My Simpsons Midlife Crisis: Reviewing every episode of the first 11 seasons.

[Athene]

Nothing makes you feel old like a broken back. Just slipping, falling and landing wrong, in a way that blows out your back wall but not the sexy way. More of a spending the next several months in a brace way. In a way where an object on the floor might as well be on the moon. In a way where you have to buy a new bed because you can't move when you wake up in the old one. In a way where I declined body and mind and will have to spend the next year building myself back up physically and mentally.

Something that strips all illusions and tells you that you, Athene, are fucking old now. You are in fact, almost fucking forty. You feel almost forty. You spent 3 years of the last good decade possible doing nothing and you're in the fight of your life now. Worse, you now have to deal with the most dangerous foe of the old: Nostalgia. I hate Nostalgia on general principle. An idealized image of the past drawn from privileged groups remembering how fucking great it was to not have to have adult worries and failing bodies. The Summer of Love? No, you mean the Long Hot Summer of 1967. You love the 80s? Well, go look at how many biographies of LGBT people actually make it past 1992. I hate rosy views of the past. They both fuel reactionaries and cause us to lose track of the actual progress we've made.

And yet? I feel Nostalgic. I have the advantage of Enshitification making it so I can in fact actually say that a lot of things were better when I was younger, but I wish to reject that. I wish to interrogate my sense of loss and really try to judge if I'm actually missing something good. I'm starting off easy, with The Simpsons. I have wanted to go through every episode of the Simpsons for a while, but when I went to watch them on Disney+ it all felt hollow. I realized later that it was part of my general growing dissatisfaction with streaming and how I enjoy the Simpsons in the first place. The episodes are just the episodes and they didn't even do that right at first, with the rather famous problem of them stretching to widescreen a show that makes use of every inch of the frame. The first season was especially bad as it made some episodes nauseating to watch because of how they were framed. They've fixed this, but I maintain this is still not the true experience.

See, the Simpsons had a lot of bonus features in all their DVDs. Deleted scenes, behind the scenes animation, commercials and audio commentaries. The Audio commentaries are among the best out there, with a good glimpse into how the shows are made, what inspired the creators, humorous banter between them and Mike Reiss telling you that The Simpsons was the first use of still images moving in rapid succession to trick your brain into a perception of motion. That joke will become funnier, I swear, but the gist here is that I absolutely enjoyed the Audio Commentaries the entire time I owned the original episodes and I missed their absence. They didn't have to be missing, before they were bought out, FXX had streaming editions of the Simpsons complete with the audio commentaries. All it is, is a separate audio track to go along with all the dubs and they are either unable to or don't care about including them.

I have been getting back into owning physical copies of media again recently, and so I have been rebuying seasons of the Simpsons (long story). I have to find used copies since the stock of new copies is so low, but I've been slowly rebuilding them and god I never knew how much I missed this. Yeah, its inconvenient and takes up space, and any attempt to try to say how much I like it is going to make me sound old as shit, but I like it. And I'm old as shit.

But boy, that's a really rambling way to actually describe what I'm doing isn't it? I have not been very productive for a while, because of stress and injury. I've really let myself go even further from where I was during the pandemic, and I've been feeling depressed because of my age. I transitioned "late" into life, I missed years of my life due to COVID and I broke my back at the start of the year. I feel I missed out on a lot of my life before "old age" hit. As part of my rehabilitation into a more functional human, I want to become more productive again and write more. So I am starting with The Simpsons' again, where my love of comedy and media began when my biological mom showed me my first episode on May 9, 1991. I'm going to be reviewing both the episodes and the DVDs, as well as commenting on how well they hold up because hoo boy, while the comedy generally works there is some STUFF in these. I hope everyone will enjoy, even if its a bit silly and self-indulgent.

Episode capsules/reviews will start soon, but first, lets come up with a very loose set of categories!

 

[nmWarden]

I share your cautious, measured approach to imbibing nostalgia. I'm reminded of James Lee's video about "vibes." Vibes, as a component of art, are a combination of sensations or patterns we can recognize. The Simpsons treehouse of horror episodes have a different vibe than the pilot episode, and new Simpsons has a different vibe than the classics.

