“Hello, I’m Evan Conover with the U.S. State Department.” – Evan Conover
“Undersecretary for International Protocol, Brat and Punk Division.” – Marge Simpson

“The Flaming Moe dates back to my forefathers who were bartenders to the Tsar.” – Moe  

Whatever else may be said about it, and we’ll likely be saying a lot this week, “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches” is further evidence of why there’s no hope whatsoever for Zombie Simpsons ever getting any better.  It had a Halloween episode level of weirdness, gore, and insane things (Moe is apparently a yeti, for example), but still couldn’t manage to squeeze out anything satirical or intelligent despite not having any rules to play by.  It had a celebrity playing someone other than himself, but didn’t have him do much of anything and didn’t give him any meaningful lines.  It had a B-plot in which Bart and Milhouse could have been just regular kids, but instead had them acting in that same weird, knowing, painfully self aware manner that Lenny and Carl do nowadays.  They gave themselves a completely blank canvas with no restrictions on story, character, believability, setting, or even time, and still fell back on things like Homer’s head being used to break down a stone wall, people beating Burns’ corpse with sticks, and multiple beheadings.  Oh, and there was a talking sponge.  This is the show now.

The magical narration tapestry/rag/respected character actor was theoretically the common element, but it didn’t have anything to do with about half the things that happened.  No explanation was given for how it got from place to place, it was hardly involved in a number of those sketches, and the entire thing with Nelson and his many wives didn’t involve it in any way.  The rag may speak in the dignified tones  of Jeremy’s Iron, but it didn’t have anything to say other than to complain.  The entire “history already written on the tapestry” thing was dropped completely midway through the episode, as was the curse of the sheep or whatever that origin thing was.  Confusingly, some segments had regular Springfield characters (Homer ended up as a peasant, a Viking, and a mountain climber) while others seemed to involve just random dudes. 

Making the entire thing even more bizarre was the way the Bart-Milhouse story apparently happened while the rag was narrating.  It wrapped up at the same time that Moe got the rag back from Marge, which means that Bart freaked out about Milhouse (and had Lisa write him a poem or whatever) all in a single night.  If that’s the case, then why did the two plots have nothing to do with one another?  It’s one thing to abandon Springfield for an episode of historical sketches, but to keep yanking us back there every few minutes for some more creepy passive aggressive conversation between Bart and Milhouse just made it even more sloppy and scatterbrained than it already was. 

Anyway, the numbers are in and they are lower and grimier than the floor at Moe’s.  Last night’s incoherent history essay was yawned through by a mere 5.12 million people.  That’s just a hair above three weeks ago and is good for fourth place on the all time lowest rated list.  Season 23 remains on track to be the least watched ever by a fair margin. 

“Good news Mr. Danielson, we saved your gamecock.  But I’m afraid he’ll never fight again.” – Veterinary Nurse
“That’s what you think!  He’ll fight and he’ll win!” – Mr. Danielson

Image improved by Dave.

There’s new Zombie Simpsons tonight, and it’s a doozy.  Simpsons Channel:

After Moe is heckled for not having any real companions, Moe’s best friend and beloved bar rag narrates his incredible thousand-year journey to Springfield. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the bar rag was loomed into a beautiful and ornate medieval tapestry and traveled around the globe through the hands of royalty before finding himself found himself at Moe’s Tavern. When the bar rag goes missing, Moe realizes that he has more friends than he thought. Meanwhile, Bart begs Milhouse for forgiveness after the two friends get into a tiff.

Yeesh, a bunch of sensitive Moe plus Bart and Milhouse getting into a fight.  The best thing I can say about that is that at least the B-plot is something they haven’t repeated recently.  And maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the rag kinda look like it’s flipping the bird? 

“Can I help you, sir?” – Greasy Teen
“My God, you’re greasy.” – Homer Simpson
“Mr. Marouka?  Help.” – Greasy Teen

“Excuse me, ma’am, don’t you think you’ve gambled enough?” – Mr. Smithers
“No.” – Marge Simpson
“Okay.  We’re required by law to ask every seventy-five hours.  Get her another free drink.” – Mr. Smithers

“Groundskeeper Willie was in my nightmare too, but he got me with hedge clippers.” – Lisa Simpson
“He ran his floor buffer over me.” – Nelson Muntz

We’ve got a lot of good links this week.  There’s two promising new blogs, several people who agree with us, and lots of fan made stuff (including a Mexican Bart figurine).  But we’ve also got three – count ’em, three! – people who had the Simpsons in their dreams this week.  Good thing you don’t have to pay a royalty for that yet.  There’s also some good discussion of older episodes, a cool Flash map of Springfield, plenty of usage, and Zombie Simpsons damaging relations with Pakistan (well, sort of). 

