I’ve been wondering about the Simpsons place in pop culture recently, so I’ve decided to undertake a thorough qualitative analysis of this behemoth and see how it changed over the years. Starting with the era that everyone loves.
http://www.patreon.com/stubagful
Round table with Conan and the Simpsons writers – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJ28qOEG1g&t=54s&pp=ygUOc2ltcHNvbnMgY29uYW4%3D
Matt Groening explains the origin of Springfield – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/matt-groening-reveals-the-location-of-the-real-springfield-60583379/
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im glad there was a whole section dedicated to season 1 in this. bart the genius is one of my favorites and the conversation with homer right before bart goes to his first special class where he says hes going to show him how to put on a tie but puts on a clip on and says "theres nothing wrong with a father kissing his son… i think" after kissing bart on the forehead are some of my favorite simpsons lines
1:09:31 OHHHH boy it's the famous stubagful pause!
In the next few seasons of the show they should make the family shift in tone to be a functional family, everything looking good, everyone assumes the show is about to be cancelled and BAM! one of the kids is killed off and the tone of the show shifts forever.
You're a hero if you finish this series. Absolute legend.
If you bail on the project, I wish the wrath of Tom Cruise upon you!
Principle and the pauper is one of my favorite episodes and I couldn't believe that so many people thought it ruined the show. No matter how many times people explain it to me I still don't get it.
On the clip shows.
I always loved all singing all dancing! the simpsons songs are awesome anyway, and it's great to see and hear them again, (especially in a pre-youtube era).
but the framing material is some of my favourite musical humour from the show, and if you want surreal and dark stuff snakes insertions are just hilarious!
"say your prayers! and then it's cablammo! Click, clikck, click click click! Oh no! I'll be back! when I get some ammo! bboyeeee!"
There is no way that literally holding a gun to the heads of a family, including two children and a baby! should be that funny! and that even after such fantasticness as ""mom is right! your singing's a sin! your as les miserable! as Lee marvin!" just before another good old fatherly choking by Homer!
This was such a brilliant video! It was strange seeing The Simpsons talked about as a linear TV show because growing up I consumed hundreds of hours of the show when they would be rerun on Sky 1, so the episodes were always out of order and I never really watched it as a box set. But that’s what made watching this so good, I thought I couldn’t see The Simpsons in a new light but this was so interesting.
It wasn’t just insightful and interesting though, it was really heartwarming when you talked about Homer and Marge’s marriage.
You’ve really made me want to go back and rewatch the golden years, something I thought I would have no interest in doing anymore.
Excellent analysis. Entertaining, well thought and laid out.
1:26:26 I think another reason people don't include Season 9 in with the rest of the golden age is because it was the first season Mike Scully was the showrunner of, and once the mentality of 'Mike Scully killed The Simpsons' and 'Mike Scully is history's greatest monster' entered the discourse, people didn't want to give praise to something he was in control of.
That being said, I definitely think the first half of his tenure is stronger than the second, and he probably should've just done a two year tenure like everyone before him.
Do you ever watch the episodes with the commentaries? When I was collecting the box-sets as a kid I never listened to them, maybe one or two out of curiosity, but always found it a lesser experience to just watching the episode regularly, so kept away from them. Now, as an adult I find them inmensely fascinating, so much so that I find it hard not to immediately rewatch an episode with the commentary track after watching it regularly. Just to hear how the different creatives viewed their approach to the show and the characters, hearing the explanations as to why the show evolved the way it did, it's such a rewarding listen. I recently found out there was a secret easter-egg commentary from Oakley & Weinstein on Lisa the Simpson, and it felt like finding a new cheat code for a video game or something. I think it speaks to how well-crafted the show is that they could make a twenty-minute discussion for every episode – they had enough to say about every episode without it ever feeling repetitive or boring.
Also it's just nice hearing people who you can tell are all friends having a laugh together.
Admittedly it's a shame John Swartzwelder never joined in considering how much he did for the show (unless that really was him in The Cartridge Family commentary). But we got the New Yorker interview with him a couple of years ago which I'd say makes up for it.
The Principal and the Pauper is where the golden age ended.
This video gave me a strange, borderline existential feeling about the Simpsons.
55:19 avatar stuart has feet confirmed
Good analysis sir
I'd never heard people complain that Skinner being a street punk was a problem. The issue I've always heard was that the retcon to his backstory undermines his relationship with his mother, since the implication was always that he is the submissive, straight edged person he is because of how she raised him, and if that never happened then something substantial is lost. Either way, I never had much of a problem with the episode, I saw it as a kid and didn't realise it wasn't just a normal thing to happen on the show.
Great vid
I don't know if homer is that competent at his job https://youtu.be/BDETBbHIPe8
I've seen people do character analyses on South Park characters, but not really the Simpsons. Still seems a bit weird in a show without serious multi-episode character arcs but it is nice to see the show reinterpreted this way.
