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| Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy
Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, Phil Hartman |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Homer
(Dan Castellaneta): Sometimes I think we're the worst family in
town.
Marge (Julie Kavner): Maybe we should move to a larger community.
- Simpsons Roasting Over An Open Fire: The upcoming Christmas
looks likely to be a bleak prospect, as Homer forfeits his Christmas
bonus and Marge spends the family savings on having Bart's new tattoo
removed.
- Bart The Genius: After cheating at an aptitude test, Bart is
labelled a child prodigy and sent to a school for the gifted.
- Homer's Odyssey: Homer is fired after causing an accident at
the power plant, and starts a general safety crusade following a period
of depression.
- There's No Disgrace Like Home: The Simpsons enter a family therapy
course.
- Bart The General: Sick of being beaten up daily by the school
bully, Bart enlists the aid of Grampa who helps him create a veritable
army of other put-upon school kids.
- Moaning Lisa: Lisa is haunted by an unexplained sadness, which
is somewhat remedied when she meets blues singer Bleeding Gums Murphy.
- Call Of The Simpsons: Following the example of his neighbor Flanders,
Homer buys a mobile home and sets out on a back-to-nature vacation,
which turns into a survival trek for Homer and Bart.
- The Telltale Head: Bart removes the head from the statue of town
founder Jebediah Springfield in an attempt to impress some older kids,
but soon finds himself the object of town-wide manhunt.
- Life On The Fast Lane: Homer's birthday gift to Marge is a bowling
ball, which so enrages her that she actually takes up bowling and soon
finds herself pursued by a smooth-talking bowling pro.
- Homer's Night Out: Bart uses his new spy camera to shoot
a photo of Homer going wild at a party with an exotic dancer, which
is soon all over town and gets Homer into trouble.
- The Crepes Of Wrath: Bart is sent to France in a foreign exchange
program, where he is put to work by two evil Frenchmen.
- Krusty Gets Busted: Bart is the only one to have faith when his
TV idol Krusty the Klown is arrested for armed robbery, and sets out
to prove his innocence.
- Some Enchanted Evening: Homer and Marge arrange a babysitter
for a night on the town, but the sitter turns out to be less than reliable.
 When
The Simpsons first appeared in their own show in December 1989,
its immediate runaway success took everyone by surprise. Within a matter
of weeks, Simpsons merchandising was selling out across America, and
within a year, Bart Simpson t-shirts were a worldwide phenomenon. As
the Internet started to develop in the early years of the past decade,
among the first things one could find online in 1992 was page after
page of elaborate episode breakdowns for the first three seasons of
the show, and The Simpsons is still second only to Star Trek
in the number of fan pages devoted to it on the Web.
What is most remarkable about the series' success to this very day is
the different levels at which one can approach the series to get something
out of it: from high-school dropout to post-graduate psychology major,
most episodes are so packed with cultural references, colorful characters
and strong drama and comedy that one is all but guaranteed a satisfying
experience no matter what one's background is. To enable this unique
multi-target group success, the series treads a very fine line between
cynicism and sentiment, with its more old-fashioned comedy-drama narratives
always finely balanced by the series' sharp wit and and adroit sense
of satire.
This unique combination helped make The Simpsons a true crossover
animation show, loved by families across the world for its truthful,
unsentimental view of contemporary family life, and heralded by critics
and press for its critical, clever jabs at just about every aspect of
America's consumer-driven society. The incredibly high level of writing
is truly the cornerstone for the series' success. The animation - still
somewhat crude and ill-defined in this semi-experimental first season
- is quite good, and easily lends itself to the well-known full range
of merchandising products. But it's the writers of this show who have
made this longest-running animated TV show the outstanding success it
still is as it enters its second decade. |
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Identical
three-disc DVD sets of the first season are available for Region 1 and
Region 2 from late September 2001.
The
fullscreen image is framed at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1.
The show's animation had not yet reached the level of sophistication
it started showing from Season 3 onwards, but the well-known bright,
even color palette and clearly defined line drawings are excellently
rendered in a crisp, clean transfer that leaves little to be desired.
Some minor flaws in the source material are the result of the inking
process used at the time (as is explained in the audio commentary),
but this is never distracting, and I think it's safe to say that these
episodes have never looked better than they do on this DVD.
