The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

by John Ortved

  It’s one of the only shows on television that dares not have a laugh track. And I cannot stand laugh tracks. It’s what I always resented about Seinfeld. You know, if you’re funny—let’s see if you’re funny. He is so much better in a stand-up comedy routine where he can’t order the audience to laugh than in that canned laughter situation. I just won’t watch it. Who knows whether Friends was good or bad. I know my children loved it, I think my wife loved Friends. But I couldn’t watch it. I just refused to be cued that way and to be told what is funny.

  The Simpsons also managed to make a virtue out of bad draftsmanship. The characters are really terribly drawn, but they are so stylized that it doesn’t make any difference any longer. I mean, every type of human being is rendered in that child’s style of drawing but put to a very sophisticated use.

  I must have a very low threshold when it comes to humor. I mean The Simpsons has often reduced me to tears of laughter. If I’m really feeling down, The Simpsons makes me feel worse. If I’m feeling bad, in a depressed mood let’s say, I can’t really stand to watch The Simpsons because there are so many people being humiliated. You may not follow that logic, you would think it would be the opposite, but it’s that real to me. There’re constant situations where every character is humiliated, and humiliation is one of the most powerful forms of humor. I mean, everybody loves to see somebody else humiliated. But if you’re feeling down, you might think, God, that could happen to me.

  SEVENTEEN

  On and On

  In which Homer Jay Simpson finally has something in common with Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli … Matt Groening faces yet another divorce … and the Dream Team of Simpsons’ writers can barely hit a free throw, never mind three-pointers.

  They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house. I’m not made of stone!

  —Krusty the Clown (on selling out)

  As the golden age of the Simpsons wound down, and the quality began to vary to greater degrees, some viewers began to abandon the show. Many others kept watching, with new feelings of anticipation that they might just see some sign of its return to former greatness. It never came. Viewership varied from 10 million per week1 in the mid-nineties to slightly less than that2 in the early 2000s, to approximately 7.5 million3 in the late 2000s. But more important than the numbers is what was happening onscreen and in the writers room.

  While the show doesn’t simply fall off a cliff between Season 8, the final year of Bill and Josh’s tenure as showrunners, and Season 9, the first year of Mike Scully’s,u this moment does mark the end of the remarkably high-yielding creative run that began in 1991. “One of the things that emerged was that they began to rely on gags, not characters, wherever that switch got flipped, whether it’s the ninth or tenth season,” says Planet Simpson author Chris Turner. “For example, Mr. Burns would show up, make his antiquated references and say a couple of evil things, but there wasn’t the same robustness to those characters.”

  Ironically, The Simpsons presaged its own downturn. In Season 8’s “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show,”v network executives at Itchy and Scratchy studios attempt to retool Bart and Lisa’s favorite cartoon by adding a new character, Poochie, voiced by none other than Homer Simpson. Poochie is a ridiculous amalgam of disposable trends, network notes, and corporate buzzwords (“I feel we should Rasta-fy him by 10 percent or so,” one exec offers). Upon his debut, he is immediately loathed by Itchy & Scratchy’s devoted fans, leading to Comic Book Guy’s famous declaration, “Worst. Episode. Ever.” At a decisive moment in the episode, Lisa shares an observation The Simpsons’ writers hoped would be heeded: “The thing is, there’s not really anything wrong with the Itchy & Scratchy Show. It’s as good as ever. But after so many years, the characters just can’t have the same impact they once had.”

  While Groening has said that the episode was his answer to Fox’s attempts to meddle in his show over the years (at this time, apparently, the network wanted them to add a new character, one that he described as being more Bart than Bart), the episode was about much more than that. “Poochie” is a perfect parody of network interference, the TV business, corporate culture, and obsessed fans. The episode is a metacelebration, a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to everyone who claimed that the quality of The Simpsons had declined over the years. And yet while The Simpsons’ writers were parodying the notion of a beloved series jumping the shark, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” came at a time when their own series was doing just that. Mike Scully’s turn as showrunner, and the beginning of the end, were just around the corner.

