The Simpsons has been on the air long enough that it’s best joke about being a long-running TV show, The 138th Episode Spectacular, aired nearly 30 years ago. A book covering the entire lifespan of the show would be quite long and probably be a pretty depressing read for the last two-thirds or so, given the general consensus of the show’s level of quality.
Luckily, The Ringer’s Alan Siegel has confined himself to the show’s “Golden Era” a nebulous concept he seems to define as the time when the original creators and writers were still in charge of the show’s direction. Any fan of the show who so much as glances at the credits will be familiar with the names, like the original producing trio: Matt Groenig, the underground cartoonist who created the characters, TV legend and Oscar-winner James L. Brooks, and writer and producer Sam Simon. The writing staff too contains names familiar to most fans, like George Meyer, John Swartzwelder, Mike Reiss, Al Jean, Jon Vitti, David X. Cohen and many more, only one of went on to become a beloved late night host.
Siegel mainly ties the success of the show to these men, and yes, it is nearly all men. Siegel lightly confronts the shortcomings of the Simpsons staffing, including a chapter in which the women who did work at The Simpsons point out the boys’ club atmosphere and occasional demeaning roles they were forced to take on. Though there were some high-level female producers at The Simpsons during its heyday, the problem persisted.
Since I’ve seen every episode covered here many times, I was more interested in Siegel’s coverage of the show as a cultural phenomenon. As someone barely older than the show, I was somewhat but not overly familiar with the show’s creation and the craze it sparked. Siegel covers the show’s early days, when the nascent FOX network was willing to take a risk like putting an animated comedy in primetime. Despite a botched rollout, including a first episode animated so poorly it had to be completely changed, the Simpsons was a hit right from the first broadcast. It then become a bonanza for FOX, with Bart Simpson t-shirts becoming one of the fastest selling pieces of merchandise in history. Siegel also explores the backlash to the show, including from the President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, who just two years into the show’s run was saying that the American family should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons, a line that Siegel convincingly argues backfired on Bush, since The Simpsons was incredibly popular in Middle America.
Ultimately, I don’t think Stupid TV, Be More Funny will go down as the definitive of the show, or even it’s early years. But it is a solid collection of anecdotes about a great show.