Enjoy.

Clickerbox: The Simpsons Season 2 – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this tour of Season 2 courtesy of someone who wasn’t allowed to watch the show as a kid but has seen many of the later episodes.  She’s harsh on some episodes I love, but it’s fascinating to see someone coming at them from a perspective utterly unlike mine.  She goes through the whole season, so there’s a lot here.

Cartoon Quotes – A new blog featuring, as you may have guessed, daily quotes from cartoons.  It’s brand new, and has quotes from several characters ranging from Bugs Bunny to Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but Homer’s on the banner and there have been three Simpsons quotes already.  All three of them are dead on correct, so let’s hope he keeps it up.

Interactive Map of Springfield – I sort of think I’ve posted this before, but it’s damn cool.

Poll: What is your favorite season of The Simpsons? – Lenny says that after much thought she’s got a favorite, but before she reveals it, she wants to know yours.  I don’t think I could pick one, I’d just feel all the seasons I didn’t pick staring at me accusatorily.  But if you’ve got one, go ahead. 

Kidrobot and The Simpsons present Matt Groening – There’s going to be a Matt Groening doll.  I suppose it was inevitable. 

Forrest Gump and the Simpsons via YouTube – What if you took the audio from an extended trailer for Forrest Gump and matched to clips from the show?  Well, you don’t have to, someone else did and it is fantastic:

That is great. 

The Simpsons Meets Skyrim of the Day – Fus Ro D’oh.

10/18/11 – Even in dreams you can’t escape The Simpsons:

We are at our apartment, watching The Simpsons, while we wait to leave for the wedding. The roommate who is getting married points out how the character Lisa has changed in the episode, while my other roommate bakes.

Merman Sideshow Bob and Bart by ~Foxiso on deviantART – Fan made drawing of a Sideshow Bob as a merman drowning Bart, the idea for which originally came in a dream.

20th January – Another Simpsons dream:

Dream 5! Ohh yeah, we’re getting into the big numbers now! I was in our conservatory. I was with my brother, and a man who looked like one of the characters for the Simpsons. We were about to get filmed for an episode. It went well, so I went to watch the premiere. I looked like a Simpson!

That’s just what you’d look like if you were a cartoon character. 

You Built What?! A Wearable LED Television – Remember that guy from last summer who built a television into a coat and had The Simpsons playing on it?  He’s back, this time with a shirt that also plays The Simpsons.  Excelsior to you, David Forbes.  (via)

Obituary: Phil Hartman – Our old friend Gran2 has started a new blog called “Late Obituaries”.  It’s either obituaries written long after the person dies, or an obituary for the genre of obituaries.  This is the first post, and it strong suggests the former.  That is a great picture of Hartman. 

Bidding war over dried glue that looks like Homer Simpson. Sort of. – When this ends, I just picture the two guys who bid thousands for it giggling and running away when one of them wins as the auctioneer has to ask, “Yes, were there any serious bids for this item?”

Fascinating contest in store – Somewhere in New Zealand there is a racing greyhound named Sideshow Bob:

Secondly, the potent Dave and Jean Fahey Canterbury training partnership provided the quinella in both of those heats, although one of them (Sideshow Bob) has since been an injury-enforced scratching.

I really wish there was a picture. 

Valentine’s Day Card – Awesome homemade “Choo Choo Choose” Valentine’s Day card. 

LEGO-Can you guess what they are? – The Simpsons one is very minimalist and cool, but for giggle factor the champion has to be Lego Princess Leia photocopying her own butt. 

Not Even Selma Will Have Him – Memebase – Forever alone!

Cartoon Pick of the Day: The Simpsons: Maggie Makes Three – Very nice writeup of “And Maggie Makes Three”.

Top 10 TV Theme Tunes – There’s a lot of good YouTube here, as well as more British shows than you usually see on lists like this.  And, of course, we all know what’s at #1. 

