I find it odd when people say The Simpsons has gone downhill when it's a staple that delivers reliably. I think it's more that they've changed and don't recognize it.

I also find the Season 2 purity barrier weird. If we're going to pick when the show stopped being true to its conception, a show where Marge tells Lisa to smile so people thinks she has a good mom, it's the camping episode and it occurs earlier than people remember. In that episode we start with a Homer who wants a better family and makes an earnest effort only to have bad luck thwart him at every turn aided by his family's range of apathy to outright awfulness... and we cross in the same story into oaf Homer, who screws things up out of stupidity. This was the drastic departure from the tone and message of the earliest episodes.

Homer is comparable to Ned in every way, yet Ned has better outcomes, a better family, better body, and better hair. There is no innate reason for this; Ned is just blessed. Homer is the only one stressed about the state of the family. Marge is not yet a nag, she's as carefree as the children. People forget it was Homer, not Marge, who pawned the TV to put the family into counseling so they could better match his ideal, an ideal the Flanders flock evoked. People also forget that this is why Homer hates Ned. It isn't anything Ned did or anything about Ned exactly, it's the comparative good fortune and Homer's envy.

The weirdest thing to me is how people don't seem to notice that they judge the show on a misrememberence. I'm just glad how this hipster bullshit about not liking The Simpsons anymore being cool hasn't killed the show.

Times are changing:

The Life in 'The Simpsons' Is No Longer Attainable

The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence.