The Suckiest Bunch of Sucks That Ever Sucked

Over the past week I have been watching the 10th season of the Simpsons, which just came out on DVD. Now, like any good nerd I’ve listened to most of the commentary tracks for this season. Having listened to the various writers, directors and guest stars talk about the show I figured out the reason why the Simpsons started sucking 6 or 7 years back. Well, two reasons actually.

First of all, when a show has been on the air for so long, it’s hard to come up with new ideas to keep the characters funny. There are only so many times Homer and Bart can grift the town out of their money or lose all of the family’s life saving in a get-rich quick scheme. Also, Lisa can only annoy us so many times with her constant moralizing and calls for tolerance of her stupid stances while at the same time not tolerating any one else’s views. The show actually tackled this issue in a hilarious episode featuring the memorable new characters Poochie and Roy. However, this episode aired in season 8 and the Simpsons are currently in their 19th season.

In addition to the show just being old, the current group of writers grew up watching the Simpsons. I think this is an important, if overlooked reason why the show isn't funny anymore. The problem with having writers that grew up watching the show is that their main source of comedy comes from the very show they were writing for. The earlier writers had several sources of comedy to draw from while the new writers mainly had the Simpsons. The show has had such an impact on pop culture that most comedy today draws from the Simpsons. Even if they looked for other sources of comedy, those sources have been, for better or worse, influenced directly or indirectly by the Simpsons. The result of this is that the newer episodes seem to only be copy of a Simpsons episode and not a real episode.

Footnote: I recently saw the movie and the screenplay was written by the original writers. It was surprisingly good and I think the writers had something to do with it.