CAN’T SLEEP – Very Demotivational – That bed never gets old. 

Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Last week I made fun of Zombie Simpsons for basically airing a free commercial for Cinnabon with their barely disguised “Cinnabun”.  Here’s why they deserve your scorn:

‘Cinnabon’ opens newest location in Karachi

[…]

Homer Simpson loves them. Jerry Seinfeld wants to marry them. And now Karachi residents can enjoy the world famous cinnamon rolls filled with the company’s signature Makara Cinnamon.

Somebody’s using it to actually pimp Cinnabon in Pakistan.  This never happened with Duff or Buzz.

Station / Estación # 10: Obrera – Click through for some excellent graffiti of Homer and Bart near a metro station in Mexico City. 

These are the bricks you’re looking for – A take on the evolution of Lego, with a particular knock at a Zombie Simpsons’ joke from a couple of weeks ago. 

Marge and Lisa Simpson Loves Donatella and Allegra Versace. Fashion Simpsons – From the same site as last week’s fashion mashups. 

The GOP’s Seemingly Never-Ending Debates – Poor usage:

Apart from global appeal, intentional comedy, puckish charm and hints of a first-rate mind operating under a veneer of stupidity, Sarah Palin has something in common with Bart Simpson. I’m specifically talking about the scene where Grandpa, forced to babysit the kids, refers to a note card provided to him by Marge. It reads: “Always do the opposite of what Bart says.” Too bad the GOP isn’t as smart as Abe Simpson.

That manages to get the quote wrong and the character wrong, and that’s always poor usage. 

My Favourite Cartoon Character – Cool fan made computer animated Lisa. 

Nice Bart Simpson pictures – There’s two here.  There’s a boring one of a Bartman statue at Comic Con 2009.  The cool one is a homemade Bart figurine from Mexico. 

Brits want to use bees as security guards to protect historic site – Excellent page whoring usage, io9:

Vandals are damaging a historic site in Wales, and its operators have come up with an ingenious solution: protect the place with bees. This should work, for as noted bee expert Homer Simpson once observed, bees will bite your bottom, and then your bottom’s big.

Got a dumb story with no hook?  Gin up a tenuous Simpsons connection and put a picture of Homer on it.  Denton has taught you well, young one. 

The 15 Best Band Cameos on TV – Good list here.  There’s lots of YouTube, and Simpsons makes it three times, for Smashing Pumpkins, The Ramones, and The Beatles, which comes in at #1. 

First You Get the Sugar: The name might confuse, but the music doesn’t – Speaking of bands and the show, here’s another band that took it’s name from an episode:

“People in tune with The Simpsons get it pretty quick,” observes drummer Daniel Moscovitch.

“While others still don’t understand what it is,” chimes in guitarist Adam Kagan. “Which is good – I say go rent Scarface, then watch The Simpsons, and then you’ll understand.”

Australia Day…In 10 Words « In 10 Words – That scene in “Bart vs. Australia” was the only good thing to come out of Crocodile Dundee, and they made two sequels! 

Homer Simpson Kills Ned Flanders by ~darthraner83 on deviantART – Fan art of Homer eating a donut after having just casually beheaded Flanders with a lightsaber.  Definitely works better than a pipe. 

Bart Simpson by ~katval1 on deviantART – Fan art of a slightly disturbing, goggle-eyed Bart.

Lisa Simpson by ~aquariano186 on deviantART – Speaking of disturbing, here’s fan art of a grown up Lisa with an undersized head and an oddly placed bust. 

Simpsons scratchboard art by Edwin Vazquez – Lots more than just Simpsons characters here, very neat.  The urinating Mickey Mouse is particularly depraved looking. 

Man wins €680,000 with one-euro football accumulator bet – Excellent reference:

Anyone who has seen The Simpsons episode where Monty Burns opens a casino knows that betting is evil, and Gamblor will ensnare you with his neon claws if you partake.

Gambling is the finest thing a person can do.

Rangers’ Rookie Hagelin Honed His Skills as a Standout at Michigan – Another NHL player who likes the show:

Hagelin’s adjustment from Sweden to the United States was surprisingly smooth. He was already fluent in English, having learned the language in school and through daily viewings of “The Simpsons” and “That ’70s Show.”

“In Sweden, they broadcast the American shows in English with Swedish subtitles, whereas in many European countries they dub them,” Hagelin said. “Watching those shows in English was big for me.”

