Do you guys remember the episode where the simpsons made fun of married with children and said that it was a tv-show that did not know when to end and just did it for money with no new content? Well...
...that's called self-referential humor. Like how waaay back in season 4 with the clip show they make fun of clip shows as a desperation move for shows going on too long and running out of things to say.
The problem is the Simpsons has lived too long, and Futurama was ended too soon. Although I prefer Futurama getting cancelled early than having to watch what they've done to the Simpsons
shortylickens69 agreed it was less about the adventures of fry bender and leela like the old episodes and more about them just doing nothing interesting the reason why the old episodes where good is because the writing was better and it was interesting what adventures they go on the Comedy Central era was mediocre at best and it made me bored of watching it even the futurama movies were mediocre too imo the same can be said about the Simpsons hell disenchantment was not that good imo it seems less like the shows are on seasonal rot and more like Matt groening is getting burnt out
The question is when simpsons die no when it left golden age. And I would argue that it dies with new HD graphics in season 20. I personally love season 14 -17. Other were watchable till 20th season. I stopped watching simpsons in season 22 which was just bad.
Season 9 to season 19 was the silver age. Not the classic 90s but still entertaining. Especially to alot of 2000s kids it was some of the first episodes we saw.
Shake it up is all that we know Using the bodies up as we go I'm waking up to fantasy The shades all around Aren't the colors we used to see Broken ice still melts in the sun And times that are broken Can often be one again We're soul alone And soul really matters to me Take a look around You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around Oh, oh-oh, oh Oh, oh-oh, oh Reaching out for something to hold Looking for a love Where the climate is cold Manic moves and drowsy dreams Or living in the middle Between the two extremes Smoking guns hot to the touch Would cool down If we didn't use them so much We're soul alone And soul really matters to me Too much You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around Oh, oh-oh, oh Oh, oh-oh, oh... (Out of touch) Out of touch You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around You're out of touch I'm out of time (time) But I'm out of my head When you're not around..
It wasn't just Homer, Marge used to be a loving mother but was now known for her nagging. Bart was shown to have heart but now he's just a prankster. Lisa used to show intelligence and care for those around her, but now she is the embodiment of "female empowerment." The only character who wasn't changed is Maggie. Maggie never dies.
That's what I thought the video was going to say. I think that more than anything else sealed the deal as so many of the best episodes were voiced by the same voice actor.
My best friend has never asked about my drug addiction or feeling bad, and we've been friends for 9 years. There's no point to this comment really, it just sorta struck me reading your comment.
For me it died when Maude died -- and I wasn't even a big Maude Flanders fan. It's just that, it became some kind of benchmark. It felt like the whole show changed after that moment. I don't really know why. I can't even really explain it. It was just a different show...
My point exactly. It was obvious yet undefinable. These characters were members of our own families. After Maude died it was like they became cartoons. Even though they were animated I NEVER thought of them as cartoons until that point. The rest of that season came across as boring and...well, cartoonish. Maude really did deserve a better death. Or even to NOT die. I would have preferred Helen Lovejoy to die. Not out of malice for her, but to see how Reverend Lovejoy deals with it as a devoutly religious man and as a community leader. What effect would the pain and depression of the town's minister have on the community? We'll never know.
Jeez, I watched a season 28 episode where Bart is in a coma, and is having constant terrors of Maude Flanders haunting him. And as it goes on (in his coma) he kills an entire train full of people and gets Homer killed to so she can pass on to the next step in the afterlife.
@Ringo Vaughan-Hughes I agree, I stopped watching Simpsons because of Family Guy. Until Family Guy also murdered itself over time and became unlikable.
I always felt bad for the "real" Skinner getting kicked out of town tied to a train carriage. I guess he's had his revenge though, as the show's quality left with him.
I miss the golden age of the Simpsons. A show that was a counterculture to the American middle class sitcoms of the 80's. Now, they became what they sought to fight in the 90's.
I think that is the point of the comment. There hasn't been (would not personally know, I haven't watched it since 2001) but it is well within the character of the programme to do such a thing. They are out of ideas: "let's reveal an old beloved character isn't who they say they are, or kill them off then replace them with a twin who is the same in every way than not have it feature in the continuity." Lazy and unimaginative. I thought it was terrible when they did that with Snowball the cat.
Sorry Matthew, but they actually did, I watched every single episode in hope that they may finally make a great true comeback... In fact, I love this show so much, I don't really hate the newest seasons that much... It's still better than other shows and maybe the audience should give them a chance... Nostalgia around this old show works both ways, either we find it hard to like because it's mostly rehashed ideas now, or some of the original audience still likes it, to see them try to find new ways to entertain us after having treated almost every theme imaginable... That's debatable in my opinion
The actually did? It doesn't at all surprise me. I really stopped caring long ago. I mostly disagree with you, it is better than a lot of what is on, hence why I rarely watch television these days, but a number of celebrities that owe their success to what's trending online, being injected into the show for the Simpson's to interact with, the playing up to U.S. politics, coupled with the lack of creativity - they used to put a lot of play-on-words jokes and hidden references everywhere, there is hardly an episode that doesn't allude to an old film, television show or historical event, adding an extra layer; the newer episodes of the last 15 years feels so sterile and unimaginative. The straight-in-your-face jokes that tell you the point in plain English and the inability to execute parody, with the hastily dating pop-cultural references shoehorned in everywhere that distract from the flow of the story. At least you are getting something out of it, though unfortunately, I doubt it'll get better.
I remember watching the episode about Seymour's real identity, it made me feel so sad because despite him being a character who is disliked by some of the characters, we still loved him he's an awesome character and to find out that he was just an imposter, it kinda sticks to the back of your head to think that they're are just gonna have to live with the fact that he was lying for so long.
The Simpsons is the kind of show where almost nothing ever changes and most stuff that happened in previous episodes is never mentioned again in new episodes so its exactly the same with Seymour and how everybody in Springfield feels about him now as it was before that episode aired. Usually when they do mention stuff that happened in old episodes its only a short joke and is not important to the episode or the story.
The important thing to remember is that the person we knew and cared about for so long, even if he was assuming a false identity, is still the same person. He is the only 'Seymour Skinner' who matters.
everybody have an episode that broke the magical spell for The Simpsons mine was the episode where Lisa Kudrow was a guest it was the first time that I thought that a celebrity cameo was gratuitious and also the design of her character came to that point where everything else but the Simpsons family was very detailed. her face, hair, clothes stood out so much when she was close to Lisa
I know exactly what you mean. I miss the old animation style that was rougher around the edges. I thought it had more personality. The animation became too polished and didn't fit into the world anymore. Thanks for watching!
Althony Rightano I've always wanted closure on this. I couldn't relate more. I grew up watching each episode so much I even enjoyed knowing each line. Then something happened and I could never put my finger on it. I do remember thinking, at the age of 14, I have a principal and how odd it would be to have this happen. It feels like after season 10 they just started selling us the same bag of chips but with far less inside. Their market had become so large it was if the writers were no longer needed. As long as they showed the cast doing stuff that was enough. It insults those iconic moments in the simpsons. I haven't seen an episode after season 13 and I don't care to as I've tried many times hoping to be wrong. The simpsons movie was also arbitrary and unnecessary. I want them to stop making the show so it can be streamed more easily and I can re watch seasons 1-10 again. Thanks for the closure. I just couldn't put my finger on what happened and this helped as lame as that may sound.
For me, this episode was what broke it. I attempted to watch it again around 2001, but couldn't. I ended up watching the NSync episode, with the lame Matrix reference, and the funniest thing being "Lt. L.T. Smash"
For me, it died in Season 11. It was truly the last season where I connected with the characters and stories. Frankly, when Maude Flanders died, so did the show. Funny enough, when Homer bowls a perfect game in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and struggled to stay relevant, it became rather poignant and symbolic of the show itself. The Millenials were all growing up and the show stopped being relevant to a lot of us. At least I have my DVD collection to fall back on these days. Seasons 1-10 are still classics in my book.
1-8 were good 9-12 were ok, some good outstanding episodes between the bad ones 13+ is just the mehest of the meh And don't even get me started on that fucking Lady Gaga episode and the one about Carl's Icelandic heritage just wtf
It's a little misleading to make this all about one episode, there are many factors, like The Great Migration, when quite a few writers went to Futurama
Same problem happened with Futurama too. 1-4 were amazing. "movies" were ok... then it just went downhill. Bad writing. Not understanding there characters that we fell in love with. Except for a few episodes of later Futurama, most of it just kinda sucks.
As a huge fan of 90s simpsons heres my two cents: 1-2: Intelligent and funny but lacks refinement 3-8: Brilliant, intelligent, full of character and relatable/heartwarming situations, genuinely hilarious 9-10: Still has its humour but slowly lacks the intelligent quips of the former seasons 11-12: Watchable, but has already lost most of the charm and creativity of the past 13-28: Oh god... just...just let it die its so bad...such unfunny and completely lazy writing...please let it die
I think the genuinely bad part of the Simpsons started with season 20. Up to season 19 there were still a memorable episode here and there but after season 20 all of them are just forgettable and cringy... Although I agree that the decay started growing faster after season 13
To me that the bigger issue in this episode then the reveal is the ending.The real Skinner was not shown to be a rude, mean, or bad person. Our Skinner had no problem stealing the life of the man who saved him and having him get banished from his home. And the real Skinner’s mom told him she didn’t want him. Who really thought that was funny or appropriate. Honestly I expect that kind of ending from Family Guy.
Not mean or bad but as I recall actually nonetheless incompetetent. The idea that because he was the original he should just take over and do as well or better seemed like something you're not really supposed to take seriously and the ending being him being banished I guess was doubling down on you're really not supposed to take seriously.
The Simpsons in its current form is a sad state of affairs. Truth be told, I'm not certain any show can get to six hundred episodes and still remain on top of its game. The stories and settings started getting more and more outlandish, sometimes reeking of pure desperation. A good example is the son of Frank Grimes. There was absolutely no setup to the reveal of Grimey's offspring whatsoever, and his appearance was explained away in one quick, artless statement that Frank Grimes enjoyed prostitutes. It was almost as though they just wanted to link a mediocre episode to an established successful one, but in doing so, damaged the source material. It also seems like the writing pace gradually devolved over the years from well thought-out, intelligent stories, to quick throw-away stories built to accommodate the guest-star of the week, who seem to be chosen on no other merit than who the episode's writer seems to fancy. It seems more like the writers want to convey how intelligent they think themselves to be, so the guests have deviated from people who fit a scenario for an episode, to people the writers believe will make them look more deep, so we get episodes centered around a large building, bringing in a famous architect who ends up having three lines in the whole show, leaving behind nineteen minutes of nonsense with no point. Or famous crossword puzzle designers who appear in the tail end of an episode, so a bizarre, uninteresting story is concocted to lead up to it. Or worst of all, we get that unwatchable mess about Lady Ga-Ga and her over-the-top, unfunny, world travelling train. We are a far cry from the early episodes of Sideshow Bob, or Burns' bear, Bobo. Just write it well, next time. Also, I apologize for any overlong sentences, or improperly conveyed ideas on my part. I'm writing this at work, and sometimes in a hurry. "Well, just write it when you're not at work, then." No.
"Seems more like the writers want to convey how intellingent the think themselves to be..." The scene that immediately comes to my mind is the "cheese scene" from the episode where the Simpsons go to Italy and they get the Ferrari wrecked. Lisa just "identifying" every kind of cheese was meant to be a joke but I can't imagine anyone laughing to that, it was like the writers screaming at us "look guys, we knows stuff".
One of the main problems with modern Simpsons is that the writers don't understand these characters, and 'The Principal and the Pauper' is an example (though not really as "modern" as other episodes). Principal Skinner's character writing and development was built how he'd been over-parented by his mother for too long, and despite having a job as a principal, the over-parenting and torment has had a bad effect on his life. Skinner turning out to be an impostor destroys his character development, because, if he didn't live with Agnes as a child, why would she be affecting his life so badly?
When I see "The Simpsons" on television, and select it, I leave pretty quick if it doesn't have that old school animation look, and the beautiful widescreen black bars on both sides of the screen.
No, I completely agree! I don't think for me there was an actual defining moment when the franchise suddenly started to suck, but I can say for sure that the last time I ever willingly laid eyes on the Simpsons was the movie. I had already written the show off, by and large, but I paid to see it in the theatres mostly out of curiosity as to whether it would act (as promised by many promoters and media outlets) as the "last hurrah" that allowed the franchise to finally die with dignity and go out on top. Instead, it was the harbinger of all things to come: a slick, flashy, soulless corporate parody of itself, directed entirely by committee, created by a team of scientists in a lab somewhere by extracting and cobbling together what they THOUGHT people liked about the series as a whole into a Frankensteinian monster, and then animated entirely by computers without even the hint that any of the show's millionaires had ever cared enough to touch it (much like George Lucas, these sniveling fools actually saw that as a plus). Hamer, Madge, Bert and Leeza Stimson in "PAY TO SEE THIS MOVIE, THEN GO BUY A T-SHIRT AND A HAPPY MEAL", plus celebrity guests, yay! Watch the flash, then give us your cash!
If only the day The Simpsons died had been the day it was allowed to end with dignity, go off the air, and ride quietly into the sunset. Instead, it's been turned into a lich by the dark sorcery of greed. A monstrosity with its life unnaturally prolonged beyond what any TV show should have. Neither truly living nor truly dead, yet condemned to walk the earth until the last money is finally drained from its withered, decrepit veins.
I'd say just stop watching this show and Fox will get the message once rating keeps getting lower and lower and don't buy any merchandise. This show died in 2000 with Behind The Laughter as far as i'm concerned and If The Simpsons was a pet it would be that old dog that desperately needs to be put down to end its long suffering.
Making a character detach from their established character tells the audience that the writers no longer care what happens to them; and eventually the audience doesn't care any longer either.
That is what I hate about Flanders' Ladder. Lisa would never act as mean as she did in that episode, not even towards Bart. It also doesn't make Bart bad enough to deserve the torment that Lisa gave him. August 25, 2019, 10:41am
This was such an iconic show in my childhood. This show serves as a reminder that all good things come to an end. Nothing is forever. All is temporary.
