Yellow journalism

I’d like to pitch a TV show to you. It revolves around a family you’ve probably seen some variation of on television before.

It has a beer-chugging dope of a father, a nag of a mother, an under-achieving brother, an over-achieving sister, a mute but resourceful baby and a senile grandfather who shows up occasionally. 

Oh, and everyone is yellow.

A sample episode goes something like this: The father (let’s call him Homer) loses all his money when he is robbed at a cyber café. He and his wife (we’ll name her Marge) attend a money-saving seminar to cope. They learn how to save on a vacation and steal their neighbors’ tickets to Japan.

Once there, the family gets into a series of misadventures including arrests and watching a TV show that gives them all seizures. Eventually, they spend all of their money and are forced to take jobs in a fish-gutting plant. They see an ad for a game show on television and become contestants, hoping that they can win tickets back to America. They are forced to walk across an unstable bridge suspended over a volcano in order to get their prize and get back home.

In further episodes, Homer will become a rock star, join a freak show and nearly kill the queen of England.

If you want to tell me to get out of your office, you should know that you are passing up one of biggest TV shows of all time.
 
“The Simpsons” is one of TV’s longest running sitcoms. It premiered in 1989 and has since aired more than 400 episodes in its 22 seasons, making it the longest running primetime series of all time. Its heyday may be gone, but it still has staying power that dwarfs almost all other American TV shows and plants it firmly in the American social consciousness.

“The animation format allows the Simpsons to exist in a rather static universe. Bart will always be 10 years old, Maggie is never going to start walking and Lisa will always be an impetuous second grader. Most TV shows bank on consistent characters to attract viewers, and animated shows have the luxury of presenting a unique level of consistency,” Jeremiah Donovan said.

Donovan is a graduate student in media theory in the IU Department of Communication and Culture.

“In addition, compared to shows set in ‘the real world,’ animated shows permit more fanciful storylines and relatively consequenceless action. These factors have added creativity and excitement to ‘The Simpsons.’”

If anything might counteract the static qualities of “The Simpsons,” it would be its frequent pop culture references, which place some episodes firmly in the ’90s or Aughts. In one instance, Marge responds to Homer’s invitation to a spa by saying: “That place is famous. It’s where J-Lo hit P. Diddy upside the head with Gary Coleman.” However, their episodes are so craftily constructed that such throwaway lines won’t affect its timeliness.

“Rarely, I think, were earlier episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ topical. That is, though they may reference a lot of popular culture artifacts, entire plots are rarely focused on a current event,” Donovan said. “Or, even if certain episodes do center on a current event, loosely veiled, of course, there is usually enough humor to allow viewers to understand the episodes as simply a part of the Simpsons universe. A viewer need not get every 1950s movie reference or 1998 pop culture reference to find the show enjoyable.”

Donovan also credits the show with legitimizing primetime animated shows, without which “Family Guy” and “South Park” may not be possible. Regardless, “The Simpsons” is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Fox picked up a 23rd season of the show in November, meaning that the series will hit 500 episodes next year. Even if the show does eventually end, its influence will be felt far into the future as viewers revisit its unprecedented run. 

As Donovan observes, “Being a fan is timeless.”