It was announced this week that The Simpsons will make its season debute on Sept. 11. And I likely won't be watching.

It has been years since I've watched a new Simpsons episode all the way through. I pretty much gave up on the series a few years ago because the quality seemed to be going downhill. The scripts would have one good idea that they got 10 minutes of show worth out of, and the rest of the episode seemed to be filler. Unfortunately Fox wants to keep milking the Simpsons cow as long as it can. Unfortunately US commercial tv is unwilling to let a series die at the height of its powers, before it can embarrass itself. The Simpsons held on longer than most, but even it began to run out of gas eventually. You can say the same thing about the original Law and Order, which is starting to seem rather tired even if the ratings are still holding up. I saw only a couple of episodes of the last season of L&O, and I don't feel like I'm missing much.