Simpsons Ninth Season

I watched through the Simpsons Season Nine on DVD this week. I am a huge fan of the Simpsons, although I pretty much stopped watching every week's new episode around the 10th or 11th season. Watching season nine reminded me why. There's still plenty of really fun stuff, like Homer going to New York, Homer getting a gun, Lisa and the angel, the carnies, and the Movementarians. However, there's also an increasing move towards really zany plots that are too out there to invest in the characters anymore. I think if you're going all the way with bizarre humor ala Family Guy, fine. But that's not what's best about the Simpsons. The Simpsons has always been best with humor based around real characters, and doing weird comedy bits where the humor is just how weird it is doesn't work as well for the Simpsons. The episode where Principal Skinner is revealed not to be Principal Skinner seems particularly maligned, but I think the Naval Reserve episode or the one where Snake goes after Homer's car or the public sex episode all are too out there as well and aren't particularly funny. It's really a shame, because I don't think there was necessarily any need to move in that direction, and the shift to guest stars and crazy scenarios took away from the focus on developing the characters and the trend just got worse. Oh well. Simpsons built up way more than enough goodwill to fault them too much for not maintaining that level of quality.