It Comes With A Slice Of Canteloupe At The End: THE SIMPSONS SEASON 1 POLL

even as a kid this season felt the 'weakest' to me - the jokes were underwritten, simplistic, not polished to the extent they were in latter seasons. but i revisited this season a few years ago and it's actually really good. my favs are bart the general, there's no disgrace like home, life on the fast lane, and the crepes of wrath

Still a pretty amazingly fully formed concept from the outset, tho yeah a lot of these episodes feel primordial in retrospect. The show had to outgrow a number of sitcom conventions that were nowhere to be found in the shorts (which were amazing and grotesque). A lot of latent Make Room for Daddy overtones -- Homer getting Marge a bowling ball for her birthday; Bart learning to cope with the neighborhood bully.

It's probably between There's No Disgrace Like Home, The Call of the Simpsons or The Crepes of Wrath.

Instinct tells me to vote for Life on the Fast Lane, but I really, really like Crepes of Wrath. Not as much even for the main plot, but for the B-plot with the Albanian exchange student.

For pure silliness, though, there may be no joke from season 1 that makes me laugh harder than this:

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c294/MaynardRules/RabbitTrap.gif

I could literally watch it all day and never stop laughing.

For people who need a recap: http://www.snpp.com/episodeguide/season1.html

Loved the first two -- the Life In Hell guy has a show! -- hated "Homer's Odyssey." There's a scene in it where Homer's speaking to a crowd through a megaphone and only his mouth is animated. It struck me at the time as such a lazy animation cop-out (even for the Simpsons at that stage) that I didn't watch any more episodes that season until a friend told me about "Krusty Gets Busted." At that moment, I dedicated my life to Krusty's teachings.

Still, voting for the x-mas special. Eric H otm re: amazingly fully-formed concept.

Gotta be Crepes of Wrath. I find season 1 a bit hard to watch actually, it's just not there yet.

this is too hard. the first 8 seasons all run together in my head as a single text at this point.

I'd say do season 9, but not 10. Some great episodes in 9, 10 is pretty much all dross.

i've always considered the bordello episode (season 8 or 9) as my personal tipping point for when things really declined and never looked back.

voting Call of the Simpsons entirely for the classic gag referenced upthread.

I have never known which season a particular Simpsons episode belonged to, or the names of any of the shows, and the fact that others do always baffles me even in the face of my Doctor Who fandom (where they at least put the name of the story at the beginning of the show so there's a handy excuse/reason for knowing them beyond "I'm super obsessed with this show")

i can tell seasons apart mainly because of watching the DVDs obsessively.

well there's this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons_(season_1)#Episodes

but also looking up classic simpsons bits in the late 90s/early 00s, you'd run across episode names on SNPP and while i never remembered them, they lodged enough in my memory so that the names look at least vaguely familiar whenever i pull up an episode guide

this is too hard. the first 8 seasons all run together in my head as a single text at this point.

― ryan, Wednesday, October 2, 2013 10:31 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

i can tell seasons apart mainly because of watching the DVDs obsessively.

― ryan, Wednesday, October 2, 2013 10:38 AM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark

come on now!!

i can tell seasons apart, not episodes!! anyway mea culpa!

tempted to vote in terms of how often i reference certain episodes in my life. (i call any gift that is more for the giver than the givee a "Homer Simpson Gift.")

Great idea for a poll series.

I never have the slightest desire to watch any of the Season 1 episodes, because they were re-run obsessively during the show's heyday and it was always a disappointment to catch one of these rough, slow, and indeed sitcom-ish things when you could be watching something from 3-6. The flipside is that I now haven't seen any of these in probably, what, 15 years? I'm kind of curious to check them out again.

For all that I don't think the Simpsons quite found its groove as a "family gets into real-life situations" type show, I think it's important that these episodes are there, and were part of its syndicated canon; though slower and more boring, they really helped balance out the overall 'feel' if that makes any sense. Like, at its best the show was both anarchic absurdity and these kind of relatable people with a heartwarming ending each time. Some of the very best episodes are pure absurdism, but many of them still work this territory. I recently rewatched the one where Bart and Lisa are on opposing hockey teams, which is a few seasons later, and is at just that sweet spot, I think. Once the show (and perhaps, its audience) lost any tether at all to this shaggy season I think something essential got lost.

The only ones I don't think I could bear to look at again would be the Marvin Monroe and Bleeding Gums ones. "They were never popular" - Troy McClure. The bowling-instructor one and the "Bart goes to live at a corrupt winery" one baffled me as a kid, maybe they would be funnier now? What a weird idea, him going to a winery...reminds me of Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown! and I remember it being similarly bleak and dull.

