By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published February 16, 2003

How does The Simpsons consistently keep hitting that Homer out of the park? We offer 10 reasons why this comedy's an American classic.

Three hundred episodes. Eighteen Emmy Awards. Thirteen years. And a range of characters that has included physicist Stephen Hawking, pop star Michael Jackson and a baby with a loaded gun.

Welcome to the world of The Simpsons, a groundbreaking cartoon that tonight celebrates a milestone few other TV shows reach, made more remarkable because of how the series has so consistently pushed the envelope of taste, social commentary, artful satire and flat-out comedy.

"I think the last show to reach 300 episodes was Knots Landing," joked executive producer Al Jean (The Critic, Teen Angel), an Emmy-winning writer who has worked on The Simpsons since its inception.

(As it turns out, he's right. The prime time soap reached more than 300 episodes in 1993; other shows that passed the milestone include Dallas, My Three Sons, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Bonanza.)

"When you look at what was on when we started, we were kind of a reaction, along with Roseanne and Married . . . With Children, to The Cosby Show," Jean said, noting the late '80s return to the dysfunctional-working-class-family-with-a-heart formula that powered classics such as The Honeymooners and All in the Family.

"Now we're up against American Idol and Joe Millionaire . . . It's just an astounding (change). I feel like a visitor from another time or something. When we were coming on, it was an enormous comedy boom . . . (and) I hope it goes back to comedy at some point."

Created by cartoonist Matt Groening as a series of 30-second spots for Fox's The Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons debuted as a stand-alone program for a Christmas special in December 1989 and became a regular series the next month.

Today, it's TV's longest-running animated show and the most consistently funny series ever made. Fox has built a brand of comedy around its formula, with programs ranging from Malcolm in the Middle to The Bernie Mac Show echoing its rhythms.

Even the caustic Web site Jump the Shark (which compares the moment a TV series becomes irrevocably awful with the moment Happy Days character Fonzie, wearing water skis, jumped over a shark tank) agrees that The Simpsons hasn't begun to decline.

"There is absolutely no precedent in the history of American television for a show to stay this good this long," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Even the great serialized novels didn't go on as long as this one."

Noting that the CBS soap opera The Guiding Light remains history's longest continuing story (it began as a radio show in 1937), Thompson said The Simpsons may be history's longest high-quality story.

"I really think the collective body of Simpsons work by all means deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence with Chaplin, Mark Twain and all the great achievements of American comedy," the professor said. "This is great American comic art in any medium."

How did such accolades come to be piled on a series about an overweight, underachieving nuclear reactor safety inspector and his oddball family?

Read on, and discover the Top 10 Reasons the Simpsons Still Matter After 300 Episodes.

Reason No. 10: They're animated.

The biggest advantage a long-running animated show has over a flesh-and-blood series is obvious: The characters don't change unless you want them to.

Bart and Lisa Simpson have remained 10 and 8 years old for more than a decade, Homer has kept the same two hairs on top of his balding head and infant Maggie has remained in diapers while her real-life peers have grown into braces and training bras.

"You don't turn on the show and see, 'Oh my God, Fonzie's in a retirement home!' " said Jean, laughing. "Wonder Years was one show where it was so special at one time, and when (the child stars) got older, it seemed to lose a little. The Simpsons, as conceived by (executive producers) Matt Groening and Jim Brooks and Sam Simon, was so rich with so many characters . . . If you're a smart kid, you can relate to Lisa; if you're a big idiot, you can relate to Homer."

But there's another advantage to animation. It also keeps the show from being taken too seriously. So producers can say things about religion, TV violence, consumerism, homosexuality and corporate greed that could alienate sponsors and viewers if featured on a real-life series.

"Great masterpieces deal with big issues, (and) The Simpsons, in fact, deal with a lot of that stuff," said Thompson. "God talks to Homer like he talks to Abraham -- in actual language. You put stuff like that on The Simpsons, and it gets a certain seal of approval."

Reason No. 9: The network kept its hands off.

Simpsons co-creator James L. Brooks, a three-time Oscar winner who produced such TV classics as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi and Room 222, had one rule for network executives who might suggest changes during the show's early days.

Don't bother.

"A big problem with other shows . . . there are a great deal of TV executives who give input to a show, which isn't the case here," Jean said. "Jim says, 'We know what we're doing and if you don't think so, we can just stop doing it right now.' "

Fox itself was just emerging when The Simpsons started, so the network needed shows that broke the rules of television and embodied its subversive style.

"Fox was a network that was not just in last place, they were in zero place," Thompson said. "By the time the network started playing by the others' rules, the (Simpsons') precedent was established."

Reason No. 8: D'oh! It's Homer.

Remember how the classic sitcom Good Times drowned in irrelevance after scripts started focusing more and more on Jimmie "J.J." Walker? Or the way Happy Days died once it turned into the Fonzie Show and star Henry Winkler started aging out of the part?

Simpsons producers dodged a similar bullet when they avoided building every episode around tagline machine Bart ("Don't have a cow, man" and "Ay Caramba" were early bumper sticker faves) and focused instead on hapless dad Homer.

