When did "The Simpsons" lose it?

It was still good for awhile after the "Who Shot Mr. Burns" storyline... May have had a couple of seasons after that that were decent.

I think you could pinpoint the show as "jumping the shark" with the episode where it was revealed Skinner wasn't who we thought he was, but the show was already getting weaker by then. In retrospect the first season is pretty shitty, but it still had a lot of heart, something the show completely lacks now.

I've had this conversation many times with different people and to me it's hard to pinpoint a definitive episode or season where it went bad. In fact I've grown really tired of the concept of jumping the shark, because everyone is always looking for that point and forgetting that there can be ups and downs and comebacks from creative lulls. I've stopped watching the show but even now when I catch a new(er) episode there are occasional glimmers of greatness. So for me there wasn't a clear turning point so much as a subtle, gradual decline to where the mediocrity outweighed those glimmers. If I'm forced to narrow it down, I use this as an indicator: season 12 is where I stopped buying the DVDs, which is more generous than a lot of hardcore fans I know. But I'm pretty sure even after that there were episodes I loved, that's just where the ratio of good to meh was such that it wasn't worth shelling out for the season sets anymore.

When!?

When I stopped watching!!!  Heheheh.

I guess the closest to a shark-jumping moment for me was the episode where they go to Africa, which for whatever reason was the first episode of the show I strongly disliked - even the Armond Tanzarian episode is pretty entertaining and well done, it's just that the premise is a misstep. But even that wasn't like "I'm done with this show, it's shit now," I kept watching and enjoying (parts of) it for at least another season or two after that. My interest just dwindled, it stopped being appointment viewing, and eventually I stopped watching altogether. If the show could be said to be flat out shitty now, which is entirely possible, it happened sometime after I stopped watching.

For me, Season 11's "Saddlesore Galactica" was the first harbinger of doom. Season 12 had some bright spots,"The Prisoner" ep, etc, but by the end of the season they'd begun to reuse gags from previous episodes, which was startling for a show of such consistant originality. By 2001, the show was done.

I gotta disagree that the current season is it's worse. It ain't. In fact, it's better than it has been in YEARS. How can I tell? Because for the first time, since at least 2003, I've actually been able to make it through an episode without it feeling like an endurance test.

Oh yeah, Saddlesore Galactica was not a good sign, although it's another questionable episode that still has a lot of stuff in it that I like. In fact I might go so far as to say it would be a good episode if not for the magical munchkin thing. Even if they'd kept the idea of the jockeys threatening Homer it could have been fine, but making them elves or whatever crossed some difficult to define but important line.

That's a perfect and kind of tragic analogy. I completely agree.

For me, there was never a "oh shit" moment when I realized it was a shadow of its former self. I just remember starting to think that all the characters were becoming larger than life and that Homer had especially become too stupid, too silly and the whole series just felt too...big if that makes any sense. I'd say it was around season 11 or 12 that I actually noticed the quality had really gone down but that's a rough estimate.

Still, those few seasons when that had it...brilliant. I don't think any TV comedy has passed that. I still respect the show like I would an athlete or cherished band who just isn't hitting 'em like they used to.

I think I get what you're saying about the bigness. I'd describe it like this: one of the defining elements of the show's decline is that they started getting too careless with the zaniness and crazy ideas. I believe the Bill Oakley/Josh Weinstein seasons are divisive amongst fans, partly because of the experimentation they did, but even then you get the sense that it was carefully thought out and was still grounded in good character and storytelling. They earned it, or tried to. But after that the craziness started to feel rote and hollow. On the DVD commentaries the phrase "rubber band reality" comes up a lot, and in the first 8-10 seasons it's a big part of what makes the show great, but they started to stretch it a little too far. That's why I say the line is difficult to define, though. Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and Dave Mirkin did some really crazy stuff in their years as showrunners, which are widely considered some of the best of the show. Why am I okay with, say, Sherry Bobbins, but not the murderous magical jockeys? Maybe it goes back to that sense of the thought and care being put into it, which is a subjective perception thing rather than a clear distinction.

Good point. Thinking back to 1989's Christmas Special through Season 2, you can see the show had it's feet planted pretty firmly in reality.

The first two seasons are very grounded in reality. Al Jean and Mike Reiss became showrunners for season three, and they brought in a lot more absurdity. Maybe what makes it work is that the most absurd elements are usually just jokes and quick asides, not whole acts/premises, and it comes back to something that's grounded in some reality (at least an emotional one). Thus rubber band reality. One of the most beloved episodes is Mr. Plow, which is mostly grounded, but the climax involves God intervening to melt the snow and magically make it spring. That's arguably just as ridiculous as Jockeys being murderous elven creatures, but somehow one is fine and the other is a sign of the shows decline. And there are classic episodes that hinge on absurd premises; Who Shot Mr. Burns has the giant mechanical sun blocking device, and You Only Move Twice is Homer working for a Bond villain. It ends with Scorpio taking over the east coast. That's why I think the care put into it is so important. At this point the show has become a well-oiled machine, going through the motions.

Sorry for these long ruminative posts, this thread happened to come in the midst of an epic marathon rewatch of the early seasons.

I don't think the decline was as gradual as people are saying. There was the Frank Grimes/Armin Tamzarian season, which was the last good one, and then the dropoff was pretty sharp after that.

Also, we already had a thread for this.

http://www.chud.com/community/forum/thread/112480/the-simpsons-when-did-they-lose-it