The Simpsons Season That Has Fans So Divided
Fox's "The Simpsons" is an American animated sitcom that follows the titular family and their ludicrous antics. Although it began in 1989, it's still going strong, and is currently in its 33rd season, with a 34th already planned. Yeah, you could say the series is doing well for itself. To put it all into perspective, the 33 seasons contain approximately 720 episodes. With each episode running about 22 minutes, that makes for at least 264 hours (or 11 days) of footage. At this point, "The Simpsons" is rivaling a few of the more popular anime in terms of episode count.
With such a long run under its belt and with no foreseeable end in sight, it's fair to wonder if it's even worth attempting to watch "The Simpsons" in its entirety. After all, who has that kind of time? Perhaps there's an objective stopping point in the series that you can use as your personal "Simpsons" finale. Well, fans have debated the answer to that very question for a long time, and although such a finish line has been selected by some, the choice remains divisive.
The 'best' stopping point seems to be around Season 10
In the r/television subreddit, u/ihatebadpuns asked, "At what season did The Simpsons get notably worse? Did it ever recover? Are there any seasons that returned to form?" They went on to explain that they were in the middle of Season 9, but felt a little nervous about what was to come. The discussion that ensued in their comments was ... heated, to say the least. u/maro_chik replied in a way that resonated with a number of Redditors, saying, "season 10 is where The Simpsons lost its touch for me." They elaborated how Season 10 featured the last episodes written by David X. Cohen (until 2020, when he returned for a single episode in the 32nd season), something they believed marked a decline for "The Simpsons."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, and just as prominently upvoted, u/otayyo posited, "You could always make up your own mind ... I have been watching The Simpsons since it came out, and have always loved it. A lot of people claim the show declined in quality ... I disagree. I just feel like the show changed over time." They suggested that most people who complain about the drop in quality had already stopped watching, so their opinions mattered less. While u/otayyo's defensive response was fair in that they stood up for what they admired, it also caused a great deal of uncivil conversation with unnecessarily inflammatory dialogue.
Few opinions in the thread delineated these two opposing factions, although u/Mootastic suggested the decline started in Season 8, and u/Ginsoakedboy21 jumped in to say that the decline didn't start until Season 11. The matter is subjective, but it seems that if you prefer "The Simpsons" before the year 2000, you'll find its later episodes to be significantly different, and maybe for the worse.