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Nobody here seems to be mentioning the death of Phil Hartman[1] in 1998. The article, as well, staggeringly, doesn't mention his name. There's a video[2], 'The Fall of the Simpsons', which is one of my favourite videos on the internet. It explains and describes with utmost clarity the issues that led to the series 'demise', which, ultimately, boils down to 'bad writing'. However, in interviews, and comments from the showrunners and staff, it seems like Phil Hartman's death, who voiced the characters of Troy McCleur, and Lionel Hutz, as well as the voice of Lyle Lanley, from the fantastic classic episode 'Marge vs. the Monorail'. When Hartman died, they retired Troy's character. His absence alone is strongly felt when viewing the first several seasons against the others. His voice is certainly missed. Said Groening of Hartman: "[I] took [Hartman] for granted because he nailed the joke every time," and that his voice acting could produce "the maximum amount of humor" with any line he was given. I mean, this was 1998. Most folks consider season 8-9 to have some of the last 'great' episodes of the series, or at least the last 'great' seasons. There's absolutely no way this is a coincidence, and the affect of his death on the series has been verified by countless staff. I often think of Hartman's death as equivalent to Brian Epstein's death in '67. Similar to the Simpsons, there are a million reasons why the Beatles went to shit (even if their output for three years after that was still phenomenal), but if you have to look at the thing that really 'started' it, Epstein's or Hartman's deaths are good places to start looking, and it's easy to see how things went downhill from there in both cases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hartman
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk |