When did the golden age of The Simpsons end?
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:
Someone on HN once commented that watching later seasons of The Simpsons is like visiting a loved one with advanced Alzheimerâs disease. This rings true to me.
It looks like them, but isnât 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.
I find this HN story title misleading (or clickbait-y): "Cluster analysis" is just a tool; it doesnât 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.
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!
https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/
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: DFWâs writings on TV) led to its 1) becoming exactly the thing it was originally skewering, 2) relying too much on the âhomer gets a new jobâ gimmick, 3) shifting homerâs 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 showâs wholly a shell of itself (a âzombieâ) past S12. Site argues its case pretty well, worth a read.
I still enjoy The Simpson's ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
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/
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.
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 was surprised to learn that everyone hated the Principal and the Pauper, I loved that episode.
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).
For an actual exploration of what happened, I highly recommend this video. The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk
My favorite take on "The Decline and Fall of the Simpsons Empire":
The Fall of the Simpsons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk
Personally, If I were picking the assumptions and hyperparameters, I'd end up with the golden age being seasons 3 through 8 :)
> The decline was much like Fox Newsâ 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?
Hah, I thought this was "why", so I looked into it.
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...
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Somewhere between Armin Tamzarian, the first season of South Park, the first season of Futurama, and the first season of Family Guy.
The Silver Age ended when The Simpson's Movie came out. Almost no animated series survives the first movie intact.
I felt Simpsons lost it by S7.
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.
The Guatemalan Insanity Pepper episode was the first âbadâ 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.
I think it's time for it to be cancelled but It's still a money-maker i guess
Could this not be better achieved by using/augmenting with writer credits?
Is there some website where you can see a good visualization of IMDB or other ratings across seasons/episodes like that for any show?
They were great when they were part of the Tracy Ullman Show. All downhill from there.
i wish the main tool wasn't inside an <iframe>. completely unnecessary
the last truly great episode of the simpsons was season 9, episode 21, "girly edition," but its rapid decline began in season 8.
Hmm but can you really tell how good an episode is by ratings?
~20 years ago. /thread
Anecdotally, I never watch the show anymore. Doesn't stop it always seeming to be on though when I'm channel flicking.