I know the animation has nothing to do with the writing quality, but the look also changed once the show started getting 'colored in' in the back room of a Chinese Walmart.
My question is this: If everyone including the show's creators are aware that the writers and directors are nowhere near the standard of the golden age, why don't they simply fire them all and get in actual talent? They are one of the biggest tv shows in history, they could do this if they choose to.
Probably demands from Fox to crank out episodes, and that hinders the quality (Rushed, underfunded/demands to be met that don't help (Like a celebrity appearance)) and then the writers probably get thrown in by Fox going "Make this work" a they print more shirts with bart on it.
The thing is, you can't "plan" to create great masterpieces, it was a unique combination of talent and circumstances that led to the golden age of the Simpsons back then. It's like saying "There are no more bands as good as the Beatles, why don't the four most talented musicians just get together and create that kind of music again?" It wouldn't work. They had their moment and they way overstayed it.
Not sure it would work. people know the voices of the characters. The show has long since jumped the shark. Still I think it will be a sad day when it finally stops making episodes. That I think will come when a major voice actor dies or quits.
You're right about connecting with the characters. Actually, while the show is about the title family, almost every resident of the city has been given protagonism in at least 1 episode. I can't think of any other show that has done that.
I honestly feel like they should have cancelled The Simpsons and continued working on Futurama. Futurama just had way more variety and was consistently fresh and entertaining. This is because the writers were not limited to just normal day to day stuff as the show was about space. They could literally do whatever they wanted, and for the 14 years the show aired, it worked. Though its true that the golden age of The Simpsons is way behind us, and the show has seemed to have lost its charm and originality. I still find it comforting that its still around as most of the other shows of my childhood have disappeared and have been replaced by absolute GARBAGE.
I always thought I grew out of The Simpson's because I didn't laugh out loud at it anymore. That was until I watched an older episode of it and I realised that I hadn't changed, the show had
I see the "Main reason" for The Simpsons decline is Matt Groening's decision to switch to Futurama, that was already in work at that time. First episode of Futurama was aired in late march 1999, and "The principle and the Pauper" was aired in late september 1997. Which means that Mr. Groening has already switched his focus on Futurama, and let other people work on The Simpsons. Futurama was fantastic for first 5 seasons, until it got canceled. And because it got canceled, almost 10 years later, Matt has watered it down too, to be more family friendly like the old The Simpsons seasons, and The Simpsons basically became lame boring, money making, family friendly franchise, and thus, both series that were once comedy gold, got killed of, for no specific reason, other than financial gain.
Season breakdown: 1-2 good but not flushed out yet 3-8: golden age 9-12: lacking but tolerable 13-Movie: terribly lackluster Movie-Present: generally awful, becoming little more than a platform for politics, pop culture, and celebrities. At least when these matters where featured in earlier seasons, it was done more sparringly and complemented the plot and characters' nature. Now these have become the plot, and the characters have generally lost all dimension.
Season 9, besides "The Episode", isn't that bad. If you watch every episode from 1 to whatever we're at now, except "The Episode" then you see seasons 3-9 are the best.
Am I the only one who also sees seasons 1 and 2 as part of the golden age too? Yes it was the early days of establishing characters and such, but it still had meaningful episodes and lessons to learn.
VERY strongly agree. The first two seasons had amazing, continually rewatchable shows. I've watched them too many times to count and still find them a pleasure. They were more biting, for one. Year after year, the show got nicer, which took a lot of the teeth out of the satire. Eventually even Mr. Burns often became an okay guy. It was wonderful when the show first came out, amid all the ultra-smarmy sitcoms of its day, that it was willing to set up a figure like Burns for attack that showed not just his ordinary greed, but his absurdity and how sheltered and ridiculously out of touch he was. Futurama got criticized by studio execs for being too mean, but in the beginning, the Simpsons was mean too.
No, I agree. They're part of it too. Bart gets an F is a fantastic episode. He tries his hardest to study when getting a miracle snow day, he still fails, he gets upset and in his despair, shows he did learn something and Krabappel rewards him for it. It's a great happy ending.
The show is on autopilot at this point though compared to the town of Quahog, they haven't become incredibly tasteless, just kind of bland with sometimes some nice moments.
There's always more ideas to be had. They just need to fire Al Jean, hire a new showrunner and hire better writers if they can't handle the direction of the new showrunner.
Modern Simpsons are simply promotional shows for Celebrities and campy unfunny jokes. Moronic stories that don't make sense, too many stupid subplots and literally no character development at all. They pretty much feel like a modern Reboot of the original Simpsons.
I think the precise moment when it clicked for me that something had been lost in the Simpsons was the episode Catch 'Em if You Can. Homer and Marge go on holiday without the kids, Bart and Lisa try to track them down, it becomes a game of cat and mouse, 'hilarity' ensues. I get that it's a direct reference to Catch Me if You Can and yes, it's a cartoon, but two things really grated with me. First, the ridiculousness of the plot; the Simpsons never shied away from being outlandish, but kids chasing their parents around all of North America is just farcical. Second, Homer and Marge were traditionally showed to be doting parents. What they sometimes lacked in intelligence and responsibility (Homer especially) they made up for with deep devotion to their kids. For instance Homer could be neglectful of his fatherly duties at times, but think of his 'do it for her' sign in the power plant and you know that he was a loving father. That was reinforced for years over hundreds of episodes. Then in this episode Homer and Marge's suddenly have a casual indifference towards their kids' well-being; they see their 8 and 10 year old kids alone in a distant city and just run away. One of the underlying characteristics of the Simpsons was that as the decades have passed, they go through a variety of bizarre situations yet the characters themselves remain constant. Yet here was a storyline in which some of their most basic character traits were abandoned to make the plot work. That said to me that the 'heart' of the show had been lost and the characters were becoming more generic, free to be moulded to whatever the plot requires.
Along with the "Do it for her" sign, your comment reminded me of when Homer gave up his tickets for the duff blimp so Lisa could join the little miss springfield pageant and regain her self confidence. Or when Homer works 2 jobs so Lisa could keep her horse. I miss the heartfelt episodes!!!
Or when Homer and Bart tries to bond over building a soap box racer together because Homer finds out he doesn't know his own son that well. I miss the old Simpsons.
quiet rogue he wasn't sobbing, he was just looking into the night sky, reflecting. Which was a rather subtle beautiful moment that humanized Homer. A show can be emotional and still be funny. I don't get why some people just want a show to be only silly, or only dramatic. A comedy can occasionally have heart & soul, while a serious drama can still have funny moments. If one focuses too much on one thing then it doesn't seem very realistic, and static to me.
I now include everything from season 1 in the golden age. when i was younger the season 1 episodes seemed to have a bit of a crude and a harsh animation edge. when i go back and watch now the humor is also blacker. but i'm older. so i like season 1 more than i used to.
"punishing the audience for paying attention"...I can name Four other prime time animated shows who do that exact thing and are unapologetic about it...They have zero respect for our intelligence
Oh wow, they did? I haven't even watched that... and I was just getting comfortable with the idea that they met normally in high school. So much for continuity.
This is why I think the characters should have been allowed to age. There would be more continuity and room to explore new storylines for the characters.
And that's why I fucking HATE! When people say shit like..."Its just a game" "Its just a cartoon" "These characters are not real" Of course their not we know that but while watching these characters we grow to love them. Apart of them becomes apart of me and you. We take something from that and hey...Maybe your going through something in life and these characters are something of a get away. When I was a kid, I use to watch Rugrats religiously lol I loved it so much it changed my perspective of life and growing up in this world of grown ups that just don't seem to understand. At the beginning I was chuckie Finster and as he grew as a character I grew along with him, I went from being afraid of everything and everyone to taking chances in life and standing up to people. "He's just a cartoon character", but a character that...yeah changed my life. So I wish writers would understand that its a huge responsibility to respect these characters and after a long run send them off on a high note.
Hurri Cane let him live how he wants. What if he has no family or friends and these characters are the only thing he has left? (I mean probably not but still) what if? Do you know him personally? Because if you do I’ll back off and you can talk to him in real life about reality but imagine if I said your entire family were characters and to not care what would you say? Would you say the exact same thing then? Or would your view change? I know that I’m kinda stretching it for the sake of someone I don’t know but hey, who knows this might be all they’ve got... and it only takes one really bad day to go crazy and maybe your comment was the straw that broke the camels back for this persons bad day... but hey what do I know I’m just some TH-cam commenter
HypE Noir yea you are just a person commenting and that’s it no one should take anything anyone says seriously someone doesn’t like something oh well I don’t think John Lennon is a legend but I understand he’s a legend to so many people which I respect just not my type of music I don’t think Simpsons is dead or unfunny it’s the Simpson’s I just watch tv to be distracted and or entertained if I want a story I’ll read a book
I loved when Homer lost weight and his hair started to grow back because Bart was gone. Then they had the news on and Homer is thinking,"don't be the boy. don't be the boy." It's Bart and his hair falls out and so does his gut. lol
And that episode was just the beginning. They then proceeded to ruin or retcon more and more characters. We find out that Flanders is actually 30 years older than he looks, which doesn’t make sense with his parents being Beatniks. We get to know Apu as a surprisingly cool bachelor only to have him get married and saddled with too many kids in rapid order. And the final nail in the coffin: after going to high school in the 1970s, Homer and Marge are suddenly in college in the 1990s.
I stopped watching the show in that season, i don't remember the number but i guess the year was 2001 or 2002... the Apu's kids chapter was the final nail for me
Sad thing is that I was born from the 2000s era and I'd watch season 1 through 8 first and I found it my favorite show ever. Then when I'ce came to season 9, it's just wasn't the same and I had stopped watching it years ago.
Fun Fact: in my country (Argentina) the Simpsons are still a huge success. People know every quote and episode, the memes are everywhere on social media, and even university professors give examples using the show. Of course everyone loves the older episodes, but it was never forgotten. Many countries in Latin America are the same. I’m always amazed at how easy Americans let it go...
Entertain The Elk that's right, the voices in Latin America where changed because the assholes here in Mexico owning the whole fucking television didn't want to pay more than the missery they gave to the dubbers, actually the voices here were really really good as were the only ones Matt Groening personally chose besides the original English ones. Here the TV is owned by Televisa, which is "owned" by the government, they pay their artists misserably so all The Simpsons actors were fired just for asking for better payment, would be cool to see a video about it... so fucking sad and unfair, but still we had the original voices until like season 12 I think... and also I can still watch them in English too but whatevs, still a sad subject.
The Simpsons never died, they were put on life support. Now the good memories that we had of them are tainted by the years of watching them slowly suffer as they rot.
Rob... I couldn't agree more. :( Though I will say, the classics will always be classics. I'm rewatching Season 4 right now and it's gold. Even the newer crappy episodes can't take that away from us.
it started to die here, but there still were a few funny episodes in seasons nine and ten. When they killed off Maud Flanders, the Simpson, the REAL Simpsons absolutely died with that episode
YES HELL YES That show was amazing and then we got that damn talking dog. AKA "if I wasn't so young and dumb at the time, I wouldn't have watched this." And then, Chloe- aka "I was young and dumb but still knew crap when I saw it." Of course, the downfall really starts in season 7(?) when we got Foop. And before that, when we got Poof, there was a dip in quality. Hell, season 2, when the Flanderization started, has been considered the end of the golden age for some fans. To me, it was when they started utilizing more gross-out and cringe comedy. But in hindsight, most of the Season 9 episodes are unwatchable, and seasons 7-8 are painful, but with a few ok bits. I'm just pissed that Foop is the only member of his _entire species_ to appear anymore. And what happened to the Pixies? Or most other magical creatures, for that matter. Season 6 is alright. Season 5 was pretty good, with the highlight being Fairy Idol, one of my favorite episodes. Season 4 was great, with episodes like Channel Chasers, Genie Meanie Minie Mo, The Big Superhero Wish, Pixies Inc, and Shelf Life. Season 3 was actually a little lower in quality than Season 4, but it still had gems such as Abracatastrophe, The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker, Imaginary Gary, Pipe Down, and The Big Scoop. Season 2 was amazing, with gems like Information Stupor Highway(despite being very out-of-date on internet things, it's still more timeless than most attempts to cover modern net culture), The Boy Who Would Be Queen, Totally Spaced Out, Boys In The Band, and Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary. And Season 1? It was pretty lackluster. I'd say the Golden Age of the show was Seasons 2-5.
Disagree. It was a misstep, but the definitive end was after 'Behind The Laughter'. The song at the end that joked about how the writers were out of ideas turned out to be borderline prophecy. After that, they started in with the topical episodes: "Springfield legalizes homosexual marriage". "Springfield legalizes marijuana". "Springfield solves the deficit". Enough, already. Worse still, as a result of injecting political sermons into episodes, Lisa went from 'mildly annoying' to 'five-alarm dumpster fire'. It threw off the family dynamic and it's never been the same since.
Why is it considered that season 3-8 is the best? Why no love for season 2? Lots of classic episodes in there, including my all time favourite episode (Lisa's Substitute).
I love Season 2. Just recently rewatched Lisa's Substitute and Bart Gets an F. It's a fantastic season, but I think they hadn't completely found their voice at that point yet. I'd have no problems considering it Golden Age though.
I always loved the Simpsons... but my interested nosedived once they started stuffing the scripts with time-sensitive memes and endless celebrity cameos/voice overs in just about every episode ("When You Dish Upon a Star" EP 5 / Season 10... give me a f#@king break). The Simpsons brand went from "must see, classic & timeless" to "passable, flavor-of-the-week" in a matter of a few seasons.
When You Dish Upon a Star was great in my opinion. I didn't know any of the three celebrities at the time (I was only young when I first watched it) and I thought it was funny and it only got funnier when I understood it more. That being said, celeb appearances for the most part have been awful.
I didn't mind "When You Dish Upon a Star" but I agree with your overall point. What made the Simpsons so amazing was that even though the show had plenty of outlandish plots it was still grounded in many ways. For all the ridiculous stuff Homer and Bart got into, there was still Marge and Lisa to bring realism. There was a counterbalance. Where the Simpsons went dreadfully wrong is that they got rid of that balance. They made everything as absurd as possible. Characters no longer had any hints of real life in their arcs. And, maybe worst of all, they tried to pump endless jokes into every episode, rather than creating several good jokes and letting them breath. They try to go a mile a minute with every line. It takes all the heart out of the show. And celebrity appearances became nothing more than a planned distraction from the mediocre writing.
