Simpsons Season 1 = Too dated?

I still enjoy the first season of the show. While not having some of the elements/being a bit rougher compared to later seasons, it's still funny. I always liked the babysitter bandit, plus one of my favorite lines of Homer's is from this season ("yeah, if you want [a tattoo] you'll have to pay for it out of your own allowance.")

-B.
 
Like pretty much any other long-running comedy, the first season was the show trying to find its feet and figure out what it wanted to do. The first season of Seinfeld wasn't funny either.

No, I don't enjoy watching first season episodes, and most of the episodes I don't really laugh at at all, and yes, they are a lot weaker than most of the rest of the series, but I still respect them for what they are. Yes the show started off very crude, but look at the wonderfulness that came out of it.

The show really hit its stride about halfway through the second season, maybe even toward the end, IMO.
 
No way. Season 1 may have nostalgia factor, but outside of maybe 3 episodes, it doesn't really hold up at all.

And Some Enchanted Evening is one of my least favorite episodes of the entire show.
 
Season 1 really does nothing for me. The animation is jarring, the writing lacks much of the charm and subtlety of the good years, and the characters feel more like background stereotypes instead of the inverted kinds they become in later seasons.

It did feature a much more sympathetic Homer though, which is certainly a plus when the modern one is either explosively angry or horribly dim-witted.
 
You'll hardly find anyone who agrees that Season 1 is dated because most people prefer to bash Season 9 onwards. but on my opinion, Season 1 and most of the classic seasons are way outdated in terms of slang, culture, and gags.

I even consider Futurama a bit outdated since it relies on the perceptions people had about the future in the year 2000. but Futurama is not the topic..

I enjoy watching the first season and I even have the DVD's but it's undeniable that everything looks and sounds so outdated..
 
With Season 1, you can tell that the writers are really trying to be funny, as opposed to Season 2 and onward where it comes more naturally to them. And maybe there are times when they try a little too hard. There are some gags that feel a little forced or awkward, and the plots tend to rely on some pretty big contrivances (like Bart suddenly learning French completely out of the blue in "The Crepes of Wrath"), while others just feel disjointed ("Homer's Night Out" abruptly and awkwardly shifts from Homer and Marge's marital argument to Homer needing to teach Bart to respect women), and others still are hardly anything groundbreaking (name me one sitcom that hasn't done something similar to "The Call of the Simpsons"). And the characterizations hadn't been ironed out yet - nowhere is this more evident than in "There's No Disgrace Like Home", where Lisa is an obnoxious brat, Marge is a slovenly drunk, and Homer is the concerned level-headed member of the family who willingly pawns the TV set in order to afford Dr. Marvin Monroe's therapy session.

But in spite of that, the season does have its moments. "Bart the General" is the first full-blown movie parody that the show ever did, and it's just as clever as anything from the later seasons. "Moaning Lisa" is a brilliant character study for Lisa that establishes her as being on a different wavelength than everyone else in Springfield, and also contains a great humorous subplot with Bart and Homer playing video games. "Life on the Fast Lane" is probably one of the best "Homer and Marge's marriage" episodes, with equal parts emotion and humor, not to mention Albert Brooks' first really great guest appearance. And "Krusty Gets Busted" is a tour de force from Brad Bird, weaving a clever little mystery that actually is solvable if you look at the clues, and setting up Sideshow Bob as a classic recurring character.

Animation-wise, yes, it can be crude, but at other times it can be quite brilliant. Homer pounding on Bart's bedroom door in "Bart the Genius" is one of my favorite bits of "Simpsons" animation ever - his rage is perfectly conveyed in every drawing. "Moaning Lisa" and "Life on the Fast Lane" have a lot of great subtle drawings that say more than dialogue ever could. Krusty getting a pie in the face from Sideshow Bob and then punching his lights out in "Krusty Gets Busted" is one of the most perfectly timed visual gags this show has ever done, and Krusty's heart attack elsewhere in the episode is full of hysterical drawings. And even the so-called "sloppy" animation that got through in "Some Enchanted Evening" has some great fluidity and expression, most notably Ms. Botz's "I said you're gonna watch this tape and you're gonna do what I say" line. I was amazed to see something that expressive on "The Simpsons".

So no, I don't consider Season 1 inferior. It's different, sure, and it has its share of weaknesses, but it still entertains me. It set the stage for the next seven years, when the show would blossom and flourish as the greatest animated series on television. Every great series needs to start somewhere.
 
It just fit with Bart's personality and the way you could get away with something like that with his design!


I still like to say it!


I know what you mean.


I felt that way too, the way they used to talk in those earlier episodes kinda gave away to a more confined and by-the-numbers approach to animating them that would be the standard they would go with for years, though I still felt there was something more lively about the way they did it in these earlier episodes.