The Simpsons Trivia Game – A free, 1500 question Simpsons trivia game for Android. 

Billy Cundiff: An Open Letter to the Baltimore Ravens’ Latest Scapegoat – Lenny actually says “Everybody” not “Everyone”, but this is still excellent usage:

To borrow a line from The Simpsons, "Everyone makes mistakes: that’s why they put erasers on pencils."

Poor Billy Cundiff. 

Family Guy (And Other Controversial Cartoons) – A Family Guy review that agrees with us:

They parody songs, popular sayings, celebrities and other cartoons (such as The Simpsons… And how it’s not been funny since you were 13 – sad but true).

Indeed, sad and true.

30 Rock: Best Comedy on TV or Stuck in Cruise Control? – And here’s a review of 30 Rock that agrees with us:

I get the argument of, ‘Come on, 30 Rock should challenge itself and try something different.’ But look what happened to a show like The Simpsons. That was the funniest show on TV for about 10 years, but its style definitely started to change, and it got terrible, and quite frankly, I cringe when I see ads for an upcoming episode today. And trust me — this is coming from a die hard Simpsons fan back in the day.

And I guess that’s my point. I’m sure after 10-12 years, the creative team of The Simpsons needed to try something else with the show. It didn’t work. Okay, fair enough. Let’s move on. But that show is still on the air today, and it’s getting progressively worse, completely losing what made it so brilliant in the first place. At this point, stop trying to change it, and just end it.

Amen, brother. 

Five TV Shows That Changed The World – Finally, here’s as excellent a one paragraph summary as you will ever read:

The Simpsons (1989-today)

Fully explaining the impact of The Simpsons in anything less than a massive leather bound tome is nearly impossible, considering the brilliant creative minds it has bestowed upon the world (Brad Bird! Conan O’Brien! Greg Daniels!), the countless shows it has influenced (South Park! Family Guy! Every show that’s ever been on Adult Swim!), and the staggering number of classic episodes it is responsible for (“Marge vs The Monorail!” “Homer at the Bat!” “Cape Feare!”). The “Golden Age” of The Simpsons is nearly a decade’s worth of sharp satire, breaking down every facet of American culture into hilarious, endlessly quotable, and sometimes even touching animated half-hours. Without The Simpsons, cartoons may have always been socially unacceptable for people over the age of 12 to watch. That an entire generation is growing up with a watered down, way-past-its-prime version of TV’s greatest dysfunctional cartoon family is a shame, but the first ten seasons of The Simpsons remain mandatory viewing for the pop culture fiends of the future.

Testify! 

“Get yer haggis right here!  Chopped heart and lungs boiled in a wee sheep’s stomach!  Tastes as good as it sounds!” – Groundskeeper Willie

“Unckie Herb, what advice would you give to a boy who will most likely become a bum like yourself?” – Bart Simpson
“Discarded pizza boxes are an inexpensive source of cheese.” – Herb Powell

“Why do we need new bands?  Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974.  It’s a scientific fact.” – Homer Simpson

Back at the end of December, reader Brian sent in a link to a video at The Escapist modestly titled “The Simpsons Is Still Funny – Pt. 1”.  It’s about five minutes long, and you can view it at the link.  The second part, “The Simpsons Is Still Funny, Part 2”, came out a week later.  These are the kind of internet videos where there’s a fast talking voiceover accompanied by a series of pictures, memes and other low cost imagery.

These particular Zombie Simpsons defenses are narrated by a guy named Bob Chipman, who usually does movie videos.  Obviously I don’t agree that what FOX puts out on Sundays is still funny.  (I don’t even think it should be called “The Simpsons”.)  But Chipman makes some plausible but easily falsified assumptions that come up every once and a while, and they’re worth rebutting in detail.

The tagline of the first video is “The Simpsons isn’t bad, you just grew up”, and that’s a reasonably accurate summary of the video.  The Simpsons came out when Chipman was a kid, and he grew into an adult during the single digit seasons which are widely considered to be the best ones.  His basic theory is that since he and others like him became more sophisticated fans as the show was at its peak, people have a nostalgic need for those seasons to be remembered as the best ones.  Unlike He-Man, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers (all of which he specifically invokes), The Simpsons was a childhood love that could still be loved by adolescents and adults without any of that icky irony.

