So I've seen plenty of threads on *when* The Simpsons went wrong, but can we have a thread about *why* it went wrong?

So I've seen plenty of threads on *when* The Simpsons went wrong, but can we have a thread about *why* it went wrong?

What caused the show to go off the rails, Sup Forums?

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Its just gone on too long.

everything has been done before
they lowered the salary for the writers

Yeah, that's the only problem...

normies want quantity over quality

The celebrity cameos became too much about the Simpsons and Springfield fawning over the celebrity. The Lady Gaga episode was really terrible with this compared with earlier episodes where a celebrity stopped by. They also became more common, longer, and the celebrities now just play themselves and are just hanging around Springfield randomly. Dustin Hoffman was one of the first celebs to do the show, but is credited under the name "Sam Ettic".

Replacing a highly talented staff of veteran writers with a revolving-door of SJW writers fresh out of California college.

It'll last until the 30th anniversary at least

Jesus fuck dude, make one post.

But thats the point.
It shouldn't last that long.
The format has been played out to the point that even the show admits it repeats old ideas.
And even if you play the "Le self aware" meme it doesn't alter the fact that the ideas are being repeated.

* The show was conceived almost as an affront to the current popular sitcoms. They zigged and the simpsons zagged

* Sam Simon left the show. He only worked on it its first 4 years but he left a slowly fading footprint on the show

* Eventually became the current popular sitcom

* Brad Bird left the show after season 8

* George Meyer left the show in 2004
the simpsons became what it was rallying against. A popular sitcom. Once a show becomes popular it tends to avoid risks, new ideas and anything that might in any way damage the show's popularity.

Once you lose too much talent your show will suffer. New talent is forced to attempt to imitate old talent because thats what was popular. You end up with weird and unfunny interpretations of the material.

Bottom line is time

Before scripts went through numerous rewrites and everyone was there to read and re read

Not it seems the Sp approach, get it done as quickly and cheaply as possible

Mostly this, along with other crew jumping off to The Critic and Futurama, with Mike Scully taking over and chancing the formula in order to make it an easier to pump out assembly line production rather than a taxing passion project.

I forgot to add the wave of Simpsons imitators basically ruined the Simpsons as well.

You're a writer, you can go work on an ancient behemoth show where you're bound and tethered and generally hampered by 20+ years of writing and ideas, and you'll be one minor cog in the show's machine or you can go work on one of any number of new animated sitcoms that come out every year.

It goes back to the show being popular and replacing talent

The golden age writers left.

The show recovered.

The silver age writers left.

The show did not recover.

Shit writers. Shit show runners. Guest stars were no longer there to fulfill a role, only shilling themselves.

By the end of the silver age there were serious options for a writer to go work on another animated program

Bad writers and gone on too long. Also trying to write episodes for current events.

>Sam Simon

>Brad Bird

>George meyer

am I supposed to know who those people are or why they were important to the show's quality?

the last season (27) and the current season (so far) have been surprisingly decent with a couple of really strong episodes

Test audiences. 20+ writers causing writing rooms to be crowded and conflicting. PC pandering which makes fucking cartoon network shows to be edgier. And last of all, the showrunner.

>"the objective for halloween shows is to be as violent and bloody as possible"
- David Mirkin, showrunner season 5, 6, 8 and 9

Brad Bird was the storyboard producer/director who went on to do the Incredibles and Ratatouille.

Sam Simon worked on sitcoms like Cheers and Taxi.

George Myer was one of the original head writers.

It had already turned sour by the time but I do think the creation of Family Guy had an affect on the show. The writers had a direct competition and then felt they had to compete with Family Guys crass, random and over the top humour (they even reference family guy on the PBS episode aired in 2000)

Sam Simon was pretty much the Carl Barks of The Simpsons. While he didn't come up with the initial premise, he expanded on it and fleshed it out in such a way that you can seriously argue that the franchise was more his baby than Matt Groening's, even though he only worked four years on it.

