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  • There is a show that airs every night on the Fox network from around 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

  • And it's an animated series about a family of five:

  • Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

  • And it's not an exceptionally entertaining show, in fact it's downright mediocre.

  • But what's so unusual about it is that the show goes by the name The Simpsons.

  • And the reason this is so strange is that it bears a striking resemblance

  • to another animated TV series from the early 90s, one also called The Simpsons,

  • which many people, myself included, consider the greatest piece of television of the 20th century.

  • But make no mistake; no matter how similar these two appear,

  • no matter what surface level resemblances exist, these are not the same show.

  • And this, friends, is the story of how one became the other.

  • How one of the best and most influential TV shows of all time became just another sitcom.

  • This is The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened.

  • So, to keep this outside the realms of my own subjective opinion, we're going to chart The Simpsons' decline off the IMDb user review data,

  • collected from nearly 300,000 individual episode reviews aggregated over the show's 28 seasons,

  • which looks like this:

  • Yikes.

  • And so the conversation is, how did we get from the Simpsonsmania of the 90s,

  • to present-day, where the show is now widely referred to as "Zombie Simpsons?"

  • And to understand this, as well as the gravity of its decline, we need to first go back to the series' origins.

  • TV of the 80s was a very different place than what we have today.

  • While the first half of the decade was dominated by soaps like Dallas and Dynasty,

  • in its later half we would see the return and rise of the TV family sitcom,

  • with shows like Diff'rent Strokes, Alf and Family Ties dominating primetime TV slots.

  • Each of these big shows centered around instilling the virtues of the American family unit,

  • with smart-aleck but well-meaning kids, and wise and loving parents.

  • The families being shown on TV were safe and comfortable depictions of the staunchly middle-upper class,

  • rich enough to be aspirational, while not so wealthy that they become unrelatable.

  • Which was fine as long as you were never in the mood for anything more than good, wholesome fun,

  • but it was also TV at its softest and most docile.

  • There's a sugary blandness to the television of this period.

  • Or, as Matt Groening referred to it, the "zombification of the American family."

  • And it seemed like this was the way family sitcom was going to stay,

  • right up until the last dying breath of the 80s,

  • when, on December 14th 1989, two weeks before the closing of the decade,

  • the Fox Network aired the first episode of The Simpsons,

  • and in doing so completely transformed television as we know it.

  • It was dark, it was satirical and it was hilarious.

  • Rather than embrace the virtues of the American family like every other show of that time,

  • The Simpsons seem to be actively mocking them.

  • It's a little hard to imagine, given the modern media landscape,

  • but back then The Simpsons were seen as an expression of blatant anti-authority.

  • Disruptive entertainment that challenged every convention of primetime TV that had built up over the forty years of its existence.

  • The Simpsons was counterculture,

  • shining a spotlight and satirizing every ugly wart of American society that so many others willingly ignored.

  • Bullying, depression, the struggle of the lower-middle class,

  • nothing was off-limits and everything was game. And The Simpsons took gleeful joy in exposing it all.

  • Such disregard for what, at the time, were seen as modern American values

  • quickly drew the ire of many parental and watchdog groups, decrying The Simpsons as abashedly un-American,

  • even drawing the disdain of former United States president George Bush Senior.

  • "...make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons!"

  • [crowd cheering]

  • Of course, the disdain of such massive authority figures only fueled the flames of The Simpsons' countercultural blaze,

  • and audiences across the world fell in love with the distinctly dysfunctional family.

  • If you were born after 1990, you probably don't remember how big Simpsonsmania actually was,

  • but for a time, The Simpsons was easily the biggest fictional property in all of media,

  • with even throwaway pieces of Simpsons merchandise turning into their own miniature cultural touchstones,

  • like The Simpsons arcade game, a staple of 90s Arcades across the world,

  • or Bart Simpson's Guide to Life, which to this day is still one of my favorite books I've ever read.

  • The Simpsons even had hit songs, like the infamous "Do the Bartman."

  • ♫ ...chain reaction

  • If you can do the Bart you're bad like Michael Jackson

  • Everybody if you can, do the Bartman

  • Shake your body, turn it round... ♫ ♫ Check it out! ♫

  • And so Simpsonsmania blazed on, but what truly made the show special was three core principles,

  • each of which could be represented by one of the show's three creators.