Maybe most interested in seeing the evil babysitter one, and the "Bart goes to gifted school" one - that was the first 'proper' episode to air, right? The Christmas one was like, its own thing IIRC. It even had its own picture-book!

on my latest rewatch a few years ago i was totally shocked how big of a leap season 2 was. it has some of my favorite episodes.

"I need more wine, wine for my children!" always makes me laugh.

Isn't that from the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode? Or did they just do the same joke twice

Crepes of Wrath has one of my favorite Homer lines, which I'm paraphrasing from memory, when Skinner comes to see him about sending Bart to France:

Homer: Hey, how do I know some French family isn't pulling the same scam right now?
Skinner: Oh, you won't be getting a French student, your child will be an Albanian.
Homer: You mean all white with pink eyes?

And let's take a moment to recognize the genius of Albert Brooks as both RV salesman Cowboy Bob and bowler/Marge paramour Jacques. There are outtakes on the DVD of Brooks improvising as Jacques that are simply amazing.

Billed himself as "A. Brooks" because he couldn't fully commit to the notion of slumming by voicing a friggin' TV cartoon. It's amazing to consider the '90s animation revolution that was just looming, what with Disney's renaissance and Pixar and all that.

I will have to re-watch these to vote. The problem w the Simpsons (and Seinfeld) is that you can read the plot description, think "meh", and yet the jokes could be top quality and have nothing to do with the plot!

Jacques: First, you must get to know your lane.  Feel the slickness, feel the
            slippery finish. Caresses it, experience it. Quite smooth, isn't it?
   Marge:   Oh, very smooth.
   \<
   Jacques: Smooth?
   Marge:          |Yes, very.
   Jacques:        |          |Yes?
   Marge:          |          |    |Yes.
   Jacques:        |          |    |    |Yes.
   Marge:          |          |    |    |    |Smooth.
   Jacques:        |          |    |    |    |       |Smooth.
   Marge:          |          |    |    |    |       |       |Yes.
   Jacques:        |          |    |    |    |       |       |    |Yes.
    :        You could eat off of it.
   \>

S1 is really uneven, but there are some classic jokes in there, as already demonstrated upthread. I always loved the cloud talk bit in The Telltale Head.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsx4ilSG391qzzd6io1_500.png

Matt Groening apparently says Life On The Fast Lane is his second favourite episode.

how many times have you people seen these?

I remember the show premiering in January and being an instant sensation, so I probably saw all of em and loved the show, but was already out of college and a full-time widgetmaking commuter... so probably mighta caught a couple of these agin in the '90s, not since.

oh yeah, the only one I know by title is the Xmas pilot.

i saw almost all of them in syndication from around 1994 to 2000--twice a day after school. over and over countless times.

yeah was annoying how much they would syndicate these but then, say, the lemon tree episode would never get a re-airing

when I was buying Simpsons DVD sets this is the one I omitted. started with s2 and went through s9.

i saw almost all of them in syndication from around 1994 to 2000--twice a day after school. over and over countless times.

― ryan, Wednesday, October 2, 2013 1:56 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, either the 7:00 or 7:30 slot on fox. saw them all out of order, i don't really think of them by 'season' either except for season 1 since the animation was noticeably different

well see you know these the way i kno(e)w I Love Lucy.

I also started reciting a Little Rascals ditty to a fellow '60s child last week, and he finished it.

I remember taping them and watching them as I got ready for school in the morning, and I'd watch them on Sky religiously til I had actually finished school, so just in that timespan I've probably seen the average episode dozens of times.

I haven't seen most of these since I was like 11 years old. I can't imagine what they'd be like now. I remember recently seeing the ones where Homer dances with the "exotic dancer" and the bowling instructor one, both centered around some pretty serious themes that didn't appear much in later seasons. Sort of an abstract quality to both of those. Kinda want to rewatch all these now.

plus you'll get the Kubrick references

Taped Seasons 1 and 2 as they aired, re-watched endlessly. Was in college during Seasons 3 through 6, and had a Thursday night class, so I missed most of those. I got caught up during the summer, and later in syndication (with those infernal cuts!)

During Season 7 I was living in an area without a Fox affiliate. My parents taped it every week and sent me the full tape. I spent an entire Saturday watching that tape, and then again and again, and again and again and again. It was wall-to-wall classics: Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 2 through Mother Simpson, with the previous year's Treehouse of Horror and Itchy & Scratchy Land.

plus you'll get the Kubrick references

― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 2, 2013 1:06 PM (2 minutes ago)

ha! I bought a dodgy Kubrick DVD boxset from China and watched all of his movies in about a 2 week span. this was literally my first thought after many of them, "ahhh, now I get that scene in that Simpsons episode..."

pre-DVD era me and my housemates would dedicate ourselves to taping every episode as it aired, since the syndicated repeats were edited. watched those tapes over and over and over

yeah millenials must have the same experience watching Citizen Kane. "It's the Mr Burns song..."

you mean White Stripes song, surely

http://i.imgur.com/of0nFo9.jpg

I'm convinced you can almost entirely create Citizen Kane with clips from The Simpsons at this point.

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z74/IanTheCool/1f01_015.jpg

love love love the weird ambience of early simpsons -- entire minutes go by with no jokes! homer says smart things! entire episodes revolve around bart's pranks! the animation is so stretchy and weird!

that said, the season 1 dvd is kind of a ripoff -- they really should've thrown the tracey ullman shorts on there.

apart from the christmas episode (which can hold its own with any TV christmas episode imo), the standout here is 'krusty gets busted.' sideshow bob is a fully formed character from the start -- this actually still might be my favorite sideshow bob episode.

The pacing in S1 is what jumps out the most at me. Jokes and scenes are quickly established, done with and they move on to the next thing. Sometimes awkwardly so. The Klasky-Csupo animation seems so jarring now, but frankly I'll take it over the shitty computerised way they do it now.

Also, anyone who continues to whine/debate about when the show jumped the shark is gettin FPed by me. WEVE DONE THAT TO DEATH.

Albert Brooks as both RV salesman Cowboy Bob and bowler/Marge paramour Jacques. There are outtakes on the DVD of Brooks improvising as Jacques that are simply amazing.

Yes, I was about to say the same. I think a lot of his and Marge's exchanges were also fairly live/adlibbed, iirc?

There's heaps to love about this early stuff tho. The RDRR nerdjoke in "Bart the Genius", the whole Marge/Jacque dialogue, black Mr Smithers (love to know the story behind that), "Krusty wore big, floppy shoes, but he's got little feet,like all good-hearted people".

no one who saw these first in syndication or on DVDs should be entitled to any opinion on this whateoever

I opened the thread again this morning and am still laughing over Homer's rabbit trap.

The more I think on this, the more "Bart the Genius" stands out as a potential vote, although "Life on the Fast Lane" is still the front runner for me.

http://home.comcast.net/~doa4/RDRRstare.gif

i also have a fondness for 'bart the general,' but i can't tell if it's because it's a good episode or because i enjoyed the bully-gets-his-comeuppance aspect

Was that the only instance of Marcia Wallace doing a non-Mrs. Krabappel voice?

xp

it's possible for more than one thing to suck

also i prefer lol-free cheap wisecrackery to lol-free emo bullshit

what season has the sexual harassment episode? because that's the all time best simpsons episode ever IMO

6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Badman

Telltale Head for Jebediah killing the bear. "We've recently uncovered evidence that the bear probably killed him."

The show really should have been retitled ''The New Simpsons Adventures'' some time in the late 90s, so you could more cleanly say ''every episode of the simpsons is at least PRETTY funny'' as well as ''...except the ones with Bleeding Gums Murphy.''

xxp I'll save my Jebediah love for a future episode. You know the one I mean.

"I did not tame the wild buffalo. It was already tamed! I merely shot it!"

NV you're just like Chili, the elf who cannot love

Which is the one that ended with the premiere of "Do the Bartman"?

I think that was somewhere in the first half of season 2. The Simpsons Sing The Blues was released in December of 1990.

Which is the one that ended with the premiere of "Do the Bartman"?

this was never in the show

MJ contractual stuff probably

how comes that when MJ appeared in the show they didn't use his real name in the credits, but they used his real *voice* but they used a soundalike for the songs he sang??

lol have you ever seen a licensing/performing contract

i guess.. not.

according to the commentary for that episode MJ asked that a soundalike be used because he wanted to play a joke on his brothers -- to see if they could tell if it was him singing, i guess.

kinda lol-worthy in itself that the very same episodes of the show that made it into The Show That Is Corrupting America's Youth and drew the ire of president bush would one day be dismissed as "emo bullshit."

episodes from this season that are as good as anything the simpsons ever did: simpsons roasting on an open fire, bart the general, krusty gets busted.

adam you're probably thinking of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep,_Deep_Trouble

i remember watching this when it aired! kinda still prefer it to 'do the bartman.'

