When did The Simpsons get bad?

[Leo656]

The art and animation is terrible now. It LOOKS like it was done on a computer, far too "clean" and completely sterile. Everyone stands perfectly still like one of their action figures, until it's time to talk. It looks terrible compared to the earlier hand-drawn episodes which, while admittedly "rougher", had tons more personality.

You used to get things like small facial tics and subtle movements in between speaking spots. All of that is gone now. "Soulless" would be an apt description. It's been a problem in cartoon shows ever since computer animation became the standard. Everything obviously looks more "clean" with smoother lines but it also looks like no human hands ever touched it and it was all done by robots. It's awful.

In the "real" Simpsons episodes, nothing was ever static, there was near-constant motion and movement and it was very dynamic. In a simple shot of Bart walking through a room, for example, he might be whistling, moving his head side to side, taking his hands in and out of his pockets, all at once... now, it's a lot more likely that a shot of Bart walking through a room would be JUST that, without any of those little quirks... just a plain, boring shot of a computer-animated Bart walking stiffly through a room, until he reaches the point where he would be programmed to stop and talk to someone. Boring. Flat. Sterile. No life or personality to it. The characters are all robots.

The earliest episodes might have looked like someone drew them in a moving car, but at least they had personality and style. Ironically enough, while the modern episodes are "drawn better" they look like garbage comparatively. This is true of every long-running cartoon that underwent the switch to computer animation. Computers simply cannot capture the spark of life that's inherent in hand-drawn animation. Even shows that are "drawn bad on purpose" to try and simulate the effect of "real" cartoons, such as Bob's Burgers, fail to capture this. It's part of the whole "uncanny valley" thing.
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I can't even fathom how anyone would think the newer stuff was "cute". If anything the show has become a LOT more mean-spirited ever since Family Guy got more popular and thus The Simpsons was forced to copy it.

They seemingly constantly have Homer and Marge's marriage barely hanging on by a thread, always teasing that they're going to cheat on each other, or should, implying or flat-out saying that they'd be better off with other people, the "future" episodes show them divorced and estranged, Bart's gone from just being a scamp who still has a good heart to a flat-out Bad Person and the show's "future" timeline makes no illusions about him being a complete failure, Lisa's become more and more a parody of herself (like everyone) and her future shows her to be a bitter failure who had to settle for Milhouse... it's just a non-stop reminder of "These are terrible people with terrible lives and they're all going to grow old and unhappy because frankly they're all too stupid to ever change course."

That's not "cute", it's f*cking depressing. The show used to be a LOT more hopeful and optimistic, once upon a time. And sure, the way they're depicted and the way its portrayed that in the future they'll all be dismal failures might be "realistic", but nobody watches The Simpsons to see that crap. It's escapist entertainment. Nobody wants to be beaten over the head with "Yeah, Homer and Marge's marriage is destined to fail" or "Bart's either going to be in and out of jail or otherwise die young", or any of that.

It's all gotten way too cynical and that's not at all what the show was ever intended to be.

[superstaff]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I can't even fathom how anyone would think the newer stuff was "cute". If anything the show has become a LOT more mean-spirited ever since Family Guy got more popular and thus The Simpsons was forced to copy it.

They seemingly constantly have Homer and Marge's marriage barely hanging on by a thread, always teasing that they're going to cheat on each other, or should, implying or flat-out saying that they'd be better off with other people, the "future" episodes show them divorced and estranged, Bart's gone from just being a scamp who still has a good heart to a flat-out Bad Person and the show's "future" timeline makes no illusions about him being a complete failure, Lisa's become more and more a parody of herself (like everyone) and her future shows her to be a bitter failure who had to settle for Milhouse... it's just a non-stop reminder of "These are terrible people with terrible lives and they're all going to grow old and unhappy because frankly they're all too stupid to ever change course."

Yeah. This is the exact rant my spouse went on when he talked about why modern Simpsons sucks now. Word for word to the point that I laughed out loud reading this because of how accurate it is to it. And I very much agree with all this as well.

