Doh! The Simpson's sets a record by staying relevant

 

 
 
 
 
The Simpsons creator and executive producer Matt Groening at The Simpsons 400th Episode Block Party on the Fox Lot in Los Angeles on Sunday.
 

The Simpsons creator and executive producer Matt Groening at The Simpsons 400th Episode Block Party on the Fox Lot in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Photograph by: Handout, Files

"When someone says that maybe you are a little too obsessed with this show, you show 'em this book and tell 'em the voices in your head say different."

— Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, in his introduction to the 11th season companion guide, The Simpsons: Beyond Forever!

Homer Simpson: "Oh, I hate reality shows!"

Marge Simpson: "A year ago, you said they were the greatest thing that ever happened to us."

Homer: "I've grown; you haven't."

— from "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade," 2002.

VANCOUVER - The family in The Simpsons never ages. It just yellows a little around the edges.

Ever since television became commercially available in the late 1930s — and long before the Hollywood trade papers acknowledged The Simpsons with headlines like, "Yellow Fever" and "Bumptious Brood Boffo!" — it has been a show that, in the words of its creator, cartoon illustrator and satirist Matt Groening, rewards the viewer for paying attention.

Last week, when the Fox network announced two additional seasons, The Simpsons sounded notice that it will soon become the longest-running entertainment series in prime time TV history, surpassing Gunsmoke — 493 episodes in all, spread over 22 years. With its subversive humour, rapier-like wit and keen sense of comic timing, The Simpsons has made a Homer Simpson-size imprint on pop culture.

And during that time, no series has been more willing to parody itself, or the medium that gave it life. The Simpsons not only changed TV for the better — it skewered it at the same time. To paraphrase Groening in his introduction to the companion book, The Simpsons: One Step Beyond Forever!, if you read between the images and squint carefully enough at the pixels, you'll get refreshing glimpses into our all-too-human desires, dilemmas and agonies.

For a series so self-referential — and self-critical — no series has been so effective at countering those critics who argue that "TV has dumbed down America" or "TV encourages violence." In its 20 seasons to date, The Simpsons has ruthlessly eviscerated TV's excesses, while slyly stating the case for the medium that has helped shape and define an entire generation of viewers.

The Simpsons's extension through 2011 not only ensures that it will surpass current record-holder Gunsmoke for longevity. It also means that the medium of TV will come in for more witty asides, obvious jokes, not-so-obvious jokes, backhanded compliments and annoying catchphrases.

The Simpsons's love-hate relationship with the medium has been evident as early as the show's fourth episode in 1990, There's No Disgrace Like Home, in which Homer, after watching a medical ad on TV, cried: "When will I learn? The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle. They're on TV!"

Long before The Simpsons parodied the Kiefer Sutherland counterterrorism drama 24 in the loopy, paranoid 2007 episode 24 Minutes — the parody opened with Sutherland saying, "Previously on 24 . . . I mean, The Simpsons" — it railed against the evils of TV in 1995 's episode Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming.

That outing, in which Sideshow Bob, voiced by Frasier's Kelsey Grammer, threatened to annihilate the town of Springfield unless it banned TV, featured the immortal line: "I'm aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it, so don't bother pointing that out."

Sideshow Bob's antics in that prompted an equally crusty retort from resident Simpsons blowhard and erstwhile TV star Krusty the Clown, who said, "Would it really be worth living in a world without television? I think the survivors would envy the dead."

The episode ended with a subtle nod-and-a-wink to the audience watching at home, as Sideshow Bob muttered, "How ironic. My crusade against television has come to an end so formulaic, it could've spewed from the Powerbook of the laziest Hollywood hack."

It was but a short leap from there The Simpsons's milestone 300th episode, Barting Over, in 2003, in which Marge Simpson told her daughter Lisa: "I can't count the number of times your father's done something crazy like this."

"It's 300, Mom," Lisa replied, with the dead-on certainty of a little girl who knows too much.

Subversive, yes. Coarse or crude, no. As Marge Simpson herself said in 2002's episode Large Marge: "That's good satire — it doesn't hurt anyone."

Satire or no, The Simpsons has endured, and not just because its characters have hardly aged a day since the first episode, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, aired in December, 1989.

In 2002's Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade, Bart argued the value of getting a satellite dish — "Then we can stop suckling on the six network teat" — only to have Marge say, "Get back, honky cat! Those systems are too expensive."

"Marge," Homer cried. "We can't pinch pennies on the machine that's going to be raising our children."

Then again, that was before the economic meltdown.

As Groening said at a recent meeting of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles, "One of the reasons the show has been on the air as long it has, I think, is because, back at the very beginning, we were only interested in doing the show as a series if we went for real emotion. That's always been our ambition.

"I think The Simpsons is plenty goofy and wacky, and has some great sight gags. But we keep trying to return to some real emotion, and keep it consistent."

Satire, in other words. But with a little heart.

The Simpsons airs Sundays on Global and Fox at 8 ET/PT.

astrachan@canwest.com

Check out Alex Strachan's TV Guy blog.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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The Simpsons creator and executive producer Matt Groening at The Simpsons 400th Episode Block Party on the Fox Lot in Los Angeles on Sunday.
 

The Simpsons creator and executive producer Matt Groening at The Simpsons 400th Episode Block Party on the Fox Lot in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Photograph by: Handout, Files

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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