“Uh-oh, it’s the fe-mailman.” – Bart Simpson “Fe-mail carrier, Bart.” – Lisa Simpson
Category: 23rd Anniversary Yellow Jubilee
The Telltale Head Spews Truth
Today’s post is another installment in our long-running “series” of DVD commentary posts; the lucky victim this time is Season 1’s classic “The Telltale Head.” Featured speakers on the commentary are the episode’s director Rich Moore and writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss. I’ll keep it short and simple (read: descriptive and lacking in any meaningful/substantive analysis), but here are the highlights from their conversation for me: (Times are approximate) 00:17 – Supposedly there were a lot of Elvis sightings when this episode was written, hence the chalkboard gag 00:31 – Early intro didn’t have Burns or Smithers in the…
Permanent Record: Jimbo Jones
“That one looks like a school bus going over a cliff in flames with kids inside screaming.” – Jimbo Jones Like any other organization or group of people, a school has a natural hierarchy. The adults are separate from the kids, obviously, but even within groups there are levels and layers. For the adults there are staff and faculty, for the students there are grades, gender, circles of friends and lots of other ways the students sort themselves out. One of the things that made Springfield Elementary so compelling and recognizable as a place, even though it’s fictional and inhabited…
Permanent Record: Maggie Simpson
“The boys certainly are taking a long time. I hope Maggie isn’t slowing them up too much.” – Marge Simpson For reasons of television necessity the Simpson family has always been an adventurous lot. But while Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa can easily go out into the world and get into and out of trouble, little Maggie is limited by the fact that she can’t talk and can barely walk. But while those limitations usually see her shuffled off to the side, the show also gives strong hints that she is the smartest and toughest of them all. “The Call…
Permanent Record: Mr. Largo
“Alright, class, from the top: one and two and three and. . .” – Mr. Largo American primary schools are filled with godawful bands. While a few students might genuinely like playing music and even have some skill, most of the members are kids that have no particular aptitude for music, aren’t overly fond of their instruments, and/or are only in the band because their parents made them join. In this context, “band” is just another class or after school activity, something most of the kids will go through the motions for, if only to keep the adults off their…
Permanent Record: Burns Manor
“There it is, kids, stately Burns Manor, heaven on earth.” – Homer Simpson Watching Season 1 episodes with the knowledge of what the show was going to become can often blur out just how well formed many of the show’s ideas were, even before the voices and the animation had developed. Burns, and the palatial estate on which he lives, illustrate that well. “There’s No Disgrace Like Home” is the first time we get to see Burns Manor, and while it would be revised and updated in Season 2 and later, the fundamental ideas of it are all right here.…
Animation Alley: Homer’s Odyssey
Make no mistake, there’s a lot of really weird and wonky animation in the first season. I used to find it really off-putting, but now I’ve learned to accept it, and it actually makes these shows all the more charming to me. Just as the show was trying to find its footing with the writing, the same could be said about the animation. There’s a lot of weird shit in this show, a few moments in particular I want to highlight. I love the execution of Nuclear Energy: Our Misunderstood Friend; the designs, the limited, jerky animation, the scratched up…
Permanent Record: Sherri & Terri
“We’re gonna make you sing, Bart Simpson.” – Sherri “Yeah, Bart Simpson, we’re gonna make you sing.” – Terri When “Homer’s Odyssey” was first broadcast, and The Simpsons was considered just this side of Satanic cults by much of mainstream culture, one of the best things about it was the way it mocked success. People who did well in Springfield didn’t always deserve it, and even the ones who did were often portrayed as insufferable jackasses. The most glaring example of that is easily Flanders, who is a genuinely nice guy but who is also grotesquely inhuman in the way…
DVD Commentary: Bart the Genius
Be gentle, it’s my first one of these. Four guys on this commentary, David Silverman, Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, and Jon Vitti. David Silverman talks about the popularity of the show after the Christmas Special Matt Groening talks about the development of the now classic “Simpsons” main titles music Blackboard and main titles were originally a way to pad the show length, but as the show got more sophisticated the writers didn’t want to cut anything This episode was Jon Vitti’s first 30-minute script, and David Silverman’s first full-length directorial debut Koreans don’t have bananas, hence the miscoloring KWYJIBO was also later used…
Animation Alley: Bart the Genius
[Note: Mike Amato of Me Blog Write Good is going to be writing about the animation for the Yellow Jubilee.] If we’re gonna talk about the animation from the first season, then we must start with the first cut of the very first episode, “Some Enchanted Evening” (feel free to mute the video, it’s just the schmucky uploader doing “commentary.”) The brunt of the animation for the show, and a sizable amount of all American animation, is done overseas, and because of how long the animation process is, and with the speed and the technology back then, a whole season…
Permanent Record: Dr. J. Loren Pryor
“Ah, finished already? Principal Skinner will be very interested to . . . oh. . . . You know, you misspelled ‘confession’.” – Dr. J. Loren Pryor Even at its earliest stages, The Simpsons was always careful not to pass up comedy opportunities. Whether it was minor characters, secondary locations, television shows, or anything else, the show made sure to populate the universe of Springfield with people, places and ideas that were just as delightfully twisted as the main family. A school psychologist evaluating troublemaking Bart could easily have been portrayed as a straight ahead public servant, a caring individual…
The Simpsons 23rd Anniversary Yellow Jubilee
“Push out the jive. Bring in the love.” – C.M. Burns If there is one persistent misperception about this blog on the wider plains of the internet, it is that we simply hate Zombie Simpsons and that’s it. Beneath that strong and oft expressed dislike, however, is the real reason we’re all here: love. We love The Simpsons. It was a show beyond even the most enthusiastic superlatives, and it remains so more than two decades after it took America and the world by storm. Its creation was a once in a lifetime alignment of immensely improbable coincidences that came…