Hypothesis: The Simpsons did not set out to be an ironic take on the average American family of the 1990s. Instead, it began as a parody of the childhood of its writers – an ironic take targeting the America of the 1960s and 70s. (And of any popular culture within reach of those eras. Either contemporary, or else past relics repeated ad nauseum on TV – such as King Kong and Citizen Kane.)
The so-called golden age ends when:
– The stories have already taught us everything we need to know about their universe of characters. Every character is at least two-dimensional. In order to surprise the audience, we're no longer learning why the characters behave the way they do. To stay interesting enough to drive the plot, we start needing to learn things about them that don't present on the surface, and therefore are necessarily forgotten by the next episode. (Whether Skinner was "ruined" by it or not, that episode definitely falls into this category.)
– The stories have run out of 1960s-to-1980s cultural memory and nostalgia to make fun of. They start trying to get with the times and parody contemporary phenomena. Instead of learning why the world is the way it is, the characters – and the audience – are learning how the world is changing. (Which is always less warm and comforting.)
I remember that when I stopped watching the first-run episodes, it felt to me like the stories were getting preachy. The show was becoming issue-based. Whether or not this was true, I think it marked a moment when the show had thoroughly explored the playground-world it had invented. In order to find new stories to tell, it had to stretch the boundaries of that world further and further.
During the golden era, the main joke was that The Simpsons were the modern stone-age family. That is to say, they were a cartoon representation of a sitcom family of the 1960s, transplanted into the late 1980s and early 1990s, and at odds with their age. The further they got from the comedic tension between that idealized traditional mid-century past and the disappointing present reality, the further they got from their golden age.
I think there was a slow decline between Round Springfield and The Principal And The Pauper. I've got no idea why you rated Round Springfield where you did. That episode sucks, and I remember even the first time it aired there was a definite feeling of "that wasn't up the usual standard" (and that jazz man song was a terrible choice – we knew something was wrong just because of that) and it was all downhill from there, albeit very gradually, before the big drop in S9. Seasons 10-12 might be the worst of the whole series, but S9 is pretty crappy too, except for the New York episode. That scene of them leaving town behind the garbage truck is the 'into the sunset' moment for the golden age. S1 is definitely included too. No one who was there could reasonably say otherwise.
The press was already saying it had gone to shit by season 5 because the best writers jumped ship to King of the Hill. It was a bit premature in hindsight. Because I read that I basically watched it expecting it to get crap, which kinds of kills the magic a bit. It really did noticeably decline half way through season 6 though.
Oh and Round Springfield is also named after a Thelonious Monk song from 1943 called 'Round Midnight.
The Simpsons golden age ended for many reasons. The death of Phil Hartman (the heart of the show) and the 9/11 attacks ending the 'prosperity' era of the 1990s were some of them. The rise of South Park, Family Guy, Futurama and other similar shows in the early 2000s was another reason. The Simpsons had to compete with the edginess of these shows and lost its original more subtle humor. Another reason for the decline was cable TV was just no longer special anymore. It used to be that cable TV was exciting, people would use "I have cable" as a pick up line at a bar… the Simpsons was an event that everyone had to watch. The internet and the explosion of animation in the 1990s and 2000s made the show no longer a phenomenon but just another animated show in a sea of them.
The Simpsons were more relatable in the early 1990s because they were just regular people in their small town. And the world was much larger, with lots of unexplored characters and territory. But after every character has been fully explored and we see the same joke over and over, and the Simpsons are the center of the universe they were once a small part of, it no longer became a show you could really relate with as an average person. And the jokes kept on repeating… You can only put things in Lenny's eye so many times before it just gets annoying and unfunny. Well, maybe not that… but its an example.
Principal and the Pauper is a great episode. I'll stand by this.
I’ve seen a bunch of Simpsons videos before, this is a quality Simpsons video. Clearly thoroughly researched
I don't like this video. Take it down.
I love Classic Simpsons and Modern Simpsons equally it's exactly the same to me. It's the same jokes they have always done. The biggest problem with the show is it's been going so long ideas are harder to come up with so they sometimes repeat older episodes or break continuity to make the plot work.
In my opinion Golden Age Simpsons is season 1-26 after that the show is incredibly hit and miss. My biggest gripes with post season 26 Simpsons. 1) Characters sometimes act very out of character in order to make the plot work. I'm looking at you Fan-illy Fued. Lisa pulling pranks on Homer because he didn't like a popstar made up for the episode is so out of place. Lisa is supposed to be the sweet voice of reason. 2) Overuse of dream sequences. In older episodes imagination scenes happened every so often. Now they try to cram a ton into almost every episode. This is especially noticeable if you watch the episodes back to back. It feels like a comedy crutch because anything can happen in a dream sequence. The Simpsons isn't as cartoony as Spongebob so the dream sequences are their cheat to get around that for easy jokes.
People who call Bart a psycho never watched Lisa's Sax. He acts up to get attention.
