As “The Simpsons” opens its 16th season on Sunday, pundits and Internet chat groups are bouncing around a pesky question: Is the show still TV’s most brilliant comedy, or has it long-since passed its prime, degenerating (as a Slate commentary suggested last year) into a cartoon? List-makers suggest that the glory days are long gone. The first three episodes (and four of the Top 10) in Entertainment Weekly’s list of the best “Simpsons” ever – issued to mark the 300th-episode landmark in 2002 – are from 1993. Three more are from 1994; the newest episode on the list (No. 4) is from 1997. Complaints on the Web site jumptheshark.com, which attempts to catalogue the moment at which a show went into decline, pinpoint the 1999 season (or perhaps 1997) as the time “The Simpsons” jumped. “The very funny episodes are few and far between” since 1997, one posting laments. Read More >>>