For some reason, I remembered "Do The Bartman" getting a similar post-show airing. But I guess I confused it with "Deep, Deep Trouble" and probably also this:

Following the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, the music video was broadcast by the Fox network on June 28, 2009—ahead of a rerun of the episode "Wedding for Disaster"—and featured a title card paying tribute to Jackson.[27]

There is an ep where Bart does a little riff of Do the Bartman on the bus, complete with hip thrusts, but that was way later on and presumably meant to be lame attention grabbing.

That was in "Bart Gets Famous," yeah?

^^^That one opens with him whistling the theme song, to Marge's annoyance

Yes and revolves around his fame over a catchphrase of "I didnt do it" which was a nice self-mockery (along with the Bartman and whistling theme tune pisstaking)

Does "Bart the General" contain the series' first self-referential moment? I'm thinking of when Grandpa is writing his (hilarious) letter to a TV network in which, among other things, he lists a bunch of words that he requests never be mentioned on television again, including "family jewels" (referring back to earlier in the episode when Homer told Bart to "go for the family jewels" when fighting Nelson). Maybe not a proper self-referential moment in that its referencing something from the same episode, but the moment nevertheless feels conscious of the influence that the show was starting/about to have on the culture (definitely in retrospect, if not so much at the time).

First self-referential moment I can recall (noticed it at the time, "Oh wow!") is in the season two episode where Burns runs for Governor - Bart gets his picture in the paper for catching a three-eyed fish, and cuts out the newspaper clipping to paste it in a scrapbook next to another clipping about the decapitation of the Jeremiah Springfield statue.

Season One seems full of pokes at the show's supposed negative influence on kids - Krusty Gets Busted is basically all about it! I don't know how much lead time they had; they might have just been guessing that they'd get pushback from parent groups and such. But the 'family jewels' callback is a different kind of gag, I guess.

I'm amazed those are callbacks I never noticed before! And I watch my DVDs all the damn time.

Just watched "Bart the General." Not seeing why it's gotten so much attention here. A few good sight gags (Bart rolling home in the trash can) and a couple of moments of sparkle in the script, but overall a bit rote. Like a Dennis the Menace episode with a few attempts at real jokes. Herman really doesn't add much, either - easy to see why they didn't use him much again. A more intense, OTT version of that concept (like the 'Nam vet history teacher on Daria) could have taken them places. Abe, at least, has a little of what would later make him so great.

Telltale Head: pretty decent! Felt 'fuller' than some of these have, probably because of the (admittedly underdeveloped) B-story about Homer's football bet and the bowling ball catalogue. (Wondering, in fact, if I'm missing a resolution to that - some of my friend's collection is from syndicated reruns.) As elsewhere, certain scenes/gags play out too long, like Lovejoy unintentionally lip-synching the color commentary, but here it's charming rather than grating.

Watched Season One not too long ago and it struck me how much heart these early episodes had. Bart actually, legitimately CRIES in three separate episodes! Anyway, "Homer's Night Out" is easily top ten all-time for me, so I'm voting for that one. Homer and the burlesque singer doing "I Could Love a Million Girls" (from Ragtime!) always makes me smile. "It's an honor to have a reeeeal swingin' cat with us tonight. Homer Simpson: Party Guy."

There's also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBTYri2KGEE

I've hardly caught any 'late, bad' Simpsons, but this was just on telly and it was awful. Most of it was watchable but not funny, but Nelson and Lisa acting out of character was just so painfully pointless and dreadful. Like, I'm not sure what they were even trying to do with it? Just so lacklustre.

Thread for heaping derision (or sadness) on recent Simpsons probably belongs elsewhere, if at all, but I just caught a 2013 ep last night:

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Love_is_a_Many_Splintered_Thing

...and yeah, watchable but never funny describes it perfectly. There were a million sub-plots, wacky Family Guy-like references to other things, all this stuff happening to no apparent point.

Political biographer Robert A. Caro and former Conan O'Brien bandleader Max Weinberg guest starred as themselves.

Sold

Prefer Max's Futurama cameo tbh

http://theinfosphere.org/images/e/e4/Max_Weinberg.png

I've hardly caught any 'late, bad' Simpsons, but this was just on telly and it was awful

If I'm thinking of the right episode this is the one that has Skinner's eulogy for Martin Prince (who is worngly thought to have died) which begins 'Martin was an shy,awkward child who never had the chance to grow into a weird, unloved adult' which might be my all-time favourite line from the show. But it was pretty crappy by this point, occasional flashes of brilliance aside

Yeah, that line was in it, and not bad. I think Wiggum had a line or two that worked as well. But maybe three lines in the whole thing? Come on, that's not enough.

caught the first two episodes of the season. the 'homeland' parody or whatever it was was completely unfunny and kind of incomprehensible. might have been partly due to my low expectations but the halloween episode was actually kind of fun, laughed out loud a few times at the dr. seuss parody especially. but was also struck by the sort of casually mean-spirited tone of the whole thing, callous in a way that i don't remember the older halloween episodes being.

gettin an itchy SB finger over here guys.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Crap!

So, I've seen all of these at some point in time, some more than once, but I'd hoped to rewatch most of them before the poll was up. As it is, I've just done "Bart the Genius," "Krusty Gets Busted," "Bart the General," and "The Telltale Head." Ugh. It sounds like "There's No Disgrace" and "Homer's Night Out" are the other big ones I'm missing - maybe "Crepes of Wrath" too (which I'm sort of curious about since I remember it being so strange).

Ended up voting "Life on the Fast Lane" simply because its the most consistently funny of these.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

haha I wonder if the thread title swung this since nobody can be arsed to actually revisit these

Wow, never seen a poll with so little curve

Tough but fair. Season 2 tomorrow!

I've been finding myself re-watching the early seasons of The Simpsons recently, and I was surprised by just how many of these episodes I remembered. There was quite a few of these episodes I hadn't really seen since the early '90s, and I was struck by how slower-paced, much less surreal and relatively undeveloped (character-wise) these episodes are in hindsight.

However, I still like this season, and I think its flaws only become apparent with hindsight - it was fine at the time!

The scene where Marge unplugs the TV just as Homer is finally going to defeat Bart at that boxing game is still as fucking funny to me as the first time I saw it. As is Bart receiving/testing out his spy camera, Homer screaming at Bart and Lisa "BE NORMAL! BE NORMAL!" at Burns' picnic while Marge gets drunk on punch (which now all seems strange to watch all these seasons later) - and, of course, "KWYJIBO" ...

all these episodes occupy a strange part in my brain - back in the day I didn't know what a "season" was, I thought they were just continually making episodes the whole time. anyways one thing I remember is that they'd air "classic Simpsons" a lot which I knew to mean an earlier episode. probably something from Season 1 or 2. so I saw the S1 episodes a lot and even then they seemed weird, they're still funny but it felt like a different show entirely. it's crazy watching them now knowing this would somehow evolve into the most successful animated comedy ever, something which would still be going nearly 40 years later.

anyway, I did watch Homer's Odyssey last night, makes sense it got 0 votes here (it's not particularly good) but a few things stood out. first of all, wow the animation was janky back then. this is the episode where "very tall bart" (a fairly well know YTP'er) got their avatar from - on the bus scene there's one bit where Bart is sitting down and appears to be like, 7 feet tall. secondly, its wild how different Homer, and really the entire ethos of the show was back then - the scene where the family is sleeping and he busts Bart's piggy bank for beer money, then decides to tie a boulder to his waist and throw himself off a bridge....it's actually as dark as it sounds, and they only attempt a couple of jokes during the whole 4 minute scene (him spotting an identical boulder at the bridge after hauling the first one all the way there and saying "live and learn"...maybe the best joke of the season). thirdly, this is actually the origin story of how Homer became safety inspector at the plant! pretty wild to think that Homer's job for the last 35 years was defined in this one episode in which he became obsessed with road signs, something which would never manifest itself in the series ever again!

wow i have almost no memory of that episode, and I must have seen every season 1 episode at least three times, back when that was all they had for reruns, plus a pass or two when the DVDs came out and I was digging into the commentary tracks.

yeah for the first half I was wondering if I'd actually stumbled upon an old Simpsons episode I hadn't seen but when he starts putting up all the traffic signs I was like okay I do remember this

few other things that freak me out about the first season:

hearing familiar voices though one-off characters

stretches of dialogue with no jokes, particularly those which serve characters who never appear again

Albert Brooks as the RV salesman - he's really good, but they sure give him a lot of time don't they?

the opening sequence, which has a few scenes I hadn't seen - one where a few characters run after the bus, one of whom looks like a grown up Bart, and also Lisa riding home on her bike - even when they showed S1 episodes, those bits were always trimmed off