Look at ‘em. The Simpsons. The classic American family. 2.5 kids, a dog, a cat, and more dysfunction than they know how to handle. I love the Simpsons. I really do. I think it was one of the most charming and sophisticated animated shows to ever be televised. I think for about 10 years it was America’s best satire of itself, and also it’s most convincing propaganda. Which is what made it so beautiful. It was constantly reinventing ways to entertain its audience. With tons of characters(a whole city's worth, so the fun was never-ending)Sight gags, sign gags, and non sequitur, the show was simply unbeatable. (I’m fairly certain the Simpsons pioneered the use of non sequitur on television, it was just intensified by shows like Family Guy, or Adult Swim.) Irony. Classic film references. Current events. Celebrity roast. Political and social satire. You name it, they had it.The reason I say this is because I've been going through a bit of a bored patch in my life recently...and I've been watching a lot of _Simpsons_ on DVD to fill the time. (I have them all). And I thought back to when the _Simpsons_ went shitty. Now, I know there are some fans out there who would vehemently disagree, but it's the God's honest truth. Anyone who tries to say that _The Simpsons_ is one of the few shows that never "jumped the shark", is an asshole. A stupid asshole who's got a fist so far up the anal cavity, they don't know shit from shinola. They don't know a _damn_ thing. They don't even know what they like anymore. They know they "like _the Simpsons_" so they continue to watch and vegetate to the vacuous humorless romp it has become in recent years. Simply because they're holding on to some pathetic notion that the show will somehow miraculously improve overnight. Well, that ain't gonna happen. The show is at the end of its rope. All the great ideas have been used, every last resource squandered and spread over the course of a handful of fantastic seasons. Bottom line.The dirty truth is _The Simpsons_ has jumped the shark. Yes indeedy. It's hard to pinpoint an exact episode....but, from my calculations it looks to have jumped the shark somewhere between midway through the 10th season, although I'd go as far as saying it started with the very first episode of the 11th. This is when I first started to notice a decline in writing, the waning of character driven, heartfelt plots (less and less episodes ended with a lesson learned or a moral value expressed) and the waxing of stupidity (frequent guest stars, a ten-fold increase in "low brow" humor, asinine new catchphrases, or catchmotions, and hollow caricatures of the characters themselves) Season 11 started with a dull bang as Mel Gibson scored a spot guest starring in the very first episode. Homer joined a biker gang. Apu had eight babies. The idiotic episode where Homer has that fucking glove he hits people with. Oh, and who can forget--Maude Flanders, killed off completely. All of that can be found in the 11th season. Without a single shred of doubt, I can say, with no remorse, that this was exactly when _the Simpsons_ started to turn shitty. At this time, my viewing of new episodes began to significantly slide. I'd miss them repeatedly on Sundays and find myself not caring. Not even..._wanting_ to watch it. ( I was always up for the re-runs of older episodes from 5 to 6...then they changed it to 6 to 7, and from then, to just one episode at 6) And it was ok, I had my re-runs, my books, and my toys, I'd live without it. And I did. I found other shows, as you invariably do, and was happy with my choices. Almost end of story. It still nagged. The question:"How in the hell did one of the greatest shows on television go from pop-culture greatness to a shallow wet grave dug in the bag of a junkyard?"And I don't know that it had to do with the writing. Because, some of the same writers who are still doing episodes to this day, have written previous seasons' episodes, some of which I consider among my favorites.I just think it has to do with....A.) Nothing can last forever. Or....no, I'll say, _nothing gold can stay_. Yea. That works. In one form, something creatively manufactured with active imaginations can only exist with the same amount of quality for so long. That is, before it starts to degrade into a rehashing of previous episodes, methodic dispatching of main characters, or the introduction of new characters and ubiquitous guest stars you just can't escape. (The irony is, most of the things that the show eventually fell victim to, were made light of in the actual show, many seasons before) For _the Simpsons_, that time period was about 10 years, give or take six months. After that, the show had become lackluster, a pop-culture staple. Worn out. (Like your pair of chuck taylors, scene fag) Tv is an entertainment medium, and most of what's on it flows directly from the ebb of the general public's tide. Read, _they put the crap on that people want to watch_. These days I think the ratings on _the Simpsons_ are only achieved through a meager sampling of die-hard fans and a new generation of teens and kids who've only just now been introduced to _the Simpsons_. Which means, their type of humor is invariably what they'll be wanting. Which is, for all intents and purposes, completely and totally different than the type of humor the show used to exude. Which brings me back to the writers. Being older guys, mostly growing up in the 60s or 70s, they're out of touch with this kind of humor. Nothing offensive meant by it, but when you're part of a generation, then another generation happens...you kind of lose touch. You can see the shift, in-show