I suppose I'm like this with The Simpsons. The first eight seasons are, to this day, the funniest thing ever produced by man. Nothing even compares to how good The Simpsons was. Nothing has ever come close. Season 9 was a big dip in quality, both in terms of humour and general writing, but it was still good. Seasons ten and eleven continued this downward slide, but they just about manage to scrape a 'worth a watch'. If The Simpsons had ended there things would have been fine.
The Simpsons just recently finished season thirty, with two more confirmed for the future. The occasional joke is still funny, but the show has been cringe-inducingly bad for just about twenty goddamn years at this point. I can't remember the last time I heard anyone say they liked The Simpsons without clarifying that they are specifically talking about the early years. All of those words and phrases from the show that have actually been added to the English language all come from the first eleven seasons. All the memes, all the endless quotes, all from the first eleven seasons. Everything after that may as well not exist. So I try to pretend it doesn't.
I have the first eight seasons on DVD and I watch them pretty often. I follow Simpsons quote accounts on Twitter, which specify that they only quote episodes from, take a guess, the first eleven seasons. They were a better time, plain and simple. A purer time when there weren't headlines about eight-year-old Lisa being a polyamorous pansexual, there weren't """comedians""" with no career trying to get famous by claiming Apu is racist, and when crossovers were something the producers disagreed and butted heads over rather than actively sought out. It was when celebrities either played actual characters in the show, like Dustin Hoffman's Mr Bergstrom or Michael Jackson's Leon Kompowsky, or were good-naturedly made the subject of humour, like Hugh Heffner or The Smashing Pumpkins, instead of today when celebrities play themselves in episodes fawningly written around them so their star power can cynically be used to draw an audience. It was when the show had the sincerity to make you cry. The ending to 'Mother Simpson', Ned and Homer's conversation before the climax of 'When Flanders Failed', 'Lisa's First Word', 'And Maggie Makes Three', Homer breaking as his son cries in 'Radio Bart'. The Simpsons has lost that. it is, memes aside, soulless. So I take refuge in the golden days, when The Simpsons was so good that it still make me laugh harder than anything since, and try to forget what it's become.