That's not "cute", it's f*cking depressing. The show used to be a LOT more hopeful and optimistic, once upon a time. And sure, the way they're depicted and the way its portrayed that in the future they'll all be dismal failures might be "realistic", but nobody watches The Simpsons to see that crap. It's escapist entertainment. Nobody wants to be beaten over the head with "Yeah, Homer and Marge's marriage is destined to fail" or "Bart's either going to be in and out of jail or otherwise die young", or any of that.

It's all gotten way too cynical and that's not at all what the show was ever intended to be.

YEP. It's not even just The Simpsons, a lot of shows are doing this too, going full post modernist with the whole "welp, all these characters you love? guess what? they're going to fail and be miserable and die alone. you love them and want them happy? then you're a moron! LOL!". I don't think I'm exaggerating with that being the tone these writers go for either. Examples? The Star Wars sequels, Nu Trek like Picard, That new Daniel Craig Bond movie, Terminator Dark Fate (and basically all the post-T2 ones), and so on.

[AquaParade]

I agree about the soulless animation in modern episodes. It does have it’s advantages, but it lacks charm.

When you watch an old episode, some things are drawn very loosely, but it somehow works with the aesthetic. Little things, like a gas pedal will be drawn like a squiggly piece of dog turd, but your eyes don’t focus in on it. It’s drawn well enough for your eyes to recognize it, and overall lends a “warmth” or humanity to the overall picture.

I don’t mean to call the old animation lazy. It had style and confidence.

The biggest change in animation came with the movie, if I remember correctly. They had to give extra shading and whatnot, in order to give people a theater-worthy experience. Give them all they paid for. At least that was the thinking. Then those models carried over to the television show, if I remember correctly.


At least the couch gags are still really cool. It’s like the best part of modern episodes, in the same way covers have become the best part of modern comics.

Btw, anyone else have “Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life” growing up? That was my bible.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by superstaff

YEP. It's not even just The Simpsons, a lot of shows are doing this too, going full post modernist with the whole "welp, all these characters you love? guess what? they're going to fail and be miserable and die alone. you love them and want them happy? then you're a moron! LOL!". I don't think I'm exaggerating with that being the tone these writers go for either. Examples? The Star Wars sequels, Nu Trek like Picard, That new Daniel Craig Bond movie, Terminator Dark Fate (and basically all the post-T2 ones), and so on.

Pretty much that life sucks, we're all miserable, so let's make everybody miserable. Not even our childhood heroes get to have happy endings.

I swear a lot of these hashtag causes are to make sure everyone is as miserable as the people starting them.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by superstaff

Yeah. This is the exact rant my spouse went on when he talked about why modern Simpsons sucks now. Word for word to the point that I laughed out loud reading this because of how accurate it is to it. And I very much agree with all this as well.



YEP. It's not even just The Simpsons, a lot of shows are doing this too, going full post modernist with the whole "welp, all these characters you love? guess what? they're going to fail and be miserable and die alone. you love them and want them happy? then you're a moron! LOL!". I don't think I'm exaggerating with that being the tone these writers go for either. Examples? The Star Wars sequels, Nu Trek like Picard, That new Daniel Craig Bond movie, Terminator Dark Fate (and basically all the post-T2 ones), and so on.

I mean, I'm as cynical as it gets but even I find that trend exhausting.

For example, I'm on-record, I love Family Guy more than most people and a lot of that is BECAUSE it's so nasty and abrasive and mean-spirited... but I certainly don't want EVERYTHING to be like that. Simpsons definitely should not be like that. For as much hullaballoo when we were kids about how it was so "scandalous" and that it was going to be the complete downfall of modern society and all that nonsense... The Simpsons was always oddly and incredibly wholesome once you got over "OMG the little kid says 'damn' and 'hell' and they showed a naked butt... what kind of trash are they pushing on our children?!" But if a person actually sat and watched it, it was a very wholesome show.

Now it's just like anything else, down in the gutter. Very sad.
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What I had was the book "The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family", which had a bunch of neat trivia and anecdotes. I *believe* that book was where it was first revealed that "d'oh!" was written in the scripts as "Annoyed Grunt".

Everything I'm finding about it says it was released in 1997 but I'd swear that I had it much earlier than that. Maybe I had an early copy and they rereleased it later, or something.

Also, I remember when the comic book "Simpsons Comics and Stories" came out in 1993 and everyone needed to have a copy. You couldn't find it for a while since it was "hot", being the first-ever Simpsons comic book, and if you did find it then it was like $30. Then a few years passed and you could find it almost anywhere for like $5, which is when I finally got a copy. Now it's apparently worth hundreds of dollars, or over $1000 if it's graded. Madness. I got my $5 copy not even all that long ago, maybe 2005-ish.

Then the Bongo line started and people were pretty hot for that stuff, too. They had the regular Simpsons comic, Bartman, Itchy & Scratchy and Radioactive Man. Simpsons was pretty generic, but fine, Bartman was more of a super-hero comic... Radioactive Man was the best. That one was a mini-series that started in the 50s and jumped ahead a decade with each issue, and each issue was in turn a satire of whatever trends were prevalent in comics at that time. Like they parodied the issue of Green Lantern/Green Arrow where Speedy became a junkie, by having it be Fallout Boy becoming a hippie. And then when they got to the 90s issue, they parodied Spawn by having Radioactive Man's cape be 20 miles long and sh*t like that. That was definitely the best-written of the Simpsons books even thought the Simpsons themselves had nothing to do with it. But then since it was so popular, they made it an ongoing while still keeping the "jump around from decade to decade at random" gimmick - which makes organizing the series insane because you have to choose whether to store them by number or by publication date, since the issues were all printed out of order on purpose - but it just wasn't the same or as good as the original mini-series.

I never cared much for the Itchy & Scratchy book. It was kinda just like Loony Tunes or the Muppets, where they're just actors who do bits and the comic was all about their offscreen antics. It was alright but I didn't think it was terribly funny. I think I only really bought it when they did the "When Bongos Collide" cross-over one Summer and had it cross over with The Simpsons and Bartman.

That stuff really takes me back.

[Prowler]

I disagree entirely with those who say that shifting the focus from Bart to Homer after season 3 was a bad move.

Now, Bart had a lot of classic and memorable episodes, and he's my favourite Simpson after Homer, but with Homer you just have a lot more different possibilities when it comes to telling stories. Especially in a series that's primarily aimed at older audiences. Bart centric episodes mostly focused on him getting in trouble at school or getting in trouble outside of it by shoplifting at a mall. He's a 4th grader. There's not that many different stories you can tell with a character that young. And Bart, like Homer, isn't very smart or responsible, so you can't tell the same kind of stories with Bart that you can with Lisa.

Also, the golden age of The Simpsons begins just right after the main focus shifts from Bart to Homer. Season 4 is probably the best season in the whole series. Not that the first 3 seasons were bad, but the show's prime was between seasons 4 and 8. Most of the episodes people love and cherish are from those seasons.

Even when I was a kid, I found Home rmore entertaining and interesting than Bart.

[AquaParade]

Yeah, the show has some of it's best moments post-season 3.

That said, I sometimes see people exclude season 2 from the "golden era", which I wholeheartedly disagree with. It's not the show firing on all cylinders, but it's a great, somewhat grounded season, that has a lot of the strengths of 3-9, while offering a slightly different flavor.

[Prowler]

Oh yeah there's definitely a lot of good stuff in the early seasons. They are the best seasons after the golden age ones.

One thing that I always notice in the early seasons is how different Homer's voice tone/cadence sounded. He had a deeper and less cartoony voice.

Anyway, Leo mentioned Family Guy and The Simpsons becoming more like it. Which reminds me...

Many many years ago, I'm gonna say mid-2000s, one of the criticisms people gave Family Guy was it being a Simpsons rip-off. This due to the apparent core similarities between both shows. The family structure is similar and Peter is dumb just like Homer. That being said, I think that's really the extent of the similarities between Family Guy and classic Simpsons. Family Guy always had a completely different style, humor, formula and writing from the get-go. I'm sure Seth MacFarlane was heavily inspired by The Simpsons, but he managed to create something unique nonetheless.

So it's kind of sad and ironic that The Simpsons seem to have become more like Family Guy in the last decade. That's not how the show was intended to be. Sounds line The Simpsons lost their identity.

I know changed to writing staff are bound to happen in long running series. But I believe South Park was still loved by its fans until not that many years ago. And Family Guy is still liked by its fans to this day. So how exactly did Simpsons lose its plot? Couldn't they find better writers to replace the ones who left?

