Commercial television is a wasteland. An immense, imagination-killing cesspool of situational comedy drivel, pandering and patronizing news programs, overwrought and hyper-plotted drama, sensationalist specials with names like When Starving Dogs Rape Nuns 4 and heavily commercialized sporting events. The sitcoms are probably the worst. When was the last time you watched Home Improvement or That 70's Show and felt engaged? Not entertained - engaged. Watching grass grow can be entertaining if there's nothing better to do. With a few occasional exceptions, and one consistent one, commercial television is nothing but hollow entertainment, the mental equivalent of a bag of Doritos. The exceptions that I speak of are shows like The X-Files and ER which sometimes rise above the low standards of TV drama and provide serious, thought provoking, engaging experiences. There is one show on television that consistently provides these experiences. It is located in the last place one would expect to look, Fox's Sunday night lineup. Sandwiched in between Brad Lachman's godawful World's Funniest and the craptacular That 70's Show is a show that for the past ten years has maintained a level of wit, snappy dialogue, brilliant writing, social commentary, and flat out unbelievably fanshmabulous comedy. I'm speaking, of course, about King of the Hill.
That was a lie. The show I'm talking about is The Simpsons.
The Simpsons entered the world as a series of short, inter-sketch bits aired on the now (thankfully) defunct Tracy Ullman Show. These shorts, with their primitive animation and uncomplicated plots, introduced the family dynamics that are still used to this day: Bart is the occasionally well-meaning troublemaker, Lisa is the thoughtful and brainy younger sister, Maggie is the wordless baby, Marge is the neurotic but thoughtful housewife and mother, and Homer is the oafish but loving father.
A full-length (half-hour) pilot was made, a Christmas special. It was successful enough to provoke Fox into adding The Simpsons to their Sunday night lineup, where it has remained ever since (except for a brief foray onto Thursday nights, but let's not split hairs).
From the beginning, it was clear that the show was a cut above. It uses a traditional sitcom format, in which despite the family's weekly adventures, their overall condition stays the same - by the end of the show, they're right back where they started. However, because it is an animated series, it has taken the genre in directions that have never been explored before.
Most sitcoms employ a small number of actors, around whom all the action revolves, and a smaller number of sets, where all the action takes place. Except for stock-footage establishing shots, and the infrequent foray into the larger world for an on-location special, everything seems to occur in two or three different spots; and except for guest actors, everything occurs to the same small group of five or six people. This creates a claustrophobic and ultimately boring dynamic.
I think that one of the reasons for the longevity of The Simpsons is that its animated format allows it to introduce new characters into every episode, if the writers wish and, ironically, allows its environments and buildings to be fully three-dimensional. In traditional sitcoms, the areas where the action occurs are always seen from the same side and from the same angles. In The Simpsons because there is no need to allow room for cameras to film the action, rooms and buildings can be portrayed in any dimension, from any angle. This helps eliminate the boredom that is often associated with traditional sitcoms, because fresh new locations and characters are always popping up. Also, the use of different angles helps bring us closer to the action, gets us more involved in the events onscreen.
Besides the five main characters of the Simpson family, there is a cast of perhaps a hundred characters who make frequent appearances in the show. Each character has a small nucleus of friends and cronies, characters that they associate with. In addition to those is the populace of the mythical town that they inhabit, Springfield. Despite the large number of characters, they each tend to be more rounded and fleshed out than their "real-life" sitcom counterparts, thanks mostly to the brilliant crew of writers. Each auxiliary character has a set of consistent motivations and goals, ranging from Barney's alcoholism to Martin's conflicting desires to be popular and to be the smartest kid in Bart's fourth grade class.
Also noteworthy are the plots. The events that happen to the Simpson family, while absurd, provide commentary on current events, parody plots of other television shows, expand our understanding of the main characters, or are simply hilarious. In true sitcom format, each episode ends with the family right back on square one, but in the half-hour between the beginning and the conclusion, all bets are off.