You can't compare TV viewer ratings in 2017 vs the 90's. Far more options now, streaming, cord-cutting, etc. Fox's top show this year draws 7M per episode, and The Simpson's still draws about 4M an episode which is strong in 2017.
The best example for ending a show after a short time but not make it feel "too soon“ is gravity falls. Had a beautiful ending and no filler episodes. It was perfect.
The Simpsons Seasons 1 & 2-- Good show, has potential Seasons 3-8 -- Legendary writing, "Golden era" of show Seasons 9-11-- Good, but not as good as the prior seasons Seasons 12-19-- Bad, but somewhat tolerable to watch Seasons 20-beyond -- Horrendous. Utterly unwatchable.
I've been rewatching the "golden era" recently and 9 is definitely the season that it starts to crack. There are plenty of good eps but a few really bad ones, season 10 does the reverse where there are few good eps and plenty of really bad ones and it's just downhill all the way
Although I'm not a big fan of the episode, I don't get why everyone hates the idea of Skinner being a fraud. He only took on a new name, the personality was always his own. Apart from a couple of flash backs, we had never learned about his life pre-89. Also for the record - a later episode of Season 9 - Das Bus, is among the greatest.
There's definitely some good episodes after The Principal and the Pauper. I remember enjoying the Super Bowl episode in Season 10 when I was a kid. Thanks for watching!
It undermined what we knew about his relationship with Agnes, and it re-contextualized the Vietnam flashbacks that we'd already seen. And even worse, it was done as a joke. It wasn't a sincere effort to give the character more depth. It didn't open the door for the writers to take Skinner in a new direction. The twist was as phony as Seymour himself. And the really sad thing is that they could've done that to almost any other supporting character on the show without causing the same level of harm. Moe isn't really Moe? No problem. Fat Tony is actually a Russian spy? Big deal. Dr. Hibbert doesn't actually have a medical degree? Fine. But Skinner was the best-developed character at the time other than Homer and Marge, so it wasn't something that fans could easily laugh off. It''s pretty much like making an episode called The Way We Wasn't, in which we discover that Marge Simpson isn't Marge Bouvier at all, but rather another woman with similar features who accidentally killed the real Marge in a hit-and-run in 1974 and then took her place, with her family and her boyfriend not noticing. That's not good storytelling. That's an insult.
I love Skinner. This episode is not that terrible. At the end of the episode one of the characters says: "Let's never speak of this ever again" (I'm paraphrasing :)). Which tells us that the writers didn't take this absurd episode to seriously and neither should we, the audience. What I'm saying is that this episode does not define Skinner as a character. There are also a lot of different episodes about how Homer and Marge met and where they grew up (Springfield, the Bronx). Which is absurd, as well as enjoyable. Just like the Skinner episode. GO SEASON 9!!
the point is, and most people seem to agree, seasons 3 - 8 were regularly hilarious. after season 8 the funny moments became fewer and farther between. the simpsons hasn't made me laugh out loud since the turn of the century. it's become a name brand (i.e. it's coasting), is relatively easy to produce, the characters don't age and fox has used it as a crutch for almost 2 decades now.
I could watch another 3 hrs of you break down the decline of the simpsons. It's a question everyone from our generation has. Why has the simpsons lost its heart? There has to be more to it than cheapening the audiences investment with flimsy premises. With so much good television out there how can they not get a A+ team of writers to really give it a span that acts as a renaissance, regains the shows heart, and gives a well thought out planned narrative while still giving one off episodes?
+j kowski Guess they're just too far gone. They need to age the children. Put them in high school or college or young adults. Only so much you can do with kids. It's been 28 years of the same thing!
It's simple: no good show goes on forever. You eventually run out of ideas and/or situations, that's it. I could make you so many examples of good TV shows or franchises that got milked way beyond what they could offer just for the sake of money, and that's why most of the more beloved ones are either still running or had a conclusion because they missed the right time to end. The show heart were the original writers, you can't just pick "a good writer", whatever that means, to write what you want. If you don't have an original idea you'll never get "the heart of the show" back. If you milk your show trying to add too much to your original idea you're done. That's why Breaking Bad is universally recognized as one (if not THE ONE) best TV show of all time, they got a story and character with an expiration date and they weren't afraid to commit to BIG CHANGES (actually the whole show is a metaphore of chance). That's why the show I got my avatar from isimho the best animated thing that came into the world after the golden age Simpson, his writer aren't afraid of change and consequences of their actions. Who died in the Simpsons? Basically nobody of the core cast. Why? Because they were afraid of ending the show. And I don't mean that you need to kill people to have a good show (see what GoT has become since they surpassed the book, just a random brainless kill lottery...) That's why, mark my words, Mr Robot will fail miserably, you can already see they the writers intended to do a much shorter show and that the whole 2nd season has almost no plot point in it, plus random death of characters they clearly didn't know how to use. That's why Stranger Things and 13 are going to be bad. That0s why True Detective 2nd season was bad. That's why X-Files failed miserably, they got past season 6 that would have been the obvious ending point. That's why Happy Days jumped the shark, and one as I said could literally make tons of examples. Somebody once said something like this: "There are two elements in a story: the final and everything else".
Entertain The Elk I think it would be interesting if they continued from one of the future episodes like the more recent one Holidays of Future Passed with Bart and Lisa raising their children and they could do much more with the future setting and all the new technology and aliens. Have one where Bart takes his sons camping on Mars and deal with the constant changing climates of hot and cold as he earnestly tries to be a better dad and give his sons a good childhood.
I once had a friend who believed that we shouldn't get emotionally invested in characters in movies or TV or even video games. Because they're all fake and fictional. They don't have real lives or real emotions or real stories. And the story, setting, and the personalities of these characters can take a dramatic turn into something that the viewers don't like simply because the writer(s) want to do something else on a whim. I wish I could show him this video to prove him wrong.
You shouldn't take it so far that you get obsessed with a piece of fiction and it ruins your life. But if you don't care AT ALL about the characters, you're probably not even going to watch the show in the first place.
+Nemesis T-Type-Yeah. ..Maude's death. ..was just completely mean. .. not to mention unnecessary on top of it. Other characters have died on the show before-one of the most famous ones being Lisa's mentor and idol-the Jazzman-but they were still given a fitting end for their stories and with Jazzman (for awhile anyway), Lisa was left utterly HAUNTED by the death of her mentor and one of her closest friends. That even "years" (however long it was for Lisa) later, she never forgot about him and she still deeply missed him. Maude's death is almost a throwaway and I guess is supposed to even be somewhat funny-Homer asks for a t-shirt, they use the t-shirt gun to chuck at him. . .Homer gets distracted. . .Maude gets hit instead and she falls to her death where her body was likely broken into pieces. . . . . .Hilarious? (?). And no one outside of Flanders is really too bothered about the fact that Maude died. That Maude died in such a horrific, senseless fashion. They all but pretty much forget it ever happened. Homer, while not fault, is reduced to a punchline to where his idiocy cost a woman her life. And despite not being at fault. . .he has no sense of humanity at any point to where he feels bad that Maude died. That he could've died instead of her. . .That despite his friction with Flanders, he should've taken the hit instead of Maude. That was the classic, sweetheart Homer we all loved. And while Flanders did have a couple of seasons where he off and on still missed Maude. . .he and his sons have probably all but forgotten about their wife/mother at this point. That for the show, for all intents and purposes, Flanders was the only parent to his sons. The show has utterly and slowly violated any sense of humanity to where there is just nothing left at this point and the fact Maude is nearly outright dismissed is pretty indicative of that.
i stopped watching the Simpsons after that god aweful episode were bart lost a baseball game and he was driven to attempt suicide because of the town's constant jeers towards him. i mean for god's sake even AFTER he was sent to the hospital, the townsfolk were STILL shitting on him
What kills great sitcoms is when the characters begin acting in ways that are inconsistent with their personalities that the audience has grown to know and love. Probably because of changes in the writing staff.
Matt Groening should have cancelled The Simpsons after season 10 due its decline, and so he and his writers can focus on a certain animated sitcom about a space parcel company.
I wouldn't say it *died*... I mean, I agree it exited the golden age. But to say it died then is a bit of a hyperbole. I think it has slowly aged, like a human: out of its prime, not worth much in its older age, but still going, and can still be charming in its later episodes.
Family guy is giant bucket of liberal garbage. It jumps from appealing to adults to appealing to children, impossible for either group to watch for long periods.
If you watch it with a political mindset it's unbearably obvious. Brian is clearly the token liberal but the rest of them obviously must portray the moronic right. It's almost a hobby of mine to analyze the political leanings of fictitious characters. It can be funny, many times I've laughed, but not consistently enough to warrant continuous watching.
Don't give the show more credit than it's worse. The characters are all terribly written and I doubt they're made to be political commentary. Especially when Seth was genuinely upset and confused over a shitty joke of character raping Marge being taken off
Family Guy is garbage but I feel like the first three seasons had potential, though I was rather young when it came out so maybe I gave it more credit than it's worth. I mean if you love repetitive humor that doesn't mind reminding you just how repetitive it is then you probably enjoy Family Guy.
The thing that really toned me off was stupid jokes that ran on for long periods. like Peter just saying something continuously for 5 minutes. or them staring at the camera for 3 minutes, I swear to God they do it 'cause they're out of ideas and need to fill in time space in the show. Not to mention sitting through some stupid attempt at being edgy without actually making the payoff punchline any good.
Much like Family Guy, the animation upgraded to HD but the writing kind of downgraded. Although to be fair, The Simpsons have more taste by not relying on so much gore and violence
Its typical of everything nowadays almost in mainstream entertainment, all flash and very little substance, CGI is ruining entertainment in one way or the other, a lot of everything is coming across consistently lazy and contrived.
Ironically, the episode before this one, where they go to New York, is my favorite episode of the Simpsons. It was like one final hurrah before it went downhill
Jazzman - what an insult to what they wanted us to consider as jazz music. FYI - Jazzman by Carole King (or whoever TF inflicted that atrocity) does not, in it wildest sweaty dreams, qualify as anything remotely vaguely evocative of actual jazz music. White people are so lame... and dry as pound cake with no milk. Make ya gag!
This whole video expresses how I feel about Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Not in the “oh, it went on too long” but that the audience was punished for caring and paying attention to characters we spent years getting attached to.
I usually stick to the classic Simpsons but I decided to watch one of the newest episodes the other day and the show really has gotten bad. Mr Burns lost all his money...again because of some rapper making him get a credit card. The jokes were either not funny or really cringe. I've never called for the Simpsons to be cancelled but if that is the kind of quality it is now, please, just let it die already.
lol that episode was weird but they were trying to parody the Great Gatsby so it wasn't a standard Simpson's episode. Still though, i agree with you... It took me 3 days to finish watching that episode. Kept pausing and it and going to do something else more entertaining. They had a concept to parody a popular story but it felt so forced and awkward.
They're always about three years behind with cultural references and the characters' stock jokes have been wrung dry. People only tune in or it only makes the news when a classic character dies or has a major character change. It's sad that what Troy McClure said about the show has come true. One day the numbers will dip low enough that it can't justify its budget anymore and it'll get axed. What an undignified way to end a show like the Simpsons
The Principal and the Pauper is the day the writing staff proved they only cared about getting laughs above all else. Phil Hartmans murder by his wife was the final nail in the Simpsons coffin.
+RYCloud92-And that to me, is the true definition of "Flanderization"-outright sacrificing a character just for the expense of a cheap joke. Family Guy certainly cranked that up to its extreme but Simpsons is arguably far more painful and far more sad in a way. The Principal and the Pauper outright destroyed Skinner-Principal Skinner-slaughtered him, just for the sake of a cheap joke. It may have been far more forgivable had the show actually gone somewhere with this-to where it actually changed the status quo a little bit. As someone else suggested, I don't think it would have been a bad idea had Skinner's mother decided to take her son in, while accepting the man she has raised for so long, to where the two "Skinners" become brothers of sorts, and even sometimes compete for their mother's affection. :D. I have to stress, it MAY have been more forgivable had that happened. . .Instead of everyone in Springfield deciding to be willfully oblivious, ignore that Skinner is a fraud, and even drive the actual Skinner out of town because they don't want to deal with that unpleasant revelation in their town. . .Principal Skinner's identity is just utterly massacred and he is exposed as a total and a complete fraud. . .but let's just ignore it after this episode except for when we need another cheap laugh.
I remember watching the Simpson’s as a young kid, my parents had seasons 1-8 on vhs so those were the mains seasons I grew up watching and the ones I mainly remember. The other day I saw an episode of the Simpson’s on tv and the childhood memories came flooding in so I watched the episode. Throughout the episode I found myself growing more and more disappointed, the jokes were horrible and it was just bad. I thought I had just grown out of the Simpson’s when I decided to check out the older seasons on Disney plus. I found myself laughing and smiling. I then realised the episode I saw on tv was from season 30, it was just awful. Rip Simpson’s, you will be missed.
@@TheBenCarroll The show is still on the air, I am looking at the guide for April 23, 2023 and there is a new episode of the Simpsons scheduled to air, unless NASCAR goes long or has many delays which would cause the episode to be aired next week. How can you miss something that hasn’t gone away? The message that I took from the principal and the pauper was that the people who we’re told to trust are actually liars and hypocrites.
I have been a Simpsons fan since 1990, I even took a course at the University about the Simpsons in which we did focus on the post-modern society portrayed in the show, the parody, and exposure life in the US; that was back in '94 or '95, at the time of what you called the golden era of the show. On the other hand, I have also read quite a few articles and essays about the show, however I would like to say that you have done a very great analysis and you have the come to a brilliant thesis of the cycle of the show. With great mastery, you were able to identify that particular episode as the breaking point of The Simpsons from being great, to be a good show, to end up being what it is today. Good Job,
Except the episode after this is 'Lisa's Sax' - one of the most beautiful episodes there is. The one before this episode is 'The city of New York VS Homer Simpson' - one of the best episodes there is. In nine years of unprecedented quality, creators are entitled to a hiccup.
