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On one hand, I hesitate to write this. The whole "worst episode ever" mentality has been going on for a long time now, and I never really liked it. But yet...I feel compelled to anyway.

As you may or may not know, I'm a bit of a Simpsons freak. Well, at least for the first 10 or 12 seasons. I honestly haven't made much of a point to catch new episodes for a few years now. Yet I enjoy the older reruns when they come on TV, and I've been picking up the box sets as they come out.

Now, part of this could just be because I haven't been following things closely, but it seems to me that recent seasons have just become really "out there". There's more and more crazy stuff going on, and the dynamic of the characters has really changed. Marge in particular seems to kind of go along with whatever Homer says these days, while in earlier seasons she was much more of a voice of reason.

Now, I've noticed in the past that some of the newer episodes grow on me after I've seen them a few times, yet I still find some to just be really wacky. It *seems* like earlier episodes were more cohesive, complete, and fleshed out, whereas newer episodes seem to jump from one unrelated thing to another.

My question is, am I alone here? Out of touch? I mean, even the animation just doesn't seem "right" anymore to me.

Anyone?

Well, they did alter the animation a bit.

Yeah, it's wacky, but I find that it's still funny. Sure, it's "different," but everything is after that long on the air. Is it as brilliant as it was? No, but at the same time, it doesn't have the "Christ, let's get this over with" degradation that Futurama had once they knew they were getting cancelled (some of the later episodes of that show feel *really* depressed).

I agree, the Simpsons has lost it. In fact, I think it's truly a terrible show now, even comparing it to other shows.

The last couple of years, I've read top ten lists that included it, claiming it's still one of the best compared to other shows on TV. Well, I think any critic that says that after this season is full of s***. Even with Al Jean back, it's terrible. I'm a Simpsons addict, so I still force myself to watch every new episode, but if that's it, I can't bear each new episode more than once. At the start of this season, I thought, "okay, the first one sucked, this one isn't bad, maybe it'll alternate back and forth," but no, the rest just sucked. No joke works, they're often too self-conscious parodies, to the point you can picture the writers and talent thinking they're being clever. The only episode I thought was decent was the robot war episode. Not a great episode, but I thought it was pretty solid.

I found it amusing they'd diss George Lucas for the crappy Star Wars movies when the same thing can be said about them, but I think it's too late. This show's the pits. "Bernie Mac," "Everybody Loves Raymond" (which is starting to slip dramatically, but next season is the last), "Arrested Development," "Scrubs," etc., etc., not necessarily classics, you can argue they're overrated, but at this point, they are miles above any current Simpsons episode. It's getting so bad, I wonder how "Yes, Dear" would compare.