I read about this on the A.V. Club (I'm gonna try to find the article again, it was used as an introductory paragraph to one of the many Futurama reviews) and -honestly- I can't quite shake the feeling that they are kind of right.

I mean, everything that came after it feels much odder and not nearly as strong in my opinion (the episode in which Homer joins the Navy is just one season away from this one and it feels incredibly different from its predecessors) and the fact that everything is played for hysterics also made this one a rare one before my eyes. I wasn't really used to that up to that point.

It's been said that Season 8 was the last good one to air and... yeah, I can see that, as most of the really bad stuff came after we crossed the double digits. But I don't really know if it is fair to blame it all in this one episode.

What do you guys think? I personally think that some things definitely changed by the end of Season 8, but what role does this episode really play on that?

Frank Grimes. What a nutcase.

I don't think so. The Simpsons was always a show that changed overtime, it didn't begin with this episode. I mean just compare the first two seasons to 3 and 4, then compare those to season 5. It didn't really start with Homer's Enemy, it was something that was already going on.

Oh hell yes, Magic Man. That intro pretty much embodies the saying "if it is not broken, don't fix it".

The Simpsons did go downhill after Homer's Enemy aired, that is true. Especially since we were starting to see the rise of Jerkass Homer during Season 9. However, what really killed The Simpsons in my mind was when Maude Flanders died. That, to me, was where the spirit of the show really started to die.

Season 12 had very few moments. The only episode I liked from that season was Trilogy of Error.

The Simpsons started as basically a dark comedy, satirizing elements of the nuclear family and american culture. In the 2000's, they started selling out with all of the celebrity camoes and tie-ins to other Fox shows, basically becoming the thing that they were originally parodying.  

blueluigi wrote :

The Simpsons did go downhill after Homer's Enemy aired, that is true. Especially since we were starting to see the rise of Jerkass Homer during Season 9. However, what really killed The Simpsons in my mind was when Maude Flanders died. That, to me, was where the spirit of the show really started to die.

Season 12 had very few moments. The only episode I liked from that season was Trilogy of Error.
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Agreed.

And yet FUTURAMA had to die... twice!

When your show is allowed to have an episode like "Lisa Goes Gaga", that's when you need to stop for a while and think things over. Right now that's the lowest rated episode of the show on IMDB (scoring an astounding 4,5/10 (!)) and we still had AT LEAST seven seasons to follow that? The show must still be very profitable, then.

echidna64 wrote :
Agreed.

I remember "Alone Again, Natura-Diddly" being falsely advertised with the death of a major simpson's character. It was basically a ratings gimmick and it fits perfectly into the year 2000 I gave as well for when the series started to decline. 

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They've done a couple episodes like that. I remember the one episode from over ten years ago called "Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore". I remember seeing commercials before the episode aired saying something along the lines of "one person will not make it out", hinting that in the episode somebody would not be appearing in the show anymore. However, nothing happened like that in the episode at all.

That's what the show's been reduced to: Making profits.