The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Since its premiere on December 17, 1989, critical reception and commentary on the show has changed significantly over its run. The Simpsons' golden era is widely considered to be among the most influential media ever produced. Discussion of the show following the supposed "end of the golden era" has been related to the decline in quality, the causes of that change, and possible solutions.
Some of the show's creators and critics have denied this decline, and defended episodes and trends, while others have acknowledged that while the show is not as good as it used to be, having such a high bar for comparison is unfair and blinds the viewer to the quality of the more recent episodes. A silver or bronze age of the show, where it returned to its roots with content reminiscent of the 1990s episodes, has been identified as lasting from either the 2007 film The Simpsons Movie or the 20th season in 2008–2009 through to at least the 24th season in 2012–2013. The relevance of discussions about the quality of the show is debated.
History
The Simpsons golden era Critics' reviews of early Simpsons episodes praised the show for its wit, realism, and intelligence. A writer for Indiewire said that throughout The Simpsons golden era, it was "a show largely seen as one of the freshest, insightful and widely accessible pop culture achievement". Jim Schembri of The Sydney Morning Herald called the show "a cultural touchstone for at least two—possibly three—generations of couch potatoes". During the show's first season, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly said, in response to a Fox press release saying the show "represent the American family at its wildest!", that "The Simpsons are the American family at its most complicated, drawn as simple cartoons. It's this neat paradox that makes millions of people turn away from the three big networks on Sunday nights to concentrate on The Simpsons".
During the show's fourth season, he said "in its constant acknowledgment of history, current events, and forms of art and entertainment other than television, The Simpsons is probably the most realistically surreal cartoon series ever; the show is always striving not only to be funnier but also tighter, more precise in its sarcasm, and (in its own brusquely unsentimental way) more moving." During the show's eighth season, he said "There is a constant sense of surprise — a wily exuberance — about [the show] that still hasn't abated after eight seasons: This is one of the sharpest, most purely pleasurable television series ever. What began [as filler sketches] has become one of [animation's] most dependable entertainments, a cartoon that transcended cartoonishness a long time ago. In the world of The Simpsons, everyone has a purpose; everything exists to make a point. In that sense, this cartoon is the most humanistic show on television.
Darren Franich of PopWatch explains that "The 90s-era Simpsons weren't funny because of the references — they were funny because the writing was snappy, the characters were realized, and the individual episode plots were structured so well. There was wordplay, and farce, and topical satire. (There was also just outright silliness — see Sideshow Bob getting hit by all those rakes.) The references were the icing, not the cake." Matt Zoller Seitz of Vulture says, "Together with Seinfeld and It's Garry Shandling's Show, The Simpsons refined a new TV template, the meta-sitcom — a half-hour comedy spiked with satire, pop-culture references, and postmodern riffs worthy of Ernie Kovacs and Monty Python."
Simpsons writer and producer Conan O'Brien commented on the quality of the writing during the show's golden era: John Swartzwelder, who wrote for the show until 2003, expressed a similar sentiment:
Author L.B. Gale explained five ways The Simpsons utilised language for both humour and philosophical musings during the "golden years of the show (pretty much the entire 90s run)": advertising comedy, interrogating language, highfalutin vocabulary usage, neologisms, and random moments of stream of consciousness.
End of the golden era
There are many definitions over when the "golden era" of The Simpsons actually ended. This is seen as "the trap that ensnares every discussion of The Simpsons, where ostensible fans end up debating when the show 'started to suck. The end of the golden era (a noticeable decline in quality) is not the same as when the show stopped being enjoyable to watch. The general consensus is that by season 10 or 11, The Simpsons had definitely started to "suffer", "lose its mojo and become less consistent from week-to-week". Some critics point to season 7, as the point at which a noticeable decline in quality is observed, while others name season 9,Turner, pp. 41–42 season 10, and still others say The Simpsons golden era lasted from season 1 to season 10. Others exclude season 1 or both season 1 and season 2, as they argue The Simpsons had not yet found its unique style and was therefore a mixed bag. Vulture described the first two seasons as "wobbly overall, and surprisingly slow and quiet compared to most other seasons", and "practically King of the Hill compared with later seasons" respectively.