Brad Bird was a key player in developing the series from the Tracey Ullman shorts to a show of its own, and stayed on as a consultant for the first eight years. I think his career speaks for itself, he's a bright dude that rarely makes a miss step.

And Meyer was Simon's main man during the early years where creative development was key in establishing the series.

Why not try looking them up instead of being a snarky little bitch

this is actually true, I recently rewatched the show (in order) and noticed that by the time the 2000s rolled around it started getting more violent and over the top. noticeable in particular in "lol randum", cartoonish injuries to the main characters, especially Homer, often featuring actual blood (which they had previously abstained from outside of ToH episodes)

Only episode I've really liked (among hundreds) past the HD "upgrade" was the non-Treehouse of Horrors episode "Halloween of Horror" which came out last season.
Other than that, it's mostly been forgettable crap which I don't really bother with anymore.

Sad.
youtube.com/watch?v=w--VcX3n_7w
So sad....

Kill yourself nu-male

This. That episode was great. Everything else has been the same old new Simpsons crap. Did you see this season's Treehouse of Horror? What an incoherent mess that was.

My god. This is so incredibly unfunny and lame.

Its like watching paint dry

deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/

WTF happened to wiggums voice actor.

It was a parody of basic family sitcoms. It was fresh and exciting and funny because a dysfunctional family was almost unheard of on TV

Then dysfunctional families became the norm, and the Simpsons became the establishment.

>SJW writers fresh out of California college
This isn't true since the vast majority of Simpsons writers are from the same generation as the original team, and several were on the show in the late '90s (after its prime but before it got as bad as today) and are still on it. But it makes for an easy explanation since it'd seem to explain everything.

I think it was a slippery slope thing brought on by a bunch of different factors. Not gonna try to trace an exact pattern but feels like

>Show stops trying to be particularly dramatic and just goes for more of a standard sitcom feel, but still stands out because of strong characters, smart writing, humor etc.
>Show gets way wackier in addition to moving away from drama/emotion, but still has all of the above good qualities to balance that out
>Show gets more self-aware/meta and goes for high concept shit, characters' personalities get more distorted than before just as a result of being around for so long, show occasionally verges into "haha fuck the fanbase" at times-- but still has effort put into it and, from the writers' perspectives, might have seemed like it deserved to comment on fans because of how much they criticized the show even at its best. Basically a "fans don't know quality, so who gives a shit what they think" attitude has developed even the show is already in slight decline
>Characters get further away from their established personalities, humor gets more dumbed-down (lol homer's in pain), show gets wackier, and so on, but even though it's now obviously far from its best years it is still reasonably entertaining
>Same, except it's not entertaining anymore because all good qualities have deteriorated except the "legacy" of its best years

These stages can pretty much be linked to the different showrunning tenures, but I don't think you can really claim any one person ruined the show because it seems the road to its decline started by, like Season 4. Just took a while to show.

>Homer went from a lovable, well-meaning oaf to a selfish, bumbling moron

>Marge went from the voice of reason and caring mother to a nagging TV wife

>Lisa turned into an annoying SJW who states her opinions as facts and shoves them down everyone's throat

>Bart went from that kid you forgive because at the end of the day, he has a conscience (see: Bart vs. Thanksgiving) to a reprehensible little shit

There were some episodes in the first few seasons that were really touching and showed that Homer cared about his family but now it's as if the writers think a big "fuck you, Homer doesn't care" is a punchline.

He got old.

>everything has been done before

I never thought The Simpsons would have finally become a vitcim of
>SIMPSONS DID IT

TV-shows just unavoidably decline, they can't stick to Simpsons kind of concepts and jokes while still keeping it new and with the times, it either feels stale or not at all like the show you once loved and this is unavoidable when you watch the same fucking cartoon characters for 20 years.

I don't watch the new simpsons much but casually watched this scene before and liked it