references and things of the like change from classic cinema and music to popular trends and fashions. But, you _can_ see that they're trying...they just don't know what the hell they're doing. And nobody's telling them because it's.... "_The Simpsons_"! Most of the new teenage fans could probably watch the episode about the Be Sharps and _be_ completely lost. Or the episode with Bobo the bear and miss out of half of the pop-culture commentary/classic cinema references. They just wouldn't...get it. There's this huge generation gap between the people who make the show and people who watch the show. But, in the past, this wasn't the case. For a while, the audience was once of the same disposition as the creators--baby-boomers fresh off the Cold War, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration, economically weary and tired of everything. And the creators made light of this. If it wasn't relevant to say...something that happened during the 80s, then it was relative to some sort of major event the viewers most likely witnessed as a child or teenager, such as classic film references, pop music, and the Nixon presidency. I doubt that younger viewers today would even so much as recognize Nixon's weary visage, much less understand what the hell he did or why it's funny. But, that's the way of things, the past is partially ingrained but mostly imbibed through schoolteachers and history books. Some things get forgotten, left out on purpose, or simply not taught. But, honestly, newer generations will never fully understand the generation before it. (Or after, for that matter.) There's something that comes from being..._in it_. Just _in it_, that gives a person this innate sense of knowledge, a unique sense of being, and a firm grasp on their place in the world and inner workings of society. A divine understanding of the present, is all we'll ever have. The past is too complicated, unexplainable at times, and the future, too unsure. B.) The truth is, it's television, and the only thing that really honestly can last for more than 10 solid seasons, is a soap opera. Because then, the bar is nice and low. Just like the ratings. To tell you the truth, I haven't watched a new episode in years. Literally...years. I don't know what it's like these days and I don't want to know. I could tell how bad it was starting to get...and that was in the 9th grade. I felt like a rat deserting a sinking ship. And what's worse was....I felt bad. Guilty, even.Like I said, it's not the writing per se, because these same writers used to have talent. But I think it's a loss of chemistry. The kind of chemistry you get when you pile a whole bunch of kids in the same room. They talk about similar music, movies they've seen, and tell anecdotes from their lives. They get excited because they feel accepted and liked. You had this chemistry with the old writers because they were all from the same generation, and so they'd sit around and talk and toss ideas back and forth, and they would get it. Because they had experienced it, and they were there. It made sense.Now, the older writers are mingling with the new writers every day... coming up with this amalgamated, new, confusing style. And it feels like they're trying to hang on to the stolidity of the early episodes while quietly inserting socially relevant ideas and humor. It's a simple clash of generations. The old guys are coming up with and tossing out these really great ideas that make the young guys say "What...? I don't know if the kids today will understand that." And vice versa. Most of the time this generational fusing comes out a little scratchy, warbling like an old record. This makes the show messy and hard to watch. I see it now as a blessing. Kind of. We got 9 or 10 good seasons. Really good seasons. Which is plenty more than a fan needs. Then we got _Futurama_, which stuck around for a while, and of course, _Family Guy_. Which I'll admit, I do actually like _Family Guy_ all right...but in the same way that I like _Space Ghost_, or _The Brak Show_. Its one fatal flaw is that most of the material is completely hit-or-miss. The majority of the time when it hits, it hits big, and it's funny as hell. But, there are other times when I can't even begin to find the show even mildly humorous. In any way. (And, for the record, previous to season 10 _the Simpsons_ were never hit-or- miss, and every joke made me at least smile, but most of the time, laugh out loud.) _Futurama_, I think, was Matt Groening's cry for help. It was his way of carrying out his old, still grand, vision he'd had for _the Simpsons_. And he was able to do so by branching out with completely new characters--characters whose stories are much fresher than that of any character on _the Simpsons_. Becuase this was exactly around the time _the Simpsons had started to go downhill. And I really think he wanted to jump ship, but couldn't, and so he did the next best thing. There was more stretching room with _Futurama_. And, of course, being set in the future, it was a perfect place for sight gags and social satire. And it was perfect, some argue that it was an even better show than _the Simpsons_. Buuuuut. I don't know about that._Family Guy_ is more of an obvious satire of the television family, but kind of stupid and less...good. The show concentrated mainly on absurd non sequitur and one rapid-fire, distasteful joke after another. It was a blatant rip-off of the _the Simpsons_ But, definitely had a much more flippant attitude towards current events, politics, and entertainers. (_The Simpsons_ was almost never completely in-your-face about such things, and always managed to