Athene, you're cooler than you give yourself credit for. Thanks for starting a new thread; you can tell from all the people that are checking out this thread that you're worth listening to. Your content is worth sharing. With that said, if a major part of your gut says to leave this thread and not to return?

...that you accomplished what you set out to do? Please leave, and don't guilt trip yourself in order to prolong this project. We don't want shackle you.

 

[Athene]

Its going to be impossible to come up with categories for a full 248 episodes of a show that I hope to write over the course of a single year, so I am throwing out some ones I intend to use off and on and will drop or add to them as I go since the nature of the show changes quite a bit, but my pitch for categories that may come up to start:

Summary: Words go in here!
Episode impressions: What I think of the episode
Audio Commentary Impressions: What I think about the
Quotable Quotables: Any particularly great quotes.
Its A Perfectly Cromulant Word: A simpsons neologism!
Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Hank Azaria is the go to guy for ethnic voices for the show, unfortunately.
He looks like some kind of Moleman: It took a while for the show to find its style, sometimes it doesn't go well.
Although there is no change in my patrician facade, I can assure you my heart is breaking: Emotional highpoints
Getting Some Blowback From The Wig Offensive: Anything politically notable.
Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: This will come up more in season 2 and beyond, but how seriously do the creators take their own genius, from a Scale of Mike Reiss (Way too much) to David Mirkin (Not very much)
They Don't Have Bananas In Korea: We're at a point where some things in the now 30 year old episodes don't age well and where things from the audio commentaries 10 years later don't age well.
"Asian people are actually not yellow on the Simpsons" count: This comes up...way too much.
Brad Storch. No, Betty Symington: Maybe some details behind the scenes.

 

[Athene]

I don't hate Mike Reiss FYI, but uh, there are issues that come up that cause my family to go "SHUT UP MIKE" during his seasons, including a tendency to claim the Simpsons invented things it didn't or believe that other shows are stealing from them.

 

[Athene]

Episode 1x01: Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire

Directed By: David Silverm

Written by: Mimi Pond

Original Air Date: December 17, 1989​

Summary: Bart gets a tattoo and the removal depletes the family's budget right before Christmas. When Homer doesn't get his bonus, there's no money for presents. Worse still, Patty and Selma are spending all their time at the house for Christmas. Not wanting to admit he's broke, Homer secretly gets a job as a Mall Santa to try to give everyone a good Christmas but Bart discovers him when he decides to pull a prank. When he goes with Bart to cash his check, he finds that the mall has left him with basically nothing after charging him for the cost of his own training and materials. Homer and Bart decide to bet all of Homer's mediocre pay on a particularly slow greyhound: Santa's Little Helper. The dog loses badly, is kicked out of the racetrack and goes home with Homer, to a family delighted by the addition of an adorable dog. The family sings carols until Homer becomes enraged.

Brad Storch. No, Betty Symington: Lot of ground work to cover on the first episode. To start with, we need to talk about how the show is run. The Simpson's is an extremely collaborative show requiring the work of dozens of people, almost all of whom are not Matt Groening. The person who determines the tone, content and overall direction of a show is the Showrunner. They're the person most responsible for a season as a whole. Below that is the writing and animation sides, with each episode having a animation Director who determines the overall visual style and feel while not having final cut on the editing. The show goes through numerous revisions from script to storyboard to animatic to overseas/color, and involves an entire team of extremely talented writers and animators fine tuning it the entire time over the course of 9 months, from conception to return of the bulk of the animation from Overseas. I will probably need to explain the animation process at somepoint, but the creative stuff is done by the American animators and they ship it off to Korea for the bulk of the animation work by AKOM (Who are loved by the Simpsons but have a bad reputation for low quality, its complicated). The credited writer is the person who wrote the original script, but this can take a wildly different form by the end as it gets edited by staff writers. This is the only season where Matt Groening is a showrunner, and he shares it with his fellow Executive Producers James L Brooks and Sam Simon, two comedy legends. This is one of my biggest bugaboos about the show, because Matt Groening while important in every season as an executive producer is responsible for effectively very little of the show in future seasons. He's the creator, he's important but there are a ton of people who do not get credit on the episodes. I want to make that all clear up front, because I'm going to be referencing all this a lot and its important to me that we don't view The Simpsons in terms of its original creator, but as a group process.

