There is a video with great analysis on this. Ultimately argues that Simpsons was a great piece of counter culture, then it just won and became culture, losing its ability to skewer mainstream comedy. Along with an upheaval in the writer's room, it just went absurd all the time. That's a sometimes brilliant move, but dull when used in place of any substance. It also forgot how to stay true to its characters. Much more here:
> Simpsons was a great piece of counter culture, then it just won and became culture
I've often mused over this as well. I remember when Simpsons was first aired in the UK, there was lots of complaints over it. The WI (Women's Institute) running campaigns again the show because its content was considered harmful. People even threatening to boycott the BBC and any high street stores that sold Simpsons merchandise. Slogans like "Eat my shorts" caused massive outrage. Yet most of those people who were angered by the very concept of the show ended up watching it with their own families. And in the end the show became a victim of it's own success; it's no longer able to surprise people without going totally random. A point South Park commented on in one of their shows where Butters keeps being reminded that all of this plot ideas have already happened in the Simpsons (this was before South Park became just as tired as the Simpsons)
At some point though, what more can you do with characters? After a while the viewer knows everything about them and the setting they exist in. There's nothing more to flesh out.
I grew up watching the Simpsons every day. I stopped watching because I didn't like the new episodes, but also because there was nothing any of the characters could credibly do that would surprise me, or that I hadn't already seen them do.
Interesting to see him mentioned for his commentary on the Simpsons, had picked up on him before due to his Irish accent but I know him from Real Engineering -- it's light content but it's well made. Might be of more interest to HNers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzRlga2-Hho
> Ultimately argues that Simpsons was a great piece of counter culture, then it just won and became culture, losing its ability to skewer mainstream comedy.
Someone on HN once commented that watching later seasons of The Simpsons is like visiting a loved one with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. This rings true to me.
It looks like them, but isn’t them. They occasionally have a flash of lucidity where they are back to their old selves but then that moment is gone as quickly as it came.
We cut our cord about 8 years ago and our TV has been limited to streaming and Netflix (DVDs too) My observation is that a great show seems to need 2 to 3 seasons to really find their pace, rhythm, and get it figured out. This is changing with the short season episodic content that everyone is doing now but network shows sort of need some time to find themselves. Beyond about season 7, they all fall apart in some way. I really can’t think of anything that lasted 10 plus season and wasn’t effectively a different show from s1, only the names are really the same; definitely the feelings it gives you will have changed. I really only watched Simpsons occasionally during the first 3 seasons, it’s hard to fathom it having anything in common with then now.
if you haven't seen A Fathers Watch s28e17 I highly recommend t. it is as good or batter than any "classic" Simpsons.
I think a good amount of Simpsons hate is nostalgia based, but the primary component is the writers. the writing of episodes like a fathers watch follows an almost Seinfeld-like formula. the best episodes always had a similar pattern.the pattern is great but gets repetitive and works best on nostalgia where you don't remember it
i can sympathize with a show on for 30 years wanting to switch up that formula even if it is less successful all the time.
I find this HN story title misleading (or clickbait-y): "Cluster analysis" is just a tool; it doesn’t show anything by itself. You can do bad and good cluster analysis, and you can probably "show" anything you want from it.
Excerpt from the blog post that explains the methodology:
> … we could consider performing cluster analysis on the data, essentially finding a way of grouping the episodes so that those with similar ratings are placed in groups together. A standard clustering approach would just group good episodes and bad episodes. However, I want to alter this slightly in that I only want a group to be made up of a single contiguous group of episodes; basically, if the episodes of season 4 are in the same group as the episodes of season 6, then the episodes of season 5 must also be in that group.
I find this HN story title misleading (or clickbait-y): <popular programming language> is just a tool; it doesn’t implement anything by itself. You can write bad and good programs in <popular programming language>, and you can probably implement anything you want from it.
How silly does that sound? Part of the explicit appeal of these kinda of articles is a toy demonstration of the tool or technique mentioned in the title.
When I was younger, we always talked about being able to pick what we watched - what we wanted, when we wanted. The Simpsons being our favorite show, it was pretty natural that we just wanted to watch that all day.
