This was a repeat. But I loved it the first time around, thought it was hysterical. Actually, this season has been a marked improvement from last.

If you check the credits of almost any episode discluding the first season and the last couple seasons, you'll almost always fine some celebrity guest-voice show up, but they never made a big deal out of it. Now almost every episode has some big celebrity playing themself, and/or a character based off their new movie/album in theaters/stores now! and there's commercials on for months beforehand advertising the fact.

Just an observation. No, I haven't been watching for a while now. In fact, I just checked what time it was while typing this comment -- missed it again this week. Ho hum.

They need to resurrect Futurama.

I hardly ever watch TV anymore, so I've never seen the Simpsons.

Is "Taxi" still on? I think that was the last new show I watched very much of.

I used to watch "The Simpsons" all the time. I haven't watched any TV at all for the last couple years. Don't miss it. Dowingba's description sounds like the classic downhill slide of a show: when they start depending on guest stars. That's when I know a show is on the skids. Too bad.

I admit that I rarely watch the new episodes -- I catch it in reruns on weeknights. But every once in a great while I catch a new episode thats good. Occasionally.

I just rented the 1993 season on DVD -- there's no comparison!

The who?

I love the Simpsons. I probably will always love the Simpsons. I guess this is because I pretty much grew up with the Simpsons. As long as I can remember they have been on TV and I have been making sure to watch. I don't have anything in particular that draws me to the show,it is funny, but I think it may be the wit and nuance (Maybe Kerry likes the Simpsons too?) that they have in the show.

I do agree with dowingba wholeheartedly that they need to ressurect Futurama. I watch Futurama reruns and The Family Guy reruns (Quite possibly my favorite comedic TV show of all time Cartoon or otherwise) on Cartoon networks adult swim M-Th. Think I must have seen em all at least thrice. No wonder my parents think I still need to grow up, all I do is watch more and more cartoons. ;-)

Dean,

I stopped watching it quite some time ago. Do you remember when Side Show Bob won the election due to fraud? He even got Lisa's dead pet's vote?

Remember that speech he gave when he was about to be arrested after the results were thrown out? He talked about how the people think they have to vote for a Democrat who cares about people, but they really want a Republican who will rule them with an iron fist and tell them what to do.

Do you remember that? I despise the pseudo-Republican statist conservatives, but plenty of these people are still Democrats, and let us not forget the statist pseudo-liberals.

I long for a time when all the collectivistic, statist Nazi-loving heel clickers can all be in one party. I really do not care which one, as long as I can belong to the one their not in. Cartoons like the Simpsons are not the appropriate place for venting one's political spleen in such a fashion. Besides, it was so unsubtle and not funny at all.

Dean,

I guess the "Simpsons" have "jumped the shark", as it were.

But wait- hasn't the phrase jumping the shark, well, you know?

:)

The Simpsons are on their way out. Thankfully, due to the tremendous DVD sales Family Guy generated, new episodes of that great show will probably be airing sometime in 2005. Woo!

Peter Griffin: "Listen Lois, I know you're a feminist and I think thats adorable, but this is grown-up time and I'm the man."

No, I haven't seen the Simpsons in a long, long time. Some years back, my brother turned me on to the Simpsons in rerun— they already had long been a fixture on TV at that time, though those reruns were the first time I'd ever seen them— and after that I would occasionally catch a new episode. But I haven't watched the Simpsons now in three or four years.

Though— for some odd reason, must be my evil imagination— I suddenly have this cartoon scene flitting through my mind:

Bart: "You want me to pilot this giant robot, and go out there and fight Krusty the Clown? I can't! I just can't! I've never even seen anything like this robot before!"

Marge: "Bart can't possibly pilot it. He just got here. It took Lisa seven months to synchronize with her Eva..."

Homer: "Very well. Flanders?"

[video screen flashes on, with Ned Flanders]

Flanders: "Yes, sir?"

Homer: "Wake up Lisa."

Flanders: "Can... can we use her?"

