Personally, I grew watching The Simpsons almost every day. I watched the latest episodes on Fox every sunday. However, around season 20 I started getting sick of the new episodes since they were very boring to me, I remember officialy quitting watching new episodes after almost falling asleep watching "Lisa the Drama Queen".

However, despite ignoring the 21th, 22th and 23th season, I started playing The Simpsons: Tapped out. The game is fun and promoted the 24th season, which made me curious about if the new episodes were still crap or if they've gotten better. I didn't expect much, but whatever they were doing wrong, they are now doing it right. I like how they started making serious changes rather than pressing the reset button the whole time. Kumiko is a very interesting character and is just what The Simpsons needed: An actual new character rather than a filler character that we won't see ever again and no one will ever remember.

Most importantly, the jokes are different. The "Simpsons back then" was gold and just pure gold and they will never be able to top that (But probably no one ever will). However, I see the current season's humour as a mix between absurd humour, creative jokes and popular culture references (Hipsters, Apple, use of Smartphones and tablets, movie and series piracy, etc). Unlike seasons 18-20, I actually laugh constantly in the new episodes.

TL;DR: Simpsons went downhill around the beggining of their HD era, but in the latest seasons (And with some promotion help from TS: Tapped Out) they are more than decent and worth waching.

So what do you guys think?

Side note: I hope they substitute Edna with Mr. Bergstrom. He is a character full of potential, since he was very smart, polite, fun and lovely. He would be as unique as Edna was IMO. It would also be interesting to see how he helps Bart as a student.

It would be a weird setup to dig up Mr. Bergstrom from distant Simpsons history.

I would agree with much of what you wrote, though. The past couple years have proved a decent recovery, while 2006-2011 seasons were fairly disastrous

I still watch every episode and enjoy it very much.

He once was referenced in "Smart and smarter". Also, he made a quick cameo this season in the episode "The kid is all right". All in all, he wasn't totally forgotten at all unlike many other characters. I believe it would make sense to get him back given the fact that he can achieve proper character development and with some luck, also achieve popularity.

I see this threads issue.... you mentioned Simpsons tapped out, I can assure you people left right then and there :D

Speaking of Simpsons tho, I have Homers Enemy on most things which have a screen and the ability to play video, many a time I've sat and watched it while waiting for friends to come down to a cafe for tea, I could happily live in just that episode of Simpsons for eternity.

The Simpsons was great from 1992-1997 and good from 1990-1991 and ok in 1998.

After that it's been garbage. Simpsons was never the same after Futurama, I think a lot of the writing staff left, and also the death of Phil Hartman had a big impact.

I don't keep up to date with TV shows in general, so I'm about a season into the HD episodes right now. I noticed what you're talking about, pre-HD was definitely better.

During the SD era they even had some people like Conan O'Brien working on the writing staff.

Anyone who watched the first part of this newest season btw? Those lisa cutaways where she says about doing something else and then it cuts away to her imagining it happening, I really hoped I'd never get to see Simpsons taking a leaf out of family guys book but that was terrible to watch.

Its probably not bad, but when I catch some of the newer episodes I find myself disappointed.

I'd rather rewatch old episodes as opposed to tolerate mediocrity.