Thesis

The Rise and Fall of the Simpsons

Has This Iconic Cartoon Declined Over The Years?

Introduction

The Simpsons are a fictional dysfunctional family that first appeared in the media in 1987. They were first used in 2 minute shorts that was part of show called The Tracey Ullman Show. Most of the main characters were there except the cat 'snowball ll' and the dog 'Santa's little helper' who appears in the show later on in the actual show.

The original cat snowball got run over by a Chrysler, the animal was white with green eyes and wore a pink cat collar, over the years the cat received multiple mentions and cameos. 

Santas little helper made his first appearance on the first ever official Simpsons episode, called 'Simpsons roasting on an open fire', the dog is a brown greyhound that used to run in the Springfield derby. As the animal lost so many races, he was abandoned by its owner and the Simpsons adopted him and ever since he has been a part of the Simpsons family. 

They have been very successful throughout the seasons with season 6 having about 17 million views per episode which are very big numbers, 20 to 25 years later and only 2.5 million views per episode which is still quite big as it is in the millions but the views have still declined around 85% which is a huge drop and as a whole most of the show ratings have dropped too.

This picture shows how the episode ratings have gone down.

This image shows the views per season going down.

The Tracey Ullman Show

This is where the Simpsons first appeared, being quickly constructed by Matt Groening (the Simpsons creator) after he discovered that he would lose the rights to his characters from 'life in hell' which was a successful comic strip that appeared in USA news papers as part of the coffee break section (a bit like the Garfield comic strips that can be found in the daily mail, coffee break section). 

The shorts would feature the Simpsons who were based on Matt's own family with Bart being based on Groening himself which explains why bart is the main character of the shorts.

The personality of Bart, Lisa and Maggie are disruptive, mischievous and naughty, with Bart being the leader of the terrible trio, and occasionally was strangled by Homer. Bart as well had his catchphrase 'don't have a cow Homer'.

The personality of Homer was loving and caring but had anger management problems and occasionally strangled Bart, in the early days homer would often take his kids out to spend time with them, but gets angry at the end of the shorts because of his kids behaviour. Homer had a catchphrase 'lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes' and 'why you little'.

The personality of Marge is loving, caring and patient, she is generally a lot calmer than Homer is and she doesn't like her children misbehaving or being rude. Sometimes she does break out into a rage when is pushed to her limits, for an example she kicks Bart out of the car after he stole some chocolate and he talked back at Marge and said he had a free ride home. 

Another example is when she had a disagreement with Homer, about the kids stopping a punching bag sound because it was annoying to homer, marge began punching the bag which caused homer to go into a rage, (the punching bag had homer's face on it).

Marge's has a catch-phase, 'we are very disappointed in you kids'.

The Tracey Ullman shorts show funny elements that most families can relate to as it covered real life topics, an example of this is when homer turns off the TV and wants his kids to do something else, like read a book or play outside, a typical child could perhaps relate to that as their own parents could do the same thing to them.

Another example could be when a child accidentally shoplifts as they may want something but their parents said no. So the only other way is to walk out of the store with the item hidden. Parents that had a child steel from a shop could perhaps also relate to it because Homer and Marge were furious when they found out what Bart did, and so would a normal parent in the real world and probably would heavily discipline their child, like Homer and Marge did to Bart Simpson. 

Generally though the jokes are funny and top quality and would make a lot of people laugh at the humor, generally though Bart doesn't need his father for the short to be funny, of course Bart would need another character to interact with it to be funny, but the other character could have been anyone in the Simpson family, but Bart being the main character wouldn't last for long, however the jokes will stay fresh for a while longer.  

Season 1-9 The Golden Age

The Simpsons then changed for the better after fox released the very first season of the Simpsons, it was such a success that they continued on and are still running after 31 seasons. However, the first 9 seasons were the best ever and was called 'Simpsons mania' and this was when the Simpsons were at their most popular.

During these seasons the Simpsons just like The Tracey Ullman Show, they covered real life topics, such as 'Moaning Lisa' where the moral is to be yourself. After marge saw how roughly the school treats her daughter, marge has a change in heart says to Lisa to be sad and she will do the smiling for the both of them.

Another example of this is when Homer tries to commit suicide after being fired from his job at the local nuclear power plant, Homer goes into a deep depression, then tries to drown himself, after rescuing his family family from being ran over, Homer became a crusader for citizen safety, making sure that all kids in Springfield were safe.