  • The first of which was Matt Groening. Groening was the one who conceived the initial premise for The Simpsons.

  • He first came to prominence with his uniquely warped counterculture comic, Life in Hell,

  • and if you go back and read this comic now, it's incredible how much of early Simpsons' rebellious spirit exists in it.

  • And it's this disdain for authority and convention that gave classic Simpsons the edge it had.

  • The second major creative force behind the show was Sam Simon, a veteran writer of TV sitcoms like Taxi and Cheers,

  • Simon was the person who took Groening's rebellious concept and gave it form, turning it into an actual TV show.

  • He was the one who hired and led the original writing team,

  • and instilled the idea that the comedy of the show should always be grounded in its characters, and not just be a string of cartoonish gags.

  • Which gave the characters a real weight and honesty, while also keeping the show consistently hilarious.

  • The third and final major contributor to The Simpsons was a little more hands-off than Simon and Groening, but arguably just important.

  • And that was its producer, James L. Brooks,

  • who not only was the one pushing for the series to get made in the first place,

  • but also largely credited as being the person to bring a heart to The Simpsons.

  • While not on the actual writing staff, he'd often come to the yearly story retreats,

  • and was always keen to encourage ideas that were more emotionally resonant than they were satirical or comedic,

  • often pushing episodes that featured Lisa or Marge as the protagonist,

  • and is even credited at penning the beautifully bittersweet moment from the episode Lisa's Substitute,

  • where Mr. Bergstrom hands Lisa a note that simply reads, "You are Lisa Simpson." before disappearing from her life forever.

  • Rebellious satire, comedy grounded in character, and heart.

  • These men and their ideals were at the core of The Simpsons,

  • something that is plainly obvious by the fact that you can still see their names listed at the start of every episode.

  • Of course that's to say nothing of the actual writing staff, who were also heavily involved in the development.

  • John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Conan O'Brien, David M. Stern,

  • these and many others were the exceptionally talented writers that made up the early staff of The Simpsons.

  • And while Groening, Simon, and Brooks oversaw the show's creation, these were the people that crafted each and every episode.

  • One thing that becomes abundantly clear after going through enough old interviews with these guys

  • is the incredible amount of work that went into each and every script.

  • A team of roughly twelve writers would work multiple long eleven-hour days on a single episode,

  • and it's a little hard to imagine now, given how seamlessly the comedy in classic Simpsons flows,

  • but I think once you start to break down the way these jokes work, the effort behind them becomes abundantly clear.

  • Let's take one of my favorite moments from one of my favorite episodes, Bart Sells His Soul,

  • in which Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for five dollars,

  • and after a run of bad luck and a rather horrifying existential nightmare, he realizes what a mistake he's made

  • and journeys out late into the night in order to find Milhouse, and reclaim his lost soul.

  • And then this happens:

  • "Well finally, a little luck!"

  • [evil laughter]

  • It's a brilliant, darkly hilarious piece of comedy, timed, paced, and delivered to near perfection.

  • But what's interesting is what happens when you break down the mechanics of how this joke works.

  • Mainly by recognizing that this is not one singular joke, but a combination of smaller ones.

  • It starts with Bart's bike being run over by the street sweeper.

  • Second, it turns out that all the street sweeper actually did was clean the bike.

  • Third, no, it's actually been destroyed.

  • Fourth, the reveal that this was actually an act of malice by some psychotic nameless public servant.

  • And finally, the street sweeper plunging down the stairwell.

  • That's five jokes in fifteen seconds.

  • And I get that by breaking them down like this, I'm robbing them of some of their magic,

  • but I think it's important to understand the underlying structure.

  • And that is how each little piece of comedy builds on and expands on the one that came before it,

  • crescendoing in the beautifully absurd and nearly surreal punchline.

  • And it's a perfect example of the brilliant layered comedy of the jokes of classic Simpsons.

  • These are jokes that, according to writers of The Simpsons from the time,

  • would go through roughly thirty to forty drafts of rewrites, which I think is genuinely evident from their makeup.

  • They're simply too layered and too intricate to be the product of one single writing pass.

