In defense of The Simpsons' first season

Depending on who you ask, the first season of The Simpsons might not be included as part of the show's beloved "golden age" up through season 8. It's kind of an odd transitional stage between the original shorts and the show that would become the gold standard for TV comedies, animated or otherwise. It hasn't aged that well, everyone always says. It's not as funny. The animation is a little rougher. They were still figuring out the characters. Some will tell you to skip to season 2 or 3, when the show hit its stride. I did just that the last time I rewatched the early seasons about a decade ago. But not this time!

Upon revisiting the show's first season as an adult for the first time, I'm kind of fascinated by it. I think it holds up way better than many fans will tell you—it's certainly way more enjoyable than the modern show—and even when it doesn't really hit, it's often an intriguing little time capsule from a time when the creative priorities of The Simpsons were very, very different.

Let's break it down episode by episode, as most of them will give me the opportunity to discuss one aspect of the series or another.

"Some Enchanted Evening"

While this was the last episode to air in the season, it was originally supposed to be the series premiere, so on this rewatch I decided to start here.

As the story famously goes, Groening and co. got back the first workprint for this episode and were so appalled by it that they delayed the premiere to have much of it redone. Funny enough, the episode was subcontracted to Korean studio AKOM, who I'm all too familiar with as the studio that animated all of the worst-looking episodes of the original Transformers cartoon. I thought I knew exactly what their shoddy work must've looked like... until I looked up the rejected footage on YouTube, and realized that a lot of it actually looks quite nice? There's some model inconsistency, sure, and the backgrounds are lower in detail, but the character animation is very fluid and fun to look at. So it's a little odd to me that the commentary track is mostly just the crew groaning at it, saying they can hardly stand to look at it, and thinking its poor quality should be immediately apparent. Still, I do get that that more traditionally cartoony and slightly "cuter" approach that made it look more like a kids' show didn't match the energy of the more grounded, realistic, dialogue-driven sitcom they were trying to make—at the start, anyway.

On the subject of animation, this episode is perhaps best remembered online for the random sakuga cut of babysitter Ms. Botz chewing out Bart, which might be the best bit of animation in the entire series. It's even funnier in the context of the full episode, where the scramble to reanimate seems to have resulted in extremely choppy lip syncing everywhere else.

Animation aside, what about the story being told?

This early in the series, the focus was still squarely on the family and their issues, and the show came off much more strongly as the satire of dysfunctional, TV-addicted, middle class American families it was originally envisioned as. We're not very far removed from the era of the Tracey Ullman Show Shorts, where you'd have things like Maggie sticking a fork in an outlet and electrocuting herself while Bart and Lisa ignore her to watch TV, and that would be the entire short. While the Simpsons always get their heartfelt happy endings in the full series, they can still be painted in an incredibly unflattering light along the way, treated as an infamous family of simpletons reviled by much of Springfield. And the show's not afraid to get a little bleak, really tapping into how much life can suck.

Hence the opening act of what was originally supposed to be the series premiere. Marge feels completely neglected and unloved by her family, who just want to scarf down their breakfast like animals and then slam the door in her face on the way out. She calls up a radio shrink, who turns her pain into entertainment for strangers around town to gawk at, and is advised to consider a divorce. And if I didn't know there were another 800 episodes and counting after this where Marge and Homer are still married, I'd almost buy that she was really going to divorce him! She's pissed! But, of course, Homer realizes he's in trouble and decided to treat Marge to a nice night out to patch things up.

One of the things that impresses me most about this first season is that they really did have the show's story structure figured out from the start, with three distinct acts divided by the commercial breaks. Act one usually begins with a fairly typical day in the life of one member of the family, but one thing leads to another and the usual status quo is somehow broken right before the first commercial break. Act two explores that new status quo shift, sometimes focusing on a different character from the one we followed in act one. This is the actual main premise of the episode. Homer gets a new job, the family travels somewhere, Mr. Burns tries to do something evil, a guest character shakes things up in town, etc. By act three, the downsides of this new status quo escalate until we reach a breaking point, a lesson is usually learned, and things find a way to return to normal. It's a pretty obvious formula, to the point that I even noticed it as a kid, but you can't say it didn't work for the show when they did nearly 200 episodes before the quality started to decline.

