The Rise and Fall of The Simpsons
An episode from The Simpsons' eighth season called “The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase” ended with a mocking song called “They’ll Never Stop The Simpsons”, which saw the writers poke fun at themselves and claim “we’ve got stories for years!” Some of the stories referenced in the song included: “Marge becomes a robot,” “maybe Moe gets a cellphone” and “a crazy wedding where… something happens.”
The joke is that the ideas start out uninspired and get even worse as the song goes along, but uninspired ideas from The Simpsons didn’t seem too likely back then.
The episode aired in the heady days of 1997 when The Simpsons was in a golden period of eight brilliant seasons. The show was one of the most critically adored and generally beloved television shows ever to grace the airwaves. Little did anyone know that the sharp decline of one the greatest television shows of all time was just around the corner. Watch an episode of any recent season and you might think Moe gets a cellphone isn’t such an awful idea after all. It certainly beats Moe becomes a judge on American Idol (yes, that happened).
The glory years of seasons 1–8 (maybe including some of 9, if we’re being generous) now stand as just the beginning of a show that has ran for 30 seasons (and counting). But so…
