[soneil]

I still watch it, but it's more like comfort food now.

I couldn't honestly say whether I think the show itself has declined though. When I first started watching, a member of the family had got cable TV (a rarity in those days), and taped episodes for us. We'd get a VHS full of episodes on grainy long-play once it was full, and we'd binge on them. I'm still not sure if I've ever seen the end of the episode where Bart goes to france on an exchange trip, and Springfield gets an Albian spy in return.

But it felt so new, so American, and so different to anything else we had on terrestrial TV. It was like TV was misbehaving!

If it had never happened, and started today fresh, it'd have nowhere near the same impact. There's a higher level of quality, and a higher level of access to it, than any sane person knows what to do with.

It was a diamond in the rough. I don't think it is anymore. But the rough has changed so drastically, that it's difficult to draw an isolated comparison.