I’m going to quote his conclusion at some length here (this begins at the 4:05 mark):

We might have moved on from thinking that cherry bombs and graffiti and “Ay Carumba” were the coolest things on Earth.  But now we could groove on, you know, incisive showbiz satire, everyday working class annoyances, and the existential ennui of being a smarty-pants trapped in a dumbed down world, all punctuated by a rotating staff of extremely talented comedy writers.  That was the real miracle of The Simpsons’ golden age, thanks largely to a parody of the bad-little-boy sitcom archetype briefly becoming an actual phenomenon with kids and winning a massive grade school audience for a show that was originally intended for an older, primetime viewership, it was able to become for those same kids one of the few precious entertainments of their childhood that was still just as awesome, if perhaps in a different way, as they grew up through their teens and into young adulthood.  That, my friends, is how something goes from being simply a good TV show to a full blown, unassailable pop culture institution.  And since the timeline of that quote-unquote “institutionalization” roughly coincides with the first nine to ten years of the series, guess which seasons tend to be remembered as “the best ones”?  So, yeah, from where I sit, that is how The Simpsons earned a legacy of such high standard that even The Simpsons couldn’t live up to it anymore.

The gist of all that is that The Simpsons simply isn’t as good as you remember it being, you just love it because you loved it as a kid and it’s still highly watchable now that you’re an adult.  The big, flashing problem with this is that most fans didn’t grow up with the show the same way he did.  He’s mistaking a very narrow age bracket of people as everyone.

This is all based on a wildly incorrect and myopically self centered assumption back at the 2:20 mark of the video:

“It seems to me that a certain majority of disappointed, hard core Simpsons fanatics are also, unsurprisingly, ground zero Generation 1 fans roughly in my relative age bracket.”

A “certain majority”?  Outside of Chipman’s immediate friends and acquaintances, is there any evidence for that rather narrow age restriction whatsoever?  He certainly doesn’t provide any, instead just assuming it to be true.  But it isn’t true.  In fact, it isn’t even remotely true.  Chipman was a kid when the show came out, so he probably knows a lot of other people who were kids when it came out too.  But the show, while popular with kids, was never just for kids.

That is all the more remarkable when you remember that there was a complete lack of adult animation at the time (at least in this country).  Before it even premiered, people knew kids would watch it.  After all, it was a cartoon and it was on at 8:00pm, the long protected “family hour”, when kids were expected to be watching television.  But adults latched on to it just as hard and as quickly.

To be sure, most of those adults were probably on the young side, members of that sweet, sweet 18-34 demographic.  But “Bartmania” wasn’t a children’s fad the way Pokemon would later be a children’s fad, or the way the Ninja Turtles and Transformers had been children’s fads a few years before.  It was a general cultural storm that encompassed not only kids, but millions of adults as well.  Two quick quotes from John Ortved’s book should serve to illustrate this.  Here’s current show writer Tim Long (p119):

“When the show started, I was a sophomore in university.  I remember thinking, This is the fasted, funniest show ever.  I cannot believe this show is on the air.  It just felt like a miracle.”

This was a common sentiment among people his age bracket, and he was born in 1969.  Ask a fan roughly Long’s age sometime and you’ll get stories about The Simpsons being something people watched in college bars or at home in groups.  During the early years of the show, new episodes were an event for a lot of people long past puberty.

Here’s Robert Cohen, who was a production assistant during the first couple of seasons (p120):

And for me in particular, the first “holy crap” moment was during the Hollywood Christmas parade, which is this dopey parade that goes down Hollywood Boulevard, and stars of yesteryear wave from convertibles; it’s this very weird parade.  It was the second season, and they’d asked the Simpsons to be in the parade, so they hired some dancers to put on costumes and Jay Kogen and I wore our Simpsons crew jackets.  We piled into this car called the Gracie-mobile, which was this big old El Dorado convertible painted with the Gracie logo.  The plan was that we would drive the Simpsons down the street in the parade.  When we pulled out on to the street and it was parade time – I was at the wheel – the people mobbed us to the point that the car could go only about twenty yards.  The sheriff’s department had to veer us outta there because it was like a riot.  And they weren’t interested in us.  They were interested in these actors in Simpsons costumes.  Obviously they weren’t even the real Simpsons.  That’s when I realized, Holy crap.  This thing’s outta control.  Because it was just hundreds of people mobbing stinky felt costumes that represented the show.  I knew the show was popular, but I didn’t realize how popular until that moment.

