Today I found out that season 16 is awesome.

The new season's episodes are definetely a huge step up from, say, four or five years ago.

Early Simpsons is an A. Seasons 9-recent were a D-. Now it's B, B-ish.

Seasons 4-8 are the golden period. 8 is the best season. 9 is still good. 11 is the worst.

I don't know why season 16 was so good. I watched them all straight through yesterday. A few episodes in, I was totally excited. Homer making out with himself had me ROLFing hard. It dropped off a bit at the end, especially the Lisa episode where she's on an American Idol knockoff, but the season as a whole was still great.

I would include seasons 2-3 in the golden period and maybe end it a bit earlier. Seasons 2-3 were back when the show was still mundane, and still could be seen as satire that applies to actual real life.

I noticed something in tonight's episode which was one of the reasons I stopped liking the show.

How do I explain...okay, the early episodes tended to start at Point A. Then, they would go to Point B. Then finally, they would go to Point C.

Tonight's episode started at Point A, then meandered around in the woods for a while, jumped off a cliff, hitchhiked to Memphis, then finally hanglided the rest of the way to Point C.

There were some really funny moments, of course, but...Lisa gets mad at Homer, then a bunch of random stuff tenuously linked together that makes no logical sense happens, then at the end Lisa forgives him for some random hideously contrived reason.

Fuck a satire that applies to actual real life.

Simpsons was still good after it decided to stop being a cynical look at lower middle class American life, but I think the writers have decided that because they're 'The Simpsons' they're above having to write a coherent plotline.

Fuck a coherent plotline.

I don't care if the plotlines are stupid or the satire isn't great, but the show has gotten redundant over the last 3-4 seasons. I would agree with Buck that 4-8 are tops, although 9 and 10 are solid. I thought 16, while better than the last few, wasn't excellent.

I noticed them reusing a lot of ideas from old Simpsons episodes, and it made me realize how little that matters.

the new episodes, which hopefully will be resuming soon, though not as good as the older ones are still entertaining and funny and that's all that matters to me now.

The most recent Christmas episode was quite excellent. The part with Moe was hilarious.