Happy Birthday, Simpsons
jsto...@my-deja.com
17, 1989. Let's all pause now and give thanks for
the greatest show in TV history. And who knows
what more adventures they'll have between now and
the time the show becomes unprofitable?
------------------------------------
Happy birthday, Bart!
By DIANE WERTS , Newsday
OK, let's put together the perfect TV sitcom.
ZYou'd want it be funny,
of course, and not just joke-funny. You'd want
strong characters with
emotional honesty. And you'd want the show's
structure to be limber
enough to support situations of all stripes, from
dramatic to absurd.
You'd want it to appeal to as many people as
possible: young, old,
white, black, American, international. And to be
timeless, so the show
wouldn't get stale or look dated. While the tone
would have an attitude, it
wouldn't be sarcastic or snide. A good-natured
sensibility would make the
characters lovable, make viewers feel at home. The
show should also look
sharp and sound swell.
And you'd have ...
"The Simpsons"?
Sure, "The Simpsons." Why not? Matt
Groening's animated fave meets
all those qualifications. Heck, it regularly
exceeds them. So regularly that
today marks 10 years of network success since the
show's arrival Dec. 17,
1989, when Fox aired the warped Christmas special
"Simpsons Roasting
on an Open Fire."
The new Fox network was taking a chance back
then on this
twisted-family cartoon, expanded from brief
commercial "bumpers" on its
"Tracey Ullman" sketch series. "They were a total
of 60 seconds a show.
And they tested really badly, by the way," recalls
Garth Ancier, now NBC's
chief programmer, then filling the same role at
Fox. Yet his 3-year-old netlet
decided "The Simpsons" was "a really interesting
shot to take. Why not see
if an animated family show works? We broke the
form with 'Married ...
With Children,' " and its caustic family takeoff
lured millions of viewers.
Ancier took "a leap of faith" by ordering 13
"Simpsons" episodes, although
prime time hadn't had an animated hit since "The
Flintstones."
"The Simpsons" sure looked different -- spiky
yellow heads, blue hair --
and it acted different. But TV comedy had
broadened in the late '80s with
"Roseanne" and "The Wonder Years," and audiences
responded. The
Sunday series was an overnight smash and a bonanza
of merchandising.
They weren't your everyday tube family. Their
adventures were, uh,
unusual. In the pilot alone, fourth-grader Bart
gets a tattoo, Homer steals a
Christmas tree, and together they hit the dog
track. The Simpsons are also
utterly addicted to television. This was
subversive stuff.
Yet "The Simpsons" at its heart wasn't all
that divergent from "The
Flintstones," or any live-action familycom.
Indeed, part of Groening's
original inspiration "was just an attempt to
justify all the wasted hours of
watching television" growing up, the creator says
by phone from his Los
Angeles office. "I was a big fan of 'Leave It to
Beaver' and 'Ozzie and
Harriet.' "
Groening's goal was to "put into the show the
kind of stuff I wanted to
see on TV. And didn't."
And some of that he did. After all the
anarchy, it's ultimately the sitcom
staples of family, love and man's essential
goodness that save the day. "The
Simpsons" wraps unsophisticated emotions in a
sophisticated package -- so
sophisticated that first reactions ranged from
enthusiasm to
misunderstanding. TV critics celebrated the show's
satiric density. Indignant
parents who missed the satire warned American
society was going to, well,
hell by taking Groening's unruly tyke as a role
model.
But what really makes "The Simpsons" soar --
still today, nearing 250
episodes -- is that they can do anything. Bart,
Homer, mom Marge, sister
Lisa, Mr. Burns, Apu the clerk, Ned Flanders,
everybody is animated.
Rather than using the form to ape reality, "The
Simpsons" employs
cartooning to deepen and expand the sitcom's
parameters to sharpen the
satire. Guiding Groening from the start were James
L. Brooks ("The Mary
Tyler Moore Show," "Taxi") and Sam Simon
("Cheers").
Brooks made sure the show had heart. The
show's voice casting was
crackerjack, some of it favored by luck. But the
secret weapon behind "The
Simpsons" is scripts that aren't cartoony. "We are
an animated sitcom," says
current "Simpsons" executive producer Mike Scully,
who's been with the
show since season five (it's now season 11). Gags
aren't its writers' stock in
trade. Character is.
"The Simpsons" truly reinvented TV animation.
It's no accident that
writers schooled here have gone to other series:
Al Jean and Mike Reiss
("The Critic"); Greg Daniels ("King of the Hill");
Josh Weinstein and Bill
Oakley ("Mission Hill"). Not to mention Conan
O'Brien.
Would "South Park" exist without "The
Simpsons"? Not likely. For that
matter, would there be a Fox network without "The
Simpsons"? The show
was Fox's first true sensation, grabbing a
first-season 35 audience share and
rocketing into Nielsen's Top 30.
In September 1990, after just one
(mid-)season of only 13 episodes,
Fox went for the Big Three's throat, moving "The
Simpsons" to Thursday at
8 opposite NBC's top-rated "Cosby Show." And it
did the job,
jump-starting a new fourth night for Fox and
slowing the "Cosby"
juggernaut.
Groening says: "I hope we give up the ghost
when the show runs out of
steam. But the episodes we're working on for next
season are as good as
ever."
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Gabe Farkas
Huzzah!
gf
Lord Thisslewick
Gabe Farkas <gu...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> wrote in article
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Darrel Jones
Lord Thisslewick wrote in message <01bf497e$ebadb500$1ef862ce@r-honnage>...
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PYLE!