Virtual Fools

There is something to be said for the first few episodes of The Simpsons, the longest running prime time animated series in America.  I must admit, I don’t watch the show anymore–there are too many other things competing for my time, and the quality of the writing has fluctuated a great deal in recent years–but I do appreciate that it is still on.

These days I try to watch as many new films as possible and really don’t have a chance to re-watch old favorites.  But where television is concerned, I tend to start watching new shows only after I’ve exhausted my other options, and once I know that I can give the new story-set my full attention.  With that in mind, friends can stop wondering whether or not I’ve started watching The Wire, The Shield, Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Scrubs yet.  The answer is no, and is likely to be so for some time.

What that does mean, though, is that my TV time, which amounts to maybe an hour a day (if I’m lucky) tends to go to controlled repeats.  I say controlled because I don’t watch broadcast TV, instead opting to watch shorter programs of my selection on DVD or the net (in this regard, I’m no different from most people my age).  If I’ve got that spare time before bed, I tend to throw on something comedic and multitask.

I recently decided to start watching The Simpsons again, after not watching an episode for over a year.  The decision made sense based on the fact that I was having trouble remembering the order of episodes–something I used to know by heart, thanks to the excellent series of books published about the show–and based on the fact that I own Seasons 1-10 on DVD.  These are roughly the seasons that I would have watched on Sundays when I was still following the show.

I began, as usual, at the beginning.  Skipping the proto-Simpsons Tracy Ullman Show shorts, I dove in to the Christmas special.  I ended up watching the first season over 3 or 4 days.

This repeated viewing reminded me that I had been meaning to write something about the show for a while.  What I love–ironically, a bit, but still find endearing–about the first Season and the early part of Season 2 is the awkward lack of standardization and canonicity.  If the “mature” era of the Simpsons is marked by some sort of consistency–despite the accepted incongruities of static time (Bart and Lisa never age or graduate school. Maggie perpetually teethes, etc)–then these early episodes are pure exploration.

1) Spatial confusion.  In this first Christmas episode, the street where the family lives looks different from its mature iteration (this is to be expected).  I love the little details.  Directly across the street is an empty lot.  Absent are the weird hills that Bart skates down in later episodes (sometimes these seem to start very close to the house, despite the stock establishing “shot” that suggests flat land on either side of the house).  The floor plan of the Simpson abode is almost incomprehensible at this point.  If later episodes let us map out the house, via a coherent “Classical Hollywood Style” system of spatially congruous shots, consistent depth, and repetition, these early episodes a bit like the mutations of space in the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  The homes are often subtly different, the spaces familiar-yet-not, the walls seem to move, to bleed (in this case, with color).

2) Character role.  The functions of many of the eventual-main characters in the series aren’t worked out in these early episodes.  One great aspect of this part of the show is that two of the most central characters to the plots of early episodes–Dr. Marvin Monroe and Bleeding Gums Murphy–end up dying not too long later.  Just as the series symbolically kills its earlier self (via. upgraded animation, evolving characters, the expansion of the canvas of the show), so too do these emblems of the early show eventual die.  Plus the designs!  Moe with black hair, Chief Wiggum trim and with black hair, Smithers as African-American!  This is also around the time that the first merchandising started, culminating with The Simpsons Arcade Game.  Here, Smithers is a total villain, Burns a Bond mastermind, Springfield an unrecognizable mess.

3) Character saturation.  I love the near-anonymous crowds from the early episodes.  There is little sense of community from one episode to the next, given that many characters appear once and then are seemingly discarded (the over-emphatic R.V. salesman, anyone?)  The “Bart the General” episode is nice, since some of the kids become regulars, yet others seem to have moved or been expelled (from school, the series).  A key anchor in the growth of the series must have been “The Telltale Head,” where we are given our first Hogarth-esque, manic carnival scene.  At the start of the episode, Bart and Homer are approached by a mob.  This swarm of demons is significant in that it is the first real Simpsons “flash mob.”  Think to later episodes.  The series has the miraculous ability to bring wholly disparate groups of local characters together, culminating in The Simpsons Movie, which surrounds Springfield with a giant bubble and forces the varied characters into frontal confrontation.  Socio-economic, criminal, sexual, and racial differences blur in these weird Simpsons “flash mobs,” where Snake can stand next to Dr. Hibbert and Barney can blend into the Lovejoys.

4. Moralism.  The Simpsons is still a moralistic show, which is part of why it survives.  Almost every episode has some kind of teleological or social goal.  But where the early series was slow, unironic, transparent, and sincere, the “mature” years throw meta- and postmodern elements into the fray, resulting in the fractured mess of recent seasons (whole plots initiated and abandoned in 5 minutes, morality subsumed into references and clever ideas).  Season 1 is all about family issues–how Christmas can continue despite little money, the threats to Marge and Homer’s marriage (at least 4 episodes center on this), the safety of the children from the babysitter bandit).  When did the show lose this kernel of conviction?  I prefer a mix of that original nativity with the high, heady writing of seasons 4-8.

I just watched “Dead Putting Society,” which struck me as the first wholly “mature” episode.  The animators seem to have stabiliezed the characters, the simulated camera angles seem to have found a grammar, weird plot point seem to finally be breached intentionally instead of unintentionally.  There are a few details that still need to be ironed out (Flanders has draught beer in his basement and was in a frat?), but the series seems to have started to hit its stride by this point.