The vast quality difference between The Simpsons and Zombie Simpsons shows itself in a lot of ways. There are direct things, like Zombie Simpsons ever declining ratings, and there are indirect things like the embarrassingly bad IMDB numbers. In that latter category we can now safely add Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has individual articles for each season of the show. Those articles were assembled and edited by hundreds of individual users over many years. One person’s bias for or against Zombie Simpsons isn’t reflected, rather these articles are a measurement of what Wikipedia thinks deserves attention, and a quick look at their relative word counts shows that Zombie Simpsons just isn’t worth the time and trouble that The Simpsons is.
|
Season |
Wikipedia Article Word Count |
| 1 | 2,583 |
| 2 | 4,425 |
| 3 | 4,539 |
| 4 | 4,707 |
| 5 | 5,106 |
| 6 | 5,101 |
| 7 | 5,857 |
| 8 | 4,227 |
| 9 | 5,804 |
| 10 | 6,107 |
| 11 | 3,774 |
| 12 | 2,517 |
| 13 | 3,632 |
| 14 | 4,854 |
| 15 | 1,648 |
| 16 | 2,622 |
| 17 | 3,252 |
| 18 | 2,560 |
| 19 | 3,247 |
| 20 | 3,960 |
| 21 | 4,409 |
For the record, the average word count from Seasons 1-10 is 4,748, and the average from Seasons 11+ is 3,315. Of Zombie Simpsons seasons, only Season 14 has a word count that’s above the average for Seasons 1-10. Please also note that those numbers include Season 1, which has only half the usual number of episodes and therefore has a much shorter episode summary section, but do not include the still incomplete Season 22.
I’ll grant that doing Wikipedia word counts is a silly and reductive, but at the same time it’s too consistent to be random. You can click on the edit history of each of these articles, the ones about The Simpsons and the ones about Zombie Simpsons, and see that all of them are updated fairly frequently. None of these articles are stale or ignored, and yet people’s interest clearly plummets after about Season 10 or so. There’s no real mystery as to why. Zombie Simpsons just isn’t as interesting, and the numbers bear that out.
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5 responses to “Wikipedia Thinks Zombie Simpsons Is Dull”
I know this is irrelevant but you know the NOT season 13 finale ‘Pappa’s got a brand new badge’ it was originally going to be a Season 14 episode but the NOT clever exec at FOX decided to make it the season 13 finale at the last minute. Why you ask? For a NOT excellent reason: FOX Celebrity Boxing, THAT’S RIGHT A SUMMER SHOW! and how did they promote (whore out too) but having Moe say “Oh great, I’m missing FOX Celebrity Boxing” in a black out aka in more technical terms lengthening the black out show and have the VA record that “line” (commercial) so to sum it up FOX sunk new lows and whored out a Simpsons episode for a crappy summer show (that noone gave 2 shits about) and it made that episode the one of the 2 only Simpsons episodes to not debut on a Sunday or Thursday (The Season 8’s Sherry Bobbins episode debuted on a Friday) the episoded debuted on WEDNESDAY May 22nd 2002 as a lead-in for FCB thus making that screamapillar episode (that one with cleavage exposing Carmen Electra) the ended-up to be the not Season 13 finale after all.
There are only about three of us that ever actually do anything on Wikipedia, and we all despise Zombie Simpsons and so have no plans to waste time writing good articles about those episodes. Similarly, if we did, they would be shit, because there are far, far fewer sources to cover those episodes. The DVD commentaries are shit and there are no real press sources at all.
Often at work, I find sick amusement in looking up the current ZS series on wikipedia and looking up future titles/storylines, so I can exchange laughs with my fellow ZS hating brother. Funny enough, when I type in ‘Simpsons Season 22’ in google, it always brings up Season 20 at the top, and never 22. Although that’s pretty much the equivalent of offering me turnip juice instead of prune juice.
Wouldn’t this confirm the theory that while ZS may not be as good as classic Simpsons, it’s getting better than it had been? Word count trends upward from the low point in Season 15, and Season 21 is a paltry 16 words short of tying Season 2.
I considered that, but rejected it for two reasons. First, Wikipedia itself is always expanding because the number of users is always going up. Second, both 20 and 21, where you really see the bump, have sections about all the 20th anniversary crap FOX did, which accounts for quite a bit of the increase.
That, and the IMDB ratings have stayed flat.