Maybe this week Bart commits fraud in Australia and has to face corporal punishment. Maybe Homer quits working at the nuclear power plant for his dream job: working as a pin monkey in a bowling alley. Maybe Homer's long-lost, now destitute half-brother shows up and rebuilds his fortune by inventing a baby translator. Maybe Marge becomes a police officer. The variety of plot possibilities is another element of The Simpsons that has helped it stay fresh through the years.
The plots, in addition to providing humor through action, also set up what may be the most brilliant thing about the show: the small jokes. Almost every episode is crammed with throwaway lines, sight gags, and situational absurdities. Often one needs to watch an episode several times to catch all the jokes, which means that taping the show is crucial.
The Simpsons recently passed The Flintstones as the longest-running animated show of all time. Not many, if any, shows have been around longer, and certainly none have aged as well. While it is true that in the past two or three seasons The Simpsons hasn't been as good as it was in the past, it still maintains such a level of quality that I have no qualms about calling it the funniest and best written show on television.
If you are a Simpsons novice, and would like to see older episodes from the show's glory days, I wouldn't recommend watching the episodes that are syndicated on the networks. In order to make more room for commercials, the bastards in charge of syndication have edited out some jokes, even some whole scenes, so that when you watch an episode that is in syndication, you are being cheated out of your comedy! My advice is to make friends with folks who have collections of Simpsons tapes, so that you can view these treasures in all their glory and splendor. Believe me, it's worth it.
Back in the early 90s, before the Fox network was firmly ensconced as the home to Barbie-doll actresses in California melodramas and masturbatory car chase specials, it staked its reputation on two television shows: Married...With Children and The Simpsons. The success of these two shows firmly entrenched the Fox network as the home of crass, crude dysfunctionalism. Al Bundy and Bart Simpson were the poster boys of the upstart channel. Endless cries of "hooters," whooping and hollering at toilets flushing and a cartoon troublemaker crying "eat my shorts" delighted the 18-34 year old demographic and made the Rev. Don Wildmon and advertisers cringe. However, while the exploitative and poorly written Married...With Children's guilty pleasures soon wore thin, The Simpsons's status as a cultural phenomenon grew exponentially with each episode.
In the series' infancy Bart was the standard bearer for the elementary school set. Principals were banning his "Underachiever and proud of it" shirts across the country and parents were wringing their hands in shame over the spiky-haired hero. At this point The Simpsons was still facing the misconception that because it was an animated series it had to be a kid's show. Adults were not paying enough attention to the series to realize that while there were some sight gags and catchy lines for the pre-pubescent set the plots and dialogue were decidedly geared toward an older crowd.
A large reason for this was the show's focus on Bart's naughty antics. While we had the Wonder Years to provide social commentary through the eyes of a child, The Simpsons worked its adult themes in peripherally. The Simpsons did not have the weighty themes of the 60s or a grown up's narration, it seemingly just had its protagonist causing trouble on his skateboard. However, somewhere along the lines things changed. Perhaps out of frustration with plot limitations, perhaps out of fear at becoming the 90s Dennis the Menace, writers for The Simpsons shifted the spotlight to the ne'er-do-well father Homer. This narrative shift allowed for sharper social commentary and even more adult oriented plot lines. Along with grades and bullies the show now introduced infidelity and drunk driving to the Springfield family.
The shift away from Bart as TV's resident bad boy opened the door for hooligans like Beavis and Butthead and later the kids from South Park. These shows elevated the role of mischievous pre-teen to never seen before heights. In comparison to the arson loving, breast worshipping Beavis or Butthead, Bart's petty pranks on Principal Skinner make him look like the Beave.
Meanwhile, Homer has developed into a lovable, incompetent father that we should hate, or at least chastise, yet we continue to love because we see his good intentions shine through. In reality, focusing on Homer is not that much different that Bart. Homer's boorish behavior and cockamamie schemes are similar to a fourth grade boy's, however they just happen to be coupled with fatherly responsibilities and adult freedoms.
It is this dichotomy which keeps The Simpsons a fresh and sharply irreverent social commentary after ten years.
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 17, March 12, 1999
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