The decline of the Simpsons 📉

I agree with the graphic.
However, I recently completed a straight watch-thru of every Simpsons episode, and while watching the lackluster episodes from seasons _20-30, I have to acknowledge one thing:
Quality of the show and its writing have noticeably improved since around Season 32.
The most recent episodes feel more centered on the family and much less on bizarre cameos and really outrageous situations. It actually feels like a show about the Simpson family and treats the characters more age-appropriately.
I don’t like that they lost/recast established voices of minority characters (Apu, Carl, Dr. Hibbert, etc), I do think the quality and the focus of the show is much better than it has been in almost 2-decades.
- Thank you for actually acknowledging this.
  The way the Internet talks about the Simpsons is so damn annoying. The vast, vast majority of them haven't actually watched an episode and formed their own opinion on it in over a decade, they just keep repeating the same tired meme over and over again.
  Long running shows have different writers coming and going, therefore quality fluctuates up and down over time. That's one of the nice things about a long running show: it gets to experiment and let new blood invigorate new life into it. There is no singular "death", there's just hills and valleys.
  
  You nailed it. Individual episodes are good bad and meh. I have a feeling if I was younger and exposed to the Simpsons now, I would've liked it just as much as I used to.
  The constant shitting on the Simpsons needs to stop. It obviously gets good enough rating to keep on the air well over 30 years, so give it a rest.
  
  All of what you say is true of brand new shows as well, with even more room to experiment. I wish the Simpsons would just die and let new shows and new ideas take its place.
  Honestly, what you’ve described sounds like a the Simpsons is an old, rich guy who pays young writers and artists to entertain him. Yes, he employs these people. No, I don’t think it’s anywhere even close to a good use of these economic resources. It’s for the same reason Hollywood makes so many comic book movies instead of dramas.
- I caught some clips of a recent season and the VAs just sound so old and tired. Regardless of the current writing, just let the show end. Have the writers write for something else.
  
  Right?! Lisa sounded like a straight up old lady. And I'm still pissed about apu.
- Dude, that's over 700 episodes, most of which suck ass. Why would you do that to yourself?
  
  How do you know they suck ass if you haven't watched them?
  Legitimately, what is it about the Internet and this show specifically where people feel compelled to sound off on something they are not actually watching, and haven't watched in years?
  
  The literal worst episode of Simpsons is still pretty good honestly. It's not as good as the best episodes of Simpsons, but it's still better than most TV shows.
  
  I distributed the watch over a long period of time—I only ever watched episodes while on a lunch break at work. It was an effective way of unplugging and just watching something “familiar”. I would typically bang out (up to) 2-episodes/day, 5-days a week over the course of about 2-years.
  I just checked, and I have not watched the most recent episode, but I’m sure I will while on lunch sometime next week.
  I would argue that majority are not as bad as you imply, though some are a tough watch—like the pointless travel shows, I recall Denmark and Canada as being a difficult watch.
- I have to agree, the recent seasons feel like they have a cohesive story and often even pull away from the 3 piece storyy telling they were doing between seasons 20-30.
  I wonder if there was a new writer brought on from s32 onward who's responsible for the uptick.

I'm not disputing that The Simpsons declined in quality, but I do kind of question the high scores for the first season or two.
I'm not a superfan or anything, but my perception of the show was that it took 3 or 4 seasons to really get good?
- You have to remember the setting...the first couple of seasons the Simpsons was a huge change from standard sitcoms in the late 80s. It got eyes on it as it grew into itself.
  
  I was gonna say these ratings are at least a decade removed from that context, but TIL that IMDb has been around since 1990.
- During the first 3 seasons Simpsons was animated by KlaskyCsupo, "animation executive producer" and "supervising animation director" was Gábor Csupó. After he left animation style changed to more conventional.
  So while the characters, writing and plotlines were not as genial as in the following seasons the animation style was much more interesting, with strange perspectives and point of views, distorted spaces, etc. Just look at this early recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LUf-GGHpuU
  
  The twister mouth might be the most known/famous creative decision during the KlaskyCsupo seasons. After the Simpsons they worked on Duckman which feels like a series more suited to their animation style.
  KlaskyCsupo also animated for Rugrats and Aaahh Real Monsters as well if those early seasons seem familiar but you can't put your finger on why.
- To get uniquely good, I'd agree, but I recently started rewatching from the start and it starts strong. At least for a start, anyways. Some cliche plot lines, but it's never JUST the main plot line so even the cliches aren't boring or lazily done.
  
