This graph of The Simpsons illustrates (for me at least) that IMDB is more reflective of the viewing community's weird quirks and biases.
Honestly: is "Homer the Smithers" the best episode of The Simpsons? I doubt anyone would truly put it on their "best ever" list. It's really more "solid" than great. Most importantly: it doesn't rub anyone the wrong way.
Is "Saddlesore Galactica" one of the worst episodes ever? No. It's extremely funny and the story is structured well. It gets lots of very low votes from viewers who favor realism over humor (the episode is implausible with the horse racing then gets silly/fantasy). The episode's score reflects a community desire rather than an objective opinion.
>Is "Saddlesore Galactica" one of the worst episodes ever?
No, and the graph in no way show that. From around season nine, episodes are mostly rated between 6.5-7.3, with a fair amount lying considerably lower than that and only a few outliers in the other direction.
But as a 6.5'er, "Saddlesore Galactica" is a solid "poor" episode, like many, many others. But there are a substantial amount of episodes well below that one, and they are also scoring considerably lower.
The clip shows are the truly "worst", despite having all the best punchlines. So one could argue that objectively they are the best. But that is also a poor argument.
> The episode's score reflects a community desire rather than an objective opinion.
I don't really understand your point. You think it's biased for audience members to rate an episode poorly because they didn't enjoy it and didn't think it was funny?
People that disliked something are more likely to vote on that episode to voice their dislike.
For example if the episode makes fun of christians you may have a heavy amount of christians vote the episode down even though it was a good episode. The people that thought it was good aren't as motivated to vote as the people offended.
This is also common with service providers and internet reviews. If the service is good there is no need to go online and post a review. If it's bad you are much more likely to take the time.
This is a great example of how to lie with statistics, or what someone can claim by applying just college-level statistics. Those trend lines are completely worthless.
See the trend lines for Futurama: http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0149460
The difference between all the episodes make having a "trend" very doubtful. Especially season 5 is a wildly varying season where if you take one episode away the line would completely flip.
Much the same can be said for The Next Generation http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0092455 where you have basically clouds where seemingly at random a line is drawn through it.
Yes, I know there are statistical methods for determining trends, but without data on their accuracy they are pretty much worthless. And you really should use a threshold for those accuracies if you're presenting this kind of data to a very wide audience.
It's a great hack that uses lousy data. IMDB ratings are best perhaps with films, a lot less reliable with individual episode scores. Also, if a show goes south do viewers keep watching it and rating it? That phenomena alone sort of spoils the fun for me.
I think with regards to the Simpsons it's just that it was better quality pre-2000 or whatever. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096697/reviews?ref_=tt_urv you can read through the reviews and see several good points about it.
The distribution is a result of the low number of ratings. Look at the number of ratings for each episode. For all those early 7.3-7.4 episodes it's about 600 ratings, the higher rated episodes have more ratings. Then from about season 12 there's a drop in number of ratings to about 300-400 for most episodes.
Compare this to the Game of Thrones ratings[1], where each episode has about 3000 ratings.
Really, the Lady Gaga episode was awful. And not only because it was a very obvious 22 minute advertisement. It was just plain bad, very bad. I absolutely agree that it's the worst Simpsons episode I've watched.
The individual ratings may not be very "accurate" (well, they're going to be subjective no matter what. My favourite episode is near the bottom of its season), but the trends are interesting. The fact that the floor of seasons 1-9 is above the ceiling of season 14 and onwards (save a few outliers) reflects quite well what many fans think.
OP here, I'd really love to include viewership data if anyone knows how to get their hands on some. I was looking at the Nielsen site but saw no easy way of acquiring or requesting data.
In general an alternate IMDB algorithm probably would give a truer image if you clip of the extreme ratings 1 and 10 before averaging, thereby getting rid of most fanboy/rage votes.
Glad to see "Lisa Goes Gaga" as the lowest rated episode. I used to watch the Simpsons religiously but I stopped ~5 years ago. I turned on FOX the other day and happened to catch that episode ... really glad that's the exception and not the rule because it was unwatchable.
You know, I actually liked the last season. No, it was not as good as the other seasons, but when I add the handicap for it basically being the first season of a new show, it held up ok. I would have kept watching had it been renewed.
But I understand where people are coming from when they compare it poorly to the other ones. The original Scrubs was a growing up story about JD (and comrades to a lesser extent). The last season was more straight sitcom, less story arc. It wasn't attempting to be as meaningful.
I like how this generally confirms my opinion of shows; I can only infer that I hold meta opinions/no opinion of my own. Season 2 finale of The West Wing as some of the best tv ever, though.
I just worked by way through TNG and DS9. TNG took a while to get it's legs...in today's environment it wouldn't have lasted past season 2. But then it became great television for the rest of the run.
DS9 started pretty solid, and became one of the best written pieces of sci-fi TV quickly for a long time.
DS9? Yeah, it starts pretty soap opera-ish. That never really goes away (they're kind of stuck on the station for the most part), but the stakes get higher and higher and the various players and factions involved become pretty interesting. Not quite Game of Thrones, but way out of character for a Trek show.
Your Enterprise link goes to TNG again. And somehow I was sure Andromeda kept going for 7 seasons, it was just so bad I wasn't even keeping track anymore.
Andromeda really only had five seasons. I think it went episodic in Season 3 or 4 after blowing its load on the major story arc (putting together the federation^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h commonwealth again). It was never a great show, but fine to put on in the background while I was doing other stuff. But then it got really really bad and I don't even think I ended up finishing it.
Honestly: is "Homer the Smithers" the best episode of The Simpsons? I doubt anyone would truly put it on their "best ever" list. It's really more "solid" than great. Most importantly: it doesn't rub anyone the wrong way.
Is "Saddlesore Galactica" one of the worst episodes ever? No. It's extremely funny and the story is structured well. It gets lots of very low votes from viewers who favor realism over humor (the episode is implausible with the horse racing then gets silly/fantasy). The episode's score reflects a community desire rather than an objective opinion.