'return to form' feel laboured and tired.

For me, the show ended with the Frank Grimes story in season eight. Most of the show had wrapped up whatever passed for loose threads by that point.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by sdp

Around season 3, when they shifted from Bart to Homer is when the shows soul was compromised for cheap laughs, which kept détériorating over time, you can argue that happened in S9/10 but it was when the show shifted focus that it was one inevitable mthat everyone would become parodies of themselves

Another terrible opinion from you. Unbelievable...

[Coola Yagami]

Eh, the sliding timeline. Like idk... Just stop making flashback Homer and Marge episodes then.

Celebrities playing themselves instead of being guest voice actors.

All these teen related problems and fads that are mostly happening to teens but are instead happening to Bart and Lisa since the show doesn't have any teens to explore these issues.

The main thing is, Simpsons uses to criticize the establishment, now they are the establishment. I mean they used to poke fun at Clinton and Bush equally, but I don't recall Obama ever being on that show.

Maybe they should do teen/adult Bart and Lisa eps but taking place in modern day so they don't have to do all the stupid robot and alien future gags.

[Leo656]

The newer episodes where all the black characters are now voiced by "authentic black people" are very annoying. We've heard what Carl and Dr. Hibbert and Lou sound like for 30+ years, and now they sound completely different and it's VERY noticeable and very annoying.

I'm only ever half-watching it anymore when it's on, and suddenly I'll hear a voice I don't recognize, so I'll look up from my reading like "Who's that?" And it'll turn out to be Carl or Dr. Hibbert, and I'm just like, "Oh, Jesus." It's every bit as bad as when the FW TMNT had fill-in VAs that sounded nothing at all like the previous VAs. They're not even close.

Marge is definitely gonna sound a lot different very soon, if the show stays on. Julie Kavner is 71, if you've seen her these days she definitely looks like she's not gonna be around much longer (as morbid as that is to say, I'm just being honest), and you can already hear it in her voice acting. Marge SOUNDS like she's 70-something, all of a sudden, and it's almost as distracting as the blatantly-wrong voices coming out of the other characters.

So if the show stays on another few years, we're gonna be hearing a new Marge pretty soon. I kinda hope they just stop before it gets to that point. Replacing background characters with bad replacements is one thing, but you can't/shouldn't do that with the main cast. Why force people to accept that just to keep the show on the air? Everybody hates the show now anyway, nobody wants to watch it with FAKE Simpsons VAs playing the main family members. Once you even have to think about replacing Marge, or Homer, or ANY of them, just pull the f*cking plug.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Eh, the sliding timeline. Like idk... Just stop making flashback Homer and Marge episodes then.

Celebrities playing themselves instead of being guest voice actors.

All these teen related problems and fads that are mostly happening to teens but are instead happening to Bart and Lisa since the show doesn't have any teens to explore these issues.

The main thing is, Simpsons uses to criticize the establishment, now they are the establishment. I mean they used to poke fun at Clinton and Bush equally, but I don't recall Obama ever being on that show.

There was a point where more and more episodes became about Lisa. When did that happen again, exactly? I no longer remember. I never liked them making Lisa a vegetarian.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Prowler

There was a point where more and more episodes became about Lisa. When did that happen again, exactly? I no longer remember. I never liked them making Lisa a vegetarian.

Probably when the entire writing staff started to skew Hard Left.

It's ironic that the writers love using Lisa as the way to scold the audience for having the "wrong" beliefs, given that she's by far the most hated character in the main cast now BECAUSE of that. People used to empathize with Lisa somewhat, but now she's just insufferable and nobody likes her or feels bad for her at all.

Just goes to show you how out of touch the writers are with the people who actually watch the show.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Probably when the entire writing staff started to skew Hard Left.

It's ironic that the writers love using Lisa as the way to scold the audience for having the "wrong" beliefs, given that she's by far the most hated character in the main cast now BECAUSE of that. People used to empathize with Lisa somewhat, but now she's just insufferable and nobody likes her or feels bad for her at all.

Just goes to show you how out of touch the writers are with the people who actually watch the show.

Around the late 90s, significant changes to the Simpsons writing staff were made. Some went on to work on Futurama, the newest Matt Groening series, and I believe one writer even died around that time as well. Clearly the replacements they found for them just weren't as good.

Yes, Lisa was a good voice of reason in the early days. The most normal and smartest person in the family, but she wasn't insufferable nor did she force her views on you. Lisa was simply the girl who was into playing the saxophone and listening to jazz.

As for the voice actors, it's kinda funny because you'd think they'd be easy to replace. Ask people irl if they can impersonate any cartoon characters, and there's always a Simpsons character or two they can impersonate. But I guess we just grow attached to their original VAs. Especially since they have been voicing them since day one.