Cite great moments in Simpsons episodes that occur after (or concurrent with) your claim of when the series started sucking irredeemably, thereby invalidating your claim.

Here's mine:
Homer goes to space? Astronaut guest star voices? Referencing "Home Improvement" as an example of boob humor, but milking it for the same cheap laughs? This surely marks the end of an era!
But this is also the episode with Homer's amazing rambling "I never got to meet Mr. T at the mall" phone call.

I was wrong!

there was that one episode a year or two ago with a main plot that sucked but had a great side plot where bart and lisa built a box fort that was attacked by UPS dudes.

There's a relatively recent ep way after the decline in which Bart is trying to talk Krusty into doing something or other and says "The Krusty I know didn't get where he is today by giving up!". To which Krusty replies, "No, he got where he is today by naming names in the 50s." A joke which doesn't talk down to the viewer, makes a smart reference, reveals something about Krusty's character and is presented in a deftly throw-away manner. You know, the kind of stuff the Simpsons used to do all the time. Not stellar, but it stood way above every other gag in the episode in question.

BTW, Homer in Space was aired almost exactly around the time I started watching the Simpsons regularly (when my family first got cable), so is a golden age ep for me. My teenaged cousins think new Simpsons is better than old, so maybe it's an age thing? I think there's been a genuine huge drop in quality, but perhaps that's because I think that the episodes that were coming out when I first got into is how the show should be. Or maybe my cousins are just wrong.

Oh hey there was a recent one where Lisa goes "Let's make banana bread! whoopee!" and she squeezes/pinches off a gloopy brown banana mass into a bowl. That was excellent.

don't know what season this is from but it's as funny as any classic Simpsons scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bt4Ly9_9Qg

That clip's almost 20 years old!

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Key

I thought I remembered the Bronson, Missouri scene being in one of the season 2-8 episodes, I thought I remembered this scene being from one of the season 2-8 episodes, which makes me wonder if there are other gags I'm misremembering as coming earlier than they did because they were good. That episode is also the one the 'old man yells at cloud' picture is from, so that's at least two hits

One of my faves, the Buck McCoy ep w/Dennis Weaver aired the previous week.

mentioned this in another thread but a classic line

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIEWgwRrY9s

so Season 13's the one that's actually still pretty good? I've only seen a handful of episodes post-S9

10-12 are watchable, 13 is where it goes completely off the rails

I think "The Dad Who Knew Too Little" was a surprisingly good episode in s14

oh and that Robot Wars one in s15

s16 does have Thomas Pynchon too

The Dad Who... has one of my favorite Homer lines: "Who's your favorite Travelling Wibury? Is it Jeff Lynne?" The delivery on Jeff Lynne makes it.

Yeah, that's a solid episode all around.

"Lisa's pet peeve is phonies?! I thought she loved them!"

The last line I remember killing me from when the show was clearly starting to circle the drain was Marge's response to Homer recollecting the artificial kidney he invented. Something about it just being a beer can with a whistle glued to it.

10-12 are watchable, 13 is where it goes completely off the rails

― my Least Favorite Writer (Whiney G. Weingarten)

this sounds about right to me, as late as S12's "Lisa The Tree Hugger" I was def still catching it occasionally

"this isn't the monsterometor, it's the frog-exaggerator!"

is the first post really saying the “homer in space” episode was the beginning of the decline? i don’t get that at all.

ok I finally watched a S13 episode (the one where Homer gets his jaw wired shut) and what struck me is how much it feels like Family Guy. there's no rhythm to it, you keep forgetting what the plot is, it's weirdly vulgar at times (one of the lines was "oh no, I can't get a boner!"??). it starts with a gay pride parade and ends at a demolition derby and I can't really remember what any of it had to do with anything. its like listening to my 4 year old make up a bedtime story..."this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened!!"

the part that stuck with me is a joke where they're in a movie theater and they have "unscramble the name" game on screen - the name is "MOT HANKS" and the joke is that the answer is "Otm Shank", an actor that only Apu knows. but before that Lisa says "oh these are so easy, it's OBVIOUSLY Tom Hanks", not only explaining the joke but also ruining it before it happens. part of why classic Simpsons was so good was because they never did shit like that!

yeah, otm re: explaining all the jokes. I hold this up as an example, from this Season 18 episode.