I noticed when a lot of people talk about the 'golden era' of The Simpsons, they always seems to start with season 3, what's so wrong with season 2?... I can understand people skipping season 1 because that was the beginning, and still very much experimental stage, of The Simpsons, but season 2 IMO was the start of The Simpsons proper and was just as great as many of the early to mid 90's seasons to follow.
Well people didn't find them really special at the time. They seemed like your typical family that have somewhat goofy experiences. But, I like seasons 1 and 2.
dude people are so smug about 'the good shit'. Early simpsons is the only good simpsons, but not TOO early. TOO early it sucks too. Righhht around season 4, but only the middle of season 4, riiight when homer eats jellyfish, that's the only good simpsons
I don't get it... what's so damn hard about coming up with good ideas for new episodes? Take "Homer the heretic", one of the greatest episodes ever. The entire plot is just about Homer not wanting to go to church. Period. In modern episodes, all kinds of crazy out-of-this-world shit is happening.... why? Keep it simple and earthbound, I'm sure there are plenty ideas to go with.
Yeah there is a reason for the south park episode "the simpsons already did it." Imagine how hard it actually was to be the writers coming up with new ideas for hundreds of new episodes.
South Park and Family Guy ruined the Simpsons. They thought they had to be more over the top so they wouldn't lose out to the other guys but they should have just stayed the same.
They should have ended the series with Homer's Enemy. It would have been a beautifully dark, introspective and hilarious way to end the series. Not to mention it was, for all intensive purposes, the last true episode of season 8 so it would have been perfect
Let me break down the season everybody else hates, season 9 1: Homer goes to New York enough said 2: Skinner's been living a lie but the original is boring and both of Skinner's lives are still more interesting 3: Lisa gets a new sax and you learn that Homer really loves his kids and would burn for them 4: Bart becomes a fly, Homer fights zombies, Marge is a witch 5: Homer buys a gun 6: Homer coaches Bart peewee team and screws them over 7: Apu gets married to Manjula, Manjula is introduced finally 8: A shopping mall fools the whole town into believing that an angel has landed in Springfield 9: Marge goes into real estate and sells Ned Flanders a murder house 10: The town helps the Simpsons celebrate Christmas after they think the Simpsons got robbed 11: This is bad because it's a clip show but good cause you guys love every season before this remember 12: The Simpsons loose their house to a bunch of carny folks 13: The Simpsons join a cult because Homer falls for anything 14: The school bus drives off the bridge and the kids try to survive on a deserted island and Homer makes an internet company that Bill Gates crushes 15: Krusty the Clown actually intentionally becomes funny and a rebel and sells out again 16: Moe gets a girlfriend and cashed out on her to the point where he needs to pull an insurance scam but it lands Homer in jail 17: They acknowledge the Simpsons Gene and establish it's on the male side only but the female side excels because of the same gene 18: Bart and Ralph have a master key and uses it but leaves the electric chair on when the Mayor shows up and sits in it for a live demostrastion 19: Homer joins the Navy and is left in charge of a nuclear submarine and almost starts a war 20: Mr Burns steals the Trillion dollar bill and Homer becomes a snitch but has a change of heart and helps Mr. Burns flee to Cuba 21: The school has a news program and Bart shines over Lisa for once and Willie vowels revenge 22: A classic, Homer vs the Garbage man, Homer wins Sanitation Commissioner and ruins the town to the point where they have to move the entire town down the road 23: Homer tries to impress his family by getting in shape and is convinced to climb the Murderhorn, the tallest mountain in Springfield history 24: Lisa takes the bus as a 8 year old for the first time and is completely lost and it's up to Homer to find her 25: Season 9 finale, Homer and Marge has sex in public naked at night and have to sneak back home before the public catches them after waking up the next morning on a mini-golf course So which ones do I hate outta all of this, 24 cause it's just one joke when Homer gets his head caught in a drawbridge, 21 because once again Lisa is awful in this simply because Bart is on top, 11 because it's a clip show but it's still funny cause of clips from previous seasons and that's it for me, this isn't by far a bad season, some liberties were taken with Skinner and Lisa who was trying to find the next thing to rebel against but overall I think majority is a classic but it's definitely a different direction compared to before, jmo
Do you guys remember the episode where the simpsons made fun of married with children and said that it was a tv-show that did not know when to end and just did it for money with no new content? Well...
Both under Fox
Hypocrisy
@@cov9290 Hypocrisy? Or self-referential...?
Sweet karma!
...that's called self-referential humor. Like how waaay back in season 4 with the clip show they make fun of clip shows as a desperation move for shows going on too long and running out of things to say.
Homer: Im in no condition to drive!
Wait i shouldnt listen to myself, im drunk!
Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that packet of powdered gravy I found in the parking lot.
Lisa: dad you cant drive, you dont have a driver license! Homer: i try it anyway "car starts" ha take that science!
Can't believe I came across this..
Can't believe you came across this!
I love it when Homer interacts with the “voice in his head” - a voice that is surprisingly reasonable and wise
The problem is the Simpsons has lived too long, and Futurama was ended too soon. Although I prefer Futurama getting cancelled early than having to watch what they've done to the Simpsons
I agree that Simpsons should have ended it after 8 years.
Simpsons should had ended in 2000
Futurama came back and was a mess. The writing was crap and I guess they had lost their edge.
But you glad Futurama ended on a good note along with King of the Hill?
shortylickens69 agreed it was less about the adventures of fry bender and leela like the old episodes and more about them just doing nothing interesting the reason why the old episodes where good is because the writing was better and it was interesting what adventures they go on the Comedy Central era was mediocre at best and it made me bored of watching it even the futurama movies were mediocre too imo the same can be said about the Simpsons hell disenchantment was not that good imo it seems less like the shows are on seasonal rot and more like Matt groening is getting burnt out
The sad part is season 9 is gold compared to anything for the last 20 seasons
The question is when simpsons die no when it left golden age. And I would argue that it dies with new HD graphics in season 20.
I personally love season 14 -17. Other were watchable till 20th season. I stopped watching simpsons in season 22 which was just bad.
Season 7-9 is arguably the shows best run for me
@@Sharkmane25 Id say 2-8 but 9 wasnt bad by any means.
Season 9 to season 19 was the silver age. Not the classic 90s but still entertaining. Especially to alot of 2000s kids it was some of the first episodes we saw.
@@johnindigo5477 I agree
I felt like.losing Phil Hartman was a big blow to the show. You may remember him from such characters as Lionel Hutz.
absolutely, rip, that man was genius.
Great comment
R.I.P
NeilHolmes72 you are a goddamn genius
FUCKING THIS....100x this. I didn't realize how much I loved Lionel Hutz or Troy McClure when Phil passed.
Fun fact: Matt Groening considers this episode non-canon.
what is wrong with your face?
My face is so dense, it has so many things going on.
Your face is also the key to all this because it's a funnier face then we've ever had before
*insert RLM meme here*
Maybe that's why it's being recommended to me
Am I out of touch?
No. It's the children who are wrong.
One of the best lines ever.
Shake it up is all that we know
Using the bodies up as we go
I'm waking up to fantasy
The shades all around
Aren't the colors we used to see
Broken ice still melts in the sun
And times that are broken
Can often be one again
We're soul alone
And soul really matters to me
Take a look around
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around
Oh, oh-oh, oh
Oh, oh-oh, oh
Reaching out for something to hold
Looking for a love
Where the climate is cold
Manic moves and drowsy dreams
Or living in the middle
Between the two extremes
Smoking guns hot to the touch
Would cool down
If we didn't use them so much
We're soul alone
And soul really matters to me
Too much
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around
Oh, oh-oh, oh
Oh, oh-oh, oh...
(Out of touch)
Out of touch
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around
You're out of touch
I'm out of time (time)
But I'm out of my head
When you're not around..
· 0xFFF1 wtf is that picture....
hahaha
0xFFF1 A serious question that Entertain The Elk should ask himself. Grandpa simply outgrew cartoons, nothing wrong with that.
It wasn't just Homer, Marge used to be a loving mother but was now known for her nagging. Bart was shown to have heart but now he's just a prankster. Lisa used to show intelligence and care for those around her, but now she is the embodiment of "female empowerment." The only character who wasn't changed is Maggie. Maggie never dies.
Yeah but Maggie doesn’t pay taxes WAR TO THE SQUIDS
Even Maggie is now this super baby who attacks adults.
Maybe its supposed to mirror how we are now 😶
Maggie bonks Homer with a hammer in like season 2 or so.
Maggie power
The Simpsons went downhill after I was no longer on the show.
You and Troy McClure.
That's what I thought the video was going to say. I think that more than anything else sealed the deal as so many of the best episodes were voiced by the same voice actor.
Who read this in Hutz voice
Well, your voice actor died, buddy. Very tragically...
Ah, The "Works on contingency, no money down" man himself.
This episode gave me one of my favourite lines though.
"Up yours, children"
Crooty i for one, welcome our insect overlord
"Children are our future - unless we stop them now."
I was thinking the same thing! I love that line
Same here.
"Eat my shorts." ;p
"...Armand Tanzarium's copy of Swank."
"Can I see your copy of Swank, Armand Tanzerium?"
"Topless nude strippers! They're not even wearing a smile."
It's like watching an old friend sink into drug addiction. They're just not themselves anymore.
Joseph Wallace shit man
Or watching them sink into depression.
Joseph Wallace Deep
My best friend has never asked about my drug addiction or feeling bad, and we've been friends for 9 years. There's no point to this comment really, it just sorta struck me reading your comment.
Joseph Wallace and wouldn't go that far u took that a bit to far
For me it died when Maude died -- and I wasn't even a big Maude Flanders fan. It's just that, it became some kind of benchmark. It felt like the whole show changed after that moment. I don't really know why. I can't even really explain it. It was just a different show...
Which was S11, EP14
My point exactly. It was obvious yet undefinable. These characters were members of our own families. After Maude died it was like they became cartoons. Even though they were animated I NEVER thought of them as cartoons until that point. The rest of that season came across as boring and...well, cartoonish. Maude really did deserve a better death. Or even to NOT die. I would have preferred Helen Lovejoy to die. Not out of malice for her, but to see how Reverend Lovejoy deals with it as a devoutly religious man and as a community leader. What effect would the pain and depression of the town's minister have on the community? We'll never know.
Jeez, I watched a season 28 episode where Bart is in a coma, and is having constant terrors of Maude Flanders haunting him. And as it goes on (in his coma) he kills an entire train full of people and gets Homer killed to so she can pass on to the next step in the afterlife.
Maude was Ned's anchor. Without her, he became more annoying and for lack of a better term, Flanderized
I think killing characters off for real in such a plotless show is just... odd. Continuity kind of ruins it, imo.
Simpsons didn't just die, it was murdered.
I understood that reference
@Ringo Vaughan-Hughes family guy is awful
@Ringo Vaughan-Hughes I agree, I stopped watching Simpsons because of Family Guy. Until Family Guy also murdered itself over time and became unlikable.
I see what you did there
Maybe you should be more respectful
I always felt bad for the "real" Skinner getting kicked out of town tied to a train carriage. I guess he's had his revenge though, as the show's quality left with him.
Ha that's an awesome thought.
Oh my god. The ‘real’ Seymour Skinner cursed Springfield for kicking him out!
Like Voldemort and the DADA teaching post !
Skinner is Voldemort !
Joel Schembri Ned’s wife was killed off because the voice actress for her left the show
@Joel Schembri yeah it sucks when shows do that I felt like that wheb they killed off Chef in South Park
I miss the golden age of the Simpsons. A show that was a counterculture to the American middle class sitcoms of the 80's. Now, they became what they sought to fight in the 90's.
No way to prevent it without death
"Who knows what adventures they'll have between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?"
RIP Phil Hartman
Hartman voiced so many great characters, including Lionel Hutz, my favorite peripheral character.
I agree that this episode wasn't good. I also hate the one where they killed the original Fat Tony, and then Fit Tony became identical
Ugh. Sounds terrible.
What do you mean? There never was such an episode. THERE. NEVER. WAS. SUCH. AN. EPISODE.
I think that is the point of the comment. There hasn't been (would not personally know, I haven't watched it since 2001) but it is well within the character of the programme to do such a thing. They are out of ideas: "let's reveal an old beloved character isn't who they say they are, or kill them off then replace them with a twin who is the same in every way than not have it feature in the continuity." Lazy and unimaginative. I thought it was terrible when they did that with Snowball the cat.
Sorry Matthew, but they actually did, I watched every single episode in hope that they may finally make a great true comeback... In fact, I love this show so much, I don't really hate the newest seasons that much... It's still better than other shows and maybe the audience should give them a chance... Nostalgia around this old show works both ways, either we find it hard to like because it's mostly rehashed ideas now, or some of the original audience still likes it, to see them try to find new ways to entertain us after having treated almost every theme imaginable... That's debatable in my opinion
The actually did? It doesn't at all surprise me. I really stopped caring long ago. I mostly disagree with you, it is better than a lot of what is on, hence why I rarely watch television these days, but a number of celebrities that owe their success to what's trending online, being injected into the show for the Simpson's to interact with, the playing up to U.S. politics, coupled with the lack of creativity - they used to put a lot of play-on-words jokes and hidden references everywhere, there is hardly an episode that doesn't allude to an old film, television show or historical event, adding an extra layer; the newer episodes of the last 15 years feels so sterile and unimaginative. The straight-in-your-face jokes that tell you the point in plain English and the inability to execute parody, with the hastily dating pop-cultural references shoehorned in everywhere that distract from the flow of the story.
At least you are getting something out of it, though unfortunately, I doubt it'll get better.
I remember watching the episode about Seymour's real identity, it made me feel so sad because despite him being a character who is disliked by some of the characters, we still loved him he's an awesome character and to find out that he was just an imposter, it kinda sticks to the back of your head to think that they're are just gonna have to live with the fact that he was lying for so long.
