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.
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.
The show’s been running for 35 years. Lisa’s voice actor is 59 now. She is an old lady.
Marge and Mr. Burns are by far the worst. Burns does t even sound like the same voice actor now
Well, Marge’s voice actor is 73 now.
Yea, not a problem either, she tries, but she sounds her age too. Burns though, I saw a recent episode and had to look up if they changed the VA because it’s so different.
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.
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.
I think I’m going to need to see this in motion
Here is a compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gPay3RUp1c
I never noticed this, it just looks like this for a few frames, but yeah, it’s a strange design choice, it makes the characters look like they are made from clay or rubber.
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.
They were amazing when they came out, which is when they were rated.
I don’t think that’s true though - these are the IMDb ratings, which remain open, and didn’t exist when the episodes came out.
It’s basically the same. Here’s info from the nelson TV ratings: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Simpsons_episodes
Fair enough. As I said at the start, it was just the impression I had - evidently not the case :-)
I’m glad you asked actually. Looking up any info is not easy. Apparently nelson TV ratings are really hard to look into these days. Even in that link I tried to follow the refrences for more info and hit a dead end pretty fast.
Also I find it interesting that they do match up with the IMDb numbers. Because your not wrong, the nostalgia is strong for those early seasons. Pretty cool is not unwarranted.
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 TwiceAnd 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
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.
“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.
“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).
Yeah I agree they should be like behind the scene gags or something.
I understand they’re more so the entire cast and animators can have a week off etc.
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.
If the music labels are botting up Spotify playcounts, are media producers botting up IMDb ratings?
Yes, it has been observed that IMDb sometimes get a lot of new “single post users” putting in 10/10 ratings on Disney movies that otherwise scored badly.
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.
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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?
Yes they will
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.
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.
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
Gods, how right you are. I stopped after 12 watching as it came out, 10-12 had some great eps but many that I was just… bored watching.
I’ve seen a scattered few from 13-20 and they were nigh unwatchable. You’re totally right about the Family Guy-ication, and it’s not even early (good) Family Guy. It’s like watching newer Spongebob, after the writer (director?) quit.
I need to watch the Gaga episode. It sounds truly awful. I don’t know if I’m ready for that psychic damage.
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.
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…
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?
That’s just how humans are. The average rating is 7. If it was perfectly even it would be 5. But it isn’t. We are objective or rational when we’re asked to put a number to our personal opinion.
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.