Viewpoints during the golden era episodes' original run were generally harsher and identified a dip in quality much earlier that what contemporary critics assign. Of season 9's "The Principal and the Pauper", The A.V. Club said, "For years, The Simpsons had enjoyed an enviable hit-to-miss ratio [but the episode] heralded an era of more misses and established a precedent for dramatically changing characters' storylines". Vulture.com said, "most viewers consider [the first 14 seasons of The Simpsons] the essential canon". In its ranking of these seasons, it listed 11–14 as the worst and 3–8 as the best. Its reviews for seasons 11–14 included: "heavy on very broad sight gags and light on memorable character bits", "pretty hit-and-miss...growing increasingly shameless, doing anything for a laugh", "the show's eventual descent into random weirdness isn't quite complete, but it's getting there", and "[it] produc[ed] one good to great episode for every couple of so-so ones". WhatCulture said "for some [the decline in quality] is from season 17 onwards".
The Simpsons "greatest episode" lists by both fans and staff always tend to heavily favor the earlier seasons, often having little to no post-golden-era episodes listed at all. The latest season to be represented is usually seven, eight, nine, ten, or eleven. In an 11 Best Simpsons Episodes of the 2000s list, the author notes, "pretty much every single episode that's in the discussion for 'Best Simpsons Ever' happened last decade". He added that "The list is...VERY early-2000s heavy... the most recent episode is one from 2006 and most come from 2000-2003". The Guardian article The Simpsons at 500: your top 10 episodes found it "interesting" and "surprising" that their list based on an opinion poll from their readership resulted in episodes from the first decade, and "only a handful [of the votes] given to...21st century [episodes]". When compiling a list, ranking the 11 Simpsons Christmas episodes from worst to best, author Sam Greenspan pointed out, "YES, I notice too that these basically go from newest episodes to oldest episodes. Just kinda happened that way". When ranking the first 20 seasons of The Simpsons, Chris Morgan of Splitsider filled the top ten slots with the first ten seasons (though not in chronological order).
David Bennun of The Guardian wrote, "The running joke about how [the show is] not as good as it used to be [is] true...The show has now been substandard for nearly as long as it was impossibly great" (approximately 10 years). He added that this sentiment is mirrored in complaints by Simpsons fans. Todd Leopold of CNN, in a 2009 article looking at its perceived decline, stated "for many fans the glory days are long past."
In an article entitled In Search of The Last Classic Simpsons Episode, author Brandon said season 10's "Homer to the Max" and "They Saved Lisa's Brain", season 12's "Trilogy of Error", season 13's "I Am Furious (Yellow)", and season 14's "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation" were contenders for the latest episode that made him feel like he was "watching The Simpsons in their heyday".
The Simpsons vs. "Zombie Simpsons"
Golden-era Simpsons and post-golden-era Simpsons are sometimes counted as two different series. This is because many believe that the two series are nominally the same program, but significantly distinct qualitatively. David Bennun of The Guardian was relieved after watching the show's opening sequence that debuted in 2009, as it was "a long overdue acknowledgment that The Simpsons is not the show it was". He argues that despite the characters and setting remaining the same, "the decline in quality [is] painfully evident".
In consequence, the term "Zombie Simpsons" has been used by some fans of the show and media commentators alike to refer to the latter period, regarded as mediocre, meandering and has-been. Two other similar terms, "Jerkass Homer" and "Flanderization" (coined by fan-run online encyclopedia TV Tropes), have also appeared to refer to the perceived aggravation of Homer Simpson and Ned Flanders' respective characters, the first one from a well-meant but flawed and bumbling working class family man to an "invincible and totally self confident [...] evil doppelganger of the Homer that had originally been on the show", and the second one from a friendly and good-hearted religious next-door neighbor which heavily contrasted with Homer's antics and incompetence to the one of a stereotypical, dogmatic, evangelical "bible-thumping" prude.
While Entertainment Weekly gave The Simpsons a rating of "A−" in 1990, an "A" in 1993 and an "A+" in 1997 (and also gave various golden era season DVDs "A"s including the first, second, and eighth), as of 2012, EW has given The Simpsons as a whole a rating of "B−". WhatCulture says, "They may never return to their past glory, but Matt Groening can end The Simpsons and still leave them with dignity...and with an IMDB rating higher than 8."
Silver or bronze era While accepting that the show either plateaued or declined in quality for about a decade, many critics such as ScreenJunkies argue that "The Simpsons are still on the creative upswing sinc[e] The Simpsons Movie". Others argue that the improvement happened after the show's move to HD in 2009. According to IMDb ratings, season 23 saw a spike in quality after a relative slump at around 7.0 since season 13. During season 23, James Poniewozik of Time described the latest few seasons of The Simpsons as the show's "Silver – or Bronze – Era", saying "it's become more family-focused again, and is still capable of world-class episodes like the recent 'Holidays of Future Passed'. The Simpsons movie too, if you count that, stands up with most of the show's first-decade greatness".