It Comes With A Slice Of Canteloupe At The End: THE SIMPSONS SEASON 1 POLL

I opened the thread again this morning and am still laughing over Homer's rabbit trap.

The more I think on this, the more "Bart the Genius" stands out as a potential vote, although "Life on the Fast Lane" is still the front runner for me.

http://home.comcast.net/~doa4/RDRRstare.gif

i also have a fondness for 'bart the general,' but i can't tell if it's because it's a good episode or because i enjoyed the bully-gets-his-comeuppance aspect

Was that the only instance of Marcia Wallace doing a non-Mrs. Krabappel voice?

xp

Use in scientific research[edit source]
"Bart the General" and Seinfeld's "The Tape" were used in a Dartmouth College experiment to study brain activity in relation to humorous moments in television shows. The results were published in a 2004 issue of the academic journal Neurolmage. The researchers noted, "During moments of humor detection, significant [brain] activation was noted in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus ... and left inferior frontal gyrus".[10]

wtf, there are like 100 funnier simpsons episodes

maybe the jokes come too fast and furious in better episodes. "humor detection" would be going on almost the entire time!

http://i.imgur.com/4fGuv9Q.gif

I just want to spend my whole day watching that.

Bumping.

I still haven't voted. :\

i think i'll vote bart the genius, was kind of the quintessential simpsons episode for me when the show first started. i watched these episodes then they originally aired, i was 7 years old!! i had like the only family in the neighborhood whose parents let their kids watch the simpsons. my whole family watched it together and we were totally hooked (except my mom), recording every episode on VHS until season 9. my oldest brother would come home from college and we'd all watch them together in marathon sessions

seasons 2-8/10 are going to be ROOOOOOOUGH choosing

Went w/ telltale head bc of story structure w/ call of the simpsons a close 2

xp yeah, might need to include an "ALL OF THEM" option so nobody has to Sophie's Choice

Went w/ telltale head bc of story structure

Man Simpsons used to be so good at structure, one of the saddest things about the newer ones is they are mostly just a bunch of unconnected wacky shit happening.

tbf, they've lost around 2-3 minutes per episode since 1990, which writers have said has messed with the plotting and structure significantly.

So, given the 3 minutes they gave Del Toro, how are they going to shoehorn 3 stories into the 14 minutes they have left for this year's Treehouse?

Del Toro is directing a Treehouse segment? Interesting...

I'm another who rewatched this recently and was surprised by how good it was, there's a slight dissonance because it's quite far from the show it had become even by the middle of season 2, but from a very early point they'd constructed something very consistent and distinct. It presents its subversiveness and its cleverness in a different way than it would later, but still goes impressively far in both respects. 'There's No Disgrace Like Home' stands out in my memory as a dud in a way that none of the others are, a couple of others are a bit weak, but overall this was already great TV. Gonna struggle to make my decision between five or six of them...

Don't get the "Disgrace" hate. There's some great stuff at the picnic and it ends with the family willingly shocking each other silly.

'there's no disgrace like home' - come on, the electric shock therapy bit is one of the best gags of season 1

xp!

Jeez what's ILE come to when we can't do a bit of hatin'. Actually 'No Disgrace...' isn't as clear in my memory as the others, maybe I forgot about it in my most recent season rewatch. Don't remember much besides drunk Marge and the shock therapy. More than the others I think it has the external problem of being hard to reconcile with where the show would later go, what with the inverted Homer-Marge dynamic.

babysitter bandit episode by far the shittiest of season 1

yea even my 7 year old self didn't like that episode

Shocked they didn't cancel the show right then and there.

Can you imagine if that HAD aired as the first ep, as planned? Even after being sent back for re-animation?

I think that's the only pre-crapulence Simpsons episode I've only seen twice. And I don't mind if I never see it again.

I think one of my favorite quotes when I first started watching these is from There's No Disgrace Like Home:

Homer: I'm sorry, Marge, but sometimes I think we're the worst family in town.
Marge: Maybe we should move to a larger community.

Kind of weird how different the characters were back in season 1.

i watched these episodes then they originally aired, i was 7 years old!!

jesus fuck I'm old

Yup. I was 20 when these first aired.

10, and I feel old now too.

(I mean, given we're on season 25.)

I was 17. I loved Life In Hell, but somehow missed the Ullman shorts.

Fortunately, my high school did not ban the "Bart Simpson: Underachiever And Proud Of It" t-shirts, and man, those things were fucking everywhere.

Ever see any of those bootleg "Simpsons Go Funky Reggae" shirts? With them all rasta-fied?

everyone saw those everywhere, they were more prevalent than licensed merchandise

^^^ GIS reveals dozens of variations.

I'm having such a hard time choosing in this poll. I don't love any of them, haven't rewatched any in ages, and I tend to think of Season 1 primarily as the era of writers retooling standard ancient sitcom plots, and actors not quite finding the voices yet. (And Moe's hair color changing!)

season premiere of bob's burgers seemed like a bit of an homage to 'call of the simpsons.'

okay fine I watched 'There's No Disgrace Like Home' again and it was very enjoyable.

Fortunately, my high school did not ban the "Bart Simpson: Underachiever And Proud Of It" t-shirts, and man, those things were fucking everywhere.

― hopping and bopping to the krokodil rot (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, October 4, 2013 2:41 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This happened other places too?! My grade 6 teacher, also the school's VP, made kids wear them inside out for the rest of the day if he saw 'em.

season premiere of bob's burgers seemed like a bit of an homage to 'call of the simpsons.'

yeah I saw a still of that on the BB's facebook page recently and had the same thought.

tempted to vote Bart the Genius cuz of the two characters in the history of The Simpsons to share my name one is one of Bart's gifted classmates and one... is one of Cletus' children, but I think I'm now leaning towards Bart the General. Bonus points for iirc being my childhood fave.

No love for "Moaning Lisa" here? Marge's climactic pep talk to Lisa still gets me choked up like very few of genuinely poignant moments from the series (and there are many).

Have been enjoying taking a peek at some of these, though I don't see myself getting to all of them before the poll's up. "Bart the Genius" was tough going in places - some long scenes with few jokes, but also so much heart (the game of catch! what the heck?!). What's amazing is how many things are already basically fully formed - the voices of Krabappel and Skinner, for example.

Just watched "Krusty Gets Busted" and was outright impressed. The "kids solve a mystery" plot is way funnier now that I get that it's a deliberately ridiculous version of that trope, rather than a straight-faced series of clues being discovered. And Sideshow Bob is pure genius - the idea of the villain being the guy who wants to turn kids' programming highbrow is just funny all by itself, even without the notion that it's actually a wildly successful venture. Also Kelsey Grammer's acting is perfect. And Homer's scene looking at the lineup of the clowns is totally classic Homer, paced and acted almost exactly like you'd expect the same scene to be in Season 4.

i polled two or three of the classic simpsons seasons like three years ago fwiw

anyway the only joke i can really remember from any of these is 'bart, youre just like chilly, the elf who cannot love' which makes me smile even typing it out. actually that and the rd/rr one in 'bart the genius' so i dont really have any opinion abt the thread qn. just wanted to reminisce about the simpsons smurfs parody and stake my claim

loved Moaning Lisa bitd. first ep i ever saw.

jesus "Moaning Lisa" is the worst

series 1 too shit to vote for tbh, sort Homer's voice out, stop trying to make me feel shit

last 2 or 3 eps aren't terrible, i guess

good lord this season is the fucken worst

Has to be Crepes of Wrath for the Adil b-story mostly and because French-bashing in The Simpsons is never not funny in the first ten seasons.

Actually, I just realised the best scene in Season One is the clown line-up in Krusty Gets Busted.

really can't understand people saying this season sucks when the Simpsons: Season 26 exists

it's possible for more than one thing to suck

also i prefer lol-free cheap wisecrackery to lol-free emo bullshit

Tough but fair. Season 2 tomorrow!

I've been finding myself re-watching the early seasons of The Simpsons recently, and I was surprised by just how many of these episodes I remembered. There was quite a few of these episodes I hadn't really seen since the early '90s, and I was struck by how slower-paced, much less surreal and relatively undeveloped (character-wise) these episodes are in hindsight.

However, I still like this season, and I think its flaws only become apparent with hindsight - it was fine at the time!

The scene where Marge unplugs the TV just as Homer is finally going to defeat Bart at that boxing game is still as fucking funny to me as the first time I saw it. As is Bart receiving/testing out his spy camera, Homer screaming at Bart and Lisa "BE NORMAL! BE NORMAL!" at Burns' picnic while Marge gets drunk on punch (which now all seems strange to watch all these seasons later) - and, of course, "KWYJIBO" ...