Anyway, the main reason why The Simpsons haven't been cancelled yet is probably not so much because of TV ratings since nowadays everyone just streams TV on their phone anyway. But probably because The Simpsons are more than a TV show. It's a brand. Possibly a very profitable one still. There's a lot of official Simpsons merch and products out there. Simpsons video games are generally trash, but if they didn't sell fairly well, I doubt they'd have made hundreds of them.

The Simpsons have reached a point where they'll never fully go away. Even if the TV series ends, I'd not be surprised to see a reboot or a spinoff coming out sometime later. Or perhaps even another movie.

The Simpsons have become the American Dragon Ball, pretty much. Too much of a cash cow to let it die.

[Leo656]

I still have a soft spot for the first couple of Seasons, even though they're not "the best". But I really love most of the first batch of episodes. The show hadn't found its groove yet but it was fun seeing it get its feet in real time. There's an undeniable charm there.

Plus, the first two Seasons were the only ones where I was able to watch them with my parents, so they have sentimental value for me. We used to sit and watch the new episodes every week while we had dinner, something we rarely did for anything. That stopped after a while; my Mom thought that the show was much too lowbrow and would be "a bad influence" on me, so she never really cared for it and eventually stopped watching it with us, and my Dad never completely got over the idea that a cartoon could ever be for anyone but little kids, so by the time the show got "really good" it was just me watching it. But we did get to watch the first two Seasons and maybe a little of the third together.

To this day it's the earliest ones I get the most excited for, whenever they show up in reruns. They're not "the best", but they were always replayed the least, clipped for time the most, and so whenever I get to see them nowadays in their complete form it makes me very happy. Plus they're just so "weird" compared to the later stuff and it's just interesting to see. By the time the show got "better", some of the excitement around it had waned just a bit. Those first two Seasons weren't the best but that's when the excitement was at its peak. The first line of action figures, the arcade game, the T-shirts that all the schools banned, the first record album... almost all of it came out before the show actually hit its stride. It all comes rushing back to me when I see those oldest episodes.

[Prowler]

Yes younger gens don't understand, but back then, The Simpsons were very ground breaking. They came out at a time where cartoons on TV were all made to sell toys to kids. Now there was this cartoon series that aired on a prime time slot and was aimed at older teens and adults.

There's nothing offensive or improper about The Simpsons tbh. There are no bad words or extreme violence in it or anything. Just some things that fly over your head when you're a kid. But I was always entertained by it. No parent was against their kids watching The Simpsons. South Park though? Yeah.

My mother respected The Simpsons and was surprised at how well-made it was considering it was a cartoon series.

There had been cartoons for adults before such as The Flinstones and Betty Boop, but they were nothing like The Simpsons. Had there not been The Simpsons we'd not have South Park, Futurama, Family Guy, Archer, American Dad, King of the Hill, etc.

[Leo656]

Oh, there were a LOT of parents, teachers and clergy who were outraged about The Simpsons. It mostly died down by Season 3, but those early days it was just like the South Park outrage. Albeit for much more innocuous reasons.

Basically, it all stemmed from the idea that "If it's a cartoon, it's meant for kids first and foremost." This despite the fact that the show The Simpsons originated from, the Tracey Ullman Show, was most certainly not a "kids' show". It wasn't exactly racy but there was quite a bit of risque' humor all the same. When I saw the show in reruns there were many things I'd missed or not noticed as a kid; a skit where one of Tracey's characters and Julie Kavner playing her "mom" were talking about dick size, and so on. So that show wasn't a kids' show, therefore it's strange that The Simpsons would be considered a kids' show, either, simply for being a cartoon.

But yeah, there was a ton of moral outrage. Mostly, because Bart was a disrespectful punk and all the kids thought he was cool, and so the idea was kids everywhere were gonna imitate him and start mouthing off to their parents, teachers, etc. Teachers were in an uproar about those "Underachiever and Proud of it!" T-shirts, because it was going to teach kids to be lazy slackers. Schools nationwide banned any Simpsons shirts; at my school, if you got caught wearing one they'd make you change into something from the Lost & Found. Churches were in an uproar because the show was "against God and morality" and was "promoting the breakdown of the family unit". In some of the REALLY strict conservative areas, churches organized burnings of Simpsons shirts and merchandise.