  Fair enough - I'm not as familiar with the earliest seasons, so it was more the impression I had than a definite opinion :-)
- I was seventeen when the Simpsons became their own show. The cultural impact was enormous and immediate. By the summer of 1990, images of the Simpsons were freaking everywhere. Clothes, glasses, miscellaneous trinkets, everywhere.
  So it's not really necessary for the first couple of seasons to come short against seasons three and four.
  The seismic wave the show caused from its beginning were enough to garner those scores you see.
- Uhm, the values are going up after a few seasons
  
  Indeed but I'm questioning the scores themselves in S1 and S2. Put it this way, I didn't think that those seasons were considered almost as good as most the next 8, I would have expected them to be mostly in the 6.8-7.2 range.
- If you were around during the early 90s on Usenet you would see a lot of people talking about how Simpsons peaked in season 1. More grounded. More focused on struggling family.
- The ratings in the graph reflect this. The first couple seasons were solid 7-8 seasons. The next bunch of seasons were solid 8-9.5 seasons.
  Also, seasons 1 isn’t great in hindsight. But it was still groundbreaking and probably factors into its score.

For anyone wondering the top rated episodes here, all at 9.2 are:
S5E2 Cape Feare
S6E6 Treehouse of Horror V
S6E25 Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One
S8E2 You Only Move Twice
And just as I was finishing that, I noticed that one episode has a 9.3, d'oh!
S8E23 Homer's Enemy
- Love how even IRL people forget about Frank Grimes. good ol Grimey
  
  Change the channel Marge!
- Just want to add that nobody is talking about the decline of tv itself. Its not only the simpsons but the whole media.
  
  Exactly. This needs to be baselined with aggregate ratings for TV or at least the genre.
- I watched the Simpsons as a kid. Never thought much about it, but Homer's Enemy is the one episode that resurfaced in my mind as an adult decades later.
- I went into ye olde Plex server to see what 8-23 is about and immediately went "yep. That tracks."

The first two sub-6.0 episodes are clip shows.
wiki S06E03:
"Another Simpsons Clip Show" is the third episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 25, 1994. In the episode, Marge reads a romance novel in bed, and it prompts her to have a family meeting, where the Simpson family recall their past loves in form of clips from previous episodes.
wiki S09E11:
"All Singing, All Dancing" is the eleventh episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 4, 1998. In the fourth Simpsons clip show, Homer claims he hates singing, so Marge shows family videos of musical numbers from previous seasons. The episode is in the form of a sung-through musical, featuring spoken dialogue only at the start and end of the episode. The original material was directed by Mark Ervin and written by Steve O'Donnell. It was executive produced by David Mirkin. It features guest appearances from George Harrison, Patrick Stewart and Phil Hartman, although these are all clips and none of them recorded original material for the episode.
- Ah saved me looking up what those episodes were.
  I skip them on rewatches of the earlier seasons
  
  Yeah, if I did the work (a full minute :)) & someone else can benefit from it too it just means less net work was expended.
  Also clip shows should only contain clips that never aired before, or completely new ones (like IASIP).

I'm just nitpicking but why are 7.7 and 6.6 arbitrary the thresholds for the colour change? Also, why is one 6.6 red while another two are yellow?
- It appears that the colours are not on a fixed scale. The season averages and individual episodes are coloured using different ranges.
  It ranges from lowest to highest regardless of the value. Like conditional formatting in Excel does if you don't specify the scale.
  The seasons average ratings range from 6.1-8.4, so it goes red to green in the span of 2.3 points.
  The episodes range from 3.9 to 9.3, so it goes red to green in the span of 5.4 points.
  The full IMDb ratings range from 1-10. This should have been used as a basis for the colouring instead. The overall average on IMDb is somewhere around 7, so it would be fine to skew the colours so the middle/yellow was at 7, but it should be able to represent any possible ratings.
  