As for this specific episode, this was actually the 8th produced episode. Due to a combination of factors I will go into when we get to the episode, the actual first episode of the show came back from Korea unairable to the point that there was a serious concern about whether the show would be cancelled before it started. Luckily the second episode came back serviceable and they were able to get the show delayed 3 months and aired the Christmas episode first.

Episode impressions: I'm not going to lie to you, its a pretty mid episode but it was a mid Simpsons episode in 1989 which means it was among the funniest shit on TV at the time. Its a real Train Job of an episode that gives us a good introduction to all the characters very quickly and they have a better grasp on where things are going. Its an sweet, grounded episode with some good jokes but nothing that especially stands out. This is a real "Eat Your Veggies" episode for me because there's not a lot to talk about. We are firmly in what noted Simpson's expert @open_sketch would note is their Blue Collar days. The family is doing alright but a single emergency and lack of a bonus puts the family in financial difficulty. This is the first major Patty and Selma appearance and they're pretty awful, which is funny but we need to talk at some point about how Marge keeps inviting them to things when they're so abusive to everyone. The show always positions this as Homer being wrong to want to exclude them because it means so much to Marge but good lord, Marge ban your sisters already. Lisa even directly points out that they're hurting her by being so mean to her father and asks them to stop and they say no! Anyway, not much to talk about in the episode itself.

Audio Commentary Impressions: It's the first episode and things are a bit wonky with them only involving two showrunners (Groening, Brooks) and director David Silverman. As Brooks jokes, they at times get caught up in watching the episode and laughing at their own jokes and being impressed with themselves or being nostalgic. However we still get a lot of good information and some signs of things to come. They're absolutely fascinated by how tame the show is versus how apocalyptic the show was treated when it came out, which will be a running theme this season because they really pushed what was allowed on TV and yet its all so mild its incredible. Matt Groening will become absolutely incredible at commentaries as the show progresses and while he's not there yet, he has a great story about how he has Russian Grandparents and did a report in school about how ethnic Russians celebrate Christmas only for a teacher to yell at him about Communism. Peak America 10/10.

Quotable Quotables: "But he's a loser! He's pathetic! He's--A Simpson"
Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Low. Its still early yet and he's the new guy
He looks like some kind of Moleman: You can really tell this is a mid season episode, because while there's a certain wonkiness, its not remotely as bad as earlier episodes. One of the most fascinating things to me is that there is a lot of good animation on the acting even if the models often leave something to be desired. The biggest animation errors are of course AKOM messing up. Lisa is supposed to be in a body stocking while doing a Polynesian dance in a grass skirt but they colored it flesh color while the grass skirt lacks uh, any grass, giving the impression she's dancing nude with a Tiki mask on. There are of course all sorts of weird moments that are more sharable including whatever the fuck was happening here:






Although there is no change in my patrician facade, I can assure you my heart is breaking: I've really struggled with money and tried to keep my family going and Christmas is definitely the most stressful time of year and so boy do I feel this one. You just want to give everyone the best at Christmas and not being able to is a real blow in our culture because of how much its built up. You will feel your poorest at Christmas, sorry O'Henry.
Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: They're all so unused to commentary they don't get much of a chance, but like I said, James L Brooks jokes about how they're all so impressed with getting this out the door because it was so experimental to do adult animation on this time scale at the time. Nobody claims to have invented anything seriously or farcically though.


Next Episode: Bart the Genius (In which the animation hits a fucking wall)

 

[Athene]

The animation section is going to be long, I'll tell you what. We're in "Eat your veggies" stage on the first episode but wow, AKOM and Klasky-Csupo.