As the nuclear power plant is quite dangerous Homer also became an anti-nuclear activist for a short while until he got his job back with an added promotion to safety inspector. He has continued to be the safety inspector, except when he gets another job or gets fired only to be rehired in the next episode, and even then he doesn't show much sadness.

There was a deep and meaningful moral to a lot of episodes where sometimes even a life lesson can be learnt, always be yourself, is a good moral in moaning Lisa.

The early Simpsons episodes managed to invoke an emotional response with the audience and sometimes its strong, with them feeling sad because of homer's depression and happy at the end of moaning Lisa.

Some episodes Homer is a nasty person but redeems himself at the end of the episode, an example of this is in the episode 'When Flanders Failed', Homer got annoyed with his neighbour, Flanders, and after pulling on a wish bone Homer wishes Ned Flanders leftorium to go bankrupt.

Homers wish starts to come true, meanwhile Homer found a lot of left handed people around town, he goes out of his way not to tell them, this in turn starts to make Homer guilty inside. Eventually Ned starts selling his possessions to keep his business afloat, Homer takes advantage and taunts Ned about his financial situation.

Eventually Ned came close to selling his house and living in his car, this in turn made Homer and Ned meet at the entrance of Flanders, (both of them apologizing to each other), Homer for being a jerk (not telling anyone about Flanders business) and Flanders apologizing for not taking Homer's advice on gambling away his family's future.

Homer redeems himself by calling everyone in Springfield and tells them about the left handed store and at the end of the episode many people were in the leftorum buying things, Homer saved Flanders business. 

What made this episode so special apart from the bbq joke was Homer having remorse, unlike the modern Homer who probably would celebrate as Flanders is moving away and the cherry on top of that cake to see Flanders suffer, the old Homer at least showed some remorse of his actions. 

Funny scene where homer says mmm bbq

In the first ever episode of the Simpsons, there was a new mini snippet of animation called the couch gags, this can range from 2 seconds to about 3 minutes, the short usually has the Simpsons sit on their sofa in their living room and something random happens.

The Simpsons expanded from a two minute short to a half an hour show. Due to this, additional characters had to be added to help show the daily lives of the Simpsons, simple characters to begin with such as Edna Krabappel, Skinner and Mrs Hoover as simple school staff that educate Bart and Lisa. Mr Burns and Smithers were added as Homer's bosses, the Flanders Family as the neighbours of the Simpsons as well as Moe who is a bartender and Lenny, Carl and Barney who are homer's drinking companions.

Then the later on they introduced, Martin Prince, Nelson Munz, Dolph Starbeam, Kearney Zzyzwicz, Jimbo Jones, Milhouse Vanhoutin, Ralph Wiggum, Sheri and Terri and many more. they are students at Springfield elementary.

Nelson Munz, Dolph Starbeam, Kearney Zzyzwicz and Jimbo Jones are all bullies who usually beat up Bart Simpson and Martin Prince.

Martin Prince is the intelligent one in Bart's class and has a frenemy relationship with Nelson.

Milhouse Vanhoutin was first introduced in a butterfinger advert as Bart's best friend and ever since has hung around Bart like glue.

Ralph Wiggum is a special needs boy who does get bullied but not so much as Bart, he is also very loved character because of his funny actions and one lined sentences.

Sheri and Terri are twins who are always together, they usually like to bully Lisa, because of this Lisa has a lot of insecurities about her self, like her weight.

Because of all the new characters that were introduced, the creators had to come up with a town for them to live in, so they created Springfield. the state that Springfield is in Oregon, with Evergreen terrace being a street being where the Simpsons live, this street name is also where Matt Grew up, he also named some of the characters from the streets of where he grew up.

The personality of the family has changed however some characters have changed more than others.

Homer's general personality is now lazy, greedy, clumsy, gets angry easily and sometimes a jerk, Homer occasionally now sleeps on the job at work, he generally eats a lot and even chokes on donuts after stuffing too many in his mouth.  he also says he famous catchphrase 'Doh' and 'Woo who'

Homer at this point still loves his children and has made a lot of sacrifices for them, for an example homer gets Lisa a horse and gets so many jobs to get enough money to keep the animal, homer also gives up his ticket to ride the duff blimp to enter Lisa into a beauty pageant, to show to his daughter that she was not ugly, as Lisa had insecurities about it.

Another few include, Sacrificing his happiness for Maggie, do it for her, with pictures of Maggie, over an unmotivational plaque, keeping Bobo the bear after being offered a lot of money, spending time with bart at The Soap Box Derby.

Sometimes though Homer is reckless and or mean those who are around him, Marge has to put up with his nonsense, but when Homer is acting like a mean jerk he usually got a negative consequence out of it.

Spending time with bart helping him to build a cart for The Soap Box Derby

As you can see in the videos and pictures Homer does something nasty and he then gets his comeuppance.  

Marge didn't really change till about season 3 where she became more quiet, kind and submissive than her Tracy Ullman show counterpart but usually takes charge of the kids when they misbehave, unlike Homer who is lazy, Marge is a very good house wife who achieves keeping the family together, Marge also hides her negative emotions and because of this Marge just sometimes freaks out and becomes very hostile.

Bart has not changed since his Tracey Ullman years but more qualities have been added to him, he has become a prankster who fools around with a slingshot and also takes on a secret identity of EL Bart-o and graffitis it all around Springfield.

Bart also received another quote "¡Ay carumba!" which turned out to be his first words after catching his parents in the bedroom.

bart is still quite disrespectful towards his dad, he does this by taking back at him, saying rude things to Homer and by doing naughty things that harm or humiliate Homer, in which he gets strangled for it.

In these pictures the name EL Bar-to can be found.

Lisa's general personality is smart, kind and different, out of the all the family members she is the only Simpson who shows her intelligence to the world and as a result she doesn't have  very many friends at school, but when someone does get to know her she is quite a nice girl.

She has also some of the best spotlight episodes, including Moaning Lisa, I love Lisa and Lisa the Beauty Queen.

She is different from her family because in season 7 she became a vegetarian after seeing a lamb with a bow around its neck, later marge gave her lamb chops and she imagined about the lamb she met during the day, so from then on in she became a vegetarian.

Maggie has become a quiet but cheerful infant, but apart from that she has not received much character development since the Tracey Ullman show, but she does revive some character development in season 15.

The Simpsons have even created some very popular and famous songs including lisa its your birthday, do the bart man, see my vest and we do.

Season 10-Present, The Downfall

During season 10 the Simpsons went through another change, this time it was not a good one. for a start slowly but surely, Homer became more reckless, impulsive and mean, he still kept his lazy and greedy traits but lost his kind heart that made this character redeemable.

Some of the meanest/worst things he has done in his time is bullying Ned Flanders constantly, strangles bart for no reason, controls/neglects his family, kills Maud Flanders and causes destruction around Springfield (Please note this is from season 10 onward).

 I have got to admit some of the content was good from season 10 to 15, one good quality episode is 'She of Little Faith' where Lisa becomes a Buddhist, this episode felt classical as it reminded me of Lisa becoming a vegetarian in season 7, it was quite meaningful watching Lisa distance herself from her family again until she learned to be respectful of her families religion just like her vegetarian episode, but then after that the massive decline in quality started.

The jokes of the Simpsons became more lazy over time. they used to have jokes different with different elements in them, an example of this is in the episode 'Bart sells his soul', in the episode bart received bad luck all day and becomes obsessed with trying to get his soul back, he rides his bike to Milhouse's but it gets destroyed by a road cleaner. 

this joke can be broken down into 5 mini jokes:

Now compare that with a modern Simpsons joke, Homer buys a lot of junk for his car and then activates a fog machine.

and that is the joke, just a one liner about homer thinking it's crazy to activate a fog machine in his car, this comparison shows how much the quality has declined.

Another problem is the repetition in the jokes, the joke first begins with a short video being shown to an audience with homer at the end laughing while no one else in that audience laughs, it first happens when homer sees Hans Moleman get hit in the groin by an American football, the joke felt fresh, homer laughed for about 17 seconds, but in that time homer did engage a bit in conversation which made it not feel like it was being dragged on.

The other episode was about a YouTuber showing bart and homer a video where a monkey falling out of a tree after sniffing its finger, after the monkey falls out of the tree homer begins laughing, even though bart nor the YouTuber was laughing, homer laughs for about 33 seconds which made the joke drag on a bit.

The personality of all the Simpsons characters have changed too.

from being an ignorant, lazy and greedy dad with a big heart, homer has turned into a an extremely confident man who shows sociopathic behaviours, doesn't give a monkeys about the people's feelings around him, and at one point he buys a grill for himself instead of spending it on a new washing machine which was Marge's request to him, which also shows he doesn't respect his wife and how selfish he has become.