voice it's criticism behind the veil of subtle pop-culture references and dignified sight gags.) Although _Family Guy _was never as flippant as say..._South Park_, it's still pretty damn flippant, nonetheless. Anyway, what I'm saying is, in general, is that society has phases. Waves. Fads. But not really fads...it's more like a phase. Or wave. You can spot these phases by what movies are made during this time, and what's on TV. Mainly, because these are the largest of the two media devices, they influence the most people and most of what happens in the popular culture. Anything not covered by the current phase is considered a sub-culture or, if need be, a counterculture. (Or an "indie", which is the term we like these days. But, don't even get me started on "indie." Yeesh. Pre-packaged image. It's all about pre-packaged images. Blech.) Usually sub-cultures come back in 20 or 30 years to make a tremendous splash with the new generation. At which time said subculture would then be assimilated into the mainstream culture and widely accepted. Other times they never come back...and are ignored. Except by scholars and historians, of course. Who in turn get ignored by everyone else. The cycle thus completes itself. _The Simpsons_ was simply riding the crest of one these culture phase-waves. For about 10 years it was pop culture. "Don't have a cow man!" "Eat my shorts!" "D'oh!" People were laughing, wearing the shirts, sporting the merchandise, quoting endlessly the seemingly endless bundle of _Simpson_ quotations. Then it ceased to be. It tapered off. The wave started to break. _The Simpsons_ were still there, still getting ratings, still on the air....but the craze was gone. Once other networks saw the great success an animated show (with quality writing) could have, the cat was out of the bag. They branched out, sally-forthed, created other animated shows and piled on their own brand of spin and jive. There was a time when _The Simpsons_ was a great show. Yes. While it was riding the crest of that wave...it was untouchable. It was utterly fantastic. But somewhere along the way everybody got disoriented and starting doing wacky things--stuffing logs into the cogs of the fine-tuned gears that was _the Simpsons_ writing machine. After that, the machines never worked the same, and just kept chucking out faulty episodes with character holes and non sequiturs, thin guest star spots and cliche, feebly trying to stay hip with the changing tides. But, I think it just ended up feeling like an old man instead. And that's the problem. With it all. Everything gets old. Everything feels out of place. And everything dies. There's no argument with that. You can't be on top forever. This one's old and it definitely feels out of place. It's been in the midst of its death throes for nigh on 8 years now, and seriously, honestly, I think it's time to put the old girl out of her misery. Which, I'm thinking, (and hoping) they will do once the movie is released. After that...I think they'll call it quits. That's _fine_. That's _good_. _Perfect_, even. Hopefully they saved some of the better bits for the movie. And that'll be good. Go out with a little dignity that way. On the zenith of mountain piled high with cash. Swimming naked in a vault full of gold doubloons.And that's what the show deserves, a quiet dignified death at the hands of its creators. Sometimes when shows start to go by the wayside, they are prematurely cut short and end on a rocky, unsatisfying note. Which, in truth, is a terrible way to treat the audience. It makes them feel stupid. Just because killing off the characters or introducing a gigantic deus ex machina is easy for you, does NOT equate any level of quality to the show, nor does it include the audience in its final moments, the way it had previously included them in the beginning and middle. (Note, most of what makes entertainment mediums like movies and TV so popular, besides accessibility, is the escapism factor. And once an audience becomes mentally aware of that factor, they no longer can enjoy it like they once did. Now it's just "a tv show" or just "a movie". The moment you lose them, they're gone forever. And there's absolutely no winning them back.) It makes them feel stupid, and rarely do viewers like to feel stupid. Or left out. If there's anything a show gone awry, or an audience gone astray, deserves, it's a quiet, decent burial.So, eh...I think I'm done. I'm done with the show. I'll buy season 10 when it comes out, but that's it. Nothing other than those 10 seasons will ever be watched, and nothing _Simpsons_ will ever be purchased again. I'll always be fond of that show because it shaped my sense of humor and impacted my life so expertly It was a damn good show and I'm thanking it for that. But I'm throwing in the towel. God bless fellow _Simpsons_ fans. Agree or not, that's how it is. You can hide behind your fraudulent smile and hauntingly fake laughs, but there's just no gettin' around the cold hard facts. You had your fucking cake and you wanted to eat it too? Well, shame on you....you didn't want just _one_ piece..._you wanted them all_. You greedy fucker. Face it, this show sucks. And pretty soon it's going to be eating the veritable dirt pie, just like its television predecessors. Just be a sport and admit it. You're only hurting yourselves.You can call me stupid or you can call me wrong. But I'm a fucking _fan_. _I am a_ Simpsons _fan_. And I'm damn proud of it. And I know what the fuck I'm talking about. So get the fuck outta here. Toodles.(P.S. Sorry for the extreme length of this post, but it's a subject I'm very passionate about. Capeesh?)