I've been watching the show since I was 6 years old. I'm 25 now. The first episode I ever watched in full and appreciated was Bart Gets Hit By a Car (its original airing). Since that period of time I taped the show on VHS. Today I record it onto DVDs. I'm sticking with the show until the day it dies. That being said, if you truly think this is the same show as season 2, you are delusional. And believe me, I've defended The Simpsons to more people than you can imagine over the past decade. By now I am finished defending it. This season has had no more than three episodes so far that come anywhere near the quality of the "golden era". Even when an episode has quality humor peppered in, like "How Munched is that Birdie...", they'll fall insanely short of classic standards in terms of storytelling. That episode, for example, has a resolving logic that boggles my mind. Bart is angry with SLH for killing a beloved pet friend of his, and somehow the resolution ends up being about the morality of killing birds specifically, which is both not the point and presented in a totally awkward way (comparing a pigeon to a full-blown larger than life violent ostrich). No matter how you slice it, that makes no sense, and even though this is just one example, and you can say "it's okay, it's just a cartoon", there is absolutely NO WAY the show would have done this in their heyday. Honestly, the jokes themselves is the least of my issues. I just find the characters and stories aren't treated with the same respect, dignity and seriousness as before. Back in the day, they could tell a great story, and deepen the characters while still telling jokes. Now it's just all about cheap laughs, which makes it no better than any other cartoon. In fact, it's worse than other cartoons because other cartoons (FG, American Dad, South Park) have younger staffs and a better understanding of pop culture and today's youth, and therefore the jokes are better. Simpsons is falling short of the competition in the humor department, while sacrificing the true essence of what made the show so brilliant, smart and respectful to begin with.
I believe the show can get away with lame excuses for resolutions like this now only because of their legacy, and I'd bet that there are even instances where the staff recognizes these shortcomings and simply lets it slide saying "eh, it's okay just this once". There are numerous Harvard grads and brilliantly smart people on staff to this day. They are simply valuing cheap humor over substance because it's easier. For example, when they do purposefully bad jokes or puns, and call attention to them, they think that's okay since they're recognizing it. I disagree. There is a total loss of self-respect going on. The show has basically admitted it has nothing left to say by resorting to cheap, self-referential humor, resting on their laurels. I would love to see the show go for something bold. Even if it's something as stereotypical as introducing new characters and developing them from scratch. Whatever brings new life to this tired franchise would be great now.
And when was the last time a character was treated with true story-driven respect? For example, when was the last time you truly felt like you were cheering on a character like when Lisa gave her anti-politician speech in "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington"? No character would EVER be given that kind of breathing room and dignity these days. Any noble endeavor they took on, like Lisa's, would likely be polluted by cheap (probably super-liberal heavy handed) jokes that would take the viewer out of the character's situation and direct our attention to the writers' message over what's happening in the episode. And that would probably be a good episode by today's standards even, since most new episodes don't even try to say anything at all about anything. That's one thing that pisses me off about the show these days especially - the writers purposely plant their own beliefs and messages into the characters mouths and stories to the point where you end up feeling like the characters' dialog belongs to a writer and not to the character. The characters become hollow vessels for delivering jokes and writers' messages, and lose their own personalities and involvement in the stories.
All in all, if you're totally OKAY with taking The Simpsons as a familiar enjoyable sitcom these days, you'll get what you came for. But there's a reason this show has been known as one of the best TV shows of all-time, and the current state of the show has absolutely nothing to do with that. It's clear as day. What's even worse is that if they were to use the excuse of "well, the episodes need to be shorter now" for why they can't do deeper stories, you need not look further than the hour-long Family Guys in the past year. When they wanna do a more serious and cinematic episode, they just fucking do it. They don't make excuses and dance around it. They do it. They take chances, and they try new things. The Simpsons hasn't even tried anything new or exciting, unless you wanna talk about the gimmicky Muppets xmas thing they did or whatever. Things for laughs. Gimmicks. Not deeper storytelling or a more serious purpose. Family Guy wanted to do a character-driven full hour on Brian and Stewie. They did. They wanted to do a big "whodunnit" episode. They did it (without making a huge damn deal out of it like Who Shot Mr. Burns). The Simpsons' showrunners and writers just need to start saying "fuck it", come up with some bold ideas, and just DO IT ALREADY. If you wanna fit in with season 2, then concentrate on serious character-driven stories and try to genuinely act like the old days. If you don't, then try something new for god's sake. Just stop trying to pretend like you haven't changed if you're gonna go for gimmicks or sacrifice character and story for jokes in regular format episodes.
Also, the "its still better than most of TV" argument is such a lame excuse for laziness, aside from the fact that it's completely untrue in so many ways.