MarcusBritish
Finally... worked through all 28 seasons of "The Simpsons" (618 episodes and 1 movie to date). A rocky road, with the first ten seasons being the best "classic" or Golden years period. Then it went downhill with many unfunny, clichéd or just plain boring seasons for a few years. Hasn't really picked up again as well as it could, but did improve eventually. I think "South Park" has done better at keeping up with social events and remaining consistent.
amarbdmi
Although the quality of the show is not the same as it used to be, the early seasons are among the best that had aired on the TV across all genres, needless to say animation. It also sit comfortably in the center of the all the American made animations, when it comes to the spirit and direction of the show. Animation in my view can be roughly put into two categories, one is associated with Japanese animation, the other is associated with American animation. The difference is obvious on the surface such as style of drawing, but a more subtle yet more important difference is the theme. The Japanese animation tend to be fantasy based and try its best to distant itself from reality, this phenomena rooted in otaku culture, which means the viewers are sick and tired of reality to some degree and just want watch something that is not here not now. While the American animation basically is no different from any real world TV series in themes and story telling, but because the drawing dose not amount to the real thing, this bring a great advantage. Namely a more loosely and more ambiguously defined world can be used to justify much more ridiculousness and randomness in the plot, and because the viewer don't usually associated a poorly drew face to a real person, this can be used to justified the character's more complex behavior and a more flexible personality. This makes the American animation perfectly suitable for portraying society in a certain way, or be critical of something in the pop culture. And basically this is what American animation does, it is used as a self-reflection tool or a way of express certain thoughts on society or life by the writers. Generally I think animation does a better job than the real world TV shows with few exceptions such as "black mirror".Simpsons is among the best in this regard and is very moderate in the theme of the story. Some shows tend to reflect on personal growth and development, such as "Bojack horseman", some show would discuss personal philosophy on a more grand scale, such as "rick and morty". Other shows offers critical view of society such as "South park". Simpsons simply does all at the same time, it's critical to society today but not as sharp as "South park", it has a underlining tone of "no matter what we do the society won't change much", so in its story telling it just paint the whole picture without providing the cause nor the solution, in "South park" the cause part is at least provided. On the side of personal philosophy, the starting point of discussion in Simpsons is the relationship between individual and the group whether it's family or the whole society, discussion that focus on personal development is also presented but overall it's not a major topic. Shows like "Bojack horseman" or "rick and morty" emphasize more on the topic of a abstract person in a abstract environment, the relationship between self and others are somewhat secondary. In other words you can basically start with Simpsons and apply minor change to it and you can get most of the American show with few exception such as "Adventure time" which is a fantasy. In no way I'm saying that all the shows are originate from Simpsons, it just happens that Simpsons just sit in the middle of basically everything, and has this "All in one" characteristic. You could say it does everything well but is not the best in any given area, to some extend it's true, but bear in mind that none of the creators has this idea of "do all the things at the same time" when they start the show, to end up with Simpson, it took true genius, but when you see all the writers that had been working on the show, especially the early season, it won't be a surprise.
TheBlueHairedLawyer
I think it's safe to say that everybody born in '89 onward has grown up with The Simpsons. In its first seasons it exploded into popularity as a timeless satire on American family life, and though it pushed boundaries, it never crossed the line. It was an extremely funny, heartfelt comedy that both adults and children alike enjoyed. My problem with it is that it really began to go downhill in the digital age, mainly its introduction of low-brow sex jokes, its constant sea of "guest stars", but most of all its decline of its most beloved characters.I'm probably being an oversensitive prude, but in terms of the crude humour, we've seen a huge jump from the Homer whose dying wish in Season 2 was to wake up and watch the sunrise with Marge, to a Homer who seriously starts talking about masturbation during a therapy appointment in one of the recent episodes. It's unfortunately trying to compete in a market of godawful "adult humour" junk like Family Guy, because apparently there's no room for a decent family comedy anymore, but while lewd jokes and fart humour might work for some things, it just doesn't suit The Simpsons. Springfield's wacky and dysfunctional citizens have always been flawed, but never in a disgusting or perverted way.As for this trend of "guest stars" being on The Simpsons, one or two is fine, but when you have a new celebrity who you don't care about in each episode, from Katy Perry to Snoop Dogg, it gets old REALLY fast and comes off as a sales gimmick to promote talentless pop icons. It takes time away from the comedy and characters of the show itself when so much screen-time gets devoted to this crud. The original Simpsons was timeless. 