Those hundreds of people were not all ten year olds.  Moreover, right about the time those anonymous people in costumes were escaping that mob, this was on newsstands all over the country:

This was when the cover of Time was among the most important cultural markers in America, and it’s not about a children’s obsession, it’s “The Best of ’90”, period.

The Simpsons was never a kids show, so when Chipman compares people obsessing over its “golden age” to the way people have kitschy attachments to He-Man or Transformers, he’s conflating two very different things, his personal experience and that of the wider audience.  The idea that the show declined noticeably isn’t restricted to people born from roughly 1975 to 1985.  It’s a widely held opinion among people of disparate ages, and plenty of people followed the entire arc of the show from Season 1 to Season 9 or so as adults.  No pre-pubescent nostalgia is needed to say that the show has gone to hell.

As if to underscore how weak this argument is, the second video drops this concept completely.  It doesn’t support this contention and barely even mentions it.  Instead, it focuses on the way the culture and the media environment have changed around the show.  Chipman gets to his point quickly (1:00):

The Simpsons was an absurdist parody.  My contention, then, is that the reason it’s different now is less because the show itself has changed, but that the world around it has changed to the extent that almost everything it first existed to skewer, satirize and parody doesn’t exist anymore.

He continues from there to discuss how many of the situations parodied on The Simpsons were universally recognizable because there were only three networks and everyone was at least aware of the family sitcom tropes the show liked to make fun of.  Nowadays, with hundreds of channels and the bottomless pit of the internet fracturing the culture into a bunch of tiny niches, he thinks the show had to become an exaggerated parody of itself to survive.

The problem with this is that while there’s a superficial truth to it, it misses the fundamental aspects of American life The Simpsons got at.  The police on The Simpsons are fat, incompetent and often drunk on their own power.  Whatever the quality of your local force, that overall perception remains very much with us.  Springfield Elementary is perpetually underfunded and doesn’t do many of its kids a whole lot of good.  Sound familiar?  Corrupt local politicians, annoyingly pious neighbors, gossipy church ladies, and evil plutocrats are still a recognizable part of the American landscape.  Self help scams, niche conventions, and painfully dumb awards shows haven’t gone anywhere either.

While some of the concepts the show parodied have faded from memory, the basic take on American life remains amazingly current and relevant.  To say, as Chipman does, that the show has become “less vital and certainly less relatable” (4:40) simply because the media landscape has changed is to let Zombie Simpsons off the hook.  There have been plenty of vital and relatable shows (pick a critical darling from the last decade) that, while never reaching the level of fame The Simpsons reached, don’t come in for the same kind of routine criticism as Zombie Simpsons.  That’s because they aren’t dragging around twenty years of backstory, aren’t constantly repeating things they’ve done better in the past, and aren’t kept alive because FOX doesn’t want to risk a profitable timeslot on a flop.

More than just being a cop out, however, saying a show has to get away from what made it great to stay alive sounds more like a reason to take it off the air than keep it on the air.  There are any number of familiar examples of this, silent movie stars who couldn’t make the transition to sound, rim shot comedians in tuxedos who became dinosaurs after Lenny Bruce, hair metal bands embarrassed off the charts by grunge.  At some point, people stop caring about what you were doing, and if you can’t change sufficiently, then you’re going to become irrelevant, just as Zombie Simpsons has.

We can still appreciate classics from a bygone era.  Truly great books and movies often stay great, genuinely good music has a way of enduring, and those old seasons of The Simpsons have aged incredibly well because they still speak to so much of our lives.  But to keep doing what no one cares about anymore is the definition of malingering.

As always, this is somebody’s opinion and they’re perfectly entitled to it.  But the specific arguments Chipman is making here simply don’t hold water.  They’re riddled with factual inaccuracies, somewhat contradictory (so the show did change?), and generally sloppy.  Saying that people’s love of the original seasons is based on nostalgia may be true for a few individuals, but there’s no evidence for that among the general population of fans.  Saying that that the world evolved around it is true, but in no way changes the fact that plenty of other shows have found ways to not suck in the era of http.  Think Zombie Simpsons is funny all you want, but don’t try to back up your opinion with things that aren’t true and don’t make sense.