The Simpsons in its prime could lay claim to being the best sit-com on TV, if not the all-out best show. Alas it lost its way long ago, even with the pretty decent movie it hasn't got back to anything like the quality it used to have. It really should end now, Futurama has shown Groening is obviously talented and still has funny stuff in him so there is no reason to go on flogging a dead horse. I get it makes money, but it always will even with endless re-runs. It works for stuff like Friends after all. They can always do another movie in 5 years to create a new surge in merchandise sales. Either do more new Futurama or something totally different and original, either way The Simpsons needs to be put to bed.
When the FX Now app comes out for Roku soon, I'll be able to stream classic Simpsons and see them for the first in a decade or so.
http://www.fbtb.net/2014/03/26/71005-the-simpsons-revealed/#more-27624 I'd have preferred Moe, Barney & Smithers in place of Itchy, Scratchy and Krusty. Hopefully there will be a 2nd series of minifigs.
Renewed for Seasons 27 & 28. FOX has announced plans to pick up its long-running animated sitcom "The Simpsons" for a twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth season, bringing the series up to a total of 625 episodes. In a statement issued by FOX, Homer Simpson says: "I've outlasted Letterman, Jon Stewart and 'McDreamy,' because I have something they don't: a costly 200-donut-a-day addiction." The animated show already holds the title as the longest-running scripted series in TV history, so the new total has no impact on records.
To paraphrase something I read elsewhere, when the Simpsons premiered I was about Maggie's age. When it finally goes off the air I might be as old as Homer and Marge.
And so it came to pass... except still no Moe or Barney. (Released a day or two back, I will get them all except maybe Patti & Selma. I have 9 of them already)
Except that that's not actually true. Doctor Who has 34 seasons and over 800 episodes and there are soap operas that have even higher tallys.
I think the article failed to include the usual qualifiers of "prime time" and "North American" (though total runtime might negate the latter?).
No matter what I feel about the declining quality in the last few seasons, The Simpsons really knows how to make awesome opening gags. Sometimes they're the best part of an episode.
Playing Simpsons Tapped Out (kinda addicted, really, daily 5 min fix) and one of the funnest character bits is Little Jumpshed (Apu's nephew "how I have waited for this day!" - pulls a shotgun on the bullies) shows up in the game but he's, like a hip college student. The characters in the game mention that it's odd that he's aged to maturity whilst everyone else is still the same.
I started watching The Simpsons as a kid when it was the shorts on the Tracy Ulman show. I was like 7 or 8 and it was a cartoon on at Sunday night dangit so I had to sit through the whole thing (Which I barely understood or remembered) just to get to the cartoon bumpers, naturally when the ads started saying The Simpsons had their own show started watching then. And never stopped. Well, okay I may have missed a few episodes but I'd wager I've seen about 90% of all the episodes at least once.