While it's got a very basic setup, "Some Enchanted Evening" is a great example of this three-act structure at work. Act one is about Marge's unhappiness in her marriage and Homer's hasty attempt to fix things. Act two is about the parents going out for a night on the town as the kids deal with a mean babysitter. And act three is about the kids realizing that the babysitter is a wanted criminal and having to figure out a way to stop her on their own, finishing with the ironic twist ending where Homer lets Ms. Botz go before realizing what happened. Our happy ending is that Marge assures an embarrassed Homer they must be doing something right if their kids could knock out and hogtie a stranger.

Is it one of the greatest, funniest episodes ever? No, not at all. In many ways it's a pretty basic sitcom episode. It's no "Marge vs. the Monorail," but it's a solid blueprint for the rest of the show to follow.

"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"

The first episode to actually air was, of course, the Christmas special. You can kind of tell that it was later in the production order because it feels a bit more cohesive than some of the episodes that immediately follow it, with the Simpsons feeling more like themselves and a bunch of the supporting cast making their debut appearances all at once. (Perhaps most notably, Homer is repeatedly contrasted with the comically perfect Ned Flanders, whose religion and politics do not come up at all in season 1.)

The trend of many season 1 episodes being kind of a downer continues (or begins, if you're watching in release order) here, with the bulk of the episode revolving around how the family is broke right before Christmas and Homer desperately struggling to find a way to afford presents. In the end he and Bart go to a dog track to bet on a race and lose the last of their money, but when the losing greyhound is thrown out on the street they end up taking him home. And so we welcome to the family their new pet, Santa's Little Helper. It's a very sweet ending, but I'm mostly left thinking it's funny how season 1 episodes were allowed to end with a change to the status quo, since they were still in the process of establishing that status quo.

"Bart the Genius"

Our first episode focused on Bart's school life, where he cheats on an IQ test and gets transferred to a fancy pants gifted school. It's a pretty good little satire of the education system and the way kids get treated very differently based on their perceived intelligence. When they think Bart is just a regular slacker, no one puts any effort into trying to help him, but the second he's labeled a misunderstood genius he's handed every opportunity on a silver platter. I also like the surreal sequence where Bart tries to visualize a complex math problem (pictured above). But otherwise I don't have much to say about it.

"Homer's Odyssey"

Probably the bleakest of the first season's episodes. In this one, Homer gets fired from his job, and when he can't find a new job he tries to kill himself. It's partly played for laughs, such as when he almost gets run over on the way to jump off a bridge and still chews the driver out even though he literally wants to die, but still. It's dark stuff! You can really see the creative DNA shared with Groening's downbeat Life In Hell comics early on, where sometimes it's more interested in highlighting how much life can suck than trying to make you laugh.

Of course, it doesn't end there. After his family also almost gets run over at the same intersection on the way to stop him from killing himself, Homer takes up a crusade to get a new stop sign installed, and he keeps riding that high by fashioning himself into a safety advocate. When he targets the nuclear power plant, Mr. Burns offers him a safety inspector job he's absolutely not qualified for to shut him up, a job he would keep for the entire rest of the show. Again, it's funny how the show was actually allowed to end on small status quo shifts like this as they were setting everything up in this first season.

"There's No Disgrace Like Home"

This is absolutely one of the weirdest episodes of the season, and the one where's it's clearest that they were still figuring everything out. It's another episode about how the Simpsons are the most uniquely unruly, dysfunctional family in Springfield, except in this one it's Homer who's embarrassed by the family's behavior at a work event and tries to get them to act right, while Marge is the layabout who gets drunk in public and makes a scene. (Also, Lisa is very much in "female Bart" mode in this one.) Homer even ends up pawning their TV so that he can afford group counseling to try and save the family. When a regular session doesn't cut it, Dr. Marvin Monroe goes to extreme measures and gives them special shock therapy where they all just end up electrocuting each other repeatedly, causing a city-wide power outage. In the end Dr. Monroe thinks they're beyond saving and refunds double their money to get them to leave. No lesson is learned. The end.

