VIRTUALLY ANY DIE-HARD SIMPSONS FAN WILL TELL YOU he or she does not watch The Simpsons and hasn’t for years. For my sins (OK, out of sheer obsessive completism), I am not among them.
I started watching when I was young enough that my parents weren’t sure they should let me, every weeknight at 6:30. This was before you could get any episode of anything at a click. I remember being excited when the box sets of DVDs started being slowly released one season at a time, so I could be sure I really had seen every episode.
At some point, I went to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York to go to the archives to catch the old shorts that had premiered on The Tracey Ullman Show. No Simpsons content would go unconsumed. And it still doesn’t. That’s how I ended up watching the most recently aired complete season of the show, Season 34.
Opinion among critics and fans alike has more or less coalesced around the golden age being seasons 4 through 8. Things were OK for a few seasons more, spotty after that, and unwatchable thereafter. I think this is limited. There were occasional great episodes in the mid-teen seasons. By the twenty-somethings, there was still a great joke here and there. Every single season, including the 35th one currently in the middle of its run, keeps up the tradition of hilarious signs that pop up on stores in the background for
