The Simpsons has never been timeless, it's always been entrenched in current pop culture. Old episodes are full of dated references.

They're playing bar and spouting drunken cliches because their dad is a terrible role model.

"Universal" humour is good, so is specific. They both have pros and cons. The growing Latino population IS seen as important to future elections, it's a relevant and topical issue. Replacing it with a more generic, international-friendly topic doesn't seem like a good change to me.

Semi-obscure references is a Simpsons hallmark. Like Family Guy and obvious 80s references.

I didn't read your post, but from the responses I'm assuming it's not as good as your comments in the 90s.

They've done it right before (with Itchy & Scratchy), so it was kind of disappointing they didn't do a better job. It could have been a great opening.

The Silly Symphonies homage could have been cool but the animation was still too modern. It didn't have that 1930s bounce.

My favourite jokes were the background gags (newpaper headlines, book covers, etc.), which is a problem. They're just supposed to be gravy, this episode was lacking meat.

The Britney Spears costume was 14 years out of date but boobs.

Everything is reset to zero each week, so apart from the occasional reference, other episodes are irrelevant. It's always been this way and it has to be, because the Simpsons as jet-setting Grammy/Oscar winning adventurers is a very different show.

I liked Homer crying the Bond melody.

Who cares? It's not like the episodes have title cards.

How can anyone hate Katy Perry in a tight PVC dress? And the Simpsons puppets were cool.

And 1999's third song is "Delirious". That's a hard to beat one-two-three punch.

I've heard some J Church, but not this song. It's dead on.

LEAVE ZOOEY ALONE!

But the animated Disney 3D re-releases will continue, of course.

Quincy Jones.

This is one of those episodes where they write themselves into a situation that's already been covered (the new parents are better than the real parents), so there's nowhere to go.

Good episode. If it came out in an early season, I think it would be considered a classic, like all the other episodes we memorized during 90s syndication.