20 years from now, people aren't going to have any idea what the hell "Alaska Nebraska" is referencing. Bringing up stupid trends and fads that come and go quicker than you can say "cash cow" doesn't really establish the newer seasons as anything timeless or memorable. I'm not sure what's up with the show's weird lean toward liberalism, either. I mean, it was never afraid to poke harmless fun at Republicans or to bring up the flaws of capitalism, but these days it's just pushy and annoying. This is especially evident with the character of Lisa, who used to be just a shy, nerdy and caring girl who always had a voice of reason. Now she's a mini Al Gore with her radical environmentalism, her smug pretentiousness and her inflated ego and notion that she's better than everybody else. She's become a huge hypocrite to boot. I'd say by-far that this show's greatest downfall has been the decline of its characters. Homer was always a slow-witted man, but he was a good man at heart who always sacrificed for his family when he knew it was important. Now he's just a jerky and selfish pig who can be unbelievably cruel to his family and anyone else around him. Very rarely is there even a glimpse anymore of his old self. Bart, a prankster who was always a bad seed but who still cared about others at his best, is now just watered-down. His "pranks" are lame instead of anything classic, and he doesn't seem to care about anyone or anything anymore. Instead of being mischievous, now he's a borderline sociopath. Marge has stayed true to her original persona but even she's a shell; each episode it's like she jumps on the bandwagon for whatever the new parenting trend may be. Even the secondary/minor characters aren't safe. For example Mr. Smithers has now become the most stereotypical gay man I've ever seen, from his rainbow pride parade parachute to his ridiculously obvious fixation on his boss, which has evolved from being funny to just plain bizarre. Nothing wrong with him being gay, but they've been hinging on the "mystery" of his sexuality for numerous seasons when it's already obvious. And my favourite character, the unnamed Blue-Haired Lawyer, who had a habit of appearing at annoying times to declare cease-and-desist cases, always appeared to still be benevolent and just doing his job, and he was willing to help Bart and Homer when they really needed it. Now he's become the show's "evil lawyer", who even admits in court that he views his injured client as a "paycheck" and who allows himself to be bribed by criminals. He's now apparently xenophobic, too. His character hasn't developed much at all except for him turning out to be an author on-the-side, and being conservative. Him and other characters like Ol' Gil, Chief Wiggum and Dr. Nick, have essentially become bad parodies of themselves. Another thing that I think has really hit The Simpsons hard, though the show is certainly not to blame, was the disappearance of promiscuous schoolteacher Edna Krabappel. I just found out that the woman who voiced her had tragically passed away. Edna was an excellent character and she'll be missed by many fans.I will say that, despite me being a sucker for nostalgia, I like the newer animation, as it gives the characters a more uniform look throughout each episode and makes things appear clearer, though I do miss the brighter look of the traditional coloration. I'm glad that the soundtrack has more or less remained consistent. I do think that Season 28 tried thus far to be slightly more character-driven and less lazily focused on celebrities, but I'm not sure how much longer this animated icon will hold up. It's come this far, and there are still many loose ends in terms of background characters so I do hope it stays on, but I hope it tries not to lose sight of what made people fall in love with the weird and wonderful town of Springfield in the first place.
eduardosanchez-02036
Since the talented voice cast has remained the same low these many years, I put all the blame on this squarely with the Fox network who refused to let this show go out gracefully when Groening siphoned off his role to work on his dream project, the now far superior 'Futurama'. In Fox's race to claim this endurance record they have turned a once edgy and visionary show into an institution with an assembly line production and revolving door of writers to match any of the other lame shows on TV. Behind the scenes, maybe the condescending we-can-do-no-wrong attitude of Maxton-Graham has dealt the show its biggest death blow, while producer Mike Scully sat back and ineptly let Maxton-Graham run it into the ground. In the end, the biggest blame may actually land with the "die-hard fans" that embolden the show by letting it get away with this junk. Yes, "The Simpsons" was ground-breaking and every adult animation in the future owns it a bit of gratitude, but blind loyalty to a show only for how it performed in the past isn't healthy. Since it has hit long-running status the critical bandwagon jumping has begun and "Simpsons" is more popular than ever amongst critics that want to be on the inside of history. We've now reached a point where the bad episodes and bad entire seasons outweigh the good and that, I'm afraid, is going to be the sad legacy of "Simpsons" . A train-wreck of crass, childish humor, grainy animation, oddly misplaced satire and forced parodies of only the most obvious pop culture targets. 10 years ago I didn't know what I would do without "The Simpsons" but now, particularly with the emergence of satisfying new adult animated shows ('Futurama', 'Family Guy' and 'South Park'), living without it might be pretty good.
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