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The decline of "The Simpsons" begins... Considering that most of these sets offer the same kinds of extras, the rating has to reflect the quality of the episodes themselves. And, unfortunately, after reaching new heights of excellence with "Marge vs. the Monorail" and "A Streetcar Named Marge" in season 4 and peaking with arguably the most intellectually hilarious 30 seconds in television history ("Worker and Parasite" in "Krusty gets Kancelled"), the first signs of what has become a long, slow decline of "The Simpsons" begins in Season 5. This isn't to say there weren't some misses in previous seasons, but even the less-than-stellar episodes generated at least a few laughs. And this isn't to say that "The Simpsons" has jumped the shark (although it has come close at times); even its worst episodes are better than nearly all of the other "Raymonds," "Jims" and "Joeys" that pass for TV comedy today combined. But what even the most rabid Simpsons fan has to admit is that Season 5 is the first season where episodes that are truly unfunny from beginning to end appear. "Marge on the Lam" is a monotonous take on "Thelma and Louise" that goes absolutely nowhere. "Bart Gets an Elephant" is a one-joke piece that begins a seemingly endless series of "funny pet" episodes that appear with distressing predictability in future seasons. "Bart Gets Famous" is quite possibly the worse episode ever--a totally unfunny exercise in self-absorption that blooms into the endless series of reflexive Fox jokes in season 6. "Homes Goes to College" begins a terrible trend of Homer-as-frat-boy plots, and "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy" maligns little Lisa with a plot unworthy of her intelligence. Season 5 also begins the regrettable tendency to replace genuine laughs from witty writing and situations with cheap laughs from cutaway visual gags and one-liners. It's a shopworn practice as old as cartoons themselves, and one that The Simpsons managed to largely resist until Season 5, where it became a patented fall-back mechanism and remains so today. Most distressing is the total transformation of Homer from a slow yet caring father-cum-working class hero into a completely one-dimensional neanderthal. Whether this was a directive from Fox or a conscious decision by Groenig and co., it started the series on a long downward slide into predictability and shameless pandering to contemporary music and MTV culture. So what earns this collection its 3 stars? The few stellar episodes like "Cape Feare," "Deep Space Homer," "Homer and Apu" and "The Devil and Ned Flanders" vignette from "Treehouse of Horror." None of these episodes matches the sheer combination of wit and scathing satire as the pantheon episodes, but they at least are funny. That can't be said for the clunkers in season 5, nearly all of season 6, and, these days, at least 50% of all episodes from season 5 on. If you haven't seen these episodes, the collection is worth it (although seasons 1-4 truly comprise the Golden Age of the series) for the diamonds in the rough. For those who have seen it, it's the last "must have" Simpsons collection; everything from this point forward is for diehard fans only.