Anecdotally, I had a LOT of friends who weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons, it was full-on Banned in their house. Usually, it was because they said "damn" to their parents, or otherwise they probably said "I'm ______, who the hell are you?" to a grown-up. Most of the kids were pretty pissed about it, but a few of them actually supported it - always the "Christian" ones who went to church a lot. One time I asked my best friend if he'd seen the latest episode, and he was like "We don't watch that trash anymore in our house!" Turns out, in one of the more recent episodes they showed Bart streaking naked through the house, and you saw his butt, and the next day my friend's little brother who was 3 or 4 dropped his pants and ran through the house showing off his butt, so after that they weren't allowed to watch the Simpsons anymore. That was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life, but I didn't say that out loud.

Even then-President George Bush got involved; in one of his speeches he said that American families were losing their values, and that "We need families that are more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons!" In response, the Simpsons producers whipped up a little animated short where they were watching that Bush speech, and then Bart quips "Hey, we're just like The Waltons... we're waiting for an end to the recession, too!"

Now, to be clear, all of this hysteria went away very quickly. It was pretty much only the first two years, or less; after that, everyone calmed down once it was obvious the show wasn't breeding a generation of serial killers. All the T-shirt bans at school went away, all the parents who banned the show from their households eventually calmed down and let their kids watch it again, and so on. In hindsight, everyone agreed a few years later that they'd completely overreacted to the show upon its debut. And all the anger and hysteria vanished just as quickly as it had come.

But oh my, there definitely WAS a lot of outrage in the early days. People WERE treating it like Beavis & Butt-Head or South Park, at least the first year, which is absolutely ridiculous in hindsight. But that's how it went down, initially.

[Prowler]

Well, I didn't know any of that happened there tbh. Interesting and also kind of crazy.

I mean sure, Bart wasn't a well behaved kid, but neither was Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Was there any moral outrage about Calvin and Hobbes back in the 80s?

It really shows how much TV changed since then. To think The Simpsons were at some point one of the most controversial shows on TV... it just seems so silly nowadays.

Kinda like back in 1983, the Iron Maiden single The Number of the Beast must have shocked a lot of people. Nowadays, no one is outraged by Iron Maiden or metal bands in general talking about Satan. No one takes that seriously anymore.

[Leo656]

I don't think parents monitor their kids reading habits the same way they do their TV-watching habits.

Like, when I was 5 a family friend gave me the first Calvin & Hobbes collected edition and I read it a thousand times, but my parents never even looked at it. Conversely, up to a certain age they made it a point to know what I was watching on TV.

But yeah, it is stupid, and people are full of double-standards like that. Looking back on early Simpsons, it's incredibly tame, and is actually more about UPHOLDING the family unit than anything. They were the most "realistic" family on TV, they just weren't the kind of family you traditionally saw in cartoon shows. The closest analogue was the Bundys on Married... With Children, and THAT show received a ton of moral outrage during its first two Seasons, too. People REALLY hated the Fox Network in 1989-1991. Between The Simpsons and Married... With Children they were gonna completely destroy family values and create a nation of idiots. Or so we were led to believe, in spite of all evidence.

Thankfully it all went away super-fast. My wife's only a year younger than me but she had no idea any of that stuff had happened, either. It came and went in a flash but it was wacky for a minute.

[Prowler]

I guess. TV used to be the most important thing to us back then. Nowadays it's the Internet in general and phones. Rarely do I tunr in the TV to watch something nowadays. And when I do it's to watch a live football match in the Champions League, the Euro or the World Cup.

I remember there being discussions about kids watching too much television. When I was 8 I got some flack from my family for watching TV all day long. And I wasn't even watching improper stuff. I was simply watching Cartoon Network. There was a day where CN aired a 24 hour marathon of Tom and Jerry episodes during summer. I basically spent the whole afternoon watching it. My mother and my brother eventually told me to stop because watching too much TV was bad for my health or something.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by Prowler

There's nothing offensive or improper about The Simpsons tbh. There are no bad words or extreme violence in it or anything. Just some things that fly over your head when you're a kid. But I was always entertained by it. No parent was against their kids watching The Simpsons.

