The Simpsons: 10 Best Episodes From The Past 15 Years

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http://whatculture.com/tv/simpsons-1...t-15-years.php

The general line of thought on The Simpsons is that the show started to go downhill somewhere between seasons nine to eleven, or thereabouts. Purists will tell you anything past season seven cannot be considered as classic, with Who Shot Mr. Burns? (the season six finale/season seven opener) being the real dividing line. And then they’ll tell you how terrible the modern episodes are, while insisting that they no longer watch the show.

To those who believe this I say: You’ve been suckered in by nostalgia and overly fond memories about the greatness of your own youth.

Look, any show that is on the air for over twenty years, twenty-five years plus in this case (and lets not forget the shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show) is going to have its ups and downs. And yes, the old episodes were great – because you can recite them almost word for word, and know every joke before it hits the screen. Nowadays, with more options on the air, and re-runs being more spread out thanks to the number of seasons that have been produced, that’s not the case. On top of that, times have changed, and so has the show. Without question, there was a very noticeable dip in the quality of the show in its teen years, as it moved from a show with solid plots with surprisingly inspirational, moral values (despite what critics may have thought) to more random, zany antics almost surely inspired by the success of Family Guy and other irreverent animated series.

That said, something interesting happened around the time The Simpsons Movie was released (and the show itself switched to high definition) – the stories came back. And if you’ve followed the show, the Simpsons has always been at its best when the stories were strong.

That’s not to say it’s reclaimed the heights it reached in its glory years, but the past several seasons have been steady – and if you really dip back into the “dark ages” of the show’s adolescent years, you can find some salvageable, in some cases fan favourite episodes there as well.

So, stop pretending you even knew what the phrase “jump the shark” meant before hundreds of other Comic Book Guy wannabes began spouting it online (or that the term has any meaning whatsoever to a show that has been on the air as long as The Simpsons), and lets take a look at ten great episodes of The Simpsons from the past fifteen years.

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10 Simpsons from the last 10 seasons that aren’t the... Worst. Episodes. Ever.