Homer also has become very violent and impulsive in about everything he does and he gets no punishment afterwards, he can do pretty much anything without getting any consequences for his actions.

He also abuses his kids and animals, on occasions he strangles Bart for no reason, or strangles something that he shouldn't, like him strangling his father who is an elderly person or Santa's little helper.

Sure in the past episodes he has strangled the dog before, but as a result he receives his comeuppance by the dog biting him back, in the modern episode though the dog does no such thing.

homer chokes his dad.

homer strangling santas little helper without a consequence.

The writers also decided for homer to strangle a panda cub and his own brain for some strange reason.

Marge has now become even more submissive letting Homer get away with his actions, she has even been emotionally manipulated on many occasions, she is the one who usually deals fixes Homer's terrible actions.

Homer is totally reliant on her to do all the house work but not just that he also relies on her to look after the kids, at this point marge has to get therapy in order to cope with her mental health, just like she said Wednesday is her reset button.

Marge's reset button.

Bart has not really changed but his pranks have become more harmful to his victims.

Lisa changed from an unpopular smartypants to a unpopular girl who tries to follow the most popular trends.

and finally Maggie changes from a normal baby to a little one who is addicted to her dummy, and if her dummy is thrown away she starts throwing tantrums, until she gets her dummy back.

As the simpsons went on more celebraties were making an appearance in the show, with many of them interacting with at least one of the simpsons characters a few examples are Ben Affleck, Tony Hawk, Elon Musk, Zac Efron, Martha Stewart, Ron Howard and many more; but one celebraty appearance made one of the most hated simpsons episodes ever, it also was very contaversual episode.

it is episode 22, season 23, it had the lowest rating out of all the Simpsons episodes, its' called Lisa goes gaga.

It could also potentially be controversial as well because one of the costumes that Lady Gaga wears could be quite inappropriate for young audiences, the Simpsons target audience would be for an average family this includes children, another one is Lady Gaga kissing Marge Simpson.

The moral of the episode was to bully people to make yourself feel better, the story is Lisa gets bullied at school and becomes very upset again because of how unpopular she is (this plot has been used too much), somehow Lady Gaga feels her sadness and comes to Springfield to cheer Lisa up, Lisa becomes angry with her and takes things out on Lady Gaga which made her feel better then at the end where she starts singing with lady gaga before the singer goes elsewhere on her train.

The episode that the Simpsons should have ended on

There was one episode that was not only good but a perfect opportunity for the Simpsons to have ended on a positive note, its called holidays of future passed, was one of the best episodes in the Simpsons, this is where the Simpsons should have ended, as the audience gets to see marge and homer grow old together with homer becoming a nearly perfect husband at that point, as he gave up drinking and became more active with his grandchildren.

Bart, Lisa and Maggie grow up, with bart working with dinosaurs, he also emulates homer's sloppy personality, he also lived at Springfield Elementary and has 2 boys that looked like him, Lisa becomes rich and famous and lives in a futuristic mansion, she got married to Milhouse and had a daughter who liked going online a lot, finally Maggie became a rock singer and was pregnant when the episode started out. she still didn't talk in the entire episode. 

The episode showed how Homer fixed up his personality and became a great grandpa, it also shows how bart and Lisa overcoming their challenges of being parents.

This episode would have been the perfect ending to such a long running American TV show as you get to say goodbye with each of the main characters in the Simpsons family, it would give a satisfying ending where many people would be happy.

But the creators still kept coming out with new episodes and that opportunity of ending on a positive note just dwindled away.

They are currently in their 31st season with still at least 2 more seasons coming in the following year, when will they finally end.

Opinions about the Simpsons 

i wrote some questions about people's opinions about the simpsons, and most people thought the simpsons should end.

Bonus fact

Disney bought the entertainment side of FOX for $71.3 billion and now the "evil" corporation now owns the rights to the Simpsons, Futurearma, family guy and south park.

Conclusion

Overtime the Simpsons has declined quite a bit and even though they had a perfect opportunity to end, they just still kept on going.

Eventually when the Simpsons does end, only the good old classic episodes will be remembered.

With Disney owning the wrights to the Simpsons now I doubt that this American family will be going anywhere as this company will milk the Simpsons until they don't make any more profit from it.

I have also found out that the Simpsons have a name after season 12 known as zombie Simpsons, it was described as the modern Simpsons being now nothing but shadowy husks from who they once were, and i agree, they are certainly not as funny compared to their old selves.

I just want to know when will they end.