  Should probably also be acknowledged that the sample size is not going to be the same.
  You're going to get a bunch of people piling in to highly rate the early episodes that they remember watching when they were kids, but a significantly lower number are going to be voting on the episodes that came later.
  Really the whole premise of trying to compare and contrast the seasons for such a long running show that existed before IMDb even started is flawed on many levels.
  
  I agree, almost all episodes still get a passing grade. Using 1-10 as a basis, it would paint an entirely different picture.
  
  I think it's fair to colour seasons and episodes with different scales because they are measuring different things.
  Due to the Central Limit Theorem, average of 20+ episodes will have a smaller standard deviation than individual episodes.
  For example, an individual episode with a score of 6 you'll probably watch. A whole season with a score of 6, maybe not.
- maybe the displayed value was rounded but the value for the color wasn't

Isn't it also just because it's old and people get bored of it? People crave new things, and even if it's just as good as in the beginning, it'll get lower ratings because it's not new anymore.
I remember quite some years ago i was like "i'm finally going to watch southpark". And people were already complaining about how the latest seasons were worse than the first seasons. Watched a ton of seasons in a short period, and honestly can't say the later seasons felt any worse than the first ones when you're not bored of the series yet. Now so many years later when i watch some more southpark, it's not as fun as when i started watching it since the "it's new and exciting" feeling is long gone.
- Probably some truth to that. Also, when Simpson first came out they were quite unique. Nowadays there is a lot of edgy comic shows around.

Comedy has changed in 31 years. So has humour in general, and so has writing.
The Simpsons is never going to be the same as it was over the seasons because that's not how culture works. Meanwhile, the reviews are mostly coming from long time viewers who lament that it's not like it "used to be".
Shows change. Get over it.
- Old gray mere aint what she used to be, aint what she used to be
- Do they? Or are they funny TO YOU because you were part of that original audience?
  If you put a kid in front of a 30 year old episode are THEY going to think its funny?

The last few seasons had a big jump in plot quality imho, with some exceptional episodes. But also yes, 10 years ago entire seasons felt comparatively bland & empty. I also feel like I would rate early seasons a bit lower today than at the time.

What's up with that one bad episode in season 6?
- Episode called "Another Simpsons Clip Show"
  After reading The Bridges of Madison County, Marge decides that she and Homer need to teach the kids about romance. Each of the Simpsons (using clips from previous episodes) reminisce about past romantic encounters, leaving them all depressed and believing that love does not work. However, Homer saves the day by pointing out that one relationship has succeeded, his and Marge's.
- Clip show.

What happened at episode 23.22?!
- That indeed is interesting, had to look it up. Episode Lisa goes Gaga, Lady Gaga guest starring the episode perhaps warranted the 38% of one point ratings. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2403733/
- Looks like Lady Gaga randomly popped up to boost Lisa's spirits when she became literally the least popular person at school.
- Lisa Goes Gaga

Would love to see this mapped to who the primary writers and producers are on each episode. I wonder if there are patterns.

A very nice wave seeing the series decline... The only problem with it is it seems a little skewed to have 5.5 in strong red...
- I think the idea is that probably around 4.5 it becomes un airable on national tv
- How people rate things is skewed. 5 really means there isn't anything redeemable about it.
  For someone to mark below the midway point it tends to be because they are offended or upset about it. At that point a quality rating isn't appropriate, it should be 0.
  
  Why are you assuming that there's some uniform rating standard that every person is committing to?

my pirate collection stops exactly at season 9
i guess i can now call it my "criterion collection of the simpsons yaaaar"
- I have it all because hoarding.
  I’ve never watched past season 13. The last season I could get through is 12…
  There’s some bangers in 10-12 though.
  
  my ancient hard drive used to have up to 12 i think. and you are right it was hit and miss there were a few goodies but so many bad as well
  and then whatever happened with the really late seasons where the show basically became family guy i get sort of secondhand embarrassed watching

Homer no!! That's Elon Musk! One of the world's greatest inventors!!
Actual line from the show.
- To be fair, that was back when the world liked him. It was topical at the time.
  
  Nah that was around the time he started showing himself as being a bit of loser, but before he came out as an outright nazi.
- Just got to that one recently. Painful episode. Not even Bowie could save it by the end.