Anyhow, years later adult me sought to realize that dream, via Plex and Simpsons DVDs on Ebay. I have Seasons 1-14, but Season 12 is really the end of it. The great stuff was probably Seasons 3-9, with Season 6 being my absolute favorite.
Yeah I know the article is about actual analysis on this, but screw it, I wanted to talk about The Simpsons!
TL;DR a loss of writers and voice talent from resignations and deaths combined (probably) with the show simply running out of things to say (especially as its irreverent tone took over culture; see also: DFW’s writings on TV) led to its 1) becoming exactly the thing it was originally skewering, 2) relying too much on the “homer gets a new job” gimmick, 3) shifting homer’s Characterization significantly, and not for the better, and 4) spending an awful lot more time subjecting homer to cartoon violence.
Decline is foreshadowed in S7, proceeds rapidly from there, and the show’s wholly a shell of itself (a “zombie”) past S12. Site argues its case pretty well, worth a read.
It is obvious I'm in the minority. I don't know what people expect from the show, especially for how long it's Been on the air consistently, but for what it is, I love it. It's one of the few, actually maybe only show I look forward to.
If you haven't you should listen to The Talking Simpson's [0]. I love this podcast!
Also, if you have a cable subscription you can watch every episode on The Simpson's World website [1] (it is pretty terrible to navigate and extremely buggy though).
If The Simpson's was canceled or when, it feels like at this point it would be a pretty big deal, especially for those of us who grew up on it. Like a hell has frozen over moment. Mind boggling to put it. It's a part of our culture.
We own every season through itunes. It’s still good. Complaints of its decline are like like complaints of the decline of SNL. There are good seasons and not so good seasons, and it ebbs and flows with new writers.
The Simpsons suffer from a problem that's rather unique to US TV shows, and I admit this may not be completely fair, given how large a percentage of popular shows are American: When a US TV show turns out to be popular it will be milked to death. Producers will keep popular shows alive for much longer than they should, because they know a large percentage of fans will watch every new show, regardless of quality.
The Simpsons had a good run, it's time to cancel it. If it's true that it peeked at season 10, then the most of the shows are produced after it's peek.
This makes it even more incredible that Seinfeld ended its run after 9 seasons at the height of its popularity. Jerry Seinfeld reportedly turned down $100 million dollars to make another season
I collected Simpsons season DVDs until I lost interest... last one I purchased is season 14. So there's a data point on when I had (re)seen enough of the show (Although, I've seen S15-22 or so completely, sporadic watcher since then).
I think season 10 is a fair cutoff point.
The jarring thing about the more recent episodes is the decline of Julie Kavner's (Marge's) voice. It sounds...weak. Unhealthy. Other actors on the show have a similar problem but hers is most notable.
I don't hate the episode, but even despite my contrarianism I have to admit I've been brought around to agree that it was a very bad episode for the universe even if it was an OK episode internally. It's easy to forget if you are young and you've never lived in a world where Simpson's seasons 1-7 or so are all there was in the world, but the Simpson's used to actually have a universe, rules, characters that were more than walking stereotypes, and even a bit of capacity for lasting consequences, and thus, a capacity for drama that the modern "cartoony" (in the bad sense) version has a very hard time sustaining.
If you were raised in the modern era, you can get the reverse effect that some of us oldster's describe by going back and watching Season 1 in order. It is not the best season, but it was already showing a lot of the promise that would manifest a couple of seasons later, and in so many ways you'll find it is just a different show, even more clearly than if you go a couple of seasons later. (And it does have my favorite Halloween episode. I have to admit I haven't seen them all, and there were certainly some other good ones, but when it comes down to it, it is hard to beat a dramatic reading of The Raven. There's a reason this became a tradition and not just a one-off.)
It’s not that the episode itself is all that bad in and of itself. Fans think of it as a turning point in tone (changing the long time Skinner character). Think of it as the beginning of the very long and steep decline.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I feel around season 12 is when it started getting really annoying with the celebrity cameos. The NSYNC episode was so horrendous that it actually made me stop watching with regularity, and it felt like after that too many episodes were just means in which to showcase some celebrity (e.g The Rolling Stones, Tony Hawk, Weird Al).
