I agree with the graphic.
However, I recently completed a straight watch-thru of every Simpsons episode, and while watching the lackluster episodes from seasons 20-30, I have to acknowledge one thing:
Quality of the show and its writing have noticeably improved since around Season 32.
The most recent episodes feel more centered on the family and much less on bizarre cameos and really outrageous situations. It actually feels like a show about the Simpson family and treats the characters more age-appropriately.
I don’t like that they lost/recast established voices of minority characters (Apu, Carl, Dr. Hibbert, etc), I do think the quality and the focus of the show is much better than it has been in almost 2-decades.
Dude, that’s over 700 episodes, most of which suck ass. Why would you do that to yourself?
I distributed the watch over a long period of time—I only ever watched episodes while on a lunch break at work. It was an effective way of unplugging and just watching something “familiar”. I would typically bang out (up to) 2-episodes/day, 5-days a week over the course of about 2-years.
I just checked, and I have not watched the most recent episode, but I’m sure I will while on lunch sometime next week.
I would argue that majority are not as bad as you imply, though some are a tough watch—like the pointless travel shows, I recall Denmark and Canada as being a difficult watch.
I have to agree, the recent seasons feel like they have a cohesive story and often even pull away from the 3 piece storyy telling they were doing between seasons 20-30.
I wonder if there was a new writer brought on from s32 onward who’s responsible for the uptick.
The first two sub-6.0 episodes are clip shows.
“Another Simpsons Clip Show” is the third episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 25, 1994. In the episode, Marge reads a romance novel in bed, and it prompts her to have a family meeting, where the Simpson family recall their past loves in form of clips from previous episodes.
“All Singing, All Dancing” is the eleventh episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 4, 1998. In the fourth Simpsons clip show, Homer claims he hates singing, so Marge shows family videos of musical numbers from previous seasons. The episode is in the form of a sung-through musical, featuring spoken dialogue only at the start and end of the episode. The original material was directed by Mark Ervin and written by Steve O’Donnell. It was executive produced by David Mirkin. It features guest appearances from George Harrison, Patrick Stewart and Phil Hartman, although these are all clips and none of them recorded original material for the episode.
Ah saved me looking up what those episodes were.
I skip them on rewatches of the earlier seasons
Yeah, if I did the work (a full minute :)) & someone else can benefit from it too it just means less net work was expended.
Also clip shows should only contain clips that never aired before, or completely new ones (like IASIP).
Yeah I agree they should be like behind the scene gags or something.
I understand they’re more so the entire cast and animators can have a week off etc.
I’m just nitpicking but why are 7.7 and 6.6 arbitrary the thresholds for the colour change? Also, why is one 6.6 red while another two are yellow?
It appears that the colours are not on a fixed scale. The season averages and individual episodes are coloured using different ranges.
It ranges from lowest to highest regardless of the value. Like conditional formatting in Excel does if you don’t specify the scale.
The seasons average ratings range from 6.1-8.4, so it goes red to green in the span of 2.3 points.
The episodes range from 3.9 to 9.3, so it goes red to green in the span of 5.4 points.
The full IMDb ratings range from 1-10. This should have been used as a basis for the colouring instead. The overall average on IMDb is somewhere around 7, so it would be fine to skew the colours so the middle/yellow was at 7, but it should be able to represent any possible ratings.
I agree, almost all episodes still get a passing grade. Using 1-10 as a basis, it would paint an entirely different picture.
I think it’s fair to colour seasons and episodes with different scales because they are measuring different things.
Due to the Central Limit Theorem, average of 20+ episodes will have a smaller standard deviation than individual episodes.
For example, an individual episode with a score of 6 you’ll probably watch. A whole season with a score of 6, maybe not.
Comedy has changed in 31 years. So has humour in general, and so has writing.
The Simpsons is never going to be the same as it was over the seasons because that’s not how culture works. Meanwhile, the reviews are mostly coming from long time viewers who lament that it’s not like it “used to be”.
Shows change. Get over it.
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Do they? Or are they funny TO YOU because you were part of that original audience?
If you put a kid in front of a 30 year old episode are THEY going to think its funny?
Yes they will
The last few seasons had a big jump in plot quality imho, with some exceptional episodes. But also yes, 10 years ago entire seasons felt comparatively bland & empty. I also feel like I would rate early seasons a bit lower today than at the time.
Isn’t it also just because it’s old and people get bored of it? People crave new things, and even if it’s just as good as in the beginning, it’ll get lower ratings because it’s not new anymore.
I remember quite some years ago i was like “i’m finally going to watch southpark”. And people were already complaining about how the latest seasons were worse than the first seasons. Watched a ton of seasons in a short period, and honestly can’t say the later seasons felt any worse than the first ones when you’re not bored of the series yet. Now so many years later when i watch some more southpark, it’s not as fun as when i started watching it since the “it’s new and exciting” feeling is long gone.
Probably some truth to that. Also, when Simpson first came out they were quite unique. Nowadays there is a lot of edgy comic shows around.
A very nice wave seeing the series decline… The only problem with it is it seems a little skewed to have 5.5 in strong red…
I think the idea is that probably around 4.5 it becomes un airable on national tv
Would love to see this mapped to who the primary writers and producers are on each episode. I wonder if there are patterns.
What’s up with that one bad episode in season 6?
Episode called “Another Simpsons Clip Show”
After reading The Bridges of Madison County, Marge decides that she and Homer need to teach the kids about romance. Each of the Simpsons (using clips from previous episodes) reminisce about past romantic encounters, leaving them all depressed and believing that love does not work. However, Homer saves the day by pointing out that one relationship has succeeded, his and Marge’s.
I was a major adult fan in my twenties who worked with people who could finish a Simpsons joke when anyone started a line from the show. I remember coming in and sadly announcing that I thought I didn’t like the show anymore. That was in the oughts. It had been in decline for a while at the time.
I mean, they themselves called it.
Nice graph!
By the way, any reason to share this here rather than !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world, as you did for the Boeing one? Genuinely curious
Ahah, didn’t actually expected anyone to recognize I was the same person as the Boeing graph, time to create a new throwaway account I guess 🤷
I post a lot on Lemmy, mainly content I find on over social networks, and I try to avoid posting on lemmy.world, it’s getting too much activity, and really hurting the decentralized aspect of Lemmy, which imo is its biggest advantage.
I’m not criticizing the mods or admins or lemmy.world, just saying that for the content I post, I try to avoid putting in there
No worries, I’m sure most of people didn’t notice.
Definitely agree on the fact that LW is a too central on Lemmy. If you want to discuss this, we created a community recently on that theme: !fedigrow@lemm.ee. Feel free to join, some discussions might interest you!
Thanks, just joined!
Looking forward to see you there, you indeed post a lot, I’m sure you’ll have interesting insight
31… SEASONS???
So… anyone who hasn’t seen them should just watch the first 8 seasons and call it. I guess.
