"The Simpsons" has never had any general decline in quality over 20+ years. Instead, it has continued to monotonically increase for all time, even if it must of necessity asymptotically approach a large, nonzero limit. After all, there exists a finite rate at which funny jokes and story lines can be delivered and interpreted to the human mind.
"Coming to Homerica" is jammed packed with witty clever unexpected quips. My only reason for scoring "Coming to Homerica" an 8 instead of 10 out of 10 is that those quips are 8/10 funny to 2/10 merely clever and witty. In fact, this is the reason ANY "The Simpsons" episodes would score less than a 10 - never because "the writing is less than perfect", but merely that the writing is on a scale from 0 representing all brilliant but not funny wit to 10 representing brilliant and funny wit.
One of the dumbest comments one can make about any TV show or movie is that the writers live in their "bubble" world while everybody else lives in "the" real world. Everybody lives in the real world AND in their own bubble world. Writers are no exception. Hence, one can not please everybody. "The Simpsons" had an episode about comic book writers which stars Jack Black (I tried to search, but I cannot find the episode's title). I never heard of these comic book writers, and I have no interest in comic books, yet I enjoyed this episode immensely.
Each "The Simpsons" episode has time to examine only ONE slice of life on this planet, and whatever period of time the writers choose. So, it is extremely unlikely that that particular slice of life and time will be relevant to your own bubble of life. An intelligent viewer will be able to appreciate the episode nevertheless, precisely because the writing of "The Simpsons" is so brilliantly universal and timeless, even when dealing with dated subjects.
I have no interest in the issue of immigration, as I am busy with animal rights. We all have time and energy to tackle only one or two issues at most in our lives. Nevertheless, I found "Coming to Homerica"'s wild ride of a storyline to be great fun.
The only other reason for me to give this episode less than a 10 is that the episode got too sentimental right at the end. That could be a fault of the subject matter of immigration, rather than the writers.
"Coming to Homerica" is jammed packed with witty clever unexpected quips. My only reason for scoring "Coming to Homerica" an 8 instead of 10 out of 10 is that those quips are 8/10 funny to 2/10 merely clever and witty. In fact, this is the reason ANY "The Simpsons" episodes would score less than a 10 - never because "the writing is less than perfect", but merely that the writing is on a scale from 0 representing all brilliant but not funny wit to 10 representing brilliant and funny wit.
One of the dumbest comments one can make about any TV show or movie is that the writers live in their "bubble" world while everybody else lives in "the" real world. Everybody lives in the real world AND in their own bubble world. Writers are no exception. Hence, one can not please everybody. "The Simpsons" had an episode about comic book writers which stars Jack Black (I tried to search, but I cannot find the episode's title). I never heard of these comic book writers, and I have no interest in comic books, yet I enjoyed this episode immensely.
Each "The Simpsons" episode has time to examine only ONE slice of life on this planet, and whatever period of time the writers choose. So, it is extremely unlikely that that particular slice of life and time will be relevant to your own bubble of life. An intelligent viewer will be able to appreciate the episode nevertheless, precisely because the writing of "The Simpsons" is so brilliantly universal and timeless, even when dealing with dated subjects.
I have no interest in the issue of immigration, as I am busy with animal rights. We all have time and energy to tackle only one or two issues at most in our lives. Nevertheless, I found "Coming to Homerica"'s wild ride of a storyline to be great fun.
The only other reason for me to give this episode less than a 10 is that the episode got too sentimental right at the end. That could be a fault of the subject matter of immigration, rather than the writers.