A husky-voiced blue-haired wifey once asked her chubby hubby, “Homer, is this the way you pictured married life?” He briefly considered and answered, “Pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.”
Homer may still be a little clueless, but there’s no mystery about he and his family’s popularity. This past Sunday, The Simpsons hit the big Five-OH-OH. Yep, the Simpson family has lasted through a couple of decades and the broadcast of 500 episodes of its animated show. Not bad for Bart, who once called himself an underachiever, “and proud of it, man!” He and his clan-mates are now part of the third-longest running TV show ever—surpassed at this point by only Gunsmoke (633 shows) and Lassie (588).
Woo-hoos have been echoing everywhere. One of them involved a competition between fans who gathered to see who could prepare for the big reveal of show number 500 by watching past shows … back-to-back in one marathon sitting. While other contestants watched, yawned and dropped out, Carin Shreve and Jeremiah Franco won the day (or rather, days) by staying glued to the tube for 86 hours and 37 minutes straight. That’s a whole lot of “D’ohs” without a single doze.
Even more impressive, though, is the lengthy run this animated small-town brood has had. Twenty-two years is a very long stretch for a TV series. In fact, contest winner Franco said the show actually premiered just three months after he was born. “I’ve been watching my entire life,” he said.
The first family of Springfield first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show way back in 1987. They first popped up in short little skit-bridging clips voiced by the Ullman Show’s cast members. And when Tracey hit the unemployment line not long after, her sidekicks went on to a primetime slot (in late 1989), an incredible amount of attention and what turned out to be a lifelong gig.
Some greeted The Simpsons as the harbingers of American decay. I was part of a two-man acting duo in the ’80s and early ’90s. And not long after the Matt Groening-penned animation hit the air, I portrayed a young boy in a short live skit and donned a Bart Simpson T-shirt as part of my costume. Later, when talking with some of the audience members, I was actually surprised how many commented on the T-shirt and how they thought those subversive Simpsons were undermining morals and eroding the family. My surprise came because … this was a college audience.
And this curious American family still has the power to spark controversy. When we asked our Facebook readers how many episodes of the show they’ve watched, a handful admitted to being Simpsons fans. But many more bucked the cultural trend and said they’d rather get a root canal than watch a single second of Homer eating donuts. “None. Nada. Zip. UGH!” one reader said. “I watched it for a few minutes once,” another declared, “long enough to determine I would not watch it again.”
Comments like that might make Groening smile—knowing his weird yellow family still has the power to spark some ire. After all, much of America would call The Simpsons wholesome family entertainment. Nowadays, in the face of the lowball Family Guys and foul-mouthed South Parks, Bart and his clan don’t seem to be the terror of civilized society that they used to be. Almost, uh, Lassie-like?
Which makes me wonder, have they moved or have we?
Several years back, when the Simpsons were just crossing the 400 episode mark, BBC News put out an article about the long-lived cartoon fam. “The Simpsons family eats together, plays together, prays together and stays together,” the article’s author wrote. “Perhaps it’s not so dysfunctional after all.”
What do you think?
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