 

[ScottishMongol]

They're absolutely fascinated by how tame the show is versus how apocalyptic the show was treated when it came out, which will be a running theme this season because they really pushed what was allowed on TV and yet its all so mild its incredible.

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Showing a single episode of Rick and Morty to a Victorian early 90s child would kill them.

 

[Athene]

Showing a single episode of Rick and Morty to a Victorian early 90s child would kill them.

Click to shrink...

Its crazy to think that the HW Bush administration name checked both The Simpsons and Murphy Brown specifically as destructive influences.

 

[Athene]

Episode 1x02: Bart The Genius
Directed By: David Silverman
Written by: John Vitti
Original Airdate: January 14, 1990​

Summary: Bart has a big IQ Test coming up in class so the family is playing scrabble to help develop his word skills, but he's bored by it. The next day he gets ratted out by Martin for spray painting some anti-Skinner graffiti. In the classroom Martin rubs it in and makes sure that Bart's seat is facing away from everyone else so he can't cheat. However, after some difficulty taking the test, Bart manages to switch his and Martin's tests. At a meeting with the principal later to discuss his behavior (He has his own drawer in the filing cabinet of disciplinary records), the school psychologist says its probably because of his status as an ultra genius. Skinner is dismissive of this and wants to retest him until the psychologist says that they can use it to just transfer him to another school to be someone elses problem. Bart attends his new school that has less boundaries and expectations thinking that he will be able to skate through, but he's so far behind everyone else he faces bullying and ostracization from both his new and old schoolmates, while being unable to function in class at all. The only upside is that Homer is actually paying attention to him and giving him respect, something that he clearly desires. Unfortunately at school, he blows up the entire science lab and requests a transfer to his old school, ostensibly to study them before finally breaking down and confessing that he cheated. When he tells his father later, he grows infuriated and chases him with intent to strangle him, and the episode ends with Bart having barricaded his room with Homer unable to get in, and unable to trick Bart into opening the door.

Brad Storch. No, Betty Symington: The second episode of the show and the one whose improved animation saved the show after the disaster of the first episode. This episode saved the series after a grueling week between returned episodes and gave us the Simpsons today.

Episode impressions: This is very obviously an early episode. Animation aside, it has the slower pacing due to the luxuriously longer episode length and the writing isn't as sharp yet. Its hard to cast my minds eye back into 1989 where this was a controversial, rule breaking episode of television but rewatching any period show involving a family, they would certainly never end the episode like the Simpsons does. One thing that always stands out is that Bart definitely has ADHD, which will be a running theme in episodes about his performance in school. Its not that Bart can't do the work, he can't focus on the work. Anyway, I think the problem here is that the writing isn't as tight and its not as intrinsically funny as it was in 1989 to violate period norms, leaving this as a Sensible Chuckle episode at best, with my partners only really laughing at one joke. Later episodes I've seen a hundred times and still laugh out loud at bits.

Audio Commentary Impressions: A bit better than the first but we're not hitting the stride of future episodes. Still, a lot of good information and some fun anecdotes including Jon Vitti getting a signed copy of a book from Jane Goodall and saying that if he had any integrity, he would have given the book to Al Jean who actually wrote the reference to her in the show, but it was too cool not to keep. David Silverman also talks about how the show had become so popular after the first episode that wearing his crew jacket on a trip to his parents had a couple dozen people asking him where he got a Simpsons jacket. Just an absolutely insane level of popularity to start with. Jon Vitti asks a bit about the show almost being cancelled if this one didn't look good and there's a bit of nervousness as they tell him that they'll wait until a later episode to talk about it. Spoiler: Its an amazing audio commentary to end the season on.

Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Low, he hasn't been hired onto the show yet.
He looks like some kind of Moleman: Good lord. Its directed by David Silverman who understood the assignment unlike Ken Butterworth on Some Enchanted Evening, and so we have some actually experimental animation like an extended day dream sequence and some night time shadows during a game of catch that blew everyone away, but things are very loose and there are a lot of notable issues. Everything is loose and bouncy, colors are all over the place, and basically everything is off model. Backgrounds are surreal with bizarre perspectives and this is basically what's in people's minds when they talk about the animation of the first season. We have some real Three Stooges syndrome here with the colors.