The Simpsons started as a parody of the (back then) dominant family sitcom that reinforced traditional values, where the family is led by a wise man who maintains the family and everyone else follows along in a traditional patriarchal hierarchy. Once that era got buried and they swallowed the thing they were mocking, The Simpsons slowly became self-referential, which made it a much harder show to write.

Losing a point or two over decades isnt bad entropy.
If copyright protection legnth wasn't so insane, the Simpsons could be in the public domain soon (if not already) and others could take up the quest for better simpson episodes.
- I was about to say the pattern of declination is not significant.
  There are other factors to consider as well. Such as the quality of the critics and audience in general.

Why was 9/11 such a poorly rated episode in an otherwise solid season. Hmmm 🤔
- It’s a clip show episode musical without the normal effort they put into clip shows like the self-aware 138th episode spectacular in season 7 episode 10.
- Laughter can’t melt steel beams!
- The ~~tow~~rating collapsed...
- Season 9 episode 11 was an inside job!!

I was a major adult fan in my twenties who worked with people who could finish a Simpsons joke when anyone started a line from the show. I remember coming in and sadly announcing that I thought I didn't like the show anymore. That was in the oughts. It had been in decline for a while at the time.

The graph represents my experience with The Simpsons. Back when they got their movie for the 10th anniversary, the serie was already struggling with the audience. I believe that was the point where they changed the animation to a horrible 3d rendering and, at least in my country, the started having troubles negotiating with the original voices we all grew up with.
Honestly at this point I believe I haven't missed much from the series since the 9th season. They should just let it die at this point, as they should've done it in 2007.
- The movie came out in 2007, mate. Nothing to do with the 10th anniversary.
  Also, you probably referred to the move from hand drawn to software animation. Because there is no "3d rendering" happening in the usual sense.
  How an episode of The Simpsons is made: https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview
- 3d?
  
  Some objects are 3d renders, most notably cars.

I mean, they themselves called it.

Nice graph!
By the way, any reason to share this here rather than !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world, as you did for the Boeing one? Genuinely curious
- Ahah, didn't actually expected anyone to recognize I was the same person as the Boeing graph, time to create a new throwaway account I guess 🤷
  I post a lot on Lemmy, mainly content I find on over social networks, and I try to avoid posting on lemmy.world, it's getting too much activity, and really hurting the decentralized aspect of Lemmy, which imo is its biggest advantage.
  I'm not criticizing the mods or admins or lemmy.world, just saying that for the content I post, I try to avoid putting in there
  
  No worries, I'm sure most of people didn't notice.
  Definitely agree on the fact that LW is a too central on Lemmy. If you want to discuss this, we created a community recently on that theme: !fedigrow@lemm.ee. Feel free to join, some discussions might interest you!

what's the deal with 9th episodes being good every now and then
- Maybe the 9th ones are the Treehouse of Horror ones?
- Maybe the last episode before a season break or something?

there’s a video by jonas čeika that’s worth checking out, on how the simpsons became a copy without an original

31... SEASONS???
- 35, actually. The graphic is a few years old.

Episode 3 of season 6 is such an outlier. Too much romance for the Simpsons audience apparently.
- It's a clip show. Both low rating episodes from the first seasons are clip shows. That's why. Clip shows are typically unpopular, even tho for The Simpsons, each clip is original and not a reair of a previous one. They're "filler" episodes.

Since when are IMDB ratings a serious metric of quality?

I actually stopped watching when I stopped wathing most over the air. the problem is the streaming free options being to convoluted with the gatekeeping. once I miss epsiodes im just sorta out.

I just started a rewatch of The Simpsons. I was only planning to watch the first 10 seasons though, juat because of the drop off in writing quality.

So... anyone who hasn't seen them should just watch the first 8 seasons and call it. I guess.

doesnt this coincide with matt leaving the writing team for futurama?
- https://www.cbr.com/matt-groening-epstein-deposition-foot-massage/
  
  oh yeah i remember reading about him flying on that plane a couple times, which at the very least raises some flags

Never been an afficionado of the Simpsons. Always been watching passively to have background sound. So always a pleasure to have more and more episodes to watch.

Seasons 8-10 were shit. That chart is invalid
- Frank Grimes is season 8.
  
  That's a shit episode