It's a good joke, it's a dirty joke, it's a good dirty joke.

But then there's an extra beat literally explaining it and it's like, fuck off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q34Qxl5HINg

is the first post really saying the “homer in space” episode was the beginning of the decline? i don’t get that at all.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, August 17, 2021 6:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

IIRC from the Simpsons oral history, several writers on the show felt that it started to drop off after season 2. I guess it depends on what sort of show you want/expect it to be.

season 19: https://static.simpsonswiki.com/images/thumb/3/31/Watchmen_Babies_in_V_for_Vacation.png/800px-Watchmen_Babies_in_V_for_Vacation.png

the signposting of jokes/explaining of punchlines is soo otm, something that i felt intuitively for a long time but had never actually put my finger on. see also: people asking homer straightman setup questions. "why on earth would you want to do THAT, homer?"

yeah that’s true. there used to be so many subtle jokes that just flew by without calling attention to themselves, and it was one of the best things about the show. i think the first time i noticed the “ruining the joke by spelling it out” thing was when lisa goes “look, there’s the cane from citizen kane! (pause) hey…wait a minute…there was no cane in citizen kane!”

One of my favorites in that vein, with no explanation:

"Homer, you liked that movie Rashoman..."
"Hmmm, that's not that way I remember it..."

you keep forgetting what the plot is

Not sure what season they started doing those three disjointed acts that barely hang together, if at all. Season 13 has a couple I rep for:

The Frying Game: Homer build a koi pond for Marge, kills the Screamapillar, gets sentenced to community service, which becomes a murder mystery and ends up a reality TV show.

Homer the Moe: After Homer tells a shaggy dog story about Bart digging a hole in the back yard, Moe decides he is bored and goes back to college, where he is inspired to remodel his bar into the trendy "M", whereupon Homer opens a bar in his garage and REM play.

But yeah "this happened, and then that happened" OTM.

When they did this well I found it a feature, not a bug.

Def happened early on that the inciting incident had nothing to do with where the episode ended up, I remember talking about that with friends at school & that would have been like season 7 - it works fine if it flows

frogbs otm about the signposting and particularly the RHYTHM which (aside from the jokes/plots just going down the crapper) is the thing that immediately stands out in zombie simpsons, the timing is so off all the time it’s so striking!

The Frying Game: Homer build a koi pond for Marge, kills the Screamapillar, gets sentenced to community service, which becomes a murder mystery and ends up a reality TV show.

Oof, this was one of the episodes that made me finally stop watching! The whole screamapillar concept was, why

The OC parody is hilarious and we quote "gonna get my fluke on - log style!" all the time but it's too late to be considered peak Simpsons

When they did this well I found it a feature, not a bug.

true, I think this can work, but there's something to be said about having a coherent plot, which I think ties into why the lines from Seasons 2-8 are quoted 100x more than anything after. I was a teenager when those Family Guy DVDs came out and my friends and I watched them endlessly. but when I actually think back, I can barely remember a single plot from the show. I vaguely remember certain jokes but there's no way to tell which episode they're from since 80% of the jokes in that show have nothing to do with the actual plot. contrast to say The Critic which I haven't really watched since it was actually on TV but I still remember quite well. I feel like I could quote way more from that show and I don't think I've watched a full episode since I was 11.

grimes episode should have been the end

s14 has the episode where Lisa competes in the Spelling Bee while Homer follows the Ribwich on tour, that's a pretty good one

^^that episode sticks out in my mind as the moment where i truly jumped off the simpsons ship. not that it was a particularly bad episode or anything but i remember watching it and being like "....ok, i think i'm done here"

"I'm a Spalding Gray in a Rick Dees world!" -S12E9

This was S15:

https://frinkiac.com/video/S15E18/_FLSxp7HksdP44_qI-tQSot5Goc=.gif

HENRY JAGLOM

this ep also gave us Lisa's withering dismissal of Love Story.

Good but reminded me of what dicks they were to Spike Lee, so therefore not good.

Lionel Richie singing "Say You Say Me" except all the words are "beer."