The Simpsons is the kind of show where almost nothing ever changes and most stuff that happened in previous episodes is never mentioned again in new episodes so its exactly the same with Seymour and how everybody in Springfield feels about him now as it was before that episode aired.
Usually when they do mention stuff that happened in old episodes its only a short joke and is not important to the episode or the story.
The important thing to remember is that the person we knew and cared about for so long, even if he was assuming a false identity, is still the same person. He is the only 'Seymour Skinner' who matters.
Yes! Unnecessary story.
Yeah i actually choose to believe the writers were wrong.
i always suspected that Skinner deep down, he has a history of lies and trickery, remember his delightfully devilish lies in steamed hams?
everybody have an episode that broke the magical spell for The Simpsons
mine was the episode where Lisa Kudrow was a guest
it was the first time that I thought that a celebrity cameo was gratuitious
and also the design of her character came to that point where everything else but the Simpsons family was very detailed. her face, hair, clothes stood out so much when she was close to Lisa
I know exactly what you mean. I miss the old animation style that was rougher around the edges. I thought it had more personality. The animation became too polished and didn't fit into the world anymore. Thanks for watching!
i feel like that's what happened with south park too, the original characters look out of place in their own show
Althony Rightano I've always wanted closure on this. I couldn't relate more. I grew up watching each episode so much I even enjoyed knowing each line. Then something happened and I could never put my finger on it. I do remember thinking, at the age of 14, I have a principal and how odd it would be to have this happen. It feels like after season 10 they just started selling us the same bag of chips but with far less inside. Their market had become so large it was if the writers were no longer needed. As long as they showed the cast doing stuff that was enough. It insults those iconic moments in the simpsons. I haven't seen an episode after season 13 and I don't care to as I've tried many times hoping to be wrong. The simpsons movie was also arbitrary and unnecessary. I want them to stop making the show so it can be streamed more easily and I can re watch seasons 1-10 again. Thanks for the closure. I just couldn't put my finger on what happened and this helped as lame as that may sound.
Wow, I love everything about your comment. Thanks for sharing! Glad we can grieve the death of The Simpsons together. :)
For me, this episode was what broke it. I attempted to watch it again around 2001, but couldn't. I ended up watching the NSync episode, with the lame Matrix reference, and the funniest thing being "Lt. L.T. Smash"
For me, it died in Season 11. It was truly the last season where I connected with the characters and stories. Frankly, when Maude Flanders died, so did the show.
Funny enough, when Homer bowls a perfect game in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and struggled to stay relevant, it became rather poignant and symbolic of the show itself. The Millenials were all growing up and the show stopped being relevant to a lot of us.
At least I have my DVD collection to fall back on these days. Seasons 1-10 are still classics in my book.
1-8 were good
9-12 were ok, some good outstanding episodes between the bad ones
13+ is just the mehest of the meh
And don't even get me started on that fucking Lady Gaga episode and the one about Carl's Icelandic heritage just wtf
SycophanticTeen I like Carl being from Iceland, personally.
therealCrazyJake They don't bring up it though. Whenever they make reference an old episode, it's either for a joke or a shitty sequel episode.
I hate that they never worked with Carl being from Iceland, but I liked the actual episode ( at least that which I remember).
Actually they do bring it up. It was in Season 14 episode 16
SycophanticTeen 1-10 were genius
11-18 were ok
19- shit
It's a little misleading to make this all about one episode, there are many factors, like The Great Migration, when quite a few writers went to Futurama
Yeah, it was a lot of factors in a span of a couple years.
Phil Hartman's demise didn't help.
Oh that's why just as simpons got bad, futurama started and was good.
Same problem happened with Futurama too. 1-4 were amazing. "movies" were ok... then it just went downhill. Bad writing. Not understanding there characters that we fell in love with. Except for a few episodes of later Futurama, most of it just kinda sucks.
except for the last episode
As a huge fan of 90s simpsons heres my two cents:
1-2: Intelligent and funny but lacks refinement
3-8: Brilliant, intelligent, full of character and relatable/heartwarming situations, genuinely hilarious
9-10: Still has its humour but slowly lacks the intelligent quips of the former seasons
11-12: Watchable, but has already lost most of the charm and creativity of the past
13-28: Oh god... just...just let it die its so bad...such unfunny and completely lazy writing...please let it die
Future seasons after the second Simpsons movie: Please no! Don't cancel now!
Me: _Excuse me wtf?_
I think it should be 13-19 bad but a little watchable and then 20-28 horrible
I think the genuinely bad part of the Simpsons started with season 20. Up to season 19 there were still a memorable episode here and there but after season 20 all of them are just forgettable and cringy... Although I agree that the decay started growing faster after season 13
Agreed
Nicely put.
To me that the bigger issue in this episode then the reveal is the ending.The real Skinner was not shown to be a rude, mean, or bad person. Our Skinner had no problem stealing the life of the man who saved him and having him get banished from his home. And the real Skinner’s mom told him she didn’t want him. Who really thought that was funny or appropriate. Honestly I expect that kind of ending from Family Guy.
Not mean or bad but as I recall actually nonetheless incompetetent. The idea that because he was the original he should just take over and do as well or better seemed like something you're not really supposed to take seriously and the ending being him being banished I guess was doubling down on you're really not supposed to take seriously.
"It's unfair to punish the audience for caring about the characters." Honestly, this analysis sums up why I hated The Last Jedi as well.
Add the last two Terminator movies to that also.
GoT for me.
The Last Of Us Part 2...
Reylo aint gonna happen, get over it already
jk, but i see your point
and the last terminator movie after what they've done with the character of John Connor, and that's where I draw the line on that one
The Simpsons in its current form is a sad state of affairs. Truth be told, I'm not certain any show can get to six hundred episodes and still remain on top of its game. The stories and settings started getting more and more outlandish, sometimes reeking of pure desperation. A good example is the son of Frank Grimes. There was absolutely no setup to the reveal of Grimey's offspring whatsoever, and his appearance was explained away in one quick, artless statement that Frank Grimes enjoyed prostitutes. It was almost as though they just wanted to link a mediocre episode to an established successful one, but in doing so, damaged the source material.
It also seems like the writing pace gradually devolved over the years from well thought-out, intelligent stories, to quick throw-away stories built to accommodate the guest-star of the week, who seem to be chosen on no other merit than who the episode's writer seems to fancy. It seems more like the writers want to convey how intelligent they think themselves to be, so the guests have deviated from people who fit a scenario for an episode, to people the writers believe will make them look more deep, so we get episodes centered around a large building, bringing in a famous architect who ends up having three lines in the whole show, leaving behind nineteen minutes of nonsense with no point. Or famous crossword puzzle designers who appear in the tail end of an episode, so a bizarre, uninteresting story is concocted to lead up to it.
Or worst of all, we get that unwatchable mess about Lady Ga-Ga and her over-the-top, unfunny, world travelling train.
We are a far cry from the early episodes of Sideshow Bob, or Burns' bear, Bobo.
Just write it well, next time.
Also, I apologize for any overlong sentences, or improperly conveyed ideas on my part. I'm writing this at work, and sometimes in a hurry.
"Well, just write it when you're not at work, then."
No.
Thad Tannonbrooke i read this comment from start to finish and i wholeheartedly agree with it.
Thanks!
Love this. Thanks for watching/commenting!
"Seems more like the writers want to convey how intellingent the think themselves to be..." The scene that immediately comes to my mind is the "cheese scene" from the episode where the Simpsons go to Italy and they get the Ferrari wrecked. Lisa just "identifying" every kind of cheese was meant to be a joke but I can't imagine anyone laughing to that, it was like the writers screaming at us "look guys, we knows stuff".
Ha! The episode where they went to Italy is the very one that caused me to be no longer sad that Fox stopped releasing anymore seasons on DVD
Hello, Super Nintendo Chalmers!
Michael Keane I'm learnding!
Michael Keane This tastes like burning
These Coleco's will rust up on you like that!
me fail English? that's unpossible
My cats breath smells like catfood!
One of the main problems with modern Simpsons is that the writers don't understand these characters, and 'The Principal and the Pauper' is an example (though not really as "modern" as other episodes). Principal Skinner's character writing and development was built how he'd been over-parented by his mother for too long, and despite having a job as a principal, the over-parenting and torment has had a bad effect on his life. Skinner turning out to be an impostor destroys his character development, because, if he didn't live with Agnes as a child, why would she be affecting his life so badly?
When I see "The Simpsons" on television, and select it, I leave pretty quick if it doesn't have that old school animation look, and the beautiful widescreen black bars on both sides of the screen.
Love this.
No, I completely agree! I don't think for me there was an actual defining moment when the franchise suddenly started to suck, but I can say for sure that the last time I ever willingly laid eyes on the Simpsons was the movie.
I had already written the show off, by and large, but I paid to see it in the theatres mostly out of curiosity as to whether it would act (as promised by many promoters and media outlets) as the "last hurrah" that allowed the franchise to finally die with dignity and go out on top.
Instead, it was the harbinger of all things to come: a slick, flashy, soulless corporate parody of itself, directed entirely by committee, created by a team of scientists in a lab somewhere by extracting and cobbling together what they THOUGHT people liked about the series as a whole into a Frankensteinian monster, and then animated entirely by computers without even the hint that any of the show's millionaires had ever cared enough to touch it (much like George Lucas, these sniveling fools actually saw that as a plus).
Hamer, Madge, Bert and Leeza Stimson in "PAY TO SEE THIS MOVIE, THEN GO BUY A T-SHIRT AND A HAPPY MEAL", plus celebrity guests, yay! Watch the flash, then give us your cash!
Do you write your text first and then make a video about to build a better storytelling and rapport for the video?
Also remember that the movie came out a decade ago in 2007, that was a long time ago but they're still airing it without doing much to liven it up
Gj23jk2 you summed it all up perfectly
If only the day The Simpsons died had been the day it was allowed to end with dignity, go off the air, and ride quietly into the sunset.
Instead, it's been turned into a lich by the dark sorcery of greed. A monstrosity with its life unnaturally prolonged beyond what any TV show should have. Neither truly living nor truly dead, yet condemned to walk the earth until the last money is finally drained from its withered, decrepit veins.
God damn, this is poetic.
,,,,,
"Who knows what whacky adventures they'll have between now and when the series becomes unprofitable" - Troy Maclure, speaking truth
I'd say just stop watching this show and Fox will get the message once rating keeps getting lower and lower and don't buy any merchandise.
This show died in 2000 with Behind The Laughter as far as i'm concerned and If The Simpsons was a pet it would be that old dog that desperately needs to be put down to end its long suffering.
The show has went downhill but I'm happy it hasn't been canceled simply because it's nice to see my favorite characters interact on screen every week
I stopped watching as it became a nightmare to see new episodes of the show as they kept burying them in repeats of older episodes.
Larry Bundy Jr Hello you
Larry Bundy Jr British TV is so guilty of that. Comedy pretty much only airs friends,impractical jokers and fresh prince.
uidFluiq makes me paranoid since my account has my IRL name.
Larry Bundy Jr hey you watched this too!! Jolly!
The real "Pie Man" is literally my friend's dad from Princeton. One of the writers must've seen him there way back when (80s lol)
Making a character detach from their established character tells the audience that the writers no longer care what happens to them; and eventually the audience doesn't care any longer either.
That is what I hate about Flanders' Ladder. Lisa would never act as mean as she did in that episode, not even towards Bart. It also doesn't make Bart bad enough to deserve the torment that Lisa gave him. August 25, 2019, 10:41am
@@Adamkalb1 Remember what Bart saud about goths/emos? "What we need is another Vietnam, thin their ranks a little."
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
This was such an iconic show in my childhood.
This show serves as a reminder that all good things come to an end. Nothing is forever. All is temporary.
This show is too much of a 90s product to survive in this new century eh and should had ended in 2001 to die with the 90s eh?
@@Johnlindsey289 Are you Canadian?
@@MagcargoMan
no
@@Johnlindsey289 Oh okay. It was just a joke because you said "eh" twice in that post.
Dark
To quote a child from The Simpsons: "Stop it! Stop it, he's already dead..."
Haha
I know the animation has nothing to do with the writing quality, but the look also changed once the show started getting 'colored in' in the back room of a Chinese Walmart.
Ralph Wiggum
I’m seeing double. 4 Krustys.
I'm eating a hamburger while watching this video
you know I mean steamed ham
And you call them steamed hams despite the fact that they are clearly grilled
@@sparkygriswold336 Yes! It's a regional dialect!
Well what region?
Upstate New York
Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard the expression "Steamed Hams" before.
My question is this: If everyone including the show's creators are aware that the writers and directors are nowhere near the standard of the golden age, why don't they simply fire them all and get in actual talent? They are one of the biggest tv shows in history, they could do this if they choose to.
I've thought this myself.
Dragalge they've probably tried many times which is why the newer episodes feel like there's New writers each time
Probably demands from Fox to crank out episodes, and that hinders the quality (Rushed, underfunded/demands to be met that don't help (Like a celebrity appearance)) and then the writers probably get thrown in by Fox going "Make this work" a they print more shirts with bart on it.
The thing is, you can't "plan" to create great masterpieces, it was a unique combination of talent and circumstances that led to the golden age of the Simpsons back then. It's like saying "There are no more bands as good as the Beatles, why don't the four most talented musicians just get together and create that kind of music again?" It wouldn't work. They had their moment and they way overstayed it.
Not sure it would work. people know the voices of the characters. The show has long since jumped the shark. Still I think it will be a sad day when it finally stops making episodes. That I think will come when a major voice actor dies or quits.
You're right about connecting with the characters. Actually, while the show is about the title family, almost every resident of the city has been given protagonism in at least 1 episode. I can't think of any other show that has done that.
Vits Vicente Torres Hey, Arnold! was another great example of this. You truly cared about everyone in that neighborhood.
Northern Exposure, which was also a Peabody winner.
Vits Vicente Torres the amazing world of gumball has gotten close to that
not good Gumball is basically the Simpsons of CN
South Park? Ring any bell?
