Funny, I was doing some good ol' browsin' around and stumbled upon this person's blog about how he thinks The Simpsons have taken a nose dive in recent years etc etc (read it here). What's more funny is, this was written well before the movie was released and I think after watching the movie, it got me thinking the very same thing about the lackluster the series has become in the past few years.

Another weird coincidence, I share a lot of similarities with the author of this blog, I, too, own all the (he has the first 7, I got the first 11) seasons of The Simpsons on DVD and have watched and listened to all the commentaries for each episode. Also, one of my all time favorite episodes happens to be his all time favorite episode, "The Lemon of Troy".

But back to the topic at hand. The episodes really feel dumbed down, as funny as that sounds for a cartoon sitcom. All the best writers have left the show and these writers were geniuses back in the prime of the series which sucks, that they've moved on.

For example, Conan O'Brien was a writer during the early hay days of the show. Although he only write four episodes, he contributed a lot of funny quirks to other episodes. Another awesome, original writer was John Schwartswelder, who's an accomplished author in his own right. I look forward to picking up his books next time I'm in a book store. He's written well over 20 episodes, all classics in my book, but he hasn't contributed to anything recent in the past few years. Technically, he's credited to writing part of the movie, but it's not quite the same. I could probably make a nice little graph showing the decline of quality vs the lack of good writers over the past 5 years.

I think when its all said and done, its the writing, the material just isn't as funny as it was. Either that or all the great stories have been done to death. It's just sad to think such a classic series might end off on a low note, because it dragged on way too long and beyond its prime, but here's hoping.