38:49 Maggie is one of my favorite characters in the whole show. I never forget about her. She shot Mr. Burns. She is a genius baby who can kick butt when she needs to.
53:40 Not true there are many great shows with functional families. The Addams Family, Bob's Burgers, Spy x Family, Big City Greens, Bluey, etc. One of the biggest compliments the Addams Family and Bob's Burgers frequently get from fans is "I like how the family gets along so well despite being weirdos."
1:06:06 I don't feel sorry for Ms. Hoover. She bullies the only kid in class who pays attention.
Interesting that you like Lisa the most. I find her to be the most insufferable character; probably because she became an unrestrained mouthpiece for Hollywood writers. It's moments that she acts like a kid that I can actually tolerate and even appreciate her.
I do feel like the golden age is seasons 1-8, and it's not because Principal and the Pauper is in season 9, I actually think there's a marked decline of quality in that season. I generally dislike all four of Mike Scully's years (that's 9-12), and the first couple seasons with Al Jean as show runner (13+14) felt like a refreshing return to form. On that note though, never switching out showrunners again means that the Simpsons stopped having a rotating door variety of directing styles and just became Al Jean's show. The uniformity of it all becomes bland and boring at times, with a lot of repeated jokes that can't surprise you after hearing them for the 50th time.
There isn't much I outright dislike about modern Simpsons, but the gems are fewer and farer between than they were in the first eight seasons. Well, don't worry, the absolute worst episode is Lisa Goes Gaga. You've got a while to get there.
Wowsers, what an indepth and eloquent dissection of the first few seasons of The Simpsons. You put a really impressive amount of introspective thought into The Simpsons, both recognising it's existence as a Television cartoon, as well as it's existence as a piece of art, and one with a deep and varied creative vision. This is definitely my favorite dissection of The Simpsons thusfar, and I really cannot wait to see where this goes. I'm legitimately surprised to see you aren't resting on big-name success on this site yet, and I sincerelt hope you find success in the future.
Nightmare Cafeteria legitimately scared me as a child. I'd look away during the blender sequence at the end.
I like the comparison between Frank Grimes and Superintendent Chalmers. Both are canonically not from Springfield so they are presented as the straight man in this wacky town. While Chalmers adapts and even at times plays into the wackiness, even moving to the town since his daughter attends the High School in Springfield, Frank let it consume him and had a mental breakdown as a result.
I wouldn't necessary say that Bart is not as intelligent as Lisa, just he is skilled in a different form of intelligence. And that is shown by his numerous triumphs over Sideshow Bob. Someone who is just as academically gifted as Lisa. And yet in their very first episode, Lisa could not believe that Robert framed Krusty while Bart is the one who figures it out from just a phrase. Which is also why I like Brother from Another Series. As Barts victories clouds his judgement and assumes Bob is guilty from the get go. Much like how you hear stories of police officers still treating reformed convicts or even exonerated ones with suspicion and mistrust. No doubt his victory from their second encounter was a factor to this. Where Bob pretended to have changed so he could marry and then murder Selma for money. So why should Bart believe him this time around?
To me part of the problem is that modern Simpsons already is more like treehouse of horror. The random grossout gags are too gross without being funny enough to cross the line twice, they do experiment but when they do they either break character, break any sense of the grounded or they don't keep the heart or all of the above.
To me, The Simpsons needs to keep that balance of comedy, originality and heart. To me what keeps the show grounded is what makes it funnier, because you need the release of the comedy to offset the serious side. If you don't need a laugh, you won't laugh as much. But having said that, once the show is grounded, the experimental stuff and the excellent comedic writing can really soar. That's not to discount a great gag or a really clever concept, but to me it's all of it together that makes that magic Simpsons "formula".
(As is the case with many comments, i'm really more thinking out loud than arguing. My favourite episode is "Lisa's Substitute" for very similar reasons to those stated in the video about "Life in the Fast Lane" but i also love me some monorail episode…)
I'd always thought Marvin Monroe's assessments of the family members in "There's No Disgrace like Home" was to show his incompetence, satirising as an example Dr Phil. for me the most, possibly only touching moments between "Skinner" and Mrs Skinner were when she clearly knew he wasn't her son but nudged things to cover up the issue
Great video
Agnus: "Seymour! The house is on fire!"
Seymour: "No Mother, it's just the Northern Lights."
House becomes engulfed in flames.
Agnus: "Hellllp! Hellllp!"
😅🤣
I've watched a whole bunch of simpsons videos, all hours long. some going through every single episode, some talking about the golden years and the fall. so i really should be sick of it by now – but your video provides a really interesting character analysis on each of the characters, and i'm enjoying this so much that i'm compelled to write this comment. great video! relaxing, a nice even tone and nice music with some sweet and relevant clips. also, these pictures are great. subbing now, eagerly awaiting more!
Series 3 to 9 of The Simpsons will always be the best.