> The decline was much like Fox News’ transition to a hardcore sex channel
When did that happen? Granted I haven't paid close attention in a while, but that still seems a surprising departure, to say the least. What have I missed?
Southpark - S5
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - S6
Arrested Development - "S4"
Deadwood - ended before its time!
New Girl - S3
Big Love - S3
GoT - S7
Friends - S6
Office - S7
Workaholics - S4
The League -S4
My baseline seems to be around 5 +- 2 seasons. Saw another poster say same. Similar dynamics apply in any creative job -- the writers can get bored and complacent, early success leads to staff getting lured away, etc. Must make it extremely hard to maintain quality.
Where does Frasier and Parks and Rec fit into your analysis? From what I can tell after the first season they had pretty consistent runs after a shaky first season.
The Guatemalan Insanity Pepper episode was the first “bad” episode to signal decline in quality, after which good episodes were absent, if not extremely rare.
When Phil Hartman died. This was my personal intuition but it fits the data. The death was in May 98. The episode given as the turning point was Jan 99.
[+] [-] brownbat|8 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/KqFNbCcyFkk
[+] [-] laumars|8 years ago|reply
I've often mused over this as well. I remember when Simpsons was first aired in the UK, there was lots of complaints over it. The WI (Women's Institute) running campaigns again the show because its content was considered harmful. People even threatening to boycott the BBC and any high street stores that sold Simpsons merchandise. Slogans like "Eat my shorts" caused massive outrage. Yet most of those people who were angered by the very concept of the show ended up watching it with their own families. And in the end the show became a victim of it's own success; it's no longer able to surprise people without going totally random. A point South Park commented on in one of their shows where Butters keeps being reminded that all of this plot ideas have already happened in the Simpsons (this was before South Park became just as tired as the Simpsons)
[+] [-] wils1245|8 years ago|reply
I grew up watching the Simpsons every day. I stopped watching because I didn't like the new episodes, but also because there was nothing any of the characters could credibly do that would surprise me, or that I hadn't already seen them do.
[+] [-] s_dev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walls|8 years ago|reply
I feel like South Park has managed to do both.
[+] [-] yupyup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|8 years ago|reply
It looks like them, but isn’t them. They occasionally have a flash of lucidity where they are back to their old selves but then that moment is gone as quickly as it came.
[+] [-] TheCondor|8 years ago|reply
We cut our cord about 8 years ago and our TV has been limited to streaming and Netflix (DVDs too) My observation is that a great show seems to need 2 to 3 seasons to really find their pace, rhythm, and get it figured out. This is changing with the short season episodic content that everyone is doing now but network shows sort of need some time to find themselves. Beyond about season 7, they all fall apart in some way. I really can’t think of anything that lasted 10 plus season and wasn’t effectively a different show from s1, only the names are really the same; definitely the feelings it gives you will have changed. I really only watched Simpsons occasionally during the first 3 seasons, it’s hard to fathom it having anything in common with then now.
[+] [-] foolfoolz|8 years ago|reply
I think a good amount of Simpsons hate is nostalgia based, but the primary component is the writers. the writing of episodes like a fathers watch follows an almost Seinfeld-like formula. the best episodes always had a similar pattern.the pattern is great but gets repetitive and works best on nostalgia where you don't remember it
i can sympathize with a show on for 30 years wanting to switch up that formula even if it is less successful all the time.
[+] [-] hk__2|8 years ago|reply
Excerpt from the blog post that explains the methodology:
> … we could consider performing cluster analysis on the data, essentially finding a way of grouping the episodes so that those with similar ratings are placed in groups together. A standard clustering approach would just group good episodes and bad episodes. However, I want to alter this slightly in that I only want a group to be made up of a single contiguous group of episodes; basically, if the episodes of season 4 are in the same group as the episodes of season 6, then the episodes of season 5 must also be in that group.
[+] [-] miiiiiike|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|8 years ago|reply
How silly does that sound? Part of the explicit appeal of these kinda of articles is a toy demonstration of the tool or technique mentioned in the title.
