The Simpsons has been running for 31 seasons, but when did the series’ golden age truly end?
The Simpsons’ true 4:3 aspect ratio has been restored on Disney Plus, and while other animated series like Goof Troop and Chip ‘N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers are seemingly doomed to a stretched 16:9 picture forever, it’s a major win for hardcore fans of the service’s only adult animated sitcom.
If you’re considering a Simpsons rewatch, you probably recall that the show’s quality drops off at a certain point. When this occurs is arguably a matter of opinion based on your generation: for Millennial audiences like me, the consensus is that seasons 3-9 represent The Simpsons’ golden age (with a season or two of leeway on either side). I have a younger brother who contests it lasts longer, until about season 13.
Either way, the rich world of Simpsons meme culture has crystallized around seasons 1-10, and the popular Simpsons quote of the day Twitter account strictly shares scenes from seasons 1-11 only. People are still watching new episodes of The Simpsons now, of course, with season 32 on the way later this year. But for me and many others, there’s a definite golden age, then there’s everything else – which is to say 300+ episodes I’ve never seen.
I won’t comment on those, simply because I don’t know the newer seasons nearly as well. But I do want to discuss the episodes that represent the series’ obvious decline, based on my own experience of watching these earlier seasons 40+ times.
Let’s pinpoint the second my heart rips in half.
The signs of trouble start in season 9. A lot of people point towards The Simpsons episode ‘The Principal and the Pauper’ as a ‘jump the shark’ moment. This episode features the revelation that Principal Seymour Skinner is, in fact, an impostor, when the real Skinner returns from a POW camp long after the Vietnam War. Our Skinner, it turns out, is really a former bad boy called Armin Tanzarian.
This is a wild story, and it’s extremely controversial among fans for the way it retcons the Skinner character. But the execution of this episode is actually very good: it features a number of great jokes, even if the plot is hard to swallow.
The episode is a commentary on The Simpsons’ audience at the time and its inability to accept change, but the episode ‘The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show’ did the same thing more successfully. That’s because the latter episode used the in-universe cartoon Itchy and Scratchy as a proxy to explore fans’ relationship with the show as it changes. In ‘The Principal and the Pauper’, The Simpsons actually changed its canon in a way that some fans didn’t like (credit to the podcast Talking Simpsons for this observation).
‘The Principal and the Pauper’ is arguably a misfire, then, but it is a thematically interesting episode that I always find entertaining to watch.