However, I have to again give credit to Silverman for things like the math dream sequence that while it has issues, shows how the show can and will improve.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jq_9ghf-jI

They Don't Have Bananas In Korea: Matt Groening says this after seeing a badly colored banana in an episode full of coloring mistakes from AKOM. There's actually really complicated period politics around Bananas as a symbol of the Korean protectionist policies around fruit import and protection of domestic Banana growers. While rare and expensive, they were certainly well known. In a classic South Korean policy, they produced a comic book for children saying foreign fruit makers would poison you and you should go with your mom to the store to make sure she doesn't buy foreign fruit.

Getting Some Blowback From The Wig Offensive: Aside from some complicated Banana Politics that are fascinating to learn about, we have our first appearance of Russian Opera. The Simpsons' would steal Russian performances of Opera to use royalty free based on an understanding of Copyright that I am not sure is valid or not. Also rather famously, the creator of the Melissa virus took his handle from the Kwyjibo scrabble joke in this episode.

Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: David Mirkin, James L Brooks jokes "Did we do anything original?" at one point after Matt Groening gives credit to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Cowabunga.

 

[Athene]

I regret to say we're firmly in "Eat Your Vegetables" Simpsons territory, but please stick with me until we get to later episodes.

 

[Athene]

Next Episode: Homer's Odyssey

What I expected: Black Smithers



What I got: Homer almost fucking killing himself.

 

[Space Oddity]

Its crazy to think that the HW Bush administration name checked both The Simpsons and Murphy Brown specifically as destructive influences.

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It makes sense when you realize that Bush was flailing for support from the Moral Majority at the time. HW saw the crackup of the voting bloc that had gotten him, Reagan, and Nixon into office with impressive electoral victories, and so much about the Republicans is explained when you realize that they think they are owed this, but damn it, it refuses to happen again.

 

[Frumple]

Showing a single episode of Rick and Morty to a Victorian early 90s child would kill them.

Click to shrink...

For what it's worth, I don't think so? Most of R&M's not actually much wilder than, say, Ren and Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead, and they're both early 90s and about the same area of animation in terms of age exposure (source: Self, who was born late 80s and exposed to that stuff early 90s). It'd be significantly more polished and a bit of a step beyond, but not much of one.

... any case, good luck Ath. As projects go, this one sounds like one heck of a marathon.

 

[Kingcrusader]

Its crazy to think that the HW Bush administration name checked both The Simpsons and Murphy Brown specifically as destructive influences.

Click to shrink...

Wow, so that is why the Simpsons had that episode where they mocked Bush. That kinda makes sense now.

He looks like some kind of Moleman: Good lord. Its directed by David Silverman who understood the assignment unlike Ken Butterworth on Some Enchanted Evening, and so we have some actually experimental animation like an extended day dream sequence and some night time shadows during a game of catch that blew everyone away, but things are very loose and there are a lot of notable issues. Everything is loose and bouncy, colors are all over the place, and basically everything is off model. Backgrounds are surreal with bizarre perspectives and this is basically what's in people's minds when they talk about the animation of the first season. We have some real Three Stooges syndrome here with the colors.

Click to shrink...

I mean, animation was still hard to do back then, you really can't blame them. Though, in the evil babysitter episode, there was a huge animation difference in there.

Also, this sounds like a great project to do. I pretty much seen all the episodes of the Simpsons (I was bored as hell, so I kinda binge watched them all) so I will actually like to hear what you will say about them.

 

[Athene]

I mean, animation was still hard to do back then, you really can't blame them.

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Oh yeah, the biggest thing is a bunch of people not understanding the assignment on the first episode and going hyper cartoony which destroys the tone. The second season is a huge triumph in the history of TV animation.

 

[Space Oddity]

Wow, so that is why the Simpsons had that episode where they mocked Bush. That kinda makes sense now.

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They shot back right after Bush made his remarks (that the Republicans were going to make it so there were more families like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons). Bart noted that the Simpsons were just like the Waltons, praying for this depression to end.