[+] [-] SirFatty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SmellTheGlove|8 years ago|reply
Anyhow, years later adult me sought to realize that dream, via Plex and Simpsons DVDs on Ebay. I have Seasons 1-14, but Season 12 is really the end of it. The great stuff was probably Seasons 3-9, with Season 6 being my absolute favorite.
Yeah I know the article is about actual analysis on this, but screw it, I wanted to talk about The Simpsons!
[+] [-] ashark|8 years ago|reply
TL;DR a loss of writers and voice talent from resignations and deaths combined (probably) with the show simply running out of things to say (especially as its irreverent tone took over culture; see also: DFW’s writings on TV) led to its 1) becoming exactly the thing it was originally skewering, 2) relying too much on the “homer gets a new job” gimmick, 3) shifting homer’s Characterization significantly, and not for the better, and 4) spending an awful lot more time subjecting homer to cartoon violence.
Decline is foreshadowed in S7, proceeds rapidly from there, and the show’s wholly a shell of itself (a “zombie”) past S12. Site argues its case pretty well, worth a read.
[+] [-] b3b0p|8 years ago|reply
It is obvious I'm in the minority. I don't know what people expect from the show, especially for how long it's Been on the air consistently, but for what it is, I love it. It's one of the few, actually maybe only show I look forward to.
If you haven't you should listen to The Talking Simpson's [0]. I love this podcast!
Also, if you have a cable subscription you can watch every episode on The Simpson's World website [1] (it is pretty terrible to navigate and extremely buggy though).
If The Simpson's was canceled or when, it feels like at this point it would be a pretty big deal, especially for those of us who grew up on it. Like a hell has frozen over moment. Mind boggling to put it. It's a part of our culture.
[0] http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/category/talking-simpsons/
[1] http://www.simpsonsworld.com
[+] [-] valuearb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|8 years ago|reply
The Simpsons had a good run, it's time to cancel it. If it's true that it peeked at season 10, then the most of the shows are produced after it's peek.
[+] [-] jacobkg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superJoy|8 years ago|reply
I think season 10 is a fair cutoff point.
The jarring thing about the more recent episodes is the decline of Julie Kavner's (Marge's) voice. It sounds...weak. Unhealthy. Other actors on the show have a similar problem but hers is most notable.
[+] [-] bamboozled|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] g00gler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|8 years ago|reply
If you were raised in the modern era, you can get the reverse effect that some of us oldster's describe by going back and watching Season 1 in order. It is not the best season, but it was already showing a lot of the promise that would manifest a couple of seasons later, and in so many ways you'll find it is just a different show, even more clearly than if you go a couple of seasons later. (And it does have my favorite Halloween episode. I have to admit I haven't seen them all, and there were certainly some other good ones, but when it comes down to it, it is hard to beat a dramatic reading of The Raven. There's a reason this became a tradition and not just a one-off.)
[+] [-] temprature|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattacular|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slipstream-|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitriid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|8 years ago|reply
The Fall of the Simpsons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk
[+] [-] artificial|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 88e282102ae2e5b|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] consentfactory|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwanem|8 years ago|reply
When did that happen? Granted I haven't paid close attention in a while, but that still seems a surprising departure, to say the least. What have I missed?
[+] [-] foldr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iagooar|8 years ago|reply
Hint: this was a joke
[+] [-] criley2|8 years ago|reply
His "end of the Golden Era": Wild Barts can't be Broken: Jan 17, 1999
Futurama, debut: March 28, 1999
So there's your why...
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] da_chicken|8 years ago|reply
The Silver Age ended when The Simpson's Movie came out. Almost no animated series survives the first movie intact.
[+] [-] Finnucane|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayonetz|8 years ago|reply
When other shows lost their magic:
Southpark - S5 It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - S6 Arrested Development - "S4" Deadwood - ended before its time! New Girl - S3 Big Love - S3 GoT - S7 Friends - S6 Office - S7 Workaholics - S4 The League -S4
My baseline seems to be around 5 +- 2 seasons. Saw another poster say same. Similar dynamics apply in any creative job -- the writers can get bored and complacent, early success leads to staff getting lured away, etc. Must make it extremely hard to maintain quality.
[+] [-] fao_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tritium|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayd16|8 years ago|reply