Every Version of The Simpsons

Television critics still use the phrase 'classic Simpsons' as shorthand for peak-era sitcom writing, and seasons 3 through 8 (roughly 1991 to 1997) are the reason. The writers' room in those years included Conan O'Brien, John Swartzwelder, and George Meyer, and it produced a run of consecutive episodes with almost no weak entries. The show operated simultaneously as heartfelt family drama, absurdist comedy, and political satire, doing all three better than almost anything else on television at the time or since. If you have only watched the later seasons, the early run will feel like a different show. It is.

Released in 2003, The Simpsons Hit and Run is substantially better than it had any right to be. A GTA-style open-world driving game set across five playable areas of Springfield, it was written by the show's own writers, fully voice-acted by the original cast, and dense with in-jokes that reward anyone who had watched every episode. It sold well, reviewed well, and then quietly became a cult object after the franchise went dormant on consoles. Two decades later it is still the game Simpsons fans cite first when the conversation turns to whether the property ever truly worked in an interactive medium. Once, it did.

The Simpsons has now aired more than 750 episodes, and the franchise is not going away. Occasional late-run episodes are genuinely good. But the general consensus, shared by many of the show's own early writers, is that the series lost its emotional grounding somewhere around season 10 or 11 and never fully recovered it. Character consistency eroded, the satirical edge dulled, and Homer shifted from lovable oaf to cartoonish sociopath. The later seasons are best treated as a loose anthology of gags set in Springfield rather than as a continuation of the show that once made you cry at the end of 'Lisa's Substitute.'