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Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

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Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#51

Post by Bartweiss »

netsharc wrote: post #27
patorjk wrote: post #16

One possible problem with this - I listened to the Simpsons commentary tracks a long time ago and one comment the writers gave was that episodes were hashed out in the writers room, and everyone contributed jokes. Once an episode was hashed out, one or two people would then be assigned to put it together. This would mean an episode could be listed as written by a specific person, but the best jokes in that episode co…

Futurama got cancelled and they made 3 straight to DVD movies which was supposed to be 26 episodes worth of content, and IIRC you could see it, each "movie" had 4 stories. The bad thing was, the humor got so so bad, with predictable lame one liners (Big Bang Theory-level lame). I wonder what sort of groupthink thought those jokes were funny, and what sort of dynamics the early Simpsons/Futurama writers group had to b…

I wonder how much of that was a format issue, though?

The Futurama movies were definitely weaker than the episodes, but I remember the Comedy Central revival being better than most or all of the movies. Maybe not up to their Season Four heights, but definitely enough better to make me think the movie style was causing them problems in either writing or editing.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#52

Post by gutnor »

Retric wrote: post #18
PacifyFish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As crazy as this feels to say, ordering a dvd and figuring out a way to consume it in this day and age is a huge ask! I haven’t had a DVD player in my house for about 6 years now & no CD-ROM drive in my laptop. And, again I can hardly believe I’m saying this, it would be such a hassle to physically insert the disk when I felt like watching! It’s got to be on HBO/Netflix/Hulu/Amazon or available on demand from my tv p…

If the show is not worth inserting a DVD then it's probably not worth watching IMO. PS: External DVD drives are ~25$.

That's not the whole effort involved though.

You first need to either remember, or somehow get hints somewhere that the content exists.

Then you need to search it, in this case, first on all the streaming option.

Then you need to find it on a physical media, which means delivery. Each season of the Simpson is worth 1 to 2 months of Netflix. Watching all the episode is going to cost you the equivalent of 2 years of streaming across all the platforms you use.

Then you still need to go to the trouble of using the physical container. Which is not guaranteed to work even if you have the hardware. DVD DRM have not become more tolerant over the years and if you have older hardware you may not be able to use it at all.

This is some non negligible commitment, you really have to want to watch the Simpson or need a serious shortcut in some of those steps (eg: finding a pile of Simpsons DVD at goodwill). There is just too much competition for people time.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#54

Post by nathcun »

patorjk wrote: post #16

One possible problem with this - I listened to the Simpsons commentary tracks a long time ago and one comment the writers gave was that episodes were hashed out in the writers room, and everyone contributed jokes. Once an episode was hashed out, one or two people would then be assigned to put it together. This would mean an episode could be listed as written by a specific person, but the best jokes in that episode co…

You're right, I kind of acknowledge this limitation, and am aware I'm doing many of the writers a massive disservice. But, the data that only showed credited writers, and those credited must have done _something_ to be the ones with their names on it.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#55

Post by nervousvarun »

jplayer01 wrote: post #13
duxup wrote: post #8

Whenever we talk about Simpsons decline it always occurs to me that even in decline... the Simpsons is still pretty good. Perhaps that says more about its high points than the "decline".

I think the decline is largely bullshit nostalgia. I still watch Simpsons and I still think it's great.

Interesting it's possible, but there are explanations out there that aren't based on nostalgia but actually joke complexity among other things: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#56

Post by monochromatic »

w-m wrote: post #9

Later episodes are rated lower, thus writers who mainly wrote later episodes have contributed to episodes with lower rating. This seems like circular reasoning, and doesn't say anything about an individual writers' contribution to the quality of the show.

I don't see how that's circular reasoning. The writers who worked on bad episodes presumably had something to do with making them bad.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#57

Post by nathcun »

drchiu wrote: post #34

Purely anecdotal, but as a Simpsons fans many years ago (and not really following the show anymore), I think there are many of us who grew up with the Simpsons who simply don't have the time (as we've gotten older and have other chores and priorities to take care of first) to follow the show anymore.

I still watch the old episodes on an almost daily basis, so I don't know if that's true for everyone.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#58

Post by probably_wrong »

s_kilk wrote: post #29

My theory is that the show started to decline after about eight or nine years on the air, which is just about enough time for young fans to grow up, go to college, start their career in writing, and then end up on the Simpsons team. The last person you want writing on a show like that is a life-long super-fan.

I cannot say whether your theory is correct or not, but your theory resonates with something director Hayao Miyazaki said[1]: that the Japanese animation industry is suffering because the staff of a modern studio is full of people who grew up watching anime rather than looking at real people.

[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131872-Hayao-Miya...

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#59

Post by lordnacho »

saganus wrote: post #2

There's a very interesting YouTube video that has a bit more of an explanation on why The Simpsons had a decline. I liked how they analyze the show and IMO it does a great job explaining why lots of people loved the show up until season 9-10. Personally I think I enjoyed up to season 12 or so, but definitely after 10 I noticed the shift in style/quality/whathaveyou. Could never put it into words why it felt like that…

Just watched this, thanks. My summary:

1) Staff turnover roughly around season 8 caused the writing to change. Jokes got simpler, not as much about the characters' invariants (for lack of a better term).

2) The show was originally successful because it parodied the sitcom era of the mid 1980s. That changed so the context disappeared.

Re: Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

#60

Post by [deleted] »

drb91 wrote: post #14
cabaalis wrote: post #4

How much of this is not attributable to quality but instead to streaming options? I watched The Simpsons for most of my childhood, up until college when I was too busy working and studying--most of my TV time then went to Stargate SG-1 and other Sci-fi. Futurama and Family Guy were in the mix as well up until that time. However, I HAVE still watched Futurama and Family Guy in adulthood, because they were available to…

I would not. The Simpsons seem inherently antiquated now. (To me! This is an opinion, not an assertion!) It’s hard to put my finger on why I feel like this, but I think a large part is that it only recognizes the stresses and anxieties we had leaving the reagan era. This is not to say, by any means, that the humor doesn’t hold up. It does! But it doesn’t help soothe living in a capitalist-realist society the way, say…

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