Gone Maggie Gone was a pretty decent episode. Will watch more! Looking at an ep list, s15 was pretty much the best post Scully season. Lots of good episodes there.
Yeah, Season 15 really can't be topped in that respect. It's also easily better than 11 or 12 and, if you twisted my arm, I could probably make an argument that it's even better than Season 10. I regret not watching most of that season live but it made for a pleasant surprise when catching up on the show as a lapsed fan a few years later.
It's just unfortunate that it does still boast some duds. Namely Smart & Smarter, Co-Dependents' Day and Bart-Mangled Banner. Today I Am a Clown is pretty bad too. So I wouldn't recommend it be watched outright. Cherry picking the good episodes is still the way to go.
I grew up watching the show starting at season 1. Watched every episode every week until some of the episodes of season seven didn't seem right to me. Then there were some bad episodes in season eight. By season nine, it seemed like there were more bad episodes than good ones. By ten on, it wasn't even recognizable anymore.
Just as I'll always argue that there are pockets of gold to mine from modern Simpsons (often few and far between, sadly), I'll also agree that there are pockets of dirt and unpleasantness to be found in some of the heralded Classic era seasons.
Season 7 starts off amazingly strong but there are a lot of subpar episodes towards its back-half right around the time Disco Stu first shows up in Two Bad Neighbors. Homerpalooza falls apart after its initial commentary on coolness and Homer starts hanging out with celebrities and getting shot at with a cannon. The Day the Violence Died is clever... but not especially funny. Ditto for Lisa the Iconoclast. Bart the Fink is just plain bad. Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming has a ton of padding.
Season 8 boasts one of the worst episodes in the entire Classic era in The Canine Mutiny (they write the rest of the Simpsons family as so dumb and gullible just taking everything Bart says at face value which Marge sometimes does but Homer and Lisa most definitely do not). The Spin-Off Showcase is a nice one-and-done idea but I don't especially enjoy rewatching it as it has very little appeal outside of satire. I have a hard time with Burns, Baby Burns because I find Dangerfield's humor so one-note (all of the non-Larry scenes in this ep are still gold). Speaking of musical episodes not as good as The President Wore Pearls, we have the Shary Bobbins ep (I love the ending and the Barney song... and not much else).
And, of course, there's the ever-controversial Homer's Enemy. I don't mind it that much as its own entity but I can understand people citing it as when Homer started going downhill - if only because they took elements of his characterization from that episode (which were exaggerated intentionally) and started infusing them into other episodes.
Every now and then I see a random post-season nine episode and it's hard to keep watching for more than two or three minutes. I'm sure there are some decent episodes here and there but no way am I digging through the trash to find the rare decent episodes.
That's, of course, unnecessary because I've already dug through the trash for you. It would make me quite happy if nobody had to suffer through watching Moe Goes from Rags to Riches or Days of Future Future ever again. And you can now enjoy the decent episodes from those seasons because I've made that sacrifice.
