>>941628
>It just was at the time that being Christian or religious was a good thing, so when it stopped being good, so did Flanders suddenly change to all the worst stereotypes.
I think the attitude the writers took to Flanders has more to do with the writers in general changing.
They stopped trying to write any episodes that were heartfelt. I remember listening to the commentary track done for the first couple seasons and the way they talked about them was surprisingly flippant about those occasional heartfelt moments.
Makes it look like they forgot how to look at the characters as those you could care about. They changed from trying to use the characters innate nature to drive the story and more about how they could just jam the characters into different settings.
Consider the episode where Homer gets Lisa a pony. There they use Homer's love of his daughter and agony over disappointing her to drive the story as he does what many fathers wish they could do for their girl, give her the object of her dreams: a pony. It's a sort of ridiculous thing that people usually never go through with and the episode uses the ridiculousness of going through with it to drive the story.
Contrast that to a later episode, Saddlesore Galactica. Where the Simpsons again get a horse because they see one being forced to jump from a diving board. It's just randomness for the sake of creating an excuse to have the Simpsons engage in horse racing. It's not based on any sort of traditional thing families do nor do the the family's personalities really make it feel natural. It's all just random bullshit for the sake of driving the plot forward with random jokes like having the horse jockeys being elves.