Build-a-ggplot: The Fall of The Simpsons

Today we incorporate a bit of television history with our data…

The Simpsons TV show needs little introduction—it is well-received as one of the pioneering “made for adults” cartoons. It rose to popularity with characters who were carefully developed with clear morals so fans could anticipate their reactions.

Moral consistency is what let the characters grow in the audience’s heart. Homer was the fool of the show, but his comedic mishaps often revolved around good intentions to care for his family.

This era between Season two and nine was coined “Simpsons Mania.”

However, something happened. Writers and producers left the show to continue on with their careers and new writers either failed to emphasize the heartfelt values each character possessed or betrayed those values entirely.

The post-Simpsons mania was deemed “Zombie Simpsons,” where our beloved characters had become shells of who they once were.

Let’s use this as inspiration to practice our graphing skills by adding some highlights and aesthetics, in stages, in an ode to The Fall of The Simpsons.

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Scraping Our Data

Check out the full R markdown from my Github repository here

First, I needed to scrape The Simpsons ratings and episode details off the Simpsons’ IMDB.

I’ve gone through scraping in a previous article using Spotify charts and a CSS selector where you can learn to build one yourself and prepare it for most websites. For now, I’ll give you a glimpse of the design I made to pull the information I wanted.

> imdbScrape <- function(x){
    page <- x
    name % read_html() %>% html_nodes('#episodes_content strong a') %>% html_text() %>% as.data.frame()
    rating % read_html() %>% html_nodes('.ipl-rating-widget > .ipl-rating-star .ipl-rating-star__rating') %>% html_text() %>% as.data.frame()
    details % read_html() %>% html_nodes('.zero-z-index div') %>% html_text() %>% as.data.frame()

    chart <- cbind(name, rating, details)
    names(chart) <- c("Name", "Rating", "Details")
    chart <- as.tibble(chart)
   return(chart)
 Sys.sleep(5)
}

Try my SpotifyCharts project if you want a deeper explanation regarding scraping data.

Here’s what our pull should look like:

Now, a bit of tidying is needed so we can group by Season for our graph. I used str_extract() to split the Details column into Season and Episode. All the code for this project is in the Github repository mentioned above.

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Customizing the Plot

I’ll go ahead and break down how I gradually added to this graph in sections, building on each layer:

1. Main line graph: A bit of grouping and summarizing so we can get season averages. Overall, just a standard geom_line with some color and line thickness modifications.

> Simpsons %>%
  group_by(Season) %>%
  summarise(Rating = mean(Rating)) %>%
  ggplot() +
    geom_line(aes(x=Season, y=Rating), color = "Blue", size = 1.5)

2.  X-axis modification: Opting to have every season represented on the x-axis by changing the breaks.

> Graph_1 +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks=c(1:28), labels=c(1:28), limits=c(1,28))

3. Adding highlights and text: Using the x- and y-axis as grids to drop text and make transparent rectangles (adjusting the alpha value).

> Graph_2 +
   # highlighting Simpsons Mania
    annotate("rect", xmin=2, xmax=9, ymin=8, ymax=8.9, alpha = .4, fill = "yellow") +
    annotate("text", x=5.5, y= 8.6, label = "Simpsons Mania", color = "black") +
  
  # highlighting: Zombie Simpsons
    annotate("rect", xmin=13, xmax=28, ymin=6.5, ymax=7.2, alpha = .2, fill = "red") +
    annotate("text", x=20.7, y= 7.1, label = "Zombie Simpsons", color = "black")

4. Average line: A dotted line (linetype = 2) better defines my two regions as above and below average.

> Graph_3 +
  geom_line(aes(x=Season, y=mean(Rating)), linetype = 2, color = "Black") + 
    annotate("text", x = 27, y = 7.45, label = "avg", color = "black", size = 3)

5. Adding all the labels and their modifiers

> Graph_4 +  
    labs(title = "The Steady Decline of The Simpsons",
         subtitle = "Average Episode Ratings by Season",
         caption = "Source: IMDB, August 2018",
         x = "Season",
         y = "Rating") +
    theme(plot.title = element_text(family='', face = 'bold', colour = 'black', size = 20),
          plot.subtitle = element_text(family='', face = 'italic', colour = 'black', size = 10),
          plot.caption = element_text(family='', colour = 'black', size = 10),
          axis.title.x = element_text(family='', face = 'bold', colour = 'black', size = 12),
          axis.title.y = element_text(family='', face = 'bold', colour = 'black', size = 12),
          )

6. Overall theme adjustments: Added Simpsons yellow and used the black/white theme to remove the grey grid.

> Graph_4 +
    theme_bw() +
    labs(title = "The Steady Decline of The Simpsons",
          subtitle = "Average Episode Ratings by Season",
          caption = "Source: IMDB, August 2018",
          x = "Season",
          y = "Rating") +
    theme(plot.title = element_text(family='', face = 'bold', colour = 'black', size = 20),
          plot.subtitle = element_text(family='', face = 'italic', colour = 'black', size = 10),
          plot.caption = element_text(family='', colour = 'black', size = 10),
          axis.title.x = element_text(family='', face = 'bold', colour = 'black', size = 12),
          axis.title.y = element_text(family='', colour = 'black', size = 12),
          plot.background = element_rect(fill = "yellow")
          )

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Nicely done!

If there’s one thing The Simpsons can teach you how to do right, it’s how to make a nice-looking graph of their wrongs.

What to do next: try and apply this to other TV shows to highlight any incredible moments in their history. You have all the tools at hand now.

Thanks for reading!