I have recently noticed that the older episodes deal with real life issues such as Bart stealing or Barts bullying problem, and maybe that episode were they are making the pretselz, but then again I'm not too sure the mafia would step out of there way fora small pretsel company. I'm not saying that the simpsons is losing its ability to make the audiance laugh, I'm just a bit cautious that they are running out of ideas involving family issues, The Simpsons taking in Santa's Little Helper was a heart warming "family" moment, the mafia fighting the yakuza on the simpsons lawn was not. There new cartoon, Game Over, is drokking brilliant though, and they should stick with that.