Come on and do the "Simpsons" flop

A T Dog Media Blog Flashback

Okay, a lot has been made about last Sunday's episode (The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed) which turned out to be the worst Simpsons produced since That '90's Show, when the writers completely rewrote the backstory to give us another wonderful Homer- f's- up - Marge-gets-mad storyline for the sake of attracting more younger viewers.

The story centered on the family's trip to Israel, another in a long line of vacation episodes whose premise was worn out by Season 13.

People complained about the horrible jokes, the annoying tour guide (voiced by the annoying and unfunny Sacha Baron Cohen), Homer being too grating, Ned Flanders being Ned Flanders, and Bart getting plummled by a girl, reducing him to little more than Leopold "Butters" Stotch (and even he can kick Bart's ass.)

The message boards at Toon Zone and No Homers were overwhelmingly negative, with 51% of voters at the latter site gave it one star out of five and even a few giving it zero stars.

Personally, yours truly thought this was the worst episode since That's '90's Show. But since the series jumped the shark two years ago with '90's, does it even matter?

The episode averaged only 5.7 million viewers, finishing fourth in in its time slot, but did finish second in adults 18-49 - but with only a 2.7 rating. But does that even matter? It still outdrew anything The Cant Win aired last week. And since The Simpsons is a heritage show, it takes in a lot of revenue regardless of how it does in the ratings - all thanks to a broken system where the numbers keep getting lower, but the ad rates keep going higher, while programs like Heroes and Law and Order get renewed year after year after year....

And the writers of The Simpsons - the morons that they are - sweep the WGA Awards for best Animation Writing every year. This is either because the competition is light or they do it The Chicago Way, and I'm suspecting the latter is the reason. Even the pompous Oprah Winfrey knew when to step aside when it came to winning Daytime Emmy Awards. 

So in honor of this landmark lowlight in Simpsons history - which there have been many in the last seven or eight seasons -  yours truly is reposting this Think Tank originally from January 30, 2008 (though rewritten on February 25, 2008) on The Simpsons jumping the shark, billed on Twitter as "the most controversial blog post I ever wrote" (okay, I stretched it a bit - the ones I wrote about Warner Saunders and South Side bashing were more controversial and serious.)

To read the Think Tank, click here.

Last Sunday's episode was indeed a creative flop. The real question is, just how much more of this Simpsons fans will take?

I hear The Amazing Race is nice this time of year...