I always loved the Simpsons, but I hardly got a chance to watch many of the episodes. Now that I have access to several full seasons of the series, I am watching them with my 12-year-old and having a great time! He loves them for what they are and laughs his head off; when I stop and explain the jokes to him, he laughs even harder. When I explained the Gordie Howe thing at the end of “Bart The Lover” he nearly lost it, he was laughing so hard!
TSS1
The Simpsons: The Complete First Season – Disc one has six episodes: “Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire”, “Bart The Genius”, “Homer’s Odyssey”, “There’s No Disgrace Like Home”, “Bart The General”, and Moaning Lisa.” It extra features are scripts for “Bart The Genius”, “Bart The General”, and “Moaning Lisa.” The scripts are half-page scans of the original documents, with their pen edits, and some doodles, which I suppose must be by Groening. No commentaries. “Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire”, the first episode of the series, has a weird Mr Burns (off-voice),
Disc two also has six episodes: “The Call Of The Simpsons”, “The Telltale Head”, “Life On The Fast Lane”, “Homer’s Night Out”, “The Crepes Of Wrath”, and “Krusty Gets Busted”. No bonus features on this disc, and no commentaries either! “The Crepes of Wrath” is probably my favorite episode of this season, with Bart going to France on exchange and a young Albanian staying with the Simpsons. Of course, the Albanian kid is not the angel he seems, and Bart gets stuck in a slave labor situation. Hilarious!!
Disc three has one episode (“Some Enchanted Evening”), and several bonus features:
- Five minutes of “Never Before Seen Outtakes” from “Some Enchanted Evening” (can watch it with commentary from Matt Groening, James L Brooks, director David Sliverman and writer Al Jean) that are so-so interesting (a bit rough, not all that different from the final version). The commentators groan that it’s off-model, and groan about nearly everything else, from how Marge gains and loses weight, a frog, everything’s rubbery, the actions of the characters don’t obey the laws of physics, Homer is fretful, smug, Marge gets slammed behind door, not tele-synced yet, less edited, big phone, glasses without pupils, Marge’s mirror not matching. Commentaries nothing special, just lots of audio-wincing…
- a 1:50 animatic of “Bart The General”, with James L Brooks and Matt Groening commenting. It’s an interesting thing to watch to understand how these things are put together.
- a five-minute documentary on “The Making of the Simpsons”, starting with Matt Groening and his Life In Hell story, and Groening’s first meeting with James L Brooks. Groening was going to do Life In Hell characters, but wanted to protect them in case the show didn’t work out, so he took five minutes to invent a family based on his own – father is Homer, mother is Margaret (Marge), sisters are Lisa and Maggie. “Matt” would have been too obvious, so he changes the spelling to “Bart”. The studio spent $10 million for 13 episodes. Prime time animation had been dead since the Flintstones, so it was a great leap for Fox. Chris Solomon, animation critic from LA Times, gives comment. Groups appropriated Bart Simpson – black Bart, Irish Bart, Mexican Bart, vegetarian Bart, pro-Gulf War Bart, anti-Gulf War Bart, etc.
- Foreign language clips – compare the same one-minute clip of Bart and Lisa preparing a wedding anniversary breakfast for their parents in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese! Weird to hear how Homer and Bart sound in those languages…
- Tracy Ullman shorts of “Good NIght Simpsons” (four parts)
- Albert Brooks’ Audio Outtakes from “Life On The Fast Lane”, 3:43, not so funny…
- Art of the Simpsons, including Matt Groening’s Life In Hell “The Los Angeles Way of Death” that originally caught Brooks’ eye, and Simpsons’ early sketches and drawings (35 items), including “surrealistic face making” opening sequence concept, attempts to get Martin Prince right (with Groening’s approval signature to the one we know and love), versions of Principal Skinner, Matt’s original Ms Krabappel (very different), classroom design, story boards, Marge’s mom, and other sketches from 1987 to 1988.
- “Some Enchanted Evening” script
TSS3
The Simpsons: The Complete Third Season – A fantastic season of 24 episodes, each with fantastic extras. All have a commentary track by the creators and actors (from two to eight of them, depending on the episode), while others have some combination of storyboards (usually over 70 pages, often with red marker comments from Matt Groening, showing a lot of how the creative process flowed), an episode with “pop-up bubbles” appearing all over the place with factoids of information, and all sorts of other stuff.
This season features some classic episodes, such as the one about Homer inventing the Flaming Moe, Moe stealing the recipe, then both of them losing out on $500,000 (guest stars – Aerosmith!!!); “Bart The Lover”, where Bart discovers Edna Krabapple’s dating ad and fakes her out as Woodrow (guest star – a picture of Gordie Howe); “Colonel Homer”, where Homer becomes the manager of a country singer, voiced by Beverley D’Angelo, and has a good ol’ time; “Black Widower”, where Marge’s sister Selma marries Sideshow Bob, who is bent on revenge; and “The Otto Show”, the only episode that focuses on Otto the bus driver, that would not have been any good if it didn’t feature the always-brilliant Spinal Tap (although it seems that the guys who made the show didn’t like Christopher Guest).
The extras are good – one has a promo spot that includes footage from “Colonel Homer” that never made it into the final show, and footage from a Macy’s Day Parade of a Bart Simpson barge. Woo-hoo!!!