Simpsons by the Season: 25

"That's the great thing about art - everyone can have their own opinion about why it sucks."

This season is in many ways a carbon copy of the previous. For the most part it's simply bland, the episodes drifting into one another without ever really catching. There are only a handful of truly offensive episodes (I'll detail those towards the end, as two split the coveted worst episode of the season award) but just as scarce are the good ones. The minds behind The Simpsons must have decided that to prolong the longevity of the series they will churn out episodes that aren't going to enrage the viewer (who is far more loyal than they deserve) but will instead placate them with mediocrity. Viewers won't be up in arms, so they'll probably grudgingly return to the television to pay homage to a fallen great. After all, you can't say you've watched the entire series while skipping season 25. 

The identical feelings at the end of season 24 and 25 I believe may have signified the end of change in the series, settling into a permanent lull. It won't change now. It doesn't go from fantastic quality, to low quality, to ridiculous, to tame and then back to something previously; it'll stay at tame as tame is safe. Low effort, low quality (but not bottoming out quality) will bring in enough viewers to keep the propped up, rotting corpse of the series alive for another day. It's the end of the line. 26 won't be better or worse, and neither will 27. The show has flatlined a hair above being legally declared deceased. Of course, it's still better than the death spiral of 15-18 (give or take) in which the show bottomed out, but being on life support after it's heart attack is such a sorry state.

Don't get me wrong, the show still has its periodic ups and downs (occasional heartbeats and seizures, if we're continuing on the hospital metaphor) but they're few and far between. There are two pretty decent episodes in "Specs and the City" (the Simpsons' version of Google Glass comes to Springfield) and "Steal This Episode" (their take on internet privacy), and about four terrible ones. "Days of Future Future" is an absolutely nonsensical mess with Homer being cloned, and then it's in the future and there's zombies, and... all I know is it wasn't a Halloween episode. "The Man Who Grew Too Much" has Sideshow Bob splice genes of animals to make himself super-human. "You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee" has Homer officiating the World Cup. Homer and Bart get back at Skinner through a prank, telling him his mother has been murdered and he was the main suspect, but they'll help him get rid of her corpse by chopping it into pieces in "Yellow Subterfuge".


Sigh.

Fortunately, those four messes make up only a fraction of the season, so it's mostly watchable. Anger has subsided and it's been replaced by boredom. Just as long as it's still on the air, right?

Best Episode:

"Steal This Episode" takes the cake, as it delivered a fairly even handed approach to internet privacy. Sure, it's low hanging fruit, but they tackled it well.

Worst Episode:

I've already described them, but Homer being a World Cup referee is so bafflingly stupid it's too difficult to ignore. However, "Days of Future Future" is such a pieced together trainwreck it might, somehow, be worse.

Best Quotes:

"Eduardo Barcelona, or in english, Eddy Miami." 
-Homer's Brazilian pen-pal

"Nelson, you frighten me so, 
the psychoest bully I know,
you're a sociopath,
in need of a bath, 
I'm sure you'll end up on death row"
-Bart's valentine for Nelson

"I'll never experience the ultimate reward for a life well lived: the gentle slumber of death."
-Homer living in a dream world