The original stereo soundtrack - the first season didn't even have matrixed
Dolby Surround when it originally aired - has been remixed to a bright,
nicely judged new Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix, proving that Fox has
spared no expense in bringing the show most directly responsible for
their TV network's success to DVD in the best possible way. As expected,
the sound mix is strongest across the front stage, presenting plenty
of split surround and directional effects, and using the rear channels
mostly for providing the musical score with extra depth and body. Occasional
sound effects are brought into the rear but don't expect this first
season's episodes to attack you from behind too much...
Fox
has gone for broke with this eagerly awaited three-disc set, and that
includes not only high-bitrate remastered versions of all thirteen first-season
episodes, but also more than a few welcome extras.
 First
off, every single episode has an audio commentary track featuring
various participants from the show's creative department. Series creator
Matt Groening features prominently on eight of these tracks, and other
major contributors like producer James L. Brooks, director David Silverman,
writer Jon Vitti and many others add a huge wealth of insight, criticism,
anecdotes, and lots of fun to every episode in this collection. Most
haven't seen these first efforts for the better part of a decade, so
especially the first few tracks are marked by quite a lot of unnecessary
apologies over the crudity of the animation. But all speakers are also
clearly as impressed as I was by the high level of writing, and the
amazing number of things the network let them get away with, most of
which was unheard of at the time. The tracks are very lively, with all
participants clearly delighted to talk about these historic first episodes,
and dishing up more info than one could possibly take in in a single
session.
The original scripts for four episodes have been included,
and are each available on the disc that contains the episode in question
('Bart the Genius' and 'Bart the General' on Disc 1, 'Moaning Lisa'
on Disc 2, and 'Some Enchanted Evening' on Disc 3). This is a great
inclusion, as not only do these copies of the original pages include
the witty descriptions of the action, but they also hold numerous doodles,
sketches etc.
The other extras are all held on Disc 3: a five-minute alternate
version of a sequence from the episode 'Some Enchanted Evening'
is taken from a time-coded VHS master that has deteriorated about as
much as one would expect it to after more than a decade; it's interesting
to watch but hardly an earth-shattering inclusion. More exciting would
have been the addition of the legendary 'Decapitated Happy Elf' sequence,
the existence of which is confirmed in the episode's audio commentary.
There's a storyboard animatics feature presenting a comparison
between the roughly animated storyboard sketches and the final animation
for Bart's dream sequence from the 'Bart the General' episode. This
two-minute segment is a great inclusion, and shows how clearly the animators
knew what they were doing while storyboarding this early animation sequence.
 The
five-minute featurette 'America's First Family: The Making of
The Simpsons' runs a measly five minutes, and is clearly a watered-down
version of a much longer BBC-produced documentary. It includes some
standard talking heads footage of Matt Groening and James L. Brooks
and does an adequate job of at least establishing the series' origins.
The brief featurette also offers a glimpse of one of the original Tracey
Ullman Show bumper segments, where the Simpsons made their first
actual TV appearance. A total of 48 animation bumper segments were produced
for this late-1980s comedy TV show for transitions between the show's
various sketches. One of them, 'Good Night', is included in full among
the extras on this disc. Hopefully, one day we will see the release
of all 48 segments, but at least this release offers us a nice little
sample.
Plenty of conceptual art, sketches and other still material can be found
in the still gallery 'The Art of the Simpsons', with lots of
rare original Groening sketches and other early work from the animation
team. Also included is an example of Groening's sardonic syndicated
cartoon 'Life in Hell'. Demonstrating the series' worldwide popularity,
a multi-language scene from 'Life in the Fast Lane' features
the characters' voices dubbed in a variety of languages.
Two Easter Eggs round out these great extras: one shows us a
news item from back in 1990 when American schools started prohibiting
children from wearing the 'Underachiever - and proud of it!' and 'I'm
Bart Simpson... Who the Hell are you?' t-shirts to school. A second
hidden feature holds a gallery of magazine covers featuring the Simpsons.
Both are on Disc 3 and are fairly easy to find.
A few minor quibbles aside, Fox has outdone itself in the production
of these extra features for this long-awaited DVD release, which should
prove a high-point of the year for Simpsons fans the world over. Menu
screens are static, with a gorgeous, simple design, employing pleasing
color combinations familiar from the show's regular palette. Most screens
are accompanied by the well-known musical theme, the scene selection menu
screens feature animated scene previews. One slight oddity in navigation
is that the special features are accessible not from the disc's main menu,
but only from the individual episode selection menus. Another minor quibble
is that the audio commentary tracks are not listed in these Special Features
menu screens, and only on the Language Selection menu, making it easy
to miss one of the main extras available on this release.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: 2001
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