The Simpsons: 10 Golden Age Episodes That Foreshadowed Its Decline
2. Bart Star
This episode is taking the spot for two main reasons, both revolving around Homer. And revolving too much around Homer is definitely a problem of the later seasons.
This episode highlights two flaws with Homer-centric episodes: We see him getting a job, and we see him being a jerk.
As jobs go, coaching peewee football probably isn’t full time and he could likely do it and keep his power plant job. But it needs to be mentioned that ‘Homer gets a job’ is a plot line running dry even in the Golden Era, and they’ve been beating that dead horse ever since. According to Matt Groening, Homer had 188 jobs in the first 400 episodes. They’re close to 650 now.
Which brings us to the second point. He’s just a jerk, and for no reason. They try to justify his meanness to Bart, but that just leads to him being a terrible coach with little logic for why. And being awful to popular coach Flanders just seems wedged in to give Homer a leading role he doesn’t need. This horrible Homer sticks around for episodes like Kidney Trouble, Co-Dependents Day and Viva Ned Flanders. Unfortunately.