Cold Open

It’s November 25th, 1990, on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Rob Cohen presses gently on the gas pedal, carefully keeping his distance from the parade float in front of him. Sitting next to him is a dancer in a large, colorful costume. But Rob has to wrinkle his nose—the costume stinks of sweat and damp felt. Still, he doesn't mind. After all, it isn’t every day that you get to drive Bart Simpson in the Hollywood Christmas Parade.

In the back seat, two other performers wear life-size costumes of Bart’s siblings, Lisa and Maggie Simpson. And in the car behind them are their parents, Homer and Marge. With their spiky hair, bright yellow skin, and bulging eyes, Rob thinks the figures look a little creepy, but the people lining the street don't seem to mind.

There must be thousands here to enjoy the spectacle. They’ve already shouted themselves hoarse to cheer the parade king, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as a host of other celebrities, and Rob wonders if the crowd will take much interest in a bunch of glorified mascots. But those worries soon disappear. As the Simpsons family waves to their devoted fans, deafening screams explode from both sides of the street. Rob waves too, but no one recognizes him. The people of Los Angeles are here to see the Simpsons, not a lowly production assistant like him.

Rob presses a button on the dashboard, and speakers pump out one of the hottest tracks of the year—the novelty rap song “Do the Bart Man.” The dancer wearing the Bart costume stands up in the front seat and begins to dance, driving the crowd mad.

Everyone goes wild, they’re only halfway down the boulevard when the crowd suddenly surges forward. People of all ages mob the convertible, desperate to reach out and touch their favorite TV family. Rob has to hit the brakes to avoid hitting anyone. He can only shake his head in disbelief.

It’s chaos and madness. But this is Bartmania.

The police quickly clear a path for Rob Cohen and the dancers to escape, but the screams of the crowd follow the convoy down the street. The Simpsons has taken America by storm. “Bartmania” is in full swing, and merchandise featuring the famous family and their catchphrases dominates storeshelves all across the country.

This hysteria, though, will eventually fade. But The Simpsons themselves won’t go anywhere. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie will remain America’s favorite family, and just over six years later, they will make television history as the longest-running primetime animated series on February 9th, 1997.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is February 9th, 1997: The Simpsons Makes Television History.

Act One: Success and Failure in Hollywood

It’s January 1987, at a country club in Ojai, California, three years before the 1990 Hollywood Christmas Parade.

Ken Estin sinks into a chair in his suite and stares across a low table, strewn with papers. Next to him are three other producers, as well as their boss, James L. Brooks. They all look tired, and the reason why is scattered across the table in front of them—the script pages from the pilot of their new sketch comedy, The Tracey Ullman Show.

No one has made a program like this in a long time, and a sketch show with multiple scenes in each sketch has never been done before. So, they need something to break up the sketches so the audience doesn’t get confused about where one ends and another begins. But they don’t know what would work best.

They’ve been at it for hours, throwing ideas at each other over games of golf and drinks at the bar. Their current favorite option is a talking bear, but no one really likes it. Slumped in his chair, Ken rolls his pen across his fingers as he listens to the others brainstorm what hijinks this talking bear might get up to. Next to him, though, Jim Brooks sighs. Ken can see he’s frustrated. Fox has given him complete creative control over The Tracey Ullman Show, and he wants it to be perfect. But whatever this talking bear is, it’s definitely not perfect.

But as he listens to the others, Ken suddenly thinks about a comic strip he likes called Life in Hell featuring a talking rabbit—why that’s popped into his head, he doesn't know. But he interrupts the others, wondering aloud whether they could convince the cartoonist behind the script to turn his comic into short animations they can use in the show.

Jim sits up, suddenly energized. He knows Life in Hell—he has one of the strips hanging in his office. He even had a meeting with its creator, Matt Groening, a couple of years back. Nothing came of it, but Jim can see how Groening’s sense of humor would be perfect for the new show. Everyone else around the table likes the idea too—they all agree that Groening’s talking rabbit is better than their talking bear. So, they set up a call.

But to their frustration, Groening decides he doesn’t want to sell Life in Hell to Fox. Instead, he offers them something else. In a meeting at Jim Brooks’ office, he presents them with a new idea—a dysfunctional suburban family he calls the Simpsons. The brightly colored characters are named after his own parents, Homer and Marge, and two of his siblings, Lisa and Maggie. The only name Groening changes is his own, with “Bart” replacing Matt.

Jim Brooks likes the idea, and Groening starts negotiations with Fox. The studio drives a hard bargain. And Groening eventually agrees to a low upfront payment in exchange for a larger slice of the profits on any Simpsons merchandise. But TV show merchandise has never been a huge market, so the executives at Fox think they’ve gotten a steal.

Matt Groening gets to work, and when The Tracey Ullman Show debuts a few months later, America meets the Simpsons for the first time. And while the sketch comedy show is well-received, it’s Groening’s animated shorts that seem to capture the public's attention.

Jim Brooks quickly realizes he has something special on his hands—something that deserves more than just a few short clips in someone else’s show. So, he pitches a full season of The Simpsons to Fox—fully animated 22-minute episodes, airing in the primetime slot, with the same voice cast who brought the characters to life on The Tracey Ullman Show.

But Fox's executives are wary. Animation is expensive, and they doubt that even a popular cartoon can bring in the numbers needed for primetime. It’s only after Jim threatens to quit the network entirely that the executives cave, and the first season of The Simpsons gets the greenlight.

Together with Matt Groening, Jim sets up his new production in an out-of-the-way office on the Fox lot. Fresh graduates and students from CalArts make up most of the team, and the crew is so unknown that many of them get hassled by security for trespassing when they turn up for work.

But despite their inexperience, after eight months of production, the first episode of The Simpsons will finally be ready. Airing on December 17th, 1989, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” will get the second-highest ratings in the history of the Fox network. The satire of classic Christmas tropes will set the perfect tone for the new show, and when the rest of the season airs in the new year, millions will tune in. Soon, The Simpsons will eclipse The Tracey Ullman Show and become something far more than just a cartoon—it will become a cultural phenomenon.

Act Two: The Golden Age

It’s early 1995, in Los Angeles, California, five years after the launch of The Simpsons.

In a glass-walled recording booth, Dan Castellaneta makes some final notations in his script as technicians prepare for the recording session. At 48 years old, Dan is a veteran actor who’s appeared in dozens of television shows and movies—but in his best-known role, his audience never sees his face. For almost ten years now, Dan has been the voice of the most famous father on television, Homer J. Simpson.

The Simpsons has come a long way since their debut on The Tracey Ullman Show. The cast of characters has grown far beyond the original family and now includes dozens of the Simpsons’ classmates, colleagues, neighbors, and friends. Dan voices many of these new characters himself, from the television star Krusty the Clown to the irascible Scottish janitor, Groundskeeper Willy. But his main role will always be Homer.

It’s a role that has grown larger and larger over the years. When the show first launched, it was 10-year-old Bart who was the main character. But as The Simpsons went on, both its writers and its fans found themselves drawn to Homer more than Bart. And it’s his misadventures that drive most of the stories now.

The episode Dan is recording today is titled “Two Bad Neighbors.” Former President George H. W. Bush moves in across the street from the Simpsons. But when he spanks Bart for misbehaving, he sparks a vendetta with Homer that ends with the two men brawling in the street.

This episode reignites a long-running, if lighthearted, feud between the Simpsons and President Bush. Back in 1990, when The Simpsons first captured the world’s attention, the then First Lady, Barbara Bush, called the show “the dumbest thing she'd ever seen.” Two years later, while campaigning for re-election, Bush himself called for Americans to be less like the Simpsons and more like the Waltons, a supposedly more wholesome TV family.

The appeal to traditional American values didn't work for Bush. But his defeat in that election doesn’t mean that the writers on The Simpsons have forgotten what he said about them. And now, they’re taking revenge in typical fashion. The storyline about the Bushes moving to the Simpsons’ hometown may seem bold and bizarre. But after half a decade on air, the showrunners are more and more willing to push the envelope.

Last year, they recorded a cliffhanger for season six that echoed the famous “Who shot J.R.?” mystery from the 1980s television drama Dallas. In this episode, after blocking the town’s sunlight and stealing millions of dollars’ worth of oil from Springfield Elementary School, the villainous Montgomery Burns is gunned down by an unknown assailant.

Dan and the rest of the cast can’t wait for that episode to air later this year. He can only imagine how the show’s fans will obsess over it and try to work out the mystery. Even Dan hasn’t been told the right answer—all he knows is that several different endings have been recorded, and no matter how much they’re asked, the writers aren’t saying anything. So, like everyone else, he’ll just have to tune in and find out the truth.

In the meantime, the rest of season seven needs recording. “Two Bad Neighbors” will be episode 13, and Dan’s been looking forward to this one. At the table read with the rest of the cast, he struggled not to break character and burst out laughing, as he and the voice actor playing President Bush played out their escalating conflict. But now he’s in the recording booth, and he's mostly got the giggles under control. He places his annotated script on its stand, puts his headphones on, and then gives the producers a thumbs-up. He’s ready to go.

In the years to come, this will be called the “Golden Age” of The Simpsons. Ratings skyrocket as reviewers heap praise on the show’s innovative humor and sometimes surprising heart. The craze of “Bartmania” may have died down by this point, but the show has proven it’s not a flash in the pan. Instead, The Simpsons has become something few would have predicted—a staple of modern American culture.

But as the awards and praise pour in, some people will begin to wonder just how long this Golden Age can last. And as The Simpsons closes in on a historic television milestone, even inside the production team, doubts will grow. As the writers begin work on season eight, they’ll face new pressures and new questions about the future of the show.

But they’ll respond in typical Simpsons’ fashion—by making a joke of it.

Act Three: Itchy, Scratchy, and Poochie.

It’s February 9th, 1997, in Los Angeles, California, two years after the recording of the “Two Bad Neighbors” episode.

Matt Groening slumps down on his couch and turns on the television. He flicks over to Fox just in time to hear the familiar theme tune of The Simpsons, the cartoon he created more than a decade ago. Thanks to the merchandising deal he originally struck with Fox, the show has made Groening a very wealthy man. Though his involvement in The Simpsons isn’t as hands-on as it used to be, and Groening doesn’t even watch every episode as it airs. But tonight is a special occasion.

This episode is all about a cartoon within the cartoon. “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” is Bart and Lisa Simpson’s favorite, a violent parody of Tom and Jerry featuring a long-suffering cat and a sadistic mouse. But in this new episode, the show is struggling to keep its audience, and so the executives in charge try to freshen things up with a new character—a dog named Poochie, who is voiced, of course, by Homer Simpson himself. But this attempt to reinvigorate the show backfires. Loyal viewers don’t like the change, and despite Homer’s best efforts to save his character, Poochie is abruptly killed off by its creators. This episode pokes fun at everyone involved in a popular cartoon, from the writers and animators to the clueless executives and even the obsessive and demanding fans.

But the biggest in-joke is aimed at The Simpsons itself. The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show marks the 167th episode of The Simpsons, making it the longest-running primetime animated show in American history. When it first aired, there hadn’t been a hit cartoon since the days of The Flintstones and The Jetsons in the 1960s, and no one could have predicted the runaway success The Simpsons would have.

But now, even though The Simpsons is as popular as ever, there’s a creeping doubt in some people’s minds that, like Itchy & Scratchy, it can’t go on forever. At its heart, this 167th episode is not so much a celebration as a witty reflection on how an established show can continue season after season, how it can reinvent itself, and whether it should even try.

Eventually, The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show will be hailed as one of The Simpsons' best ever. But in the eyes of some of the fans, eventually The Simpsons will reach its “Poochie” moment as well, when it loses touch with what made it fresh and original. In the 2000s, some will start calling it a “zombie” show—a program that staggers on year after year, just popular enough to avoid being canceled without ever getting close to its previous heights.

But regardless of the quality of its later seasons, there can be no doubt about the impact The Simpsons had in the 1990s, or its transformative effect on the rest of television. Thanks to its success, a host of other animated shows were able to follow in its footsteps. But there will never be another quite like The Simpsons, the groundbreaking and hilarious cartoon that made history on February 9th, 1997.

Outro

Next on History Daily. February 10th, 1972. When his music career begins to stagnate, David Bowie reinvents himself with an alien alter-ego he names Ziggy Stardust.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Samuel Hume.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.