There’s no profit, and no dignity, in trying to make someone quit before he or she is ready. Here’s the way the equation works: If (a) has desire, and (b) has a willingness to satisfy that desire for mutual gain, then (a + b) = (c)ome on back, dude, let’s find you a jersey. (This is why the irritating thing about Brett Favre wasn’t that he wanted to keep playing, but that he seemed to want to play quarterback in the fall and Hamlet in the summer.)

That said, the continued existence of The Simpsons makes us a little sad – not that it’s still on the air, necessarily, but that each new episode adds another brick to that big wall spelling out The Simpsons Are Not Good Anymore, to say nothing of the fact that there are now so very many more middling-to-poor episodes than there are absolute, stone-cold classic ones. Which is sad because, and this is not hyperbole, The Simpsons at its peak was the best television show of all time. But we’re nearly twenty years out from that peak, and it threatens to get lost in a fog of episodes about Moe’s bar rag and how much like Jesus Lady Gaga is, so it’s nice that the Civilians know where it’s at; they’ve got this new production up at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co., Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and, basically, it’s a big game of telephone that centers around one of the all-time greatest Simpsons episodes, “Cape Feare.” (FULL ARTICLE: Eric Grode, The New York Times)