Live-Action TV
"I feel like Friends in Season Eight: Out of ideas and forcing Joey and Rachel together even though it made no sense."
— Michael, The Good Place ("What We Owe to Each Other")
"In Broadchurch 1, the mystery was, 'Who's the murderer?' In Broadchurch 2, it's, 'What's the point?'."
Web Animation
"Variety is the spice of life and status quo is the starch. The star that shines brightest is all the more glorious for its brevity. Or, to bring the metaphor down to a broader cultural level, The Simpsons has been running for 21 seasons and hasn't been good since the fifth!"
Web Video
Ryan Reynolds: Full of my signature fourth wall breaking, '90s pop culture references, and more dick jokes than you can shake a sack full of dicks at!
Bailey: In what feels like a really expensive longer episode of Family Guy!
Deadpool: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Which season of Family Guy are we talking about?
Bailey: Let's say... Fourth?
Deadpool: Oh, okay. I can take that.note
Bailey: In what feels like a really expensive longer episode of Family Guy!
Deadpool: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Which season of Family Guy are we talking about?
Bailey: Let's say... Fourth?
Deadpool: Oh, okay. I can take that.note
"Despite the show still airing new episodes, the book has basically been written already: The Simpsons had an amazing run in the 90's, then the decline happened; Skinner is Armin Tamzarian, Homer became a giant asshole, and the show refused to die. "LOL, Zombie Simpsons!"."
"It's extraordinarily sad to still see The Simpsons producing new episodes today. It's like watching a dominant athlete have all their remarkable abilities stripped away through the march of time, until they are no more special than the rest of us. There's a reason why many all-time greats in pop culture also happened to die young. We never get to witness them wither away into a shell of their former glory. The brilliance of those first eight seasons now only amounts to a measly quarter of the show's entire lifespan. The Simpsons has been on the air so long, that YouTube videos complaining about the show's decline have themselves become stale and cliched. What was once the epitome of media counterculture is now owned by the epitome of the media establishment. Following Disney's acquisition of Fox in 2019, the Simpsons featured in a series of uncanny animated bumpers welcoming their new overlords. Considering the prior two decades of openly trashing the evil empire, it's hard to believe that this was even the same show anymore. In all honesty, The Simpsons was never designed to survive until the 21st century. The big media conglomerates just keep it around as a ceremonial token to evoke nostalgia for better times. At this point, Homer Simpson has been relegated to a figurehead akin to the likes of Mickey Mouse and the Queen of England. Like many other forms of counterculture, The Simpsons ended up becoming the very thing they sought to destroy."
"If the first season of Shield Hero was three dumpsters full of flaming Bud Light boxes, then Season Two is all that plus one budget fursuit trash compacted into a small, inert cube of dull gray aluminum, and then placed inside an equally dull gray aluminum trash can."
Batman: Now listen. We can stop here on a high note, or continue and completely dilute whatever quality control there once was here. You already know what my answer is.
Superman: Let's Simpsons this shit!
Western Animation
"There's not really anything wrong with The Itchy & Scratchy Show. It's as good as ever. But after so many years, the characters just can't have the same impact they once had."
"This show's been going downhill since Season 3!"
Peridot: How about [giving Lapis] my Camp Pining Hearts DVD?
Steven: Which season?
Peridot: Five?
Steven: Trash.
Peridot: I know.
Steven: Which season?
Peridot: Five?
Steven: Trash.
Peridot: I know.
"We're replicants in a ridiculous theme park for an ancient TV show that stopped being good after Season 45!"
—Lisa Simpson, "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII" (a Season 34 episode)
"What a shame. The Patrick Show has really gone downhill since the first three episodes."
—Granny Tentacles, The Patrick Star Show, "Mid-Season Finale"
Real Life
I'm sorry, but to me (Season 5) had a lot of missed oppertunities. It had a lot of bad filler, a lot of plot holes, and more annoyances, even more so than Season 4. It had a real lack of vision.... SMB was ruined for me when they decided to extend it past Act II of the movie
So you either die as Firefly or live long enough to see yourself become The Simpsons?
— Weaselwodger from a comment on this
Cracked.com article.
Cracked.com article.One season of how to make a successful comic book-style television show, followed by three seasons of monstrous fuck ups.
— quicksummary on Heroes
on Heroes"I think it was a point where we were in the room and we were talking about bringing Geordi's mother in, and we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'This is sad. This is the best we can do? Is this the best we can do, is Geordi's mother?' It was such a 'who cares' idea that we were just sort of, 'Oh, man... This show has got to end.'"
"As Autumn approaches, soon it will be time for another series of Downton Abbey, and, frankly, if you think of the downward trajectory that show is on, I dread to think what it will be like. It'll probably just be an animated turd standing on a Tesco logo, and screaming the word 'why!'"
"It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them."
—Bill Watterson, on his decision to end Calvin and Hobbes
