Why The Simpsons' Bad Reputation Can Never Be Fixed (Despite Improving)

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While The Simpsons season 33 proved that the long-running animated sitcom can improve, the series can never get over its bad reputation overall. At the height of the show’s popularity,The Simpsons was broadly regarded as one of the best television shows in the history of the medium. A confluence of factors made the so-called “Golden Age” of The Simpsons uniquely successful in television comedy, from an extraordinarily talented writer’s room to a revision process that saw each script go through dozens of edits until it was perfected.

In the years since this bygone peak, the critical reception of The Simpsons has ranged from abysmal to moderately positive. Although classic Simpsons episodes continue to predict the future with alarming accuracy, the show’s new outings are often criticized for being disjointed, satirically blunt, and uninspired. Even looking back on an atypically solid set of episodes like The Simpsons season 33 underlines the fact that the series will never be able to return to its early success.

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The gradual decline of The Simpsons can be chalked up to a variety of causes. Iconic individual writers like John Swartzwelder, Conan O'Brien, and Larry Doyle left the series, the show’s fame meant it was now arguably more famous than many of the shows, movies, and real-life figures parodied on The Simpsons, and a stream of Simpsons-influenced shows like South Park, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers began to render the original series increasingly irrelevant. Regardless of what caused the decline of The Simpsons, though, the series can’t return to its Golden Age glory days for reasons that are just as numerous and complex.

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