If there’s a better pub argument than “when did the Simpsons stop being great” I’m yet to hear it, but (unfortunately?) we now have a definitive answer as to the reasons why the show started falling apart.
And yes, we know that there are many, many competing arguments about when exactly the Simpsons went from being the most perfect thing on television to a shadow of its former self, but the general consensus is that the jump the shark moment was ‘The Principal and the Pauper’.
That was the episode where it was revealed that Principal Skinner was actually Armin Tamzarian, who had done a Don Draper in Vietnam. You might remember that it isn’t very good. Assuming you remember it at all.
Anyway: that was the second episode of Season 8, first screening in 1997. It turns out that a lot of things happened around that period.
First up, a bunch of especially good writers left the show in 1996-97, including Greg Daniels (who wrote ‘Lisa’s Wedding’ and ‘Bart Sells His Soul’, and was later showrunner for The Office and Parks and Recreation), Jennifer Crittenden (‘The Twisted World of Marge Simpson’, ‘And Maggie Makes Three’, later Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond producer), Bob Kushell (‘Bart the Fink’), Jonathon Collier (‘The Curse of the Flying Hellfish’) and Steve Young (‘Hurricane Neddy’), among others.
Another was a change in showrunners. Mike Scully took over from Bill Oakey and Josh Weinstein, who’d had the gig for a couple of seasons at that point.
But writers comes and go, and Oakley and Weinstein weren’t the only showrunners the show had over its lifetime. But there was one massive absence from which the show never recovered:
That chap with the nice shirt:
It turns out that 1996 was the last year in which The Simpsons‘ creator Matt Groening was involved on a day to day level, since that was when production began on Futurama.
Ask your grandparents about it, Millennials: it was an animated comedy programme that was amazingly good, but is now mainly known for this meme:
And while Groening’s actual involvement in the Simpsons is arguable (for one thing, he only ever wrote four episodes) clearly something changed in the show’s DNA when he wasn’t there.
Sorry gang, but the argument is now settled: The Simpsons started falling apart the second that Groening left Springfield for New New York. You’ll need to find something else to dispute next time you feel like fighting about TV.
So, who reckons season five of The Wire is a bit garbage?