  • And this is also a style of comedy that was completely distinct to everything else at the time.

  • Sitcoms of the late 80s and early 90s were ruled by the laughter track, which had been a staple of American sitcoms since the 1950s.

  • Originally provided by a live studio audience, but now it was just fake canned laughter,

  • used as an artificial way to prop up lazy one-liners and unimaginative quips.

  • The problem with using laughter tracks is that they only allow for jokes to be structured in a very particular way,

  • with long lead ins and big punchlines.

  • But there is also a forced quality to it too, as it takes the onus away from the audience and tells us when to react.

  • And if a joke is genuinely funny, then surely we don't need it to be pointed out to us.

  • And if you want to see some proof of this, just check out what an existential nightmare the Big Bang Theory turns into when the laughter track is removed.

  • "Sorry I'm late."

  • "What happened?"

  • "Nothing. I just really didn't wanna come."

  • [long, uncomfortable silence]

  • [shudders]

  • Not only is there not a laughter track in The Simpsons, there straight up could not be one.

  • The pace, rhythm, and subtlety of the jokes didn't allow for it.

  • Take our previous street sweeper gag.

  • The way the joke is interconnected and paced means there's no space for canned laughter.

  • The only place you could put it would be right at the end, and by doing so, you would ruin these darkly surreal atmosphere the joke establishes.

  • And so in disregarding the biggest crutch of TV sitcoms of that era, The Simpsons created a different style of comedy to anything else at the time.

  • One that was consistently creative, surprising and hilarious.

  • And yet, despite how exceptionally the show delivered its comedy, it never did so at the expense of its characters.

  • I think the key to what makes these characters so distinct and memorable

  • is that each one operates off a very specific set of conflicting beliefs and motivations.

  • Take Homer, for example.

  • He's an emotional man, equally prone to bouts of both intense joy and excitement, as well as fits of blinding rage.

  • He's unintelligent and slow witted, but not just that. He was also gluttonous and extremely lazy.

  • And this aspect of his character would often prove more detrimental to him than his low intelligence.

  • He was also an optimist, often choosing to ignore problems until they became unavoidable,

  • but also just kind of wanted to be left alone.

  • To go about his life his own way, and enjoy the little pleasures of it on his own terms.

  • And lastly, he really, really cares about his family.

  • These are the core traits that define Homer Simpson.

  • These are the motivations and beliefs that determine each action he takes,

  • and in any given scene, you can see one or more of them pulling him in different directions.

  • In other words, there was a consistent internal logic to Homer.

  • No matter how outlandish this situation he was in, Homer could always be expected to act like Homer.

  • And so when comedy did occur, you weren't just laughing because something goofy was happening,

  • you were doing so because a character you were intimately familiar with had done something that made sense to them and only them.

  • The comedy of Homer's character comes from his failings causing him to misinterpret the world around him, and suffer because of it.

  • This is the kind of character writing that was dense throughout every episode of The Simpsons.

  • But it's only when this combined with the show's expertly crafted narratives that the series' true strength becomes apparent.

  • Even when the show ventured into its more surreal territory, which it often did,

  • there was always the feeling that each story had something to say.

  • From accepting one's own mortality, to corruption in politics, and even the nature of the human soul.

  • And yet It did all this with a sincerity that never felt patronizing.

  • And so The Simpsons delivered classic episode after classic episode,

  • like the touching, poignant Lisa on Ice,

  • the genius season-spanning cliffhanger Who Shot Mr. Burns,

  • and the irreverent, hilarious Last Exit to Springfield.

  • These, and so many others, are some of the finest pieces of television ever crafted,

  • and cemented The Simpsons not only as one of the greatest TV shows of all time,

  • but as a bonafide worldwide cultural phenomenon.

  • The Simpsons, it seemed, was unstoppable.

  • And then...

  • Season eight happened.

  • The eighth season of The Simpsons is... odd.

  • It's still home to a lot of classic stories,

  • in particular the episode Homer's Enemy, which is the all-time highest rated episode of the entire show.

  • But when you look at this season closely, things were beginning to change in subtle, but meaningful ways.

  • The rock-solid narrative commentaries of the earlier seasons were gradually giving way to stories that were growing increasingly more nonsensical.

