As many others have said this list and any conclussions drawn from it are utter shit. The Simpsons, Rosanne, hell half the damn list owe a huge debt to Married With Children. Irreverent satire in sitcoms was turned into an art form by the bundy clan.
Non stop hate speech gets on my nerves after a while. Also, why does anyone in the whole world think Seinfeld is funny? A show about 4 obnoxious douches being douchey isnt funny.
Seinfeld is the most polarizing network show ever made. The good thing about it is how every episode brilliantly bookends itself, and it has hilariously quirky supporting characters (especially Putty). The show even satirized itself in its most famous episode "The Pitch". The bad, like you said, is trying to withstand the irritating onslaught of the four Jewish pricks who spend the show ruining every life around them. For that, I both love Seinfeld and hate it.
Considering I can find a Simpsons quote to go with any situation that pops up in my life (be it work, relationship, shit in general) I'd say it's obvious where my loyalties lay. Hell, just yesterday the boyfriend was talking about how some ex of his met Jimmy Carter and said he was a royal prick, and my first thought was to bust out "What do you expect? He's history's greatest monster!" Except after season 9. Fuck that shit.
Not to you specifically (more to some of my friends, actually), but it seems like people hate on the new seasons without even watching them, like it's cool to hate on them and talk about the good 'ol days or something. Was the Classic Era better as a whole? Absolutely. But that was one of the best eras of any TV comedy show ever, and there are PLENTY of episodes from even the last five years that are hysterical start to finish. Seems like asking a lot for it to keep up the same standard a decade after it blew everything else away. Sure, it has fallen from its perch as clear cut number one (currently held by South Park, at least out of animated shows), but dropping down to the level of "in the mix of better comedies" doesn't mean it sucks.
It's fucking terrible. Beyond mediocre if it was any other stand alone show. I've not come close to even cracking a smile in any of the couple dozen episodes Ive seen past 13-14. Being the withered remnants of arguably the best comedy show of all time? Makes it that much worse. This man is obviously on bath salts.
I don't know if any of the later episodes are actually good or bad, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in saying that I couldn't watch the show any more after after Hartman was killed.
I still watch almost all of the Sunday night cartoons, even the ones I don't particularly like, and on a week-to-week basis, it's as good as any of them. I'm not gonna go through the recent seasons and pick out the best jokes, but you guys aren't saying shows like Family Guy/American Dad/Bob's Burger's etc are clear cut better, are you? Off the very top of my head, 'Homerazzi' (season 18) was a modern era classic, 'E Pluribus Wiggum' (19) was as good of a Ralph episode as I've ever seen, 'To Surveil with Love' (21) has one of the best endings ever, and 'Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts' (23) really fleshes out the Bully characters nicely. Well there's about 200 episodes you haven't seen then. Again, I'm not saying it's as consistent as it was when it was literally the funniest show on television, but after South Park, there's everything else (I'm talking animated shows only here), and out of everything else, it's in the top third.
Can anyone just admit that Family Guy completely took the wind out of the show's sails? It is as simple as that. Both on the same night, one show pushed the envelope harder, and now The Simpsons is tame and tepid.
See this I don't get at all. For starters, pushing the envelope was only ever a VERY small part of The Simpsons' greatness, but talk about a show (FG) whose "Classic Era" was about 3 seasons long and became instantly un-watchable after a second viewing. The ONLY way that show makes me chuckle is if I'm REALLY high and half asleep, and I find it funny that "pushing the envelope" is its calling card, yet it doesn't even do THAT well. I still watch it because I like pretty much all things cartoons (and I'm often high on Sunday evenings), but if the logic goes: it outdid the Simpsons' envelope pushing and therefore Simpsons sucks, then the same should go for South Park outdoing Family Guy's, only by a fuck of a lot more.
It's not just that. It's how subversive and irreverent Family Guy is. Not to mention downright cruel. It constantly breaks the Fourth wall, and satirized itself in such a unique way where it just seems to get inside your head in uncomfortable ways at times. That's when I found it so hilarious is when a joke on the show makes you say to yourself "Shit, I had NO IDEA other people thought that too!" I think it was a combination of this show, and the fact The Simpsons was already running WAY longer than any other show ever had. Most sitcoms that are a running success run between 6-8 season on average. Of course, because MacFarlane has so many projects on the go right now (including an inevitable Ted sequel) he turned over much of the writing reigns to his staff and they aren't as funny as he is.
Oh I've thought from the very beginning that MacFarlane himself is WAY funnier than his actual show(s), even when he was fully at the helm. The cut-away joke was something the Simpsons used to use sparingly, whereas it's been the basis of entire Family Guy episodes for most of its run (thankfully they've let up a bit in recent seasons), which is why even the funniest Family Guy episodes are only funny for one viewing. It's hack writing. It's also why, when South Park did a two-part episode absolutely ripping Family Guy apart (and something about some prophet or something), other animated shows (King of the Hill was one of them, if I recall correctly) sent the South Park guys cakes and flowers for saying what they all think. Shit, even MacFarlane himself has said multiple times that Simpsons is better.
MacFarlane is a huge Simpsons fan, would be the first person to praise the show and will be the first to admit it is the primary influence of Family Guy (along with his old show Life With Larry). The Simpsons, no matter how you slice it, is a national treasure and always will be.
I agree with basically everything here. Pushing the envolpe does not always mean it makes it a quality show. The original 2 1/2-3 seasons of FG are great, Id say very rewatchable. They had decently cohesive plots. After they came back it reliead much more heavily on cut aways and shock humor(aka pushing the envelope). On the other hand its brand of humor is at least funny enough on the first viewing to keep me coming back to see new ones. The Simpsons time and again when I see new ones is so unfunny it doesn't give any reason to keep watching.