I honestly feel like they should have cancelled The Simpsons and continued working on Futurama. Futurama just had way more variety and was consistently fresh and entertaining. This is because the writers were not limited to just normal day to day stuff as the show was about space. They could literally do whatever they wanted, and for the 14 years the show aired, it worked. Though its true that the golden age of The Simpsons is way behind us, and the show has seemed to have lost its charm and originality. I still find it comforting that its still around as most of the other shows of my childhood have disappeared and have been replaced by absolute GARBAGE.
Hercserino yup i agree futurama was a amazing show
Yeah. Futurama is fucking great. Wish they would bring it back.
I agree
I think that was the original idea but sadly Futurama wasn't as succesful as they hoped it would be.
I always thought I grew out of The Simpson's because I didn't laugh out loud at it anymore. That was until I watched an older episode of it and I realised that I hadn't changed, the show had
Yeah. For the worse.
I see the "Main reason" for The Simpsons decline is Matt Groening's decision to switch to Futurama, that was already in work at that time. First episode of Futurama was aired in late march 1999, and "The principle and the Pauper" was aired in late september 1997. Which means that Mr. Groening has already switched his focus on Futurama, and let other people work on The Simpsons. Futurama was fantastic for first 5 seasons, until it got canceled. And because it got canceled, almost 10 years later, Matt has watered it down too, to be more family friendly like the old The Simpsons seasons, and The Simpsons basically became lame boring, money making, family friendly franchise, and thus, both series that were once comedy gold, got killed of, for no specific reason, other than financial gain.
Miloš Dangubić ahhhhh business as usual. Life sucks!
Matt Groening critizised the 'Principal and the Pauper' episode
Season breakdown:
1-2 good but not flushed out yet
3-8: golden age
9-12: lacking but tolerable
13-Movie: terribly lackluster
Movie-Present: generally awful, becoming little more than a platform for politics, pop culture, and celebrities.
At least when these matters where featured in earlier seasons, it was done more sparringly and complemented the plot and characters' nature. Now these have become the plot, and the characters have generally lost all dimension.
season 9 shouldnt be lumped in with the crap that is 10-12.
Chris Godas For me the first two seasons are great for me the golden era are 1-8 seasons
I think season 9 is better than season 8
movie was terrible? Gtho nigga you high! Seen it like 10 times or more....
I know its your "Opinion" but man is it a crappy one
I still enjoy every episode
Season 9, besides "The Episode", isn't that bad. If you watch every episode from 1 to whatever we're at now, except "The Episode" then you see seasons 3-9 are the best.
Max Lee actually 10 11 and 12 are ok too
MiloSconster Is season 13 when the show got bad?
Andrew Del Pilar
IMDb ratings point that the slope began at season 12.
Season 10 was the best season, but I'm not against the belief that seasons 3-8 were incredible
What is this episode that you refer to as "The Episode"? I'm new to Simpson's discourse :)
Am I the only one who also sees seasons 1 and 2 as part of the golden age too? Yes it was the early days of establishing characters and such, but it still had meaningful episodes and lessons to learn.
They are literally my 2 favourite seasons
They might not have quite hit the level that they did in seasons 3-8, but 1-2 were excellent in their own right. I would tend to agree with you.
VERY strongly agree. The first two seasons had amazing, continually rewatchable shows. I've watched them too many times to count and still find them a pleasure. They were more biting, for one. Year after year, the show got nicer, which took a lot of the teeth out of the satire. Eventually even Mr. Burns often became an okay guy. It was wonderful when the show first came out, amid all the ultra-smarmy sitcoms of its day, that it was willing to set up a figure like Burns for attack that showed not just his ordinary greed, but his absurdity and how sheltered and ridiculously out of touch he was. Futurama got criticized by studio execs for being too mean, but in the beginning, the Simpsons was mean too.
Barts gets an F is a classic so..
No, I agree. They're part of it too. Bart gets an F is a fantastic episode. He tries his hardest to study when getting a miracle snow day, he still fails, he gets upset and in his despair, shows he did learn something and Krabappel rewards him for it. It's a great happy ending.
i feel like modern simpsons is heartless, the characters feel so one dimensional and the humor so slapstick
The show is on autopilot at this point though compared to the town of Quahog, they haven't become incredibly tasteless, just kind of bland with sometimes some nice moments.
Yup, this is why the word "flanderization" exists.
try to keep a series about a family going for over 20 years, and you'll probably run out of ideas after just a few years.
There's always more ideas to be had. They just need to fire Al Jean, hire a new showrunner and hire better writers if they can't handle the direction of the new showrunner.
Modern Simpsons are simply promotional shows for Celebrities and campy unfunny jokes. Moronic stories that don't make sense, too many stupid subplots and literally no character development at all. They pretty much feel like a modern Reboot of the original Simpsons.
I think the precise moment when it clicked for me that something had been lost in the Simpsons was the episode Catch 'Em if You Can. Homer and Marge go on holiday without the kids, Bart and Lisa try to track them down, it becomes a game of cat and mouse, 'hilarity' ensues.
I get that it's a direct reference to Catch Me if You Can and yes, it's a cartoon, but two things really grated with me. First, the ridiculousness of the plot; the Simpsons never shied away from being outlandish, but kids chasing their parents around all of North America is just farcical. Second, Homer and Marge were traditionally showed to be doting parents. What they sometimes lacked in intelligence and responsibility (Homer especially) they made up for with deep devotion to their kids. For instance Homer could be neglectful of his fatherly duties at times, but think of his 'do it for her' sign in the power plant and you know that he was a loving father. That was reinforced for years over hundreds of episodes. Then in this episode Homer and Marge's suddenly have a casual indifference towards their kids' well-being; they see their 8 and 10 year old kids alone in a distant city and just run away.
One of the underlying characteristics of the Simpsons was that as the decades have passed, they go through a variety of bizarre situations yet the characters themselves remain constant. Yet here was a storyline in which some of their most basic character traits were abandoned to make the plot work. That said to me that the 'heart' of the show had been lost and the characters were becoming more generic, free to be moulded to whatever the plot requires.
Along with the "Do it for her" sign, your comment reminded me of when Homer gave up his tickets for the duff blimp so Lisa could join the little miss springfield pageant and regain her self confidence. Or when Homer works 2 jobs so Lisa could keep her horse. I miss the heartfelt episodes!!!
Or when Homer and Bart tries to bond over building a soap box racer together because Homer finds out he doesn't know his own son that well. I miss the old Simpsons.
quiet rogue he wasn't sobbing, he was just looking into the night sky, reflecting. Which was a rather subtle beautiful moment that humanized Homer. A show can be emotional and still be funny. I don't get why some people just want a show to be only silly, or only dramatic. A comedy can occasionally have heart & soul, while a serious drama can still have funny moments. If one focuses too much on one thing then it doesn't seem very realistic, and static to me.
you should include the first Treehouse of horrors as the begining of the golden age.
I would include season two of the golden age. the season that really set the tone and the characters with amazing animation
Agreed.
I now include everything from season 1 in the golden age. when i was younger the season 1 episodes seemed to have a bit of a crude and a harsh animation edge. when i go back and watch now the humor is also blacker. but i'm older. so i like season 1 more than i used to.
"punishing the audience for paying attention"...I can name Four other prime time animated shows who do that exact thing and are unapologetic about it...They have zero respect for our intelligence
I’m guessing one of those shows is Family Guy?
Name
@@greenstuff3706 probably
im guessing steven universe, family guy, spongebob and star vs the forces of evil
I hate it now because the writers keep rewriting Marge and Homer's history. The flashbacks contradict themselves and change the past.
I hated the season 15 episode "The Way We Weren't". Just another excuse to change the way Homer and Marge met...
Oh wow, they did? I haven't even watched that... and I was just getting comfortable with the idea that they met normally in high school. So much for continuity.
Mike That was bad. And then, they did the 90's episode which really shit all over the backstory. That episode was even more egregious.
This is why I think the characters should have been allowed to age. There would be more continuity and room to explore new storylines for the characters.
GTR24 Well Homer would be over 70 years old if they didn't.
And that's why I fucking HATE! When people say shit like..."Its just a game" "Its just a cartoon" "These characters are not real" Of course their not we know that but while watching these characters we grow to love them. Apart of them becomes apart of me and you. We take something from that and hey...Maybe your going through something in life and these characters are something of a get away. When I was a kid, I use to watch Rugrats religiously lol I loved it so much it changed my perspective of life and growing up in this world of grown ups that just don't seem to understand. At the beginning I was chuckie Finster and as he grew as a character I grew along with him, I went from being afraid of everything and everyone to taking chances in life and standing up to people. "He's just a cartoon character", but a character that...yeah changed my life. So I wish writers would understand that its a huge responsibility to respect these characters and after a long run send them off on a high note.
Nytellem Man seriously. You need to live in reality
Nytellem. Amen bud😢
Hurri Cane let him live how he wants. What if he has no family or friends and these characters are the only thing he has left? (I mean probably not but still) what if? Do you know him personally? Because if you do I’ll back off and you can talk to him in real life about reality but imagine if I said your entire family were characters and to not care what would you say? Would you say the exact same thing then? Or would your view change? I know that I’m kinda stretching it for the sake of someone I don’t know but hey, who knows this might be all they’ve got... and it only takes one really bad day to go crazy and maybe your comment was the straw that broke the camels back for this persons bad day... but hey what do I know I’m just some TH-cam commenter
HypE Noir yea you are just a person commenting and that’s it no one should take anything anyone says seriously someone doesn’t like something oh well I don’t think John Lennon is a legend but I understand he’s a legend to so many people which I respect just not my type of music I don’t think Simpsons is dead or unfunny it’s the Simpson’s I just watch tv to be distracted and or entertained if I want a story I’ll read a book
Rodger Rabbit isn’t Roger Rabbit a cartoon?
21 years ago today, that disastrous episode was released
@*/. The principal and the pauper.
@Aaron Greenfield Poor Harry. He really hated this episode. I don't resent him for nearly leaving.
Even as a kid, I hated that episode..
Punishing the fans. Disney lucasfilm: "hold my beer"
Ha
Both of these franchises are now owned by The Mouse.
Disney Lucasfilm: "Hold my green milk."
Green milk from the Last Jedi.
I had a vhs tape that I recorded The Camp Krusty episode and watched it until it broke eventually. So good.
Love that. I had a VHS tape of the Pin Pals bowling episode that I wore out.
"WE WANT KRUNCHY!"
I loved when Homer lost weight and his hair started to grow back because Bart was gone. Then they had the news on and Homer is thinking,"don't be the boy. don't be the boy." It's Bart and his hair falls out and so does his gut. lol
tell me it´s not the kid
'Back in line, maggot'.
And that episode was just the beginning. They then proceeded to ruin or retcon more and more characters. We find out that Flanders is actually 30 years older than he looks, which doesn’t make sense with his parents being Beatniks. We get to know Apu as a surprisingly cool bachelor only to have him get married and saddled with too many kids in rapid order. And the final nail in the coffin: after going to high school in the 1970s, Homer and Marge are suddenly in college in the 1990s.
Maybe they're just slow
I stopped watching the show in that season, i don't remember the number but i guess the year was 2001 or 2002... the Apu's kids chapter was the final nail for me
But then again, Maggie is still a baby after more than 30 yrs.
You’re mad a show what retcons everything every other episode
How about the fact that the Simpsons kids are STILL kids?
the shows reputation has been so damaged now that it is just awkward when someone in real life talks about the simpsons
as if that ever happens nowadays.
xxxaragon Show stopped being social relevant for about 20 years.
Sad thing is that I was born from the 2000s era and I'd watch season 1 through 8 first and I found it my favorite show ever. Then when I'ce came to season 9, it's just wasn't the same and I had stopped watching it years ago.
@@xxxaragon I mean if you no someone who thinks its still great it happens
Fun Fact: in my country (Argentina) the Simpsons are still a huge success. People know every quote and episode, the memes are everywhere on social media, and even university professors give examples using the show. Of course everyone loves the older episodes, but it was never forgotten. Many countries in Latin America are the same. I’m always amazed at how easy Americans let it go...
Imagine an alternate universe where The Simpsons actually ended long time ago...
But at least season 9 had The City of New York VS Homer Simpson, one of the best episodes of the entire show!
Yes, but that episode is now hard to find as it was removed from the sets following 9/11 and I don't know if it was ever added back.
Seriously? I own season 9 on DVD and it's on there
That episode was kind of tedious.
Many local affiliates pulled it from the syndicated rerun cycle but it did get put back.
only khlav kalash
In Latin America they died when the original dubbers left.
I've heard that sentiment. That's so interesting. Thanks for watching/commenting!
+Entertain The Elk Do you think they should cancel the show? I do. Great video btw, keep it up!
Xbitrate. what season did that happen?
Entertain The Elk that's right, the voices in Latin America where changed because the assholes here in Mexico owning the whole fucking television didn't want to pay more than the missery they gave to the dubbers, actually the voices here were really really good as were the only ones Matt Groening personally chose besides the original English ones. Here the TV is owned by Televisa, which is "owned" by the government, they pay their artists misserably so all The Simpsons actors were fired just for asking for better payment, would be cool to see a video about it... so fucking sad and unfair, but still we had the original voices until like season 12 I think... and also I can still watch them in English too but whatevs, still a sad subject.
Or you can just learn english or have subtitles like the rest of the world? :)
The Simpsons never died, they were put on life support. Now the good memories that we had of them are tainted by the years of watching them slowly suffer as they rot.
Rob... I couldn't agree more. :(
Though I will say, the classics will always be classics. I'm rewatching Season 4 right now and it's gold. Even the newer crappy episodes can't take that away from us.
The Simpsons: the "Terry Schavio" of Animated Sitcoms.
The Show since 2001 is like the family dog: We all grew up with it, love and cherish all the memories, but sadly, the time has come to put it down.
it started to die here, but there still were a few funny episodes in seasons nine and ten. When they killed off Maud Flanders, the Simpson, the REAL Simpsons absolutely died with that episode
Thank you.