  • Homer became a heavyweight boxer, Bart started working at a burlesque club,

  • Marge got involved with both the Italian mob and Japanese yakuza, and the family hired a magical British nanny.

  • And I like all these episodes, but what they represent is the start of a pivot away from satire straight into the absurd,

  • a pivot that's full significance would only truly come to light a season later, with the infamous episode The Principal and the Pauper.

  • It's an episode largely reviled by the hardcore Simpsons fanbase,

  • and was originally written about by Simpsons authority Charlie Sweatpants in one of his many fantastic blog posts about the show.

  • Like a lot of seasons eight to ten, the episode itself isn't particularly bad, and there's even some great jokes in there.

  • But the problem comes from how it shatters the fictional integrity of one of the show's most beloved characters:

  • Principal Seymour Skinner.

  • Skinner, like so many other of the supporting cast of The Simpsons, is a geniusly written character.

  • Designed as the direct antithesis to Bart, Skinner is a rigidly authoritarian abider of rules,

  • and a strict believer in hierarchy and order,

  • used to hilarious effect in the episode The Boy Who Knew Too Much.

  • But at the center of Skinner's character, and what made him this way,

  • is his upbringing by his tyrannically oppressive razor-toned mother Agnes,

  • and the pair were a hilarious commentary on what overly authoritative parenting could do to a person.

  • "I owe everything I have to my mother's watchful eye,"

  • "and swift hand..."

  • "Hm. There's mother now."

  • [crow cawing]

  • "Watching me."

  • "Well they have a right to be here! It's school business! I-"

  • "Mother, that sailor suit doesn't fit anymore!"

  • "Hrmm. I think we should go."

  • It's dark, comedic Simpsons brilliance, emblematic of how Simpsons of the 90s handled its characters.

  • And in 22 short minutes, The Principal and the Pauper undoes all that.

  • The entire episode is based on the premise that the upbringing that made Principal Skinner who he is

  • and is so integral to his character... never actually happened.

  • Instead, the character we thought was Seymour Skinner is actually Armin Tamzarian,

  • a street punk from Capital City who switched identities with his M.I.A. Officer after returning from the Vietnam war.

  • It's not the first time The Simpsons delved into absurdist storytelling,

  • various episodes from even the earliest seasons would occasionally dabble in these kind of immersion-shattering narratives,

  • but throughout them we could always rely on the characters to act like the characters.

  • But now this episode was telling us that a character who's been built up carefully for eight years isn't real and never was.

  • all for the sake of a cheap gag narrative that ultimately goes nowhere and says nothing.

  • It felt... wrong. A little perverse, even.

  • And if this perversion had remained just in this one episode, it wouldn't have been that big a deal,

  • but unfortunately this was just a prelude of what was to come.

  • Slowly, as The Simpsons crept along, little pieces of it would start falling away and disappear.

  • The narratives were becoming less poignant, the characters less consistent,

  • and a lot of the jokes were starting to land with the laziness of the most average of sitcoms.

  • Something was changing for the primetime series.

  • Something was corrupting The Simpsons.

  • And I think you can boil down this shift in direction to two primary factors.

  • And to find the first, we need to look to what was happening to the staff that made up The Simpsons of the late 90s.

  • The three people credited as creating the show were long gone at this point.

  • Matt Groening had moved on to other projects like Futurama,

  • Sam Simon had left in 1993 over creative differences,

  • and Brooks became less involved with the show from around 1995

  • after a public dispute with Groening over the episode A Star is Burns.

  • There had also been some deaths on the cast, most notably the tragic passing of Phil Hartman and Doris Grau,

  • which unfortunately left some of the show's best characters without a voice.

  • And that's to say nothing of the actual writing staff itself.

  • Here's a list of every major writer who is a lead on multiple episodes of The Simpsons during its most acclaimed period.

  • In other words, the writers who shaped what the series was.

  • And watch as we go forward through the years.

  • More and more drop off, with a massive exodus right at the start of season eight,

  • which is when the ratings for the show would begin their slow decline,

  • with only a tiny percentage of the original staff left by season 12.

  • I want to make it clear at this point that the purpose of this video is not to demonize any of the staff for The Simpsons from season ten on,

  • namely because I think that's a bit of a shitty thing to do,

  • but also I think the problems are more complicated than that.

