1x01 Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

The Simpsons occupies a position of amazing cultural ubiquity. Even now it struggles on, shorn completely of what made it special to begin with. A shade of its former self. What I thought would be interesting would be to watch the first eight series—those that almost everyone can agree on are of the highest quality—in proper order. I used to look forward all day to watching repeats of the show as a child, and so my knowledge of the show is present but jumbled and out-of-sync. It's exciting to know that I have so many great moments waiting for me before I've even begun.

Starting right back at the beginning, however, means that there's a way to go before I get to the really good stuff. What we have here is very much in the spirit of the old Tracey Ullman Show shorts transposed into a longer form. There's a simple domestic situation: the family don't have enough money to pay for Christmas and Homer sets out to sort it. What we end up with is something akin to an animated sitcom; deeply ingrained in the details of late 1980s/early 1990s working-class American life, without any whimsy or fantastical elements. There isn't a celebrity to be seen here. This is very refreshing—the show doesn't shy away from presenting the life of the Simpsons as tough or avoiding class-based commentary. Homer is a good man, although one whose efforts to do the best he can for his family don't always come through legitimate means. Bart is a typical rebellious child, a prankster, but one that isn't unfamiliar with moments of tenderness. (From memory, the closeness between father and son here is something that happens less and less as time goes on.) The plot has an ending rich in pathos and one that sets us up to continue our journey with the Simpsons, one that will move away from this small focus and onto a broader, more satirical canvass.

I'm giving this cult classic television series another spin, starting off from the beginning (and also redoing my ratings up to now). So here we go:

The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire is, as the title card reads, a Christmas Special, and it may seem rather strange, that a television series starts with a Christmas special. To understand this, you need to know two things:

Firstly, this wasn't actually supposed to be the first episode. The first episode produced, was S01E13, Some Enchanted Evening. However, a workprint test screening was received overall poorly, enforcing a long rework of the entire first season that took around half a year. Now, having to air in mid December, the decision was made to grab Episode 8 of that season for premiering.

Secondly, the Simpsons where already well known. It was in 1985 that comic artist Matt Groening was asked to do an animated short series for the Tracey Ullman Show, a ~30-minute long sketch comedy show, to be used as a ~1 minute long "bumper" before and after the commercial break. Groening initially wanted to use his comic series "Life in Hell" but when he learned, that he would actually loose all intellectual property rights, he came up with a plan B: The Simpsons, which - as rumor has it - was developed in 15 minutes in front of the office of producer James L. Brooks, just before pitching the idea. It wasn't the first (and in the beginning not the only) animated short that aired as advertisement bumper in the show that started in April 1987, but it was the one that got most attention and by the second season, all other cartoons were canceled and The Simpsons became the exclusive short series in that show. After the third season, that ended in May 1989, the Simpsons where spun off into a standalone half-hour series.

Taking these two facts into consideration makes it clear, how they could start off with a Christmas Special, but it also puts a lot of undeserved praise into better context. Many point out how this first episode already established so many places & figures and their characteristics right from the get-go (e.g. Skinner, Ned Flanders, Patty & Selma, Moe, Barney, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Milhouse and Grandpa, Moe's tavern, the power plant, Bart prank-calling Moe, etc.). If, however you watch them in production order, you will see, that the Simpsons started out as any other series; only Moe, Moe's Tavern and the Pranks where introduced in the original first episode. And other characters get introduced gradually over the next episodes, not all at once and some with large differences in the beginning (e.g. Milhouse being black-haired, or Smithers initially being black), so that this episode had already a rather rich background to fetch ideas from and build upon.

So ignoring this aspect, this episode has rather little to offer. The drawings are still a bit clumsy, the story not that original, there is little humor, no real sassy social remars and the dialogues rather dull. On the plus side, however, it is a heart warming story that has a nice happy end, and it manages to bring you into a Christmas spirit, even if you watch it in the summer.

Starting at 5/10 and looking at all the pros and cons, in the end, this episode is rather balanced out, leaving it at 5/10 points over all.