Exactly
They killed her character off because the actress quit the show
S11
Agree. I hate the Maude Flanders death... I refuse to see it as canon. Because it was just so mean spirited & spiteful
I think The Day Fairly OddParents died would be interesting
YES
HELL YES That show was amazing and then we got that damn talking dog. AKA "if I wasn't so young and dumb at the time, I wouldn't have watched this." And then, Chloe- aka "I was young and dumb but still knew crap when I saw it." Of course, the downfall really starts in season 7(?) when we got Foop. And before that, when we got Poof, there was a dip in quality. Hell, season 2, when the Flanderization started, has been considered the end of the golden age for some fans. To me, it was when they started utilizing more gross-out and cringe comedy. But in hindsight, most of the Season 9 episodes are unwatchable, and seasons 7-8 are painful, but with a few ok bits. I'm just pissed that Foop is the only member of his _entire species_ to appear anymore. And what happened to the Pixies? Or most other magical creatures, for that matter. Season 6 is alright. Season 5 was pretty good, with the highlight being Fairy Idol, one of my favorite episodes. Season 4 was great, with episodes like Channel Chasers, Genie Meanie Minie Mo, The Big Superhero Wish, Pixies Inc, and Shelf Life. Season 3 was actually a little lower in quality than Season 4, but it still had gems such as Abracatastrophe, The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker, Imaginary Gary, Pipe Down, and The Big Scoop. Season 2 was amazing, with gems like Information Stupor Highway(despite being very out-of-date on internet things, it's still more timeless than most attempts to cover modern net culture), The Boy Who Would Be Queen, Totally Spaced Out, Boys In The Band, and Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary. And Season 1? It was pretty lackluster. I'd say the Golden Age of the show was Seasons 2-5.
That was a grotesque one
Once Jay Leno no longer took part as the Crimson Chin, that's when it died to me.
It's already on TH-cam
@kristian rikardsen if they leave it on the season 2 finale then it's great, if they try milk it for cash with more seasons then it'll get ruined
Disagree. It was a misstep, but the definitive end was after 'Behind The Laughter'. The song at the end that joked about how the writers were out of ideas turned out to be borderline prophecy.
After that, they started in with the topical episodes: "Springfield legalizes homosexual marriage". "Springfield legalizes marijuana". "Springfield solves the deficit". Enough, already.
Worse still, as a result of injecting political sermons into episodes, Lisa went from 'mildly annoying' to 'five-alarm dumpster fire'. It threw off the family dynamic and it's never been the same since.
I agree with your comment especially "behind the laughter" episode came out that's when the Simpsons died for me.
Any episodes worth watching in season 11?
Not really. Lisa got worse and worse during and after season 11
Yellowdock Ooo Brothers little helper is great, and episode 5 is great too. Simpsons didn't really decline until season 12 and beyond.
Agreed, "Behind the Laughter" was the logical bookend to the series.
Why is it considered that season 3-8 is the best? Why no love for season 2? Lots of classic episodes in there, including my all time favourite episode (Lisa's Substitute).
I love Season 2. Just recently rewatched Lisa's Substitute and Bart Gets an F. It's a fantastic season, but I think they hadn't completely found their voice at that point yet. I'd have no problems considering it Golden Age though.
The Simpsons died when they killed off Maude Flanders...
I always loved the Simpsons... but my interested nosedived once they started stuffing the scripts with time-sensitive memes and endless celebrity cameos/voice overs in just about every episode ("When You Dish Upon a Star" EP 5 / Season 10... give me a f#@king break). The Simpsons brand went from "must see, classic & timeless" to "passable, flavor-of-the-week" in a matter of a few seasons.
When You Dish Upon a Star was great in my opinion. I didn't know any of the three celebrities at the time (I was only young when I first watched it) and I thought it was funny and it only got funnier when I understood it more.
That being said, celeb appearances for the most part have been awful.
They killed it after season 19 period, the new animations just don't do for me
I didn't mind "When You Dish Upon a Star" but I agree with your overall point. What made the Simpsons so amazing was that even though the show had plenty of outlandish plots it was still grounded in many ways. For all the ridiculous stuff Homer and Bart got into, there was still Marge and Lisa to bring realism. There was a counterbalance. Where the Simpsons went dreadfully wrong is that they got rid of that balance. They made everything as absurd as possible. Characters no longer had any hints of real life in their arcs. And, maybe worst of all, they tried to pump endless jokes into every episode, rather than creating several good jokes and letting them breath. They try to go a mile a minute with every line. It takes all the heart out of the show. And celebrity appearances became nothing more than a planned distraction from the mediocre writing.
LanceCampeau I liked most episodes of the show up until after the movie came out then it became officially un wacthable at least to me
Just a point, there are no 'memes' in The Simpsons, they are 'jokes'.
Seaons 3-8 really are works of art.
Yes. Just yes.
I still prefief older ones more then new ones.
Thats true! I dont watch simpsons. Anymore..
N64 MasterRace give it a rest
Agreed
You can't compare TV viewer ratings in 2017 vs the 90's. Far more options now, streaming, cord-cutting, etc. Fox's top show this year draws 7M per episode, and The Simpson's still draws about 4M an episode which is strong in 2017.
You mean more beta people bitching about everything.
Twat
Joseph Stalin 100%
Yh there is more to do now. Especially play on consoles or play on electronic devices
The best example for ending a show after a short time but not make it feel "too soon“ is gravity falls. Had a beautiful ending and no filler episodes. It was perfect.
The Simpsons
Seasons 1 & 2-- Good show, has potential
Seasons 3-8 -- Legendary writing, "Golden era" of show
Seasons 9-11-- Good, but not as good as the prior seasons
Seasons 12-19-- Bad, but somewhat tolerable to watch
Seasons 20-beyond -- Horrendous. Utterly unwatchable.
Agreed.
I think that's a good summary. I concur.
*9-11*
sorry
CorazónMexica you’re right I stop watching it round season 13
I've been rewatching the "golden era" recently and 9 is definitely the season that it starts to crack. There are plenty of good eps but a few really bad ones, season 10 does the reverse where there are few good eps and plenty of really bad ones and it's just downhill all the way
Although I'm not a big fan of the episode, I don't get why everyone hates the idea of Skinner being a fraud. He only took on a new name, the personality was always his own. Apart from a couple of flash backs, we had never learned about his life pre-89. Also for the record - a later episode of Season 9 - Das Bus, is among the greatest.
There's definitely some good episodes after The Principal and the Pauper. I remember enjoying the Super Bowl episode in Season 10 when I was a kid. Thanks for watching!
It undermined what we knew about his relationship with Agnes, and it re-contextualized the Vietnam flashbacks that we'd already seen. And even worse, it was done as a joke. It wasn't a sincere effort to give the character more depth. It didn't open the door for the writers to take Skinner in a new direction. The twist was as phony as Seymour himself.
And the really sad thing is that they could've done that to almost any other supporting character on the show without causing the same level of harm. Moe isn't really Moe? No problem. Fat Tony is actually a Russian spy? Big deal. Dr. Hibbert doesn't actually have a medical degree? Fine. But Skinner was the best-developed character at the time other than Homer and Marge, so it wasn't something that fans could easily laugh off.
It''s pretty much like making an episode called The Way We Wasn't, in which we discover that Marge Simpson isn't Marge Bouvier at all, but rather another woman with similar features who accidentally killed the real Marge in a hit-and-run in 1974 and then took her place, with her family and her boyfriend not noticing. That's not good storytelling. That's an insult.
1 to 10 was great. after 10 years it started to sink
I love Skinner. This episode is not that terrible. At the end of the episode one of the characters says: "Let's never speak of this ever again" (I'm paraphrasing :)). Which tells us that the writers didn't take this absurd episode to seriously and neither should we, the audience.
What I'm saying is that this episode does not define Skinner as a character. There are also a lot of different episodes about how Homer and Marge met and where they grew up (Springfield, the Bronx). Which is absurd, as well as enjoyable. Just like the Skinner episode.
GO SEASON 9!!
the point is, and most people seem to agree, seasons 3 - 8 were regularly hilarious. after season 8 the funny moments became fewer and farther between. the simpsons hasn't made me laugh out loud since the turn of the century. it's become a name brand (i.e. it's coasting), is relatively easy to produce, the characters don't age and fox has used it as a crutch for almost 2 decades now.
I could watch another 3 hrs of you break down the decline of the simpsons. It's a question everyone from our generation has. Why has the simpsons lost its heart? There has to be more to it than cheapening the audiences investment with flimsy premises. With so much good television out there how can they not get a A+ team of writers to really give it a span that acts as a renaissance, regains the shows heart, and gives a well thought out planned narrative while still giving one off episodes?
+j kowski Guess they're just too far gone. They need to age the children. Put them in high school or college or young adults. Only so much you can do with kids. It's been 28 years of the same thing!
It's simple: no good show goes on forever. You eventually run out of ideas and/or situations, that's it.
I could make you so many examples of good TV shows or franchises that got milked way beyond what they could offer just for the sake of money, and that's why most of the more beloved ones are either still running or had a conclusion because they missed the right time to end.
The show heart were the original writers, you can't just pick "a good writer", whatever that means, to write what you want.
If you don't have an original idea you'll never get "the heart of the show" back.
If you milk your show trying to add too much to your original idea you're done.
That's why Breaking Bad is universally recognized as one (if not THE ONE) best TV show of all time, they got a story and character with an expiration date and they weren't afraid to commit to BIG CHANGES (actually the whole show is a metaphore of chance).
That's why the show I got my avatar from isimho the best animated thing that came into the world after the golden age Simpson, his writer aren't afraid of change and consequences of their actions.
Who died in the Simpsons? Basically nobody of the core cast. Why? Because they were afraid of ending the show. And I don't mean that you need to kill people to have a good show (see what GoT has become since they surpassed the book, just a random brainless kill lottery...)
That's why, mark my words, Mr Robot will fail miserably, you can already see they the writers intended to do a much shorter show and that the whole 2nd season has almost no plot point in it, plus random death of characters they clearly didn't know how to use.
That's why Stranger Things and 13 are going to be bad. That0s why True Detective 2nd season was bad.
That's why X-Files failed miserably, they got past season 6 that would have been the obvious ending point.
That's why Happy Days jumped the shark, and one as I said could literally make tons of examples.
Somebody once said something like this: "There are two elements in a story: the final and everything else".
Entertain The Elk I think it would be interesting if they continued from one of the future episodes like the more recent one Holidays of Future Passed with Bart and Lisa raising their children and they could do much more with the future setting and all the new technology and aliens. Have one where Bart takes his sons camping on Mars and deal with the constant changing climates of hot and cold as he earnestly tries to be a better dad and give his sons a good childhood.
BubuSnow93 hey got has nothing brainless about it. Show some respect to George RR Martin
Dr. Siracha weiners weiners weiners weniers!!
I once had a friend who believed that we shouldn't get emotionally invested in characters in movies or TV or even video games. Because they're all fake and fictional. They don't have real lives or real emotions or real stories. And the story, setting, and the personalities of these characters can take a dramatic turn into something that the viewers don't like simply because the writer(s) want to do something else on a whim. I wish I could show him this video to prove him wrong.
Your friend was right
You shouldn't take it so far that you get obsessed with a piece of fiction and it ruins your life. But if you don't care AT ALL about the characters, you're probably not even going to watch the show in the first place.
That "once" says a lot
Maude's death was the last straw for me. It's too dark and Flanders doesn't deserve it.
That happened because the voice actress who did Maude's voice wanted a big raise.
+Nemesis T-Type-Yeah. ..Maude's death. ..was just completely mean. .. not to mention unnecessary on top of it. Other characters have died on the show before-one of the most famous ones being Lisa's mentor and idol-the Jazzman-but they were still given a fitting end for their stories and with Jazzman (for awhile anyway), Lisa was left utterly HAUNTED by the death of her mentor and one of her closest friends. That even "years" (however long it was for Lisa) later, she never forgot about him and she still deeply missed him.
Maude's death is almost a throwaway and I guess is supposed to even be somewhat funny-Homer asks for a t-shirt, they use the t-shirt gun to chuck at him. . .Homer gets distracted. . .Maude gets hit instead and she falls to her death where her body was likely broken into pieces. . . . . .Hilarious? (?).
And no one outside of Flanders is really too bothered about the fact that Maude died. That Maude died in such a horrific, senseless fashion. They all but pretty much forget it ever happened. Homer, while not fault, is reduced to a punchline to where his idiocy cost a woman her life. And despite not being at fault. . .he has no sense of humanity at any point to where he feels bad that Maude died. That he could've died instead of her. . .That despite his friction with Flanders, he should've taken the hit instead of Maude. That was the classic, sweetheart Homer we all loved.
And while Flanders did have a couple of seasons where he off and on still missed Maude. . .he and his sons have probably all but forgotten about their wife/mother at this point. That for the show, for all intents and purposes, Flanders was the only parent to his sons. The show has utterly and slowly violated any sense of humanity to where there is just nothing left at this point and the fact Maude is nearly outright dismissed is pretty indicative of that.
Nemesis T-Type agreed!
Fera Flauna I'm planning to make a video about how modern left wing writers have an issue with nihilism and warped reality in their work
I felt so bad for her
i stopped watching the Simpsons after that god aweful episode were bart lost a baseball game and he was driven to attempt suicide because of the town's constant jeers towards him. i mean for god's sake even AFTER he was sent to the hospital, the townsfolk were STILL shitting on him
reminds me of 'no spongebob day' and/or 'someone's in the kitchen with Sandy'
I never even made it that far.
The Simpsons died with Phil Hartman, imo.
Well said.
You glad King of the Hill and Futurama ended on good notes?
@Courtesy Stitch I don't use the word 'hero' very often, but you, are the greatest hero in american history.
What kills great sitcoms is when the characters begin acting in ways that are inconsistent with their personalities that the audience has grown to know and love. Probably because of changes in the writing staff.
Well that was depressing
Sorry... :(
Entertain The Elk don't worry haha the Simpsons was a big part of my childhood haha sad to see it go but it's gone on too long.
Yup
I had a horrible day and, this is just what I needed.
I can see The Simpsons talking to itself in the mirror "I used to be somebody. I used to be a contendah."
Matt Groening should have cancelled The Simpsons after season 10 due its decline, and so he and his writers can focus on a certain animated sitcom about a space parcel company.
the thing is, creator don't have control about how long a series most go on, they just get legal rights about it.
Dixit, I think you mean "royalties". Matt Groening probably hasn't cared about the show in 20 years or more.