Definitely not true. My mom didn't like us watching it. My dad was fine with it. Bill Cosby thought Bart was a bad role model for children.

[Coola Yagami]

I mean back in the day 'ass' was one of the bad words not allowed on TV and yet here we had a cartoon kid character Bart saying it on prime time.

Yeah those were the days.

If you want to see a comparison, watch the Simpsons/Family Guy crossover. Family Guy is so damn edgey and crap it makes the Simpsons look downright wholesome by comparison.

Stuff like Bart being just a mischievous prankster while Stewie is making rape references and actually tried to kill all of Bart's enemies.

[Andrew NDB]

Someone brought up the dark Sideshow Bob stuff. Yeah. As a kid -- and keep in mind I was a kid freely allowed to watch, say, the Chucky movies or anything R in theaters -- the Sideshow Bob stuff really struck me and seemed to strike a lot of other kids I knew as kind of a "holy sh**." Thing. Here was a cartoon that really had an edge to it, with real risks suddenly. Coated in humor and this or that, but it felt like a huge game changer.

Now? It's nothing. 3 seconds of Rick and Morty would trump all of that stuff in terms of "risque" or pretty much anything else. But at the time, whoa. That was brand new.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

Definitely not true. My mom didn't like us watching it. My dad was fine with it. Bill Cosby thought Bart was a bad role model for children.

Keep in mind, if it hadn't been stated before, Prowler's a few years younger than I am. He would have been too young to have experienced the anti-Simpsons hysteria. My wife is only one year younger than me, and she watched the show from the beginning but she completely missed all of the people being mad at it.

It was definitely a thing, but it came and went pretty fast and history doesn't really spend a lot of time on discussing the brief period where the show was "controversial". Most discussion about the history of the show only focuses on how it was an overnight sensation and changed TV forever and all that. They don't speak much of the year or so when Bart Simpson was every parent and teacher's worst enemy. Anyone who didn't see it up close as it was happening could be forgiven for not even knowing about it.

Especially since less than three years later, Beavis & Butt-Head came out and made The Simpsons seem positively quaint. That REALLY made parents and teachers feel foolish for ever being so uptight about The Simpsons of all things. They thought it was bad that suddenly kids were saying "damn" and "hell" because of Bart... and then they had to worry about their kids calling each other "butt-munch" and "dingleberry" and going around lighting fires.

If there was still any lingering "heat" on The Simpsons by 1993 among parents, teachers and churches... Beavis & Butt-Head pretty much put it all to bed immediately. But most people were done being mad at The Simpsons by then, anyway.

[Wildcat]

I mentioned the Sideshow Bob episodes.

Anyway what I meant by cute is I think things became more lighthearted compared to the more straightforward satire of the older seasons.

I certainly do not see how it became mean-spirited. The Family Guy crossover proved it’s not. Regardless it’s apparent that all the characters operate as friends or close acquaintances now even if they’re rivals in a given situation.

The future episodes and Marge and Homer’s marriage problems are not about them being miserable they’re just plot points that are recycled a lot because it’s been on so long.

Being a loving family is still very much intact. Only people who consistently watch will know. The most recent Valentine’s Day episode is a good example. The kids think they’re in a rut and tell them to take a trip but neither actually wants to go. They do and get stuck in the forest. It’s a very sweet episode.

I could list others but again only people who consistently watch it will get this.

About the art/animation, improving it should not be considered bad. I’m not talking about being hand drawn specifically. Overall everything is more vibrant and detailed which just looks better. The characters are not too static either. There is more than enough movement. It’s not anime (nothing against anime).

The old hand drawn quirks and such are fine but this goes back to people glorifying something old because it was “back then”.

If the art/animation was as clean in the 90s it would have been praised. It’s not like old fashioned animation should be the standard. Then what’s the point of progressing any media? There’s nothing wrong with liking vintage/retro stuff. We all do but that’s not the point.

I’m not saying everyone should still like the show. It’s definitely changed some over the years and some ideas are not as creative as they used to be.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

No offense Wildcat but I feel like you're too loose with properties you love so much.

The Simpsons definitely dropped in quality from animation to writing to storytelling. I don't feel the show has much going for it anymore in terms of all three of what I mention and that's just what happens when it goes on for so long.