‘Simpsons’ Fan Who Says the Show Should Have Ended After Season 12 Gets Flamed By Modern ‘Simpsons’ Fans

Modern Simpsons fans and classics-only Simpsons fans are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots. Or Welshmen and Scots. 

As is the case with most groups of its massive size, the Simpsons fandom is certainly not a monolith, and every fan has their own opinions about when the show was in its prime. Generally, Seasons One through Nine are considered the “Golden Age” of the franchise, with a steady decline in the quality of writing and the consistency of the characters coming in the three-or-so seasons after that. Many critics point to Mike Scully’s tenure as showrunner and the “Jerkass Homer” phase of the series as the tipping point that pushed The Simpsons into decades of syndicated sloppiness, but regardless of what the critics say, the show continues to command a fanbase that will happily watch every new season for as long as the lights are on.

One classic Simpsons fan on Reddit recently posted an opinion that is far from uncommon among the show’s online fandom — they wrote that The Simpsons should have been canceled following its 12th season, prompting pushback from the fans who still happily watch every new episode and wonder why those who don’t watch it can’t leave well enough alone.

“After Season 12 would have been the most logical moment to cancel The Simpsons,” user Braiseofglory argued. “‘Behind the Laughter’ (S11) was the last truly brilliant season finale (and one of the last episodes worthy of comparison to the Golden Era), and Season 12 had enough good episodes (‘A Tale of Two Springfields’ is one of my personal favorites of the Decline Era) that something would have been lost, but enough mediocre and bad episodes to see the writing was truly on the wall.”

This opinion generally aligns with the mainstream critical community’s thoughts on The Simpsons and its zombie-like continuation into the modern day, but there is still a vocal contingency of contemporary fans who say that they actually like zombie Simpsons. These viewers argue that the fans who think that the only good stuff happened in the 1990s need to take off their rose-colored goggles — they do nothing, anyways. Or as one detractor posited, “Are we just destined to talk about this forever? The Simpsons is kind of like SNL at this point. Large swathes of people still watch it, but the parts of the show that you watched when you were younger are the best ever and now it’s awful, yadda yadda yadda.”

“I still find it enjoyable, and I’ve watched since Season One,” another Simpsons loyalist wrote. “If there weren’t enough people watching, it wouldn’t be on the air. It’s different now than in the early seasons but still enjoyable overall (not necessarily all episodes).”

One more modern fan added, “A new ‘bad’ episode of The Simpson’s is still an enjoyable 30 minutes of television.”

Critically, not one of the modern Simpsons fans argued that its current 35th season is comparable to the classic episodes that built Matt Groening’s media empire. Instead, the sentiment they’re trying to communicate is that late-series Simpsons is still better than no Simpsons, and there’s nothing about the new episodes that somehow degrades or devalues those of the Golden Age. 

Basically, let people enjoy what they enjoy, even if they enjoy watching the 100th fucking episode about Homer getting riled up because of his phone.