  • But what I do want to do is explore how this change of staff

  • affected the writing behind the series, and how it changed its style of comedy.

  • The best analysis I've seen of this is from a 2016 blog post written by Jonathan Jayson,

  • in which he breaks down a joke from a more recent season in the style of both modern Simpsons and classic Simpsons.

  • The joke goes like this:

  • Homer is sitting in an airport, and over a loudspeaker a voice announces:

  • "Boarding has commenced for women, children, and fat men,"

  • to which Homer exclaims excitedly, "That's me!" and that's the joke.

  • With all due respect to the person who penned this line,

  • does this really feel like a joke that went through thirty or forty drafts like Simpsons of old?

  • It has no layers, no subtlety. It's just a self-referential, throwaway piece of nothing,

  • and ironically, the exact kind of joke a laughter track would fit over perfectly.

  • Now watch what happens when Jayson rewrites the same joke in the style of classic Simpsons.

  • We have the same setup, with the same announcement for "women, children, and fat men,"

  • but this time Homer ignores the announcement and sits in blissful ignorance,

  • before being approached by an airport staff member who taps him on the shoulder and says:

  • "Um, sir?" and points towards a queue of overweight men, before cutting back to Homer, who would let out a disappointed "D'oh..."

  • See how now all at once, the joke is funny, tells us a little bit about Homer's character,

  • about the airport and its staff, and is even a mild commentary on how society views obesity?

  • Now it has layers. Now it has a purpose.

  • The article also reveals another problem that was creeping its way into The Simpsons,

  • and that is the two characters present here are not actually the same person.

  • One is the slow-witted, downtrodden everyman from the first seven seasons, and the other...

  • Well, the other is Jerkass Homer.

  • Jerkass Homer is a term that's been coined to describe Homer of the modern Era.

  • While classic Homer is layered and nuanced, Jerkass Homer is basically a Wacky Cartoon Dad™.

  • An indestructible, supremely confident sociopath who's willing to leap headlong into any new venture for the most nonsensical of motives.

  • There's little rhyme or reason to his actions, and the lens of satire was now being turned firmly inwards,

  • with many of Homer's jokes being lame self-referential one-liners of a far weaker show.

  • "Fog machine!"

  • "Even I think this is crazy."

  • [laughtrack]

  • [shudders]

  • And this shift could be felt not only in each member of the Simpsons' family, but in every resident of Springfield,

  • sometimes completely destroying characters in the process.

  • Moe went from a violent lowlife, vaguely criminal owner of a shady bar,

  • to a boring, lovelorn family friend who only occasionally said the wrong thing.

  • Lisa went from a skeptical, isolated intellectual and voice of reason, to someone who religiously follows popular trends.

  • Or Barney, who goes from an alcoholic to a... coffee drinker, turning him from a hilariously dark representation of a major societal woe into...

  • Well, someone who likes coffee?

  • Every dark, satirical edge of Springfield was being smoothed out and sterilized.

  • Its characters were slowly devolving into simple-minded cartoons of what they had once been.

  • The exact kind of one-dimensional writing Sam Simon had worked so hard to avoid.

  • The second major reason for the show's change is a little less tangible.

  • The Simpsons was born out of a complete disdain for the status quo.

  • A hatred for the neutered, zombified version of the American family that sitcoms of the late 80s depicted.

  • And this anger gave The Simpsons its cynical edge it used to tear through pop culture of the time.

  • But now, 10 years later, The Simpsons was no longer a cruel and biting attack on popular media,

  • it WAS popular media.

  • The pop culture landscape that the show had been created to lampoon had been utterly obliterated,

  • and in doing so, The Simpsons lost its ability to truly be satire.

  • Characters that had been conceived as a harsh critique of TV stereotypes at the time now lost all context,

  • and The Simpsons itself was even being parodied by newer shows like Family Guy and South Park.

  • The Simpsons as a show had aged out, and as a result, it needed to transform and change its identity to stay relevant.

  • And it did so in the most disappointing way possible.

  • And that was that, rather than treating the idea of celebrity with the wry disdain it had in its earlier seasons,

  • modern Simpsons revels in the celebration of the rich and famous.

  • No longer were bespoke guest characters created for each new celebrity,

  • the joke now was just "let the Simpsons meet a celebrity and have that serve as the gag."

  • And the result is some of the weakest, most insincere writing of the entire show.

  • "Welcome to the United Kingdom!"

  • "Prime Minister Tony Blair?"

  • "Hey, Blink 182!"

  • "Thanks for the lift, Tony Hawk!" I gotta go now, Tony Hawk!"

  • "Bart, you know, Tony Hawk?"

  • Is this really the same show that so thoroughly took apart celebrity-centric culture

  • in episodes like Radioactive Man, Bart Gets Famous, and The Be Sharps?

  • And the answer is no, it's not.

  • This is no longer a show that satirizes pop culture, this is one that actively worships it.

  • The only thing that The Simpsons was a parody of now,

  • was The Simpsons.

  • And this is the state it would remain in for the next two decades,

  • a soulless, shambling husk that only vaguely resembles what it had once been.

  • and this is the period known as Zombie Simpsons.

  • And so with this in mind, let's return to our graph and put all this together.

  • The Simpsons was born in the last breath of the 80s, and quickly became the dominant force of early 90s television,

  • with a ferociously satirical slant on not only entertainment, but also society itself.

  • With masterfully written episodes and characters that drew in a global audience, thus creating Simpsonsmania,

  • right up until season eight, where major staff changes slowly began to eke away at the identity and craft that made the show great.

  • Slowly, little pieces of The Simpsons began falling away,

  • with characters that were beginning to only vaguely resemble who they had once been,

  • reaching a critical limit in season nine with The Principal and the Pauper.

  • And thus, the show begins relying more and more on outlandish plots and absurd self- referential writing,

  • until season twelve where, now a decade away from the media landscape it had been created as a response to,

  • the show ages out, and in an effort to stay relevant, transforms its relationship with pop culture,

  • and in doing so, snuffed out the final spark that made The Simpsons what it was.

  • And so, Zombie Simpsons is born,

  • which would cause the legendary series to fall into a decline that is still happening today,

  • bottoming out at its most recent season 28, with the lowest ratings of the series' entire history.

  • Ultimately, it's hard not to feel sad about what's happened to The Simpsons,

  • but even if the same staff had stayed on, even if everything had remained exactly the same for the show internally,

  • I think Simpsons was too much of a time that it could never really have survived the turn of the millennium.

  • So much of it was so rooted in the culture of the 90s and its media, and I think that's okay.

  • I think entertainment isn't meant to last forever. Rather, it's an extension of the people and places that made it at a particular moment in time.

  • And that's what The Simpsons is.

  • One of the purest and most raw expressions of social and political unrest, beautifully told and hilariously depicted.

  • And despite what it's become, and how it's all ended, I can't help be so glad that we got those early seasons.

  • It was a show that shaped a generation, and transformed entertainment as we know it. and I'm very, very glad it did.

  • But regardless, this has been the story of how the greatest show on Earth became just another sitcom.

  • This was The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened.

  • Friends, that's gonna do it.

  • I want to once again give a huge shout-out to artist Rebecca Reynolds for providing the artwork for this video.

  • You can find her over at rebeccareynolds.tumblr.com or on Twitter: @brobexx.

  • Her stuff is awesome, so do check it out.

  • Also, I want to give a huge shout-out to the blog Zombie Simpsons over on the Dead Homer Society,

  • which was a massive source in putting together this video, and whose Zombie Simpsons shtick I've been kind of curbing this whole time.

  • They have a massive 22,000 word essay that goes into way more detail than I had time for here, so you should definitely check it out.

  • Link for this, and various other sources, in the description below.

  • If you enjoyed this video and would like to help me create more like it,

  • then you can do so for as little as a single dollar over at patreon.com/supereyepatchwolf.

  • Thank you to all my patrons, without whom this video would not be possible,

  • and in particular this week I'd like to thank:

  • As always, you can find me on the Let's Fight a Boss video game podcast, or on Twitter: @Eyepatchwolf.

  • Friends, take care of yourselves, and I'll see you next time.

There is a show that airs every night on the Fox network from around 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

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