Simpsons Season 1 = Too dated?

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Eusebius

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I've been rewatching Season 1 lately and I'm noticing that a lot of the gags aren't as funny as they were back then. I realize the show was just starting back then, but what is your view on Season 1?

Do you still find the season funny nowadays?
 
The first season of The Simpsons might not be even close to as great as the seven or so seasons that followed it, but id' still say it's better than season nine and beyond (or perhapes at least season ten and beyond). Most of the jokes in season one episodes might not be as clever as those that featured in episodes during the "golden age", but at least they worked in that they were often very funny (and yes, they still work, at least that's how i feel). The majority of the jokes in most post-golden age epsiodes just fall completely flat. And another thing that falls flat in the never seasons episodes are the plots, which just feels repetative and completely unegaging. The plots of most season one episodes however are very interesting and engaging, just like the ones in most episodes in the seven seasons thereafter.
 
Season 1 was easily the worst season of The Simpsons. There were many episodes that were completely devoid of laughs. The better ones tended to only have a couple of good jokes.
 
Its my favorite season. Nostalgia goggles involved? Very probable, this is the season I ended up watching the most as a kid since it always seemed to be re-run. For that reason I disliked it the most as a kid since I had already seen those episodes so many times, not to mention even when compared to season 2 the animation looks much worse. But now its the season I have the most fond memories of.
 
You have to remember that the first season aired in 1990, a time when every animated series was based off a toyline or a revival of an equally bland Hanna Barbera cartoon from the decade earlier. To see an animated show that actually dealt with family values and had some adult humor in it was groundbreaking. Now a days, the first season is probably tame enough that you could air it on a children's channel, but at the time, it was shocking to see a cartoon aimed at adults.
 
The first season was a very different animal from the later ones. I don't think it was necessarily any worse, just different and not really what people think of when they think of what "The Simpsons" is all about.

Personally, I really liked the more slow-paced approach that gave a lot of the jokes some real room to breathe, the more grounded plots, and the less exaggerated, more relatable characters.

'Course, I very much like what most would consider the "Golden Age" of the show, too. Some days I'm in the mood for one, some days the other.
 
It's in some parts the best season of the entire series. The visual characters expressions being inventive and the animation is very good visual even if it's a bit yelling. I don't like neither the later seasons when the styles being satured and the characters less fun to watch.
 
imo it's by far the best season of the show. The animation style was at it's peak, and the expressions of the characters had none of the stiffness of later seasons, and it looked nice and hand drawn unlike the glossy cgi style of newer episodes. The jokes were well written and much funnier than later season jokes which are somewhat... family guy esque. I only first saw this season last year, but it seems fresh, indeed a lot fresher than say the Scully 'Homer is a idiot' episodes which i am quite tired of. There's only so many times you can watch Stupid Sexy Flanders and think it works before you get sick of the gag. Also in this, imo the best season of the show, Lisa isn't quite as annoyingly hippie and environmentalist as in later seasons, being more normal like Bart (although not as normal as in the shorts, which is the peak of her character imo before Simons ruined it and made her into a hateable nerd). Bart is in this season in his peak of character and it is this season that features bart being most normal. Indeed the show itself seems most normal during this season. In season two i think they ruined the show by 'improving' the animation and losing much of the character in the process, also by making Homer more stupid and less angry. Bart should be good old normal Bart, and Homer shouldn't be an idiot, he should be a normal father who gets angry at lots of stuff. And Marge shouldn't be cool with everything, she should be trying to fit in and going to church and doing normal things. Lisa should be punching Bart and being normal rather than being a treehugging beatnik layabout, and Maggie... well she was just better in the first season. Jimbo Kearney and Dolph were much more normal too before they became background characters in every episode. And the music and style of the show were much better too in this season.

I tell you season two ruined that show.
 
To me the early seasons are the best part of the show because the episodes have a real plot, and not various gags tied to make an episode.

I bought the Season 1 boxset, and still found those episodes to be very entertaining and funny.
 
I absolutely love when there's a first season rerun on tv. I'll admit, I probably do have some nostalgia speaking. But I think that I manage to stay unbiased for the most part when it comes to cartoons from my childhood. I recognize that the original He-Man cartoon was garbage, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon wasn't much better. But I still love watching the early Simpsons episodes as much as any of the other episodes.
 
I don't understand how anyone could like the later seasons' animation more.

It's pretty much undeniable that while the early seasons were a bit more sloppy animation-wise, they had much more interesting movement, and more variety in the characters' expressions and poses. The look of the show hadn't yet settled into a boring pattern of "as little movement as is necessary, with all in-betweens being straight A-to-B". If anything, it's the later seasons that have 'meh' animation. Maybe you don't like the first season's animation, but you can't really argue that it's boring compared to the rest.

For a while I preferred the first season to any others, when I first saw it (after having seen most of the 'golden age' first), simply because of how different it was, and how fascinating it was to see how the show had developed and changed. Now I'm a little less enamoured with it, because I can see that the writing isn't as tight as it would later be, and everything's a little rough. But it does has a special unique charm, and some good storytelling, and I'd take it over Season 10+ any day. Besides, it's where almost all of the famous trademarks of the show come from.
 
Simpsons is a lot like Rugrats when you think about it. Both shows started out pretty unfunny, with crude animaiton, and gradually grew into much better shows, then turned to mostly crap.
 
I liked the first season so much as a kid but when I see one of those episodes now, I just get an odd feeling of nostalgia. Not too much laughing. It's so hard to believe that this was the show every adult I knew was complaining about me watching because they thought it would corrupt the very core of my soul. It's still pretty fun to watch though and that early Homer voice is hilarious. The one thing I don't like about about current seasons is when they try to pull off something that they think is "cutting edge humor" but it just feels forced, dated and uncomfortable.
 
Most of the ingredients that would make the Simpsons great in seasons 2-8 are in place, but nothing's nuanced, and Homer has some evolving to do.

The first season episodes definitely interesting from an evolutionary standpoint, though.
 
The first season was great. It had my favorite episode to date, Krusty Gets Busted, and it had the type of animation that Matt Groening later worked hard to get eradicated from the series.
 
The animation in the first season is just crude, and in many cases is stilted and inexpressive. The movement is more distracting than interesting.

The animation in the Simpsons becomes a lot better from Season 4 onward. That's where we get Homer's Triple Bypass, Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie, Treehouse of Horror V and others. The art is tighter, and the crew are able to do more interesting and expressive thing with the characters.
 
There are a few great episodes, including the Baby Sitter Bandit, Krusty Gets Busted, and the one where Homer gives Marge a bowling ball for her birthday. The show hit its stride in the second season.
 
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