"Somewhere in the very early seasons, it became clear to the people creating this series it was an American epic about an Everyschlub," Thompson said. "Homer Simpson is, let's face it, one of the great creations of American literature."

Indeed, Homer's odyssey over 13 years has been as expansive as the Greek epic, including a stint managing a country music singer, a hidden past as a barbershop quartet star, time as Springfield's snowplow king and a too-brief moment as a super-achieving corporate go-getter (it all evaporated when Homer stopped using a hair tonic that gave him an impressive coif).

Reason 7: It makes fun of the same stuff that feeds its success.

Done by anyone else, a hokey gimmick song such as Do the Bartman would have been royally -- and rightly -- skewered by The Simpsons itself. (Remember the Vegas-style parody of the Brady Bunch's hapless foray into musicality, The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour?)

But instead, Bartman -- which debuted in November 1990 and was featured in a post-episode music video the next month -- pushed sales of the gimmicky soundtrack The Simpsons Sing the Blues past 1-million in its first week.

There have been Simpsons dolls, a Homer talking bottle opener, Simpsons spinning lamps, two seasons' worth of episodes on DVD, a host of related books and even a Moe's Tavern play set (with special Duffman action figure!).

This leads to a very special way of having your cake while gulping it down whole -- allowing the network to reap huge rewards from aggressively merchandising a series that stays hip by lampooning everyone else's mega-marketing.

"The Simpsons is both a commentary and a critique of the cultural phenomenon it is mired in," Thompson said. "In one sense, it's a great hypocrisy, but maybe that also makes it a symbol for modern culture."

Reason 6: It's the writers, stupid.

Jean estimated that there are about 20 writers on the show, many with long tenures and extensive knowledge of past shows. Long gone are the days when such writers might be off making their own shows, which increases the Simpsons' writing bench strength.

Working with comedy experts such as Brooks helped Jean hone his skills and make Simpsons characters more complex than typical TV types.

"(Brooks) taught me a great deal about imparting reality and emotion to characters in a way that moves an audience," the producer said. "You look at the shows he's done . . . people don't just like the characters, they love them. (Characters) don't just give punch lines, they also reveal themselves with what they say. You're always trying to figure out what the emotion is and bring that to the character."

Reason 5: It's the voices, too.

Not only have the actors who voice the Simpsons helped create a historic core cast, they also often voice many of the show's other signature characters.

Ullman Show veteran Dan Castellaneta plays Homer and about a dozen other regulars, including Krusty the Clown, Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumbel, Mayor Quimby and Groundskeeper Willie. Nancy Cartwright plays Bart, bully Nelson and the Flanders kids, Rod and Todd.

Spinal Tap alum Harry Shearer has more than a dozen characters to his credit, including Montgomery Burns, his assistant Smithers, Principal Skinner, Reverend Lovejoy and Ned Flanders.

When you can fill a town with six or seven talented actors, it makes casting the perfect person a whole lot easier.

Reason 4: It's timeless.

Because the animation process takes six months to complete, Simpsons episodes are written far in advance (producers are now working on next year's Halloween episode, for example). One cool byproduct: The topicality that makes so many comedies feel so dated in reruns is largely missing from The Simpsons.

Of course, that lag time can make producers wary of tackling some subjects where the public's mood is more fluid.

"Homer had a fistfight with George Bush Sr. (in a past episode), so one of the writers pitched that George Bush Jr., now that he's president, takes his revenge on Homer," Jean said.

"The reason I'm shying away from doing it is, with a political figure, you don't know what the feeling is from time to time. At one point, people said you can't make fun of the president. Now we're saying maybe you can."

Jean did advocate getting one controversial show back in the rerun rotation: the 1995 episode where Homer travels to the World Trade Center to pick up a car his pal Barney parked there while on a bender (the episode was shelved for a year after the twin towers' collapse).

"People know that it was written prior (to the terrorist attack)," he said. "And to pretend that (the twin towers) never existed is sort of dishonoring the people that died there."

Reason 3: It's layered.

Watch a Simpsons rerun for the second or third time, and chances are you'll catch jokes you missed the first time. Animators sometimes even slip in visual gags that weren't in the script.

This extends the life of reruns and spreads the show's appeal. (Simpsons reruns on WTOG-Ch. 44 have often earned ratings greater than the combined viewership of the four local TV stations offering news during the same time periods.)

Reason 2: It had four years to get going.

Because Groening did Simpsons shorts for the Ullman show over four years, he had time to develop the concept.

Key innovations: making Homer less mean and more clueless, while reinforcing the notion that, at the end of the day, the members of this dysfunctional family really care for each other. D'oh! indeed.

Reason 1: It's still funny.

Just watch tonight's episode, in which Homer tests his skateboarding prowess against champ Tony Hawk (rockers Blink-182 and Malcolm star Jane Kaczmarek also make an appearance) and try not to laugh. I dare you.

-- AT A GLANCE: The Simpsons' 300th episode airs at 8 tonight on WTVT-Ch. 13. TV-PG. Grade: A.

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