I'd say this one feels the most like the Tracey Ullman Show shorts expanded to 22 minutes, but even in the shorts Marge was portrayed as the moralistic disciplinarian who chided her family's behavior. But it's funny to imagine a version of the show where this episode's characterization was the version that stuck and Marge and Homer's personalities were swapped.

"Bart the General"

What a shock to the senses. After the unusual characterization of "There's No Disgrace Like Home," suddenly the show's tone and humor feels like the golden age Simpsons I know and love. Probably because this is the first episode written by John Swartzwelder.

What begins as a fairly straightforward episode about Bart getting bullied by Nelson is elevated to something much more absurd and funny in its second and third acts when Bart turns to Grampa for help, finding him while he's in the middle of writing an angry letter about the unrealistically positive depictions of old people in commercials and the inappropriate words he's sick of hearing on TV. Grampa takes Bart to an army surplus store to meet the deranged vet Herman, who molds Bart into a wannabe drill sergeant who trains his classmates into an army that can take on Nelson in some sequences parodying movies like Patton and Full Metal Jacket. After an all-out water balloon assault, they have to resolve the feud with a detailed armistice treaty. In the end, to give the episode a moral, Bart breaks the fourth wall to tell the kids in the audience that there are no good wars, with the exceptions of the American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy, and they should go to their library and look at the cool gory pictures in the history books if they want to learn more.

Herman really feels like a sign of things to come for me. In earlier episodes, the focus is largely on how much the family stands out as uniquely dysfunctional in Springfield. Most of the other characters feel like either relatively normal and upstanding people that exist to make the Simpsons look worse in comparison, like Flanders or Skinner, or characters who exist to antagonize or take advantage of them. But this is the first time where much of the comedy of an episode comes from the fact that someone else in the town is an oddball. It feels like the first step towards depicting Springfield as a town full of hilarious weirdos, rather than merely as an Anytown USA backdrop for the life of the family.

This is just a very funny episode that's packed full of good jokes and knows how to escalate its premise in absurd ways. If you've never seen it because you started at season 2 or 3, you're missing out.

"Moaning Lisa"

The one where Lisa is depressed. Again, season 1 can really be a bummer, but I don't hate that. This is a gentle episode that isn't particularly funny (the uncharacteristically straightforward B-plot about Homer trying to beat Bart at a boxing video game doesn't do much for me), but Lisa meeting Bleeding Gums Murphy and being inspired to channel her feelings through her saxophone is very sweet, as is the resolution of the episode. Marge was raised to be this perfect girl who suppressed her negative emotions for the sake of others, but she realizes that she's hurting Lisa by placing that expectation on her and tells her that it's okay for her to be sad. It's probably one of my favorite Marge moments.

What really stands out to me here is that the things Lisa's sad about are so childish. And I don't mean that as a negative. Lisa is, after all, a child! She does express a general sadness about the injustices of the world, but she isn't the 8-year-old political activist later seasons would portray her as. Instead, when given the chance to vent via music, she complains about things like Bart annoying her all the time or Marge giving away the last cupcake that was meant for her. And yet the episode doesn't mock her for this. She's allowed to feel sad about relatively trivial things. She's a kid. It feels very honest about what kids are actually like in a way that I enjoy, compared to the miniature adults Bart and Lisa would later turn into.

"The Call of the Simpsons"

Another Swartzwelder joint, and wow, what do you know? Another really funny episode!

I think this one has my favorite use of the show's three-act structure in the first season. Act one: Homer gets jealous of Flanders' new RV and buys a very shitty one from a slick-talking salesman to take the family on a camping trip. Act two: After the RV falls off a cliff and explodes, the family has to survive while stranded out in the woods. Hijinks ensue. Act three: A muddy Homer is mistaken for Bigfoot and a media circus swarms the forest. After he's taken in for research, scientists can't agree if he's "a below average human being" or "a brilliant beast." The comedy here is pretty broad and lacking in satirical bite, and you could probably change the names and make this work as an episode of many other shows, but it's once again just a very funny episode that matches the comedic tempo I expect out of the show.