I often felt their money trouble was too much like the one my family had then, so I related to The Simpsons a bit more because of that.


It was those ideas that made the show what it was despite it's differences towards people's perceptions of what a cartoon was. Married... With Children was also a early fav of mine (and Fox was the only network capable to show such ballsy shows).


Let alone Homer working at the power plant since they often don't show him there as much nowadays!


It seemed like it got very surreal after season 3 in my book. Where the earlier seasons were quite pedestrian in the Simpson world and it's workings, they later had some fun in adding a lot of that unusual and surreal things though I tend to favor the down-to-earth factor the show began with.


Seems like it.


Those episodes were the best indeed for those details.


Which you couldn't blame since Digital Ink & Paint wasn't a standard yet in Hollywood besides what Hanna-Barbera tried to do with their clunky system then. I often remind myself of how cheap the second season look as often they didn't paint the cels fully enough, especially the red color as you tend to see through those colors transparently.


In the case of "Some Enchanting Evening", much of that could be blame on how it had been handled by two different teams as the episode was meant to be the true pilot to the show until the producers saw what Kent Butterworth tried with his hand and later had someone else fix it, leading to how it appeared. Many early episodes in season one also got animated in-house besides sent later to Korea's Akom.


They were. I'll still miss the way they backgrounds had that gradient tone in the first couple episodes (including some of Some Enchanting Evening), let alone they way they cheat on using a particular piece of textured paper to mock the floors of places including streets instead of painting them directly on the background cels.
 
I find Season 1 to be quite funny. Its not constant laughter like the seasons that come after, but the episodes are definitely amusing.

It still holds up IMO.
 
You know, I feel like many of the early episodes are filled with quick gags that could very well be animated adaptations of comic strips. I guess they were more influence d by the original shorts. One good example of what I'm talking about is in Homer at the Bat (though it's from the third season). The various short scenes with the baseball players doing things that prevent them from playing in the championship look like they could be stand-alone daily comics, with soem having a sunday comics quality.

I like the first season, though I do like a lot of later seasons better. And normally my favorite seasons of TV shows are the first and last seasons, with a few in-between seasosn thrown into the top favorites list (though The Simpsons still hasn't had it's last season). Some of my favorite first season episodes include Bart the Genius, There's No Discrace Like Home (despite the fact that half the family appears to have different personalities than what we know now), and Krusty Gets Busted.
 
Could be a colouring mistake or could be they weren't super sure of how everyone would look at the time. I don't think we get the Simpsons we know now until the second or third seasons. Much like how Moe had black hair and pink apron and his bar looked more like a saloon, blonde Barney, and black haired Wiggum.
 
I think in another episode, it looked like they tried digitally coloring Smithers' a bit more yellow as his skin color was not correct as well in that episode, the one I'm talking about is the one where the family goes to Burn's house for a company picnic.
 
I think in one of the commentaries they explain in more detail, that it was due to one colorist who decided to randomly colour the characters with darker skin, trying to create a more inter-racial show. Unfortunately she just did it arbitrarily, causing some characters who were clearly supposed to be yellow to have the wrong skin tone.
 
Not really blaming season 1 for something it couldn't help; I was more saying, "newer episodes are digitally colored, the older ones are not, so they're going to look more dated". I'm well aware digital coloring wasn't common in 1990. Yup, I know all about the backstory of the production woes for that episode. Actually I find that more interesting than the episode itself. Though I did like Homer's cover story at the end where he pretends he fought Botz to the news cameras. "Have you ever seen a kung fu movie? It was JUST like that!"
 
You know I noticed that in Season 1, the Simpsons actually feel more realistic as a family. The characters didn't do anything too crazy and it felt like they all had emotional attachment to each other.

Homer was the big one, always looking out to make sure his family is happy. I miss things like Homer playing catch with Bart in the backyard, or the realistic Homer/Marge break-up stuff that's done better here than in the later seasons.

Bart was a prankster and the 10 year old we all knew and loved, later on I feel like they lost this part of Bart's character.

Lisa was a feminist, an idealist, and intelligent, but she still felt like an 8 year old girl. Later seasons make her sound way too old for her age. Marge was also more like a mother you'd expect.

I also miss stuff like Bart/Lisa making prank calls to Moe's tavern, or Selma/Patty bringing over a slide collection for them to view.

Man, going back to these early episodes really does feel like going back in time. I feel like I'm back in 1989 or 1990's when I watch these eps.
 
I enjoy some episodes a little more surreal. I mean Lisa was a little obnoxious. Marge was a very uninteresting character. The extras had no character. Later seasons I feel just are a little more fun to watch than season one.
 
I'd rather shoot myself than have to sit through that stupid babysitter episode one more time.

Yes its dated. Its horrible looking, the jokes fall flat, the characters are boring and the money woes are depressing!!

That's my gun and I'm stickin' to 'em!
 
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