  The show’s quality certainly declined under Mike Scully’s four-year stewardship, and things went from bad to worse when Al Jean took over in Season 13, though he didn’t seem to think so. “A good episode from Season 14 can be switched with one from Season 4 pretty interchangeably,”4 he said in 2004. Critics saw things differently. “Put a fork in ‘The Simpsons’ because this show is done,” wrote the New York Times’s Adam Buckman in 2005. “Gone are the rich details and inventive storylines that characterized this beloved show for so many incredible seasons. In their place is a sitcom that is seriously showing its age.”5w Touting the show’s brilliance up to Season 9, New York magazine concurred: “Perhaps it was inevitable that The Simpsons couldn’t sustain forever such a high-wire mix of hilarity and humanity.”6x

  Even though Jean has presided over the show’s worst years, to blame a single head writer for the show’s decline is unfair. The Simpsons is, and always has been, a giant collaboration. Speaking at Northwestern University in 2004, Mike Reiss, Jean’s longtime writing partner, made reference to the show’s apparent decline. Reiss told the audience that when viewers tell him that the show is not as good as it used to be, he offers the following explanation: “Go fuck yourself!”7 Belying Reiss’s joke is the fans’ disappointment, which by the early 2000s was palpable, not only in the critical response or the decreasing numbers in the ratings, but in The Simpsons’ community at large.

  JACOB BURCH, administrator, NoHomers.net: I’ve never ever heard anyone say the show is better than ever. There are varied opinions on whether or not it’s still good. In an interview Matt Groening referred to us as “spurned lovers.” Well, most of us have divorced The Simpsons by now. Some just stick it out. It was such a big part of their childhood that they feel this devotion, they feel they have to continue to subject themselves to The Simpsons. Some people will watch eighteen episodes of a show they now hate, and rate them “FFFF” [the lowest rating for an episode on NoHomers], and some people are more positive.

  The debate became, “Is the show getting worse? And if it is, is it now a bad show? Should they have stopped?” That’s the only debate. The only time I would see the old kind of fervor is when someone who was still obviously clinging to the hope that the show would get better, or find some sort of second wind, would write a give-up post. Those are the most emotional posts I’ve seen, people who have an honest grief at losing this part of their life. They feel shameful saying they’re a Simpsons fan. Once a week we’ll see a die-hard fan change his or her username from something totally Simpsons-related to I’m-Giving-Up-I-Don’t-Wantto-Be-Associated-With-This-Show-Anymore-Make-It-My-Real-Name. People just stopped caring.y

  Matt Groening has managed to pinpoint a potential source of fans’ dissatisfaction.

  MATT GROENING (to the Los Angeles Daily News, July 27, 2007): You always hear that the show isn’t as good as it used to be … But people always compare the new shows to the memories of their favorite episodes, back when the show surprised them. You’ve got to have an open mind, and for some people, it’s impossible. Nostalgia clouds their thinking.

  Unlike fans, critics, and many writers, Matt Groening seemed perfectly comfortable with the show’s status. In 2004, he told NPR, “You’re trying not to repeat yourself, you’re trying to surprise the audience … As a result, the show has gone off in some very particular directions … I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, we can’t do this. We can’t do this,’ an
d then it turned out to be OK. It’s funny, it’s crazy, and the show is so fast-paced … It’s really still a lot of fun.”8

  And there’s one very important voice who seems to support Groening and Al Jean’s appraisals. “I can’t say I’ve watched every episode, but I watch it at every opportunity,” says Rupert Murdoch, “and I think it’s still as brilliant as ever.”

  While flagrant and unforgivable in the eyes of many hard-core fans, The Simpsons’ downturn was a relative one. The show has maintained, when compared to other network sitcoms, its status as a reliable laugher. Back in the fifth season, The Simpsons reached the hundred-episode mark, the point where, for most successful sitcoms, syndication can begin, the bucks start rolling in, and the producers can relax. Yet The Simpsons has managed more than four hundred episodes, with no end in sight. How has it kept going so strong, especially if the quality has dropped so noticeably?

  GEORGE MEYER (to The Believer, September 2004): My feeling is that we’ll probably get bored with it before the audience does. We have to spend more time with it and immerse ourselves in this weird little universe. If it’s completely dried up, I think we’ll know it. I hope so, anyway.

  Meyer left later that year.

  One major factor keeping the show alive is Homer, thanks in no small part to the performance of Dan Castellaneta. No matter how dull one week’s episode might be, or how close to sitcom catchphrasery The Simpsons slips, Homer Simpson is so beloved, and still so surprising, we will tune in to see what he will say next.

  DONICK CARY: I think we got to times where it felt like Homer was just being dumb. It was like, literally, he’s on the floor eating out of the garbage. And you’re asking yourself, Hmm. Is this really the best … [laughs] the best place to take this character?

  As the golden age was winding down, Season 8’s episode “Homer’s Enemy” gave viewers special insight into this complicated character and provided a probing exposition of his role within the world of The Simpsons.

  After seeing a news report on an unlucky man named Frank Grimes, who has had to work extremely hard his entire life (as a child he worked delivering gifts to more fortunate kids), Mr. Burns hires him as an executive vice president at the plant. But after Burns sees a heroic dog on a subsequent news report, the dog becomes VP and Grimes lands in sector 7G, alongside one Homer Simpson. With his blithe disregard for professionalism, safety, and hard work, Homer annoys Grimes no end. Grimes is incredulous that his coworkers and fellow Springfieldians neither notice Homer’s idiocy nor seem to care. He becomes so tortured by the contrast between his and Homer’s existence, he actually goes mad, committing suicide by grabbing high-voltage wires with his bare hands.

  GEORGE MEYER (to The Believer): Grimes’s cardinal sin was that he shined a light on Springfield. He pointed out everything that was wrongheaded and idiotic about that world. And the people who do that tend to become martyrs. He said things that needed to be said, but once they were said, we needed to destroy that person. I’ll admit, we took a certain sadistic glee in his downfall. He was such a righteous person, and that somehow made his demise more satisfying.

  Grimes was an interloper, and an earnest one at that, who showed us that Homer is, for all intents and purposes, not a very attractive character. He is boorish, incompetent, lazy, uncaring, unintelligent, and destructive. That being said, the Homer that emerges during this period, and is expounded upon later, is also the opposite of all those things. At any given moment, Homer can be sweet or bitter, angry or happy, smart or stupid, driven or apathetic, bemused or intrigued, gay or straight. And he can switch between these effortlessly within a few frames of animation. Homer has evolved past the everyman. He is both the everyman’s fantasy and his nightmare—a symbol of what we all strive for and what we should avoid. He is no longer simply sympathetic and relatable; Homer can be whatever you want him to be, at any time. As a character, he has very few limits.

  Yet even a comedic character as perfect as Homer has not been able to save The Simpsons. There are a few sitcoms that stayed interesting and funny for more than a decade. They relied on the emotional investment of their audience. Would Sam and Rebecca end up together? Would Ross and Rachel? Daphne and Niles? The Simpsons couldn’t manage the same feat. It was decided at the beginning of the series that these characters would never age, that each episode would begin again at zero, never allowing plotlines and emotional arcs to extend beyond a single episode, to the great benefit of the early seasons. It’s possible this format ended up limiting the series’ potential, further hindered by the problems of repetition and staleness inherent in any entertainment’s extended longevity, compounded by the lack of any new direction from its showrunner.

  GARTH ANCIER: I had lunch with Jim [Brooks] a couple of years ago, and he was saying to me, and this was going into the seventeenth season, he says, “I really need to shake the show up. It’s just gotten stale, you know?” I go, “Jim, seventeen years! No one’s ever made a show for seventeen years.” He still cared so much about it, and cared how good it is. I’ll give you another example. He was comparing it to South Park and saying, “Gee, I just feel like we’re not as fresh as South Park.” Here’s someone who’s done arguably the most profitable show in the history of television and is still concerned that the quality isn’t quite at the top of its game. You gotta admire someone like that.

  SETH MACFARLANE, creator of Family Guy, American Dad: It is still funnier than any live-action show that’s on television right now, let me put it that way. If I did Family Guy for eighteen years, I don’t think it would be as good as it is now. There’s only so much you can do with a certain group of characters. The Simpsons has sustained better than South Park.

  Further evidence of The Simpsons’ decline is the show’s overshadowing by its own progeny: South Park and Family Guy. These shows currently provide the hilarity, subversiveness, and relevant social commentary that The Simpsons once did. One could argue that the bluntness with which Family Guy and South Park excoriate their subjects actually makes them less potent than The Simpsons, that the loudest voice does not always win the day. But there is something to be said for South Park’s continued ability to shock and entertain, as well as Family Guy’s obscene, lyrical, and preposterous look at family life (on an episode-by-episode basis, both elicit more laughs than The Simpsons). These upstarts are able to take more risks and aim for a lower common denominator. And while it’s true that both series benefit from the groundwork laid by The Simpsons and that neither has been on as long—hence they are inherently fresher—it is also possible that they’ve been able to stay more in touch with today’s audience, what it considers taboo and what it expects from comedy. A joke, as Matt Groening pointed out, is what you don’t expect.

  The Simpsons can rest easy in the knowledge that South Park and Family Guy, not to mention King of the Hill, Futurama, and scores of other shows, would not exist without the foundation they laid. And yet with each passing season, as other comedies—both animated and live action—become bolder, smarter, and more attuned, The Simpsons slips farther into irrelevance. Compared to Two and Half Men, Reba, and My Name Is Earl, The Simpsons still looks pretty good. But after watching postmillennium live-action shows like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, and The Daily Show, and animated series like Family Guy, as well as Adult Swim’s avant-garde programs (Tom Goes to the Mayor, The Venture Bros., Harvey Birdman), it’s difficult to return to The Simpsons, especially in its current lackluster state.z

  One area where The Simpsons still rules is in reruns, available at least once an evening in every TV market in the United States. Simpsons episodes hold up remarkably well against shows like Friends and Will and Grace, which have aged with all the grace of the video rental stores that once sold their seasons in giant box sets. But while the older episodes were enjoyed over and over by older fans, the show’s then-current producers had to reach out to new ones by injecting a dose of the medicine most often prescribed for shows on the wane: the celebrity guest star. Over t
he last few seasons, celebrity guest voices have become a feature of every episode, along with the unfortunate side effect of plots being geared toward those stars, no matter what the cost to the show and its story lines. Drew Barrymore’s appearance as Krusty’s daughter in Season 12, for example, focused on a father’s selfishness toward his daughter (the theme of every Homer/Lisa episode), and even reused a previous setup—the loss of a child’s musical instrument, her prized possession.aa

  After several hundred episodes, the writers have explored every plotline imaginable. Having a celebrity can provide some understandable relief, as can dedicating an entire show to a topical issue. Season 16’s “There’s Something About Marrying” addressed gay marriage by having Marge’s sister, Patty, come out of the closet and decide to marry another woman. In an interview, showrunner Al Jean pointed to this episode as an example of how the show is still relevant and edgy, and yet the episode was in fact a long-winded and lame exploration of the topic.

  The Simpsons has become such a staple of the mainstream and is so lacking in controversy that even conservatives embrace it. In 2000, an article in the National Review, William F. Buckley’s great bastion of conservative thought, said, “The Simpsons celebrates many, if not most, of the best conservative principles: the primacy of family, skepticism about political authority, distrust of abstractions.” The series still does manage to irk some people, though. In 2008, a Venezuelan TV station pulled the show, declaring it inappropriate for kids. In its place ran Baywatch: Hawaii. In 2006, China banned The Simpsons from prime time, though that had more to do with promoting cartoons made domestically than any content issues.9