Posts tagged as Classic Simpsons Week
The Bart Show: When The Simpsons Were Almost Much Worse
With all this jibber-jabber about The Simpsons not being as good as it was when the writer was 12 (see: The Saturday Night Live Effect), it’s easy to forget that there was an early period in the show’s popularity when it was ready to take a turn for the much worse. Catchphrase-filled bumper stickers, key chains, video games, and music albums all pointed in one direction: The Simpsons was becoming the “Bart Show.” READ MORE
(Some of) Our All-Time Favorite Simpsons Episodes
It's pretty much impossible to pick one favorite Simpsons episode. Try it! You'll think of one, but then immediately a half-dozen others will spring to mind that you can't imagine not putting in that top spot. There are just so many classic episodes! READ MORE
The Eras of The Simpsons, By the Numbers
The most common thing you hear about the lasting Simpsons franchise is that the show has “lost its touch,” that while it remains popular, viewers continue to tune in only because of nostalgia for the series’ “golden years” (which most fans place between seasons 3 and 8). Granted, Bart evading Sideshow Bob for the umpteenth time, Homer and Marge re-writing their romantic history, and the Simpson family traveling to Tokyo just feels a little exhausting when we remember the days Bart sold his soul and Homer “did it for her.” READ MORE
Eight Times The Simpsons Have Made Me Cry
The Simpsons is the funniest show of all time, but it’s also one of the most tragic. Think about it: Homer is an overweight drunk who hates his job; Marge gave up her dreams for her husband; Bart is “underachiever and proud of it,” meaning he’s already stopped trying, even in elementary school; Lisa is a clinically depressed eight-year-old; and Maggie is only a toddler and she’s already shot someone. And that’s not to mention the lives of Milhouse, Hans Moleman, Martin Prince, Nelson Muntz, and so on. READ MORE
Watching The Simpsons From Its Tracey Ullman Beginning
Long before every kid I knew wore “Don’t have a cow man!” or “Eat my shorts!” t-shirts –- the unofficial grade school uniform years 1989-1993 that would cause a great ruckus within PTAs nationwide — my parents had already introduced me to The Simpsons, back when the cartoon was no more than a series of 30-second sketches during The Tracey Ullman Show. READ MORE
Why Are There So Many Simpsons Video Games?
As fans of comedy, we often forget — or try to forget — that The Simpsons is a franchise as much as it is a source of humor. Bart dolls that say, “Eat my shorts!” don’t really explore the human condition and the Simpsons comforter I had on my bed under my Spider-Man pillow was less early postmodernism and more childhood commercialism. READ MORE
Meat and You: Partners in Freedom, or How "Lisa The Vegetarian" Convinced Me to Give Up Meat at 11
The Simpsons have been running their game for 21 years this December, since I was in kindergarten. So it was really only a matter of time before this show, the second most important constant in my life (after my parents, and just barely) revealed exactly how it has influenced my development as a human being. For me, that moment was when the episode "Lisa the Vegetarian" (Season 7, Episode 5) converted my 11-year-old self to vegetarianism. READ MORE
Every Commercial That Aired During the First Simpsons Episode
The Simpsons have been around for a very long time, but it can be sometimes hard to place those early episodes in their time periods. Sure, there are references to politicians, celebrities and events from the early 90's that date it a bit, but on the whole, it's aged incredibly well. So much so that watching this compilation of every commercial that ran alongside the premiere of the show is almost shocking. I mean, look at how old this stuff is! It's amazing to see how dated the rest of American culture looks to us now when compared to how relevant those Simpsons episodes continue to be. That's one major reason the show still gets as much love as it does.
George Meyer's Army Man and the Birth of The Simpsons
If you follow the stories about the beginnings of The Simpsons, chances are you're heard of Army Man. But just as likely, chances are you haven't read it. Army Man exists mainly in lore, a rare, brilliant, short-lived moment of a magazine that, as one of the show's former producers called it, was "the father of The Simpsons." READ MORE
Phil Hartman's Simpsons Legacy
Later episodes of The Simpsons tend to unfold like Radiohead songs, starting off one way before taking an abrupt left turn. In stark contrast to this style, the plot of Season 2 gem “Bart Gets Hit By a Car” is thrust into motion within its first minute… when Bart gets hit by a car. Immediately afterward, the boy’s soul sheds its mortal shell and ascends the escalator to heaven, guided by a voice that is both pleasant and firm. It’s the kind of voice designed to convey trust during a commercial, and also the kind used during a fake commercial to mock such naked appeals for trust, perhaps on Saturday Night Live. If this hauntingly familiar voice wasn’t one that viewers recognized at the time of the original airing, it was one they would soon know very well: this was the first Simpsons appearance of Phil Hartman. READ MORE
SNL Recap: Maya Rudolph and the Magic of Breaking
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