Wednesday, 14th January

Today in 1990...

"The Simpsons was first shown on television"

...Lies!!!

Wikipedia states that the first full episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", was shown on the Fox network on the 17th December 1989. In actual fact the second, "Bart the Genius", was shown 19 years ago today. thesimpsons.com verifies this to be the unequivocal truth...

Well, anyway, I goes by wot the calendar sez. It's just a shame that the information is so botched... I suppose I should go on, though. Here goes...

It's simply incredible that the Simpsons has been going for (nearly) 20 years. It all started, as you may know, on the Tracy Ullman show as short animated inserts. They looked, frankly, terrible.

Anyway, god knows how it went from this to sassy semi-satirical cultural icon. It did take time, I suppose... the first series is peculiar and unwatchable, it sort of picks up from there. And because here in the UK we're served the Simpsons in an incredibly piecemeal way, we never really get to track with any sort of coherence the gentle upswing in quality from jerky animation and (an admittedly sort of lovable) corniness to the mythical 'golden age' (is it seasons 4-10?) followed by (in mine and about a Marillion other people's opinion) the dramatic fall into patronising and hateful characterisation which has plagued the show in is latter years. This article from slate.com might help:

In A.O. Scott's Slate "Assessment" of Matt Groening, he wrote that Groening is "committed to using cartoons as a way of addressing reality." But in recent years, The Simpsons has become an inversion of this. The show now uses reality as a way of addressing itself, a cartoon. This past Sunday's episode featured funny references to Spongebob Squarepants, the WNBA, Ken Burns, Tony Soprano, and Fox programming, but the Simpsons themselves, and the rest of the Springfield populace, have become empty vessels for one-liners and sight gags, just like the characters who inhabit other sitcoms (Think Chandler Bing).

Either way, countless people still watch the show and think it brilliant. But then, there are a Chamillion other people who think Family Guy is funny.

I'll leave the mildly depressing tale of a once-great show with this mildly depressing, mostly unseen-in-the-UK video collection of Simpsons adverts. Yes, adverts!

The Quote:

"Do it today - tomorrow it might be illegal"

Anonymous quote time again: This is one for you paranoid liberal conservatives out there who enjoy things like driving heavy-duty 4x4 vehicles, not bothering to recycle their rubbish and making jokes about minorities. Watch it! tomorrow it might all be illegal!!