"The Telltale Head"

History seems to have made this one of the more remembered episodes of the first season, mostly because the image of the Jebediah Springfield statue getting its head chopped off has stuck around as a memorable bit. It's a pretty solid episode that makes it feel like the show is starting to come together, especially thanks to the debut appearances of a bunch more recurring characters like Krusty, Apu, and Reverend Lovejoy. The bits with the Sunday school teacher growing increasingly exasperated by the kids' questions about what gets into heaven were probably my favorite part.

Looking back on the Bartmania era and the moral panic over him being a bad role model is always funny in hindsight. In a post-Beavis & Butthead, post-South Park world, Bart's delinquency really does come off as incredibly tame, especially when episodes like this always have him regretting his worst deeds. He's not even the worst-behaved kid in his own show. But, then again, Bart manages to avoid any real repercussions for his act of vandalism in this episode by giving a rousing speech to the angry mob and saying that his crime has brought the town together to honor their heritage. To a Satanic Panic era concerned parent, the show might as well have told their kids to go outside and chop the head off a statue themselves.

"Life on the Fast Lane"

The one where Marge has an affair with a French bowling instructor. Yes, there are a lot of episodes in season 1 about Homer and Marge's marriage being unhappy.

This is apparently Groening's second favorite episode, behind only season two's classic "Bart the Daredevil," and it was even the first Simpsons episode to win an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, but it's just okay to me. I think it's well-directed and has some good jokes here and there (I like the bit where the family works together to throw out a single pizza box), but it isn't all that funny overall compared to other episodes. In place of the very tightly scripted dialogue you'd normally expect, this episode relies heavily on ad-libbed dialogue from Albert Brooks as bowling instructor Jacques, which almost makes it feel like I'm watching Home Movies at times rather than The Simpsons.

The ending where Marge goes back to Homer before going too far with Jacques also feels a little too convenient and unearned, not really exploring why Marge would want to go back beyond pure guilt over the thought of cheating. It's not like he makes some big effort to win her back, or she remembers what she loved about him. It feels like the ending is mostly just there to parody the ending of the 1982 romantic drama film An Officer and a Gentleman, a cultural reference that is completely lost on me and presumably most other viewers today.

"Homer's Night Out"

Yes, another episode about Homer and Marge's marriage being in jeopardy. This time Bart snaps a picture of Homer dancing with a belly dancer at a coworker's bachelor party, and after it circulates around town via photocopies Marge gets mad and kicks Homer out of the house. When he tries to make amends, Marge makes him teach Bart a lesson about how women are people and not just sexual objects, thinking that Homer set a bad example for his son.

Once again this one's just okay and not all that funny, aside from a few specific moments, and it feels like it hasn't aged particularly well. Homer's transgression seems pretty minor—he was literally just dancing next to the woman, not getting a lap dance or making out with her or anything—and the lesson about not treating women as objects feels very ham-fisted. Homer's climactic speech that wins back Marge uses the very tired framing that men should care about women because they're "our wives, our daughters, our sisters, our grandmas, our mothers," etc. etc. In other words, it still frames women via their relations to men, rather than just viewing them as their own people with no strings attached. I'll cut it some slack because this was written in 1989, but it just doesn't do much for me.

"The Crepes of Wrath"

Swartzwelder only co-wrote this one alongside George Meyer, Sam Simon, and Jon Vitti, but still, he's three for three this season. I didn't go into this season looking to gas him up in particular, but it really does feel like it's his specific sense of humor that the rest of the golden age would try to emulate, rather than Groening's.

After Bart's continued tomfoolery injures both Homer and Principal Skinner's mother, Skinner comes up with a plan to get him out of their hair: shipping him off to France as a foreign exchange student. While Bart is initially excited about this vacation, he quickly realizes his caretakers in France just want to use him for manual labor in their crappy vineyard out in the boonies, which makes him regret his actions and feel homesick. Back in Springfield, the family is woefully oblivious to the fact that the sweet little Albanian kid they're hosting in Bart's place is actually a communist spy who's trying to get intel on America's nuclear power plants. (In the end, the FBI lets him go by trading him for their own child spy who had gotten caught in Albania.)

