Twelve seasons young and still running, being a fan of “The Simpsons” is almost an admissions requirement on this campus. At 5:30 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays and 7 p.m. on Sundays, dorm hallways and TV lounges across Northwestern ring with the “d’oh” of Homer and the whiny “Hoo-mer” of Marge. Students laugh, procrastinate and share their affection for the longest-running prime time show that still airs new episodes.

But Speech freshman Joel Penney hasn’t enjoyed a show in a while. Labeled a “pessimist,” amongst other unmentionable epithets, Penney has debated fiercely the value of the current shows with both friends and foes.

“I can like see through (the episodes),” Penney says. “When I watch one now, I can just see the writer and what he’s thinking and that (what he is thinking) is stupid.”

With the lofty air of a philosophy major and the insight of a Radio/TV/Film student, Penney is a rare mix of critic and devotee, a “Simpsons” connoisseur.

The deeper he slouches on the couch, the more profound his opinions on the show become. He has analyzed the seasons in the way most biology students study for the M.C.A.T., spouting fact after fact and theory after theory.

“‘The Simpsons never sold out,” Penney says. “They never were responsible for promulgating some kind of healthy message to America. They were all about pissing off all of the people in control, and everybody can relate to that. What are you going to watch? ‘Survivor’ or ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ Is that going to change the national consciousness?”

Penney believes that “The Simpsons” embodies the anti-authoritarianism of youth and the cynicism of the ’90s that resonate with teen-agers and college students. The characters in positions of power, such as the clergy, the politicians and the policemen, are made to look like idiots.

As an independent thinker, Penney obviously can relate to this theme of rebellion as he recites his views on the show. Unlike most “Simpsons” fans, he hasn’t liked a show since the fifth season. But he still watches it every week because to turn it off now after 10 years of viewing, as he believes, would be “wrong.”

“I still get stuff out of the shows, and some of the jokes are still funny,” Penney admits. “But (now) they’ve lost the core of the show, which was the characters. They just have them as mouthpieces for whatever kind of dumb jokes they want to come up with every week.”

From these feelings, he generates his “Simpsons” theory. He contends the show started out as low “kiddy” humor and developed into an “adult” fad that “got on fire” in the fourth and fifth seasons. This peak of Simpson-dom effortlessly blended the development of the characters, the plots and the jokes, like in the episode when Homer stops going to church. In “Homer the Heretic,” Homer spends his Sundays parading around the house in his underwear in a knock-off of the dance from the film “Risky Business,” making waffles and watching football. He creates his own faith until he almost burns down the house. His church friends save him and the pastor convinces him that God has not turned His back on Homer. The humor of the episode is reflected in Homer’s description of God: “Perfect teeth; nice smell; a class act all the way.”

For a while the creators tried to mimic the golden age but failed, causing the characters to become static and the writers to use up their ideas, Penney says. Now he says the show has “a new vibe” in which the tradition of “The Simpsons” is shelved for an outlandish weirdness. For example, in a recent rerun, the Simpsons save a horse from the glue factory, only to remake him into a “bad-boy” racehorse with a dyed mane and nose-ring. The horse even sports a James Dean-like leather jacket.

Penney believes that the show, like the horse at the beginning of that episode, needs to be “put out of its misery.” He entertained the idea of starting a letter-writing campaign aimed at persuading “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening to pull the show off the air, but, like Homer, he is content to just complain and hope that eventually the writers will see that they have lost the soul of the show.

“It was never supposed to be a totally silly show,” Penney says. “They made a lot of important social commentary. It was very witty and very funny commentary, but it was still something real.” nyou