The two poorly-rated “classic” Simpsons episodes are both clip shows (the second and third such episodes):
S06 E03: Another Simpsons Clip Show
S09 E11: All Singing, All Dancing
The first clip show episode, S04 E18, is lower-rated than its neighbors but still gets a 7.0, perhaps because of the IMO hilarious “April Fools” framing narrative.
Also notably unpopular classic episodes:
S08 E24: The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase (three non-canonical segments that are deliberately bad for the sake of humor)
S09 E02: The Principal and the Pauper (Principal Skinner is revealed to be a fraud)
I always liked the spin-off showcase
I give All Singing, All Dancing a pass solely for the “Paint Your Wagon” gag.
I’ve seen something similar posted before, and I don’t think that light green does justice to the quality of the later episodes.
Generally anything in the 6 range of IMDB is bad, 7 is average/good, 8+ is good/great.
IMHO they’ve been doing good stuff for the last few seasons. It definitely jumped the shark back there somewhere when the seasons went double digits, but they’ve found a new niche.
I think this show has been bad for ages now, but there are plenty of decent shows/movies on IMDB in the 6 range.
But that’s the problem. For some reason tv show episodes get voted higher relatively speaking. So a 7.0 movie is kinda ok, but a 7.0 tv episode is probably pretty bad.
I guess it comes from the pool of people who vote on series are more inclined to liking it, since they somehow got to watch a season 3 episode. If they hated the show as they probably wouldn’t get that far. Movies are one-off by design and anyone could watch and rate it, obviously.
Ahyess, the season 9 ep 5 clip show that replayed dumb little bits from the previous seasons.
Is there a tool somewhere that lets me create such a table for other shows?Quick search got me this very nice
Notice that the entire show goes completely yellow after they cancelled Apu. He was such a delightful character.
What caused the steep drop-off of Seasons 9/10+? Were there different writers, or did they just choose a bad plot line to follow, or what?
The show had been around long enough that most of the original writers had moved on and the tone of the show and its humor had changed. They would ruin long established elements and characters just for a cheap laugh. It was less satirical and more zany. They were drowning in Emmys for their clever writing in previous seasons and now they tell the kind of jokes you’d hear in two broke girls.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the murder of Phil Hartman had a lot to do with it. He was frequent on the show up to that point.
Futurama!
I also did not like the Lady Gaga episode.
Was that S33E01? I’m definitely going to watch that tonight… seems to be about musical theater 🤔
S23 e22
Oh yeah… I don’t even have that one yet, and I just spent all my money on a The Venture Bros. hoodie 😅
Can confirm S33E01 is play about retroactive continuity or something like that, it was pretty hard to follow. 
That last 8.4 they got in season 27 episode 9 was called Barthood. It was a nice episode. Here’s the wiki.