The Simpsons Season 1 Review

I decided to tackle the "greatest television show" as defined by some people.  I'm coming into this basically having seen zero Simpsons episodes.  I was pretty skeptical though.  I mean I saw The Simpsons Movie and I didn't think it was that good and apparently everyone else did. (That was a while ago and maybe my opinion on the movie has changed, but I remember absolutely nothing about it.)

I could just watch the best episodes, but that's not really how I like to watch TV.  Anyway, when I watch episodes, I read recaps of individual episodes on AV Club.  Usually those are helpful in getting me to think about the show.  But apparently they decided to hire the biggest fanboy on the planet who refuses to say a single bad word about the show.  He gave the show's first season a cumulative A.  He should be fired.

The first season wasn't that good.  I'm judging this by today's standard not how it would have been in 1989, since The Simpsons is always called a "classic show."  By definition, it should be timeless.  So I don't know how good it was back then, but it wasn't that good now.

Now, I can see seeds of what makes the show great and it's really really not hard to see how this show became what it became.  Besides the finale, which was awful, the show basically got progressively better and better.

The show suffered the worst crime of all for a comedy: I didn't laugh a lot.  Like I could see this was more intelligent than your typical cartoon (or really comedy in general), but it didn't elicit actual laughter.  The later episodes I remember laughing a few times, but the early ones I remember distinctly not laughing at all.

This is somewhat to be expected in a show searching for an identity in its first season, but the characters are somewhat inconsistent.  Some of the episodes Homer desperately wants to be a good father and husband, and others he's so bad at it it seems a least a little intentional.

The best episodes to me where Life on the Fast Lane, just because Albert Brooks is hilarious, and Krusty Gets Busted, the first of apparently many Krusty-themed episodes.  I also thoroughly enjoyed The Crepes of Wrath, which has Bart going to France as a foreign exchange student, and The Telltale Head, which has Bart cutting off the head of a statue for approval of "cool kids."

Some Enchanted Evening, which has a bandit babysitter, is just not good at all.  The less said about it, the better.  Homer's Night Out is hilariously outdated, as Homer gets in trouble with the whole town for dancing with another woman?  At a bachelor party?  And they celebrate their bachelor party at the same place that Marge and the kids go out to eat?  That episode didn't work for me.

Overall, this season shows obvious promise, but it's not very good.  I'm sure Simpsons fanatics will enjoy this season, but as a newcomer, there's no nostalgic factor to make it seem good for me.

Season Grade - C-

Playlist
1. "Definition" - Black Star
2. "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second" - Starfucker
3. "Song 2" - Blur
4. "Next" - The Weeknd
5. "Razor Blades and Steak Knives" - Jarren Benton