The problem is that reality TV is inevitable. People, generally speaking, like to know what other people are doing. Or like to see other people react to things.
The first “reality TV” program was Candid Camera, which technically got its start as “Candid Microphone”, all in the late 1940s. Of course things evolved from there into our current “reality TV” situation.
The real problem is that the line between “entertainment” and “reality” has gotten blurrier and blurrier. When we watch Godzilla we know that’s just entertainment, we know a giant lizard creature isn’t walking down the street.
It’s also funny that you mention MTV because realistically MTV should have died out years ago. In the same way that video killed the radio star, the Internet killed the video star. Why would I turn on the TV and hope the video I wanted to watch was on, when I could just go on the Internet and see it now. Of course MTV the television station wants to keep making money, so they pivoted hard into reality TV.
I always have to pop up in these threads because I’m out there, and I’m not alone. I’ve been watching The Simpsons, more or less, non-stop since it first started airing.
When I was younger it played twice a day during the week with a new episode every Sunday. So when it comes to the earlier seasons, the ten or so seasons often viewed as the golden era, I’ve seen those dozens of times.
In the 2000s watching TV at a regularly scheduled time wasn’t as much of a priority and the availability of videos on the Internet began to increase, so I usually watched The Simpsons that way. When the film came out in 2007 I was there opening day.
As streaming services became popular in the 2010s I started to watch The Simpsons there instead. Although these streaming services rarely had a backlog, just the current season, but I had them all collected over the years.
In the late 2010s my roommates and I decided to watch every episode of The Simpsons but not in release order. We would just pick a random season and episode and watch a few episodes a week over the course of two years.
Now in the 2020s we sometimes get together to watch, sometimes watch solo. I’m personally much more strict about watching every week, they usually watch in short bursts and I don’t mind rewatching recent episodes.
But… Is it good? Yeah mostly. Not every episode is great.
The episode that aired this past Sunday isn’t anything special, a few funny moments but Albert Brooks who voiced Hank Scorpio and Russ Cargill (from the movie) voiced a new character and that was fun.
The Treehouse of Horror from two Sunday’s ago was much better, so if you want a recent episode then watch that.
No it isn’t ever going to be as great as the golden age of The Simpsons, but it’s still fun to watch and I still laugh, so that’s a win to me.