This could have easily been a bridge too far into absurd comedy for what was otherwise a very grounded first season, and sending the Simpsons abroad would become a tired cliche in the 2000s, but I think this episode strikes a great balance. It exaggerates the reality of the show a bit more, but it still manages to feel clever with its humor, whether it's Bart's initial tour of France taking him through scenes from several famous paintings or Homer settling a dinner table argument by saying "Please, please, kids. Stop fighting. Maybe Lisa's right about America being a land of opportunity, and maybe Adil has a point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers." Even the easy jokes about the stereotypical rural Frenchmen putting a little antifreeze in their wine to give it some extra kick and having Bart taste test it to see if it makes you go blind landed for me. This was easily one of my favorites of the season.

"Krusty Gets Busted"

Since I started with what aired as the season finale, we end on the season's twelfth episode, famed as the introduction to Sideshow Bob and his lifelong vendetta against Bart.

While this wasn't Krusty's first appearance in the show, I'm surprised that it took until this late in the first season to really highlight him, given he's Bart's idol. It was probably worth the wait, though, as by now they'd really figured the series out. That early era satirical bite is still there with stuff like Krusty and the kids' call and response of "What would you do if I went off the air?" "We'd kill ourselves!!", but they also play up the absurdity of the supporting cast as well. In particular, they contrast Krusty's sleaziness and craven commercialism with Sideshow Bob's over-the-top intellectualism, replacing the show's slapstick antics and product placement with jazz performances and live readings of classic literature (though he still appears in a grass skirt and clown shoes the whole time). He's immediately a very funny character for whom Kelsey Grammer is a perfect fit, so it's no wonder he's endured as a recurring villain.

Closing thoughts

And so, reaching the end of the first season, I'm left impressed by how quickly the show came together.

While the early episodes can be a bit rough, by the end of the season they clearly knew what they were doing. The character design oddities were mostly ironed out. Homer's voice sounds more like what we'd expect, rather than the Walter Matthau impersonation it originated as. But most importantly, they've already made several episodes that nail the style of humor the show would become known for. A bit more zany and outlandish with a large supporting cast of goofballs, but still incredibly clever in its construction, balancing witty dialogue, artsy cultural references not every viewer will get, and straightforwardly funny slapstick. And it's cynical in its jabs at modern society, but it's still sincerely sympathetic towards the family.

But even in the episodes where they don't have it all figured out in the first season, I still find it really interesting to watch. The creative throughline between Groening's satirical Life in Hell comics and The Simpsons is most evident in this first season in a way that I find really charming, and it paints a picture of how different the show could have turned out, had they decided to focus on different aspects from this first season.

Of course, the thing is, this first season kind of feels like a Rosetta Stone for the evolution of the animated sitcom genre as a whole. We kinda did get all those different variations on the show, in the long run! Amp up Bart's delinquency and stupidity and you get Beavis & Butthead. Try to keep everything more grounded and subdued and you get King of the Hill. Lean into the family hating each other and throw in even more pop culture references and you get Family Guy. Embrace the naturalistic ad-libbed humor from "Life on the Fast Lane" and you get Home Movies. The list goes on and on.

As an artist, it can be easy to look at the stuff other people make and get a little bit of imposter syndrome. It can feel like other creators have everything figured out, and these brilliant ideas just come to them fully formed. But that's what makes it fun to go back to earlier projects where they're still iterating on their ideas. You can see them doing the work there on the screen. Writing that goes back and forth on its ideas before it settles on the show's final form. Off-model drawings. Stray ink marks visible on the cels. 37 seasons in, The Simpsons can feel like it's made on an assembly line at this point, with formulaic scripts and squeaky clean digital animation. But there's something so human and honest about the flaws and quirks about this weird, inconsistent first season that makes it feel way more valuable to me.