Just watched "Meanwhile"- there's so much left to explore.....
He pleaded with Fox to cancel the Simpsons so he could work full time on Futurama, and was told no on personal and legal levels. Look it up.
Hell no seasons 11 and 12 are the shit
"The Day The Spongebob Died"
Transdimensional there needs to be a video
Transdimensional
Season 5
May 20, 2005 (Good Neighbors)
Season 4 Episode 1
Season 4
I wouldn't say it *died*... I mean, I agree it exited the golden age. But to say it died then is a bit of a hyperbole. I think it has slowly aged, like a human: out of its prime, not worth much in its older age, but still going, and can still be charming in its later episodes.
-Beethoven 2017
Funny you say that when Beethoven composed his best in old age
"The day the Simpsons began its slow and depressing slide into dementia"
U cant even hear that shit ludwig
It became a hollow shell, as opposed to Family Guy, which was a hollow shell right off the bat
Family guy is giant bucket of liberal garbage.
It jumps from appealing to adults to appealing to children, impossible for either group to watch for long periods.
If you watch it with a political mindset it's unbearably obvious.
Brian is clearly the token liberal but the rest of them obviously must portray the moronic right.
It's almost a hobby of mine to analyze the political leanings of fictitious characters.
It can be funny, many times I've laughed, but not consistently enough to warrant continuous watching.
Don't give the show more credit than it's worse. The characters are all terribly written and I doubt they're made to be political commentary. Especially when Seth was genuinely upset and confused over a shitty joke of character raping Marge being taken off
Family Guy is garbage but I feel like the first three seasons had potential, though I was rather young when it came out so maybe I gave it more credit than it's worth. I mean if you love repetitive humor that doesn't mind reminding you just how repetitive it is then you probably enjoy Family Guy.
The thing that really toned me off was stupid jokes that ran on for long periods.
like Peter just saying something continuously for 5 minutes.
or them staring at the camera for 3 minutes, I swear to God they do it 'cause they're out of ideas and need to fill in time space in the show.
Not to mention sitting through some stupid attempt at being edgy without actually making the payoff punchline any good.
IMO it looked the best with its original drawing style now it looks kinda cold and boring
Completely agree!
yeah it died when they went HD
Much like Family Guy, the animation upgraded to HD but the writing kind of downgraded. Although to be fair, The Simpsons have more taste by not relying on so much gore and violence
Original drawing style like it was on the Tracey Ullman show or 1st episode?
Its typical of everything nowadays almost in mainstream entertainment, all flash and very little substance, CGI is ruining entertainment in one way or the other, a lot of everything is coming across consistently lazy and contrived.
Ironically, the episode before this one, where they go to New York, is my favorite episode of the Simpsons. It was like one final hurrah before it went downhill
My mum didn't like the episode because of how Skinners mum just rejected him and didn't care
I haven't seen the episode in what seems like forever... but didn't she come around at the end?
5:36 Did he list 'homophobe' as one of his past jobs?...
Sweetly. Yes, he did.
Homophobic Missionary.
..., homophobe and missionary
Yeah, he was protecting springfield
Sweetly WTF OMG
Ahh did you have to play jazzman at the end? you made me tear up ;( But also fantastic job!
Ha, thanks!
Rip Bleeding Gums Murphy
Wow a TF2 youtuber =D
Jazzman - what an insult to what they wanted us to consider as jazz music. FYI - Jazzman by Carole King (or whoever TF inflicted that atrocity) does not, in it wildest sweaty dreams, qualify as anything remotely vaguely evocative of actual jazz music. White people are so lame... and dry as pound cake with no milk. Make ya gag!
Ihasnotomate wtf are you doing i was watching one of your videos just mins ago
This whole video expresses how I feel about Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Not in the “oh, it went on too long” but that the audience was punished for caring and paying attention to characters we spent years getting attached to.
I got bored of the Simpsons in 1999 and haven't watched regularly since then. I tried watching a more recent ep and it was painful.
ssjup81 Same. Sad to me that it has spent much longer being painfully unfunny than it has been being absolute genius.
I usually stick to the classic Simpsons but I decided to watch one of the newest episodes the other day and the show really has gotten bad. Mr Burns lost all his money...again because of some rapper making him get a credit card. The jokes were either not funny or really cringe. I've never called for the Simpsons to be cancelled but if that is the kind of quality it is now, please, just let it die already.
Agreed!
lol that episode was weird but they were trying to parody the Great Gatsby so it wasn't a standard Simpson's episode. Still though, i agree with you... It took me 3 days to finish watching that episode. Kept pausing and it and going to do something else more entertaining. They had a concept to parody a popular story but it felt so forced and awkward.
I bet someone will kill themselves when the show ends
h
They're always about three years behind with cultural references and the characters' stock jokes have been wrung dry. People only tune in or it only makes the news when a classic character dies or has a major character change. It's sad that what Troy McClure said about the show has come true. One day the numbers will dip low enough that it can't justify its budget anymore and it'll get axed. What an undignified way to end a show like the Simpsons
The Principal and the Pauper is the day the writing staff proved they only cared about getting laughs above all else. Phil Hartmans murder by his wife was the final nail in the Simpsons coffin.
RYCloud92 I agree. I miss Phil, very badly, even to this day.
+RYCloud92-And that to me, is the true definition of "Flanderization"-outright sacrificing a character just for the expense of a cheap joke. Family Guy certainly cranked that up to its extreme but Simpsons is arguably far more painful and far more sad in a way. The Principal and the Pauper outright destroyed Skinner-Principal Skinner-slaughtered him, just for the sake of a cheap joke. It may have been far more forgivable had the show actually gone somewhere with this-to where it actually changed the status quo a little bit. As someone else suggested, I don't think it would have been a bad idea had Skinner's mother decided to take her son in, while accepting the man she has raised for so long, to where the two "Skinners" become brothers of sorts, and even sometimes compete for their mother's affection. :D. I have to stress, it MAY have been more forgivable had that happened. . .Instead of everyone in Springfield deciding to be willfully oblivious, ignore that Skinner is a fraud, and even drive the actual Skinner out of town because they don't want to deal with that unpleasant revelation in their town. . .Principal Skinner's identity is just utterly massacred and he is exposed as a total and a complete fraud. . .but let's just ignore it after this episode except for when we need another cheap laugh.
I remember watching the Simpson’s as a young kid, my parents had seasons 1-8 on vhs so those were the mains seasons I grew up watching and the ones I mainly remember. The other day I saw an episode of the Simpson’s on tv and the childhood memories came flooding in so I watched the episode. Throughout the episode I found myself growing more and more disappointed, the jokes were horrible and it was just bad. I thought I had just grown out of the Simpson’s when I decided to check out the older seasons on Disney plus. I found myself laughing and smiling. I then realised the episode I saw on tv was from season 30, it was just awful. Rip Simpson’s, you will be missed.
Maybe nostalgia played a strong role
I miss The Simpsons too but I grew up and moved onto Futurama and especially South Park (in reference to your profile pic).
@@TheBenCarroll
The show is still on the air, I am looking at the guide for April 23, 2023 and there is a new episode of the Simpsons scheduled to air, unless NASCAR goes long or has many delays which would cause the episode to be aired next week. How can you miss something that hasn’t gone away? The message that I took from the principal and the pauper was that the people who we’re told to trust are actually liars and hypocrites.
@giantsr1eva I agree with Mank there so you don't like it then shut up!!
@giantsr1eva I agree with Mank there so you don't like it then shut up!!
I have been a Simpsons fan since 1990, I even took a course at the University about the Simpsons in which we did focus on the post-modern society portrayed in the show, the parody, and exposure life in the US; that was back in '94 or '95, at the time of what you called the golden era of the show. On the other hand, I have also read quite a few articles and essays about the show, however I would like to say that you have done a very great analysis and you have the come to a brilliant thesis of the cycle of the show.
With great mastery, you were able to identify that particular episode as the breaking point of The Simpsons from being great, to be a good show, to end up being what it is today.
Good Job,
Except the episode after this is 'Lisa's Sax' - one of the most beautiful episodes there is. The one before this episode is 'The city of New York VS Homer Simpson' - one of the best episodes there is. In nine years of unprecedented quality, creators are entitled to a hiccup.
Is that the one where Homer was stuck at the World Trade Center with the Poprakosh (Not sure how it's spelled) vendor?
Mrfilmreviewcriticman
ugh...ewww... I'll have a crab juice!
People are blinded by nostalgia. By season 7, it often got criticism for being "tired". Just look up reviews from that time (they're still out there).
You mentions seasons 3 onwards, but I thought seasons 1 was exceptional. Season 2 also had my favorite episode, "Homer and Delilah".
Katie Persons I think S1 and S2 are fantastic! I just don't think that they completely hit their stride tonally yet.
Katie Persons Harvey firestein was great.
It's because seasons 3-8 are more consistently well reviewed compared to 1 and 2 I guess.
Or season 2 when homer go to mount splashmore and got stock or the episode blood feuds. One of the best episode ever
Sweet sweet can
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed a significant decline from season 9 onwards.
Well, guess I'm gonna go watch seasons 3-8 just to confirm that this random TH-cam video is to be correct.
I'll be back in 2-4 months.
301 was heartwarming. And catchy
2-4 months for a few seasons of The Simpsons? Wow, that'd take me maybe two weeks.
irishboy0909
Its been 2-4 monthes
4 months
irishboy0909 well
I noticed when a lot of people talk about the 'golden era' of The Simpsons, they always seems to start with season 3, what's so wrong with season 2?... I can understand people skipping season 1 because that was the beginning, and still very much experimental stage, of The Simpsons, but season 2 IMO was the start of The Simpsons proper and was just as great as many of the early to mid 90's seasons to follow.
Well people didn't find them really special at the time. They seemed like your typical family that have somewhat goofy experiences. But, I like seasons 1 and 2.
dude people are so smug about 'the good shit'. Early simpsons is the only good simpsons, but not TOO early. TOO early it sucks too. Righhht around season 4, but only the middle of season 4, riiight when homer eats jellyfish, that's the only good simpsons
pennmaster What?
Valgar u
seasons 1 and 2 were a lot darker than the newer ones
I don't get it... what's so damn hard about coming up with good ideas for new episodes? Take "Homer the heretic", one of the greatest episodes ever. The entire plot is just about Homer not wanting to go to church. Period. In modern episodes, all kinds of crazy out-of-this-world shit is happening.... why? Keep it simple and earthbound, I'm sure there are plenty ideas to go with.
Hit the nail right on the head.
The wackiness is what killed the show for me.
The down to earth nature of the early years was the best.
Couldnt agree more!!
they exhausted all the "grounded and simple" premises on the good seasons... nothing's left i guess
Yeah there is a reason for the south park episode "the simpsons already did it." Imagine how hard it actually was to be the writers coming up with new ideas for hundreds of new episodes.
South Park and Family Guy ruined the Simpsons. They thought they had to be more over the top so they wouldn't lose out to the other guys but they should have just stayed the same.
They should have ended the series with Homer's Enemy. It would have been a beautifully dark, introspective and hilarious way to end the series. Not to mention it was, for all intensive purposes, the last true episode of season 8 so it would have been perfect
I probably hate Homer's Enemy more than Principal and the Pauper
@@khaansulu5695 Interesting, why?
*intents*
Introspective how? It was another variation of Homer encounters a real life person, like their long time animosity with George Bush.
Let me break down the season everybody else hates, season 9
1: Homer goes to New York enough said
2: Skinner's been living a lie but the original is boring and both of Skinner's lives are still more interesting
3: Lisa gets a new sax and you learn that Homer really loves his kids and would burn for them
4: Bart becomes a fly, Homer fights zombies, Marge is a witch
5: Homer buys a gun
6: Homer coaches Bart peewee team and screws them over
7: Apu gets married to Manjula, Manjula is introduced finally
8: A shopping mall fools the whole town into believing that an angel has landed in Springfield
9: Marge goes into real estate and sells Ned Flanders a murder house
10: The town helps the Simpsons celebrate Christmas after they think the Simpsons got robbed
11: This is bad because it's a clip show but good cause you guys love every season before this remember
12: The Simpsons loose their house to a bunch of carny folks
13: The Simpsons join a cult because Homer falls for anything
14: The school bus drives off the bridge and the kids try to survive on a deserted island and Homer makes an internet company that Bill Gates crushes
15: Krusty the Clown actually intentionally becomes funny and a rebel and sells out again
16: Moe gets a girlfriend and cashed out on her to the point where he needs to pull an insurance scam but it lands Homer in jail
17: They acknowledge the Simpsons Gene and establish it's on the male side only but the female side excels because of the same gene
18: Bart and Ralph have a master key and uses it but leaves the electric chair on when the Mayor shows up and sits in it for a live demostrastion
19: Homer joins the Navy and is left in charge of a nuclear submarine and almost starts a war
20: Mr Burns steals the Trillion dollar bill and Homer becomes a snitch but has a change of heart and helps Mr. Burns flee to Cuba
21: The school has a news program and Bart shines over Lisa for once and Willie vowels revenge
22: A classic, Homer vs the Garbage man, Homer wins Sanitation Commissioner and ruins the town to the point where they have to move the entire town down the road
23: Homer tries to impress his family by getting in shape and is convinced to climb the Murderhorn, the tallest mountain in Springfield history
24: Lisa takes the bus as a 8 year old for the first time and is completely lost and it's up to Homer to find her
25: Season 9 finale, Homer and Marge has sex in public naked at night and have to sneak back home before the public catches them after waking up the next morning on a mini-golf course
So which ones do I hate outta all of this, 24 cause it's just one joke when Homer gets his head caught in a drawbridge, 21 because once again Lisa is awful in this simply because Bart is on top, 11 because it's a clip show but it's still funny cause of clips from previous seasons and that's it for me, this isn't by far a bad season, some liberties were taken with Skinner and Lisa who was trying to find the next thing to rebel against but overall I think majority is a classic but it's definitely a different direction compared to before, jmo
Leondre' Leonard some were good eps.until ten. Homer gun thing was funny
Actually, New York episode is one of the best.
The New York episode is great.
The Khlav Kalash segment was amazing.