Homer: "She's not dead yet."

Flanders: "Understood."

[video screen off]

Homer: "Lisa?"

Lisa [voice over intercom, weakly]: "Yes?"

Homer: "The spare is unusable, you will do it again."

Lisa: "Yes, sir."

After a no-TV hiatus (roughly five years) I wound up living with someone who wanted us to have cable. This was about fifteen years ago now. I didn't watch TV from 1989-1994, roughly.

Other than the commercials (which were fabulous, absolutely fabulous, using technology that I ahd last seen only in movies) the thing that amazed me the most was The Simpsons.

The Simpsons may be in a state of decay. Any who have watched, and enjoyed, the expose of every mainstay cliche must realize that this type of satire is sorely needed.

Plus, it can be a great way to instantly understand whether or not you might get along with someone. Tell me you don't think the Simpsons are funny and I will take it to the bank that you aren't getting the joke. We wouldn't get along. See?

I, too, hope the Family Guy returns. Returns to stay.

Worst troll ever.

You've got to be kidding, Dean. I just saw last season's episode "Three Gays of the Condo", and it floored me-- it felt like one of the early-years episodes, only it was funny! It was poignant, human, internally consistent, and had a Weird Al cameo. It also won an Emmy.

True, the Simpsons sort of lost its way under the pen of Ian Maxtone-Graham, but they're getting their groove back. And I find it bewildering, incidentally, that people would slam The Simpsons for its "anti-conservative" slant (Sideshow Bob? Birch Barlow? C'mon, can't we enjoy gentle satire when we see it?) and simultaneously fawn over Family Guy, with its sneering Kennedy-esque New England liberal miasma. I can barely stomach that show-- the only thing worse on that count is The Oblongs, which is one long Canadian anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-corporate screed whose central theme is the horrors of having private health care and stratified wages.

I've seethed about Family Guy before-- it's got this ponderous, tripping-over-its-feet pacing that makes me want to claw my eyes out (remember that Y2K episode, when they meet up with Randy Newman, who sits there at his piano plinking out an extemporaneous song about Lois just standing there-- for like ninety seconds?), and a repetitive, tiresome, sitcom-like set of cipher characters (yes, yes, I get it, the baby's going to launch into one of those misanthropic, megalomaniacal scheming tirades every time the camera lights on him-- c'mon, if I wanted to watch "Dinosaurs", I'd have killed myself in 1991), and Peter's politically incorrect, and Lois has that voice that's like bleach to the dendrites. The kids are barely even believable as human beings, particularly the son. The only character I find mildly interesting is the dog. Now, I've softened on the show a bit since my original screed on the subject when it first came on Adult Swim several months ago; but it's utterly beyond me how Family Guy can have culled such a rabid following, and particularly how people can compare it favorably to The Simpsons, even the latter years' episodes.

...But anyway, I'm rambling. Let me just say that it was the fact that I was able to make nervous jokes about "Khlau Kalash" with friends on the morning of 9/11 that allowed me to keep my head at all that day.

I still watch The Simpson's because even though it's NOT as funny as it used to be, it'll still have a few zingers that'll make me laugh out loud. I live for those moments.

And if you want more of those moments, check out The Family Guy repeats on the Cartoon Network. That show has the edge and laughs that The Simpson's used to have. Occassionally it'll have something in it that I'll find incredibly offensive, but at least it's equal-opportunity offensiveness. EVERYTHING in The Family Guy is fair game. Kudos to Fox for making noise about bringing it back.

Q: What sucks worst than the Simpsons?

A: A thread entitled "The Simpsons Suck."

A better question would be "why did they ever cancel 'Sports Night' or 'Playmakers'?

I only started watching the Simpsons recently, thanks to my fiancee, but I enjoy the current episodes as much as any reruns I've seen. The exceptions are actually the first-season episodes, many of which just aren't very funny. I'm happily surprised that it lasted long enough to get better.

It's a satire, plain and simple.