So, I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I think I've come to a conclusion of why The Simpson's sucks.

I know it's a topic that has had much deliberation and debate, and I don't know if a sufficient agreement has been reached, because, to be honest, my attention span on reading online internet webpages if pretty much limited to Zhubin, dooce, and comics about necrophelia and oedipus complexes. (Compleces?)

Anyhoo, I was just talking to my good friend Matt Little about Simpsons philosophy and why it went down the crapper.
He was, of course, defending its genius, saying that it changed the face of irony in comedy, and paved the way for ridiculous hilarity in shows such as Family Guy to come into being.
It got me thinking about the specific rise of the Simpsons.
I remember how my mom didn't let me and Ryan watch it when it first came out, because she thought it was bad, but my uncle told her that it was too funny to miss. Bear in mind that they were already on t-shirts at this point, so my pre-teen mind thought that we were late-bandwagon jumpers. Well, that was about as wrong as Lovejoy thinking Frank Grimes liked to be called "Grimey"!

Here's how I see it. There are an elite few of us who saw the genius from the beginning. Yes, I'm going to rope myself in with the beginning, because comparitively speaking, I was. We appreciated the simple storylines that sometimes wrapped up in a bow, sometimes wandered way off-course. We liked it before they crammed the entire CBS line-up and Billboard chart-toppers in for guest cameos, but appreciated, every once in a while, turning to our family members asking, "Was that Ozzie Smith?"

We caught a lot of the popular culture references and felt proud of ourselves for doing so. This is key. When this occured, we felt a tiny wink transmit unnoticed from the writers right to us. We talked about it at school. A person could sit in class, drum their fingers and say "excellent" and three or four people would bust out into laughter. People started doing the Nelson "HA-ha," the Frink "blaven," and I have no shame in admitting that one of my favorite facial responses to a good rip comes right from Homer Simpson. Just that little whimper and head drop deal. I do it all the time.

Here's the deal. The cool kids got jealous. They wanted to get "it." They wanted to be in on all the jokes and make the references that seemed to make everyone else laugh, that transmitted a wink of acknowledgment from writer to viewer to viewer's friend.

Simpsons was a cultural point of reference. I'd use examples of episodes as actual backing to arguments I had. It was edgy but touching. It pushed limits of mocking the network hand that fed them, and it was unafraid of allowing its characters to be self-referential, without being too formulaic or absurdist. (Appendix A -- Watch almost any show on Cartoon Network. I'm sorry, Seth, but Robot Chicken makes me want to shove my head in a pit of acid.)

But the cool kids fucked everything up, just like they did the video game industry. But we can get to that another day, just as soon as this fire I just set to Felicia's Madden games simmers down.

The cool kids started watching by the droves, and the Simpsons creators noticed. They saw that they had to beef up whatever it was that made them so great, which was, of course, the irony, pithy statements on society, and the inside-joke winks. But it became absurd.
The people who loved it for so long noticed that the creators were trying too hard, and the cool people didn't get the jokes that they were trying so hard to make, because cool people are idiots!
Also, another absurd tendency popped up -- the writers began making winking inside jokes about their own damn show! Oftentimes, you couldn't even get some joke without puzzle-piecing together two unrelated jokes from unrelated episodes in unrelated seasons. And can I just say, if I never hear from Crazy Cat Lady again in my life, it will be too soon?

So, the "die-hard" cool kids who liked Simpsons for a second and maybe caught *a* joke in the first episode they saw, started saying "Simpsons suck now" is so mind-numbingly ironic, it's like Hitler putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head at Poland, saying "Wow, the population really sucks now."
IT'S YOUR FAULT COOL KIDS!! DAMN YOU!!!

So, that's what happened to the Simpsons. Now, I can only assume that the hardest-hardy-hard-hard core kids continue to watch. The ones that love that Cat Lady and other lesser-known characters and eagerly await them to utter a line so's they can add it to their internet list of quotes. Unfortunately, the coolio-cool-14-year-olds also watch, because of the gratuitous use of trendy cameos of Trendy McWhore-of-the-Moment.

So, that's my opinion. I have officially written a Simpsons diatribe on the Internet. Like every person ever.
I'd like to like the Simpsons again. I love the old episodes.
It just doesn't have the Sunday magic it used to.

Okay, I don't really hate the Simpsons that much. I'm just trying to get back at them for making Marge's weapon in the arcade game a vacuum cleaner. And my brother and his friends for making me play her.