 

[Kingcrusader]

They shot back right after Bush made his remarks (that the Republicans were going to make it so there were more families like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons). Bart noted that the Simpsons were just like the Waltons, praying for this depression to end.

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Oh, I didn't know that. I was referring to the episode where Bush came to Springfield and had a feud with homer.

 

[Athene]

CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE, SUICIDAL IDEATION

1x03: Homer's Odyssey
Directed by: Wes Archer
Written by: Wallace Wolodarsky and Jay Hogan
Original Air Date: January 21, 1990​

Summary: Bart's school goes on a field trip to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. While they're there, Homer causes an accident while trying to impress Bart and loses his job. Without good prospects for a new job immediately, he becomes extremely depressed and steals Bart's piggy bank to try to buy a beer when he doesn't have any money left. When he realizes that Bart doesn't even have enough for him to get a beer, he realizes how low he's sunk and decides to commit suicide. The family finds his note in time to go after him but are almost run over by a car on Vista and Market the nearby intersection and Homer finds purpose again as a safety crusader and gets new stop signs and reduced speed limits enacted, before turning on the Nuclear Power Plant for being so unsafe as to hire Homer Simpsons. Realizing his power, Mr Burns buys him off with a promotion to safety inspector as he can't say no to more financial stability and while he doesn't fully betray his followers, he leaves them behind for the money.

Episode impressions: You hear so much about Black Smithers with this episode and almost nothing on the fact that Homer, exaggerated method of jumping of a bridge excluded, almost realistically committed suicide on a bridge that looks like a famous place to kill yourself near where Matt Groening lived as a teen and near where I, in a different neighborhood, currently live. Homer suffers from some incredibly realistic depression and sinks pretty realistically far and its a bit of a shock. The episode has some better singular jokes and lines but overall isn't that funny by the standards of The Simpsons golden age. It is however, only episode 3 and while I don't think it worked out that well, you can't say they weren't daring and the show will make better work of this kind of conflict in the future.

Audio Commentary Impressions: A real meat and potatoes early season commentary, talking about the origins and foibles of starting the show. Its not bad and the writers really elevate the conversation but a bit too functional. Lots of discussion about animation and some good background on how they didn't designers on staff yet, and so there were no concrete or even flexible reality layouts of the house or other locations. The idea of treating Springfield as being a real location with established locations to give it a sense of place was created while the creators and writers were walking through a mall. Also Wes Archer dragged the film for the film strip portion behind his car to give it realistic scratches, which was the standard at the time and looks pretty good compared to digital film scratching. Ah, the old ways.


Quotable Quotables:

Lisa: Here's a good job at the fireworks factory
Homer: Those perfectionists? Forget it

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Marge: There, there, Homer, you'll find a job. You've caused plenty of industrial accidents and you've always bounced back

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Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Low, its his first proper episode.

He looks like some kind of Moleman: I feel bad for pointing out animation wonkiness and off model characters at this stage but yeesh, there's a lot of flat out errors. Objects with accidental transparency, forgetting to animate the bodies of characters, and potentially Black Smithers, but nobody can agree on whether that was a mistake or something they changed their mind on. Wes says that they were trying to make more random characters black to make sure the show wasn't too monochromatic, but others insist on it being a mistake, and opinions are divided about how purposeful or accidental it was. Either way he's colored wrong for a black or white person on the Simpsons and looks ghastly. Lots of demented looking characters abound, including two background guys that appear to be joined at the top of their head and some sort of Gremlin creature at a meeting. The El Barto police sketch however is a real winner of a joke and the police conception of what he looks like is realistically pretty awesome to a ten year old.



Although there is no change in my patrician facade, I can assure you my heart is breaking: Good god, do I feel this one. Money is one of my major triggers, and one of the only things at this stage that can make me feel suicidal, so this subplot of depressed homer was a lot. I've said some of the lines from Homer's suicide note to people before after asking for money. I'm no good at it, it kills me on an emotional level and my current family's financial situation causes me to have to do it often. That this is just an easily dismissed subplot feels weird after it has hit me so hard.

Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: David Mirken, not too serious a commentary, no dead serious silly claims.

 

[Athene]

That was a rough one, but the next episode is No Disgrace Like Home featuring my favorite thing: Drunk Marge

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE, SUICIDAL IDEATION

1x03: Homer's Odyssey
Directed by: Wes Archer
Written by: Wallace Wolodarsky and Jay Hogan
Original Air Date: January 21, 1990​

Summary: Bart's school goes on a field trip to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. While they're there, Homer causes an accident while trying to impress Bart and loses his job. Without good prospects for a new job immediately, he becomes extremely depressed and steals Bart's piggy bank to try to buy a beer when he doesn't have any money left. When he realizes that Bart doesn't even have enough for him to get a beer, he realizes how low he's sunk and decides to commit suicide. The family finds his note in time to go after him but are almost run over by a car on Vista and Market the nearby intersection and Homer finds purpose again as a safety crusader and gets new stop signs and reduced speed limits enacted, before turning on the Nuclear Power Plant for being so unsafe as to hire Homer Simpsons. Realizing his power, Mr Burns buys him off with a promotion to safety inspector as he can't say no to more financial stability and while he doesn't fully betray his followers, he leaves them behind for the money.

Episode impressions: You hear so much about Black Smithers with this episode and almost nothing on the fact that Homer, exaggerated method of jumping of a bridge excluded, almost realistically committed suicide on a bridge that looks like a famous place to kill yourself near where Matt Groening lived as a teen and near where I, in a different neighborhood, currently live. Homer suffers from some incredibly realistic depression and sinks pretty realistically far and its a bit of a shock. The episode has some better singular jokes and lines but overall isn't that funny by the standards of The Simpsons golden age. It is however, only episode 3 and while I don't think it worked out that well, you can't say they weren't daring and the show will make better work of this kind of conflict in the future.

Audio Commentary Impressions: A real meat and potatoes early season commentary, talking about the origins and foibles of starting the show. Its not bad and the writers really elevate the conversation but a bit too functional. Lots of discussion about animation and some good background on how they didn't designers on staff yet, and so there were no concrete or even flexible reality layouts of the house or other locations. The idea of treating Springfield as being a real location with established locations to give it a sense of place was created while the creators and writers were walking through a mall. Also Wes Archer dragged the film for the film strip portion behind his car to give it realistic scratches, which was the standard at the time and looks pretty good compared to digital film scratching. Ah, the old ways.


Quotable Quotables:




Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Low, its his first proper episode.

He looks like some kind of Moleman: I feel bad for pointing out animation wonkiness and off model characters at this stage but yeesh, there's a lot of flat out errors. Objects with accidental transparency, forgetting to animate the bodies of characters, and potentially Black Smithers, but nobody can agree on whether that was a mistake or something they changed their mind on. Wes says that they were trying to make more random characters black to make sure the show wasn't too monochromatic, but others insist on it being a mistake, and opinions are divided about how purposeful or accidental it was. Either way he's colored wrong for a black or white person on the Simpsons and looks ghastly. Lots of demented looking characters abound, including two background guys that appear to be joined at the top of their head and some sort of Gremlin creature at a meeting. The El Barto police sketch however is a real winner of a joke and the police conception of what he looks like is realistically pretty awesome to a ten year old.



Although there is no change in my patrician facade, I can assure you my heart is breaking: Good god, do I feel this one. Money is one of my major triggers, and one of the only things at this stage that can make me feel suicidal, so this subplot of depressed homer was a lot. I've said some of the lines from Homer's suicide note to people before after asking for money. I'm no good at it, it kills me on an emotional level and my current family's financial situation causes me to have to do it often. That this is just an easily dismissed subplot feels weird after it has hit me so hard.

Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: David Mirken, not too serious a commentary, no dead serious silly claims.

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I remember seeing this one in the BBC in the mid 1990s.

 

[LilyWitch]

Even is someone born in 1993 and who experience the enshitification basically alongside The Simpsons in real time it's still wild to see homer be so realistically working-class and financially precarious in the early stuff. The family was already fairly aspirational by the end of the 90s when I really started watching and understanding it.

 

[Athene]

Watching episode 4:

 

[Athene]

1x04 No Disgrace Like Home
Directed by Gregg Vanzo, Ken Butterworth (LOL)
Written By: Al Jean and Mike Reiss
Original Airdate: January 28, 1990​

Summary: Homer brings the family to his company picnic where they proceed to embarass him. Marge gets wasted while Bart and Lisa are out of control. Seeing them compared to a more perfect family, Homer becomes worried by how hell bound and awful his family is. The next day, Homer turns off the TV and makes them eat dinner as a family, but Homer becomes enraged and makes the family walk around the neighborhood looking into other peoples houses to see how much better they are than the Simpsons until they get show at. While drowning his sorrows later at Moe, he sees an ad for Dr Marvin Monroe's family therapy. He makes the family open the college fund, all $85.50 of it and pawn the TV to come up with the $250 for the therapy appointment. At the appointment, things don't go well. After Homer almost bashes a child's skull in with a nearby lamp after they drew the biggest problem in the father (him), they escalate to foam rubber bats. After whacking each other for a bit, Homer decides that they're useless because they don't hurt and Bart removes the padding to hit Dr Monroe in the kneecap with the aluminum bat underneath. They finally escalate to electroshock therapy but the family shocks each other so much it causes the town to brown out. Finally, they're kicked out but take advantage of the double your money back guarantee to come out ahead financially and the family celebrates having earned a new TV.

Episode impressions: Holy shit, finally an episode that's actually funny. Oh every single person on the show acts out of character because they had no character defined yet, and the animation looks extremely rough, the audio quality is awful, and more, but by god its actually funny. I will always stan Drunk Marge as she gets absolutely wasted on punch at the picnic and even sings Hey Brother, Pour the Wine with a chorus of wives.


View: https://youtu.be/K5Id_4BoC0k

Also great is the jokes about the Simpsons being mistaken for prowlers with their extremely weird idea of looking into other family's houses ending with a dad telling his son to "Get the gun" and later the cops having to do extra patrols with K9 units to try to find the people that have been terrorizing the city. Lots of good little jokes too, like Homer saying they won't pawn Marge's engagement ring because they need something of value or his attempt at grace turning into an angry rant about this family. This is really the show starting to get cooking and be something with some legs to it. Though again, absolutely nobody had their character established yet (many didn't even have names!), so this is also the most unSimpsons they are in a while. Homer is the one concerned with everyone embarassing him, Marge is the one who gets drunk at a party (and doesn't want to stop watching TV), Lisa wants to go to Vassar, etc. We also are firmly in Poor Simpsons territory with them unable to scrape up $250 and the years of saving for college netting less than ninety bucks.

Audio Commentary Impressions: We're still in the middle of them finding their feet on these. Matt Groening eventually becomes extremely good at these but he doesn't even give the episode production code, Al Jean does. They're going to get a lot better, especially by the time they get to the infamous first episode. Matt does have a good story about being turned down by Jell-O for a marketing deal because they felt a belch by Bart in a commercial was too much for the dignity of their brand, so they continued to associate with Bill Cosby for another decade. Also they talk about how Fox loves to use Simpson's clips in some movies for some levity because they don't pay royalties for it.

Hank Azaria Ethnic Stereotype Alert Level: Low, they haven't discovered he can do "accents" yet.

He looks like some kind of Moleman: I feel any issues on this one, I am going to have to address in a later episode because this episode has two credited directors and one of them is Ken Butterworth and we'll talk about that whole issue later.

Wallowing in my Own Crapulence Scale: This one has them mainly focused on how weird everything is, like they entered a twilight zone version of the show where everyone looks the same but nobody acts the way they should, so we're not going to have much crowing on this one.

 

[Athene]

Next Episode? I'm tempted to make it Some Enchanted Evening so I can talk about the core of the animation issues and how bad it almost was even though its the last episode of the season.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

the animation here is so wierd. It's like seeing pre-dinosaur dinosaurs.