Simpsons by the Season: 18

"I can't believe he acted completely in character."

Season ten started the decline of The Simpsons. Eleven found the plots becoming decreasingly realistic. Twelve, the plots went from unrealistic to just not entertaining. In the thirteenth, the characters weren't even really acting like themselves anymore. Fourteen, the quality of the humour really started to sink, as if it wasn't already. The fifteenth season finds the show trying to conjure up happier feelings with nostalgia in place of good writing. While the sixteenth is a strange throwback to slightly better stuff, it was too little too late as the following the characters just lose their humanity. 

This eighteenth is a culmination of everything that has gone wrong with the series, tied into one tidy bundle of garbage. Here's how!

Reality is taken out back and shot: 

Far too many episodes can essentially pass for Halloween episodes now, as writing in reality has evidently become too hard. If you remember when Community had their first paintball themed episode, it was fresh, original, and above all pretty funny. Then they started doing more of them, and other such episodes that didn't fit with the format and went about as off the rails as a show can go. It's probably easier to write as it opens up nearly endless material, but they rarely hit the mark and come across as cheap. "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times" is another three-part episode in which the characters are different people, "Marge Gamer" (a self explanatory title) takes them into another universe, and "24 Minutes" (an episode parodying the show 24) is just an extended Halloween bit. With the Halloween episode itself added, about 20% of the episodes a season don't actually exist within the Simpsons universe anymore (maybe "24 Minutes" did, but man, that's a push).

The plots losing entertainment value:
I understand that this is about as subjective as it comes, but episodes like "Kill Gil" just can't make it past the first stages. Gil is a side character, and having him lead an entire episode in which he comes and lives with the Simpsons would work as a side plot as best. He's a one dimensional character - he can't hold a whole plot. It's like when The Office, in its declining years, had a few Creed-based episodes.

Characters just aren't themselves:
Homer becomes a thief (again?) in "Crook and Ladder". This isn't Homer being morally questionable, this is him flat out taking advantage of someone's buildings burning down and, in the case of Burns' Manor, just plain robbing him. Beloved family man, Homer Simpson...

The humour is dead and gone:
Watch "Rome-old and Juli-eh" in which Abe dates Selma and tell me if you laugh just once.

They might try for nostalgia but forget their own stories:
The crux of the "Haw Hawed Couple" episode is Nelson and Bart becoming unlikely friends. But... Nelson and Bart have already become friends before, in the episode when Bart  shoots the bird. This is already old news. Nelson even says at one point "I've never had a best friend before" - but he has! And it is the same person. 

The characters lose their humanity:
In "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em" there is a side plot where Bart finds out Skinner has a peanut allergy. He then continues to blackmail, taunt and torture skinner by waving a peanut on a stick at him. Bart is a malicious and horrible person in this episode, and in the end Skinner is throwing shrimp at Bart (in which they find he is allergic to) and Bart is throwing peanuts at Skinner. All this occurs after an extended Family Guy-esque fight scene. I would say it would be like a time in Family Guy when it started declining, but that show has always been trash.

Bring on season 19. Lets try to forget this ever happened.

Best Quotes:
"This is the most disgusting place we've ever been!"
"What about Brazil?"
"After Brazil."
-An exchange between Lisa and Bart

"You have destroyed all human life on Earth. Level one: completed!"
-The video game Death Kill City 2: Death Kill Stories

Best Episode:
"The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and the Homer" is probably the top of the season. Fat Tony has a son, and exploits occur. That's all you need to know. It's pretty good.

Worst Episode:
"Please Homer Don't Hammer 'Em" is in contention for being one of the worst ever, in my books. I've already explained how terrible the Bart and Skinner side story is, but the main one fares no better. Marge inexplicably becomes a very talented carpenter (Bart in this season also becomes a fantastic jazz drummer too, somehow) but no one trusts her as she's a woman. Homer then takes the credit while letting Marge do the work. There's a terrible bit with a roller coaster falling apart, nothing makes sense, and if you laugh once it would be at, not with, this trainwreck of an episode. I can't believe it's worse than "Crook and Ladder".