Although Matt Groening had been drawing
Simpsons-like figures since grade school, the true genesis of the
characters took place in under fifteen minutes, as Groening waited in the
office of James Brooks. Groening had attracted the attention of
Brooks via his Life In Hell comics (which he occasionally still draws to
this day); the result of the meeting was that Groening was hired to do the
"bumpers," sub-minute-long animations that were shown before and after
commercial breaks of 1967's The Tracey Ullman Show. Although crudely
drawn, the characters quickly became one of the favorites of the Ullman
audience, and in 1990 they earned their own half-hour show on the
fledgeling Fox network. Set in the town of Springfield (no state has
ever been cited, although Ohio was once alluded to; the name was chosen
because there is a "Springfield" in just about every state in the U.S.),
the show follows the adventures of the Simpson family: the apish Homer,
his forebearing wife Marge, and their three children: Bart (an anagram of
brat), the wise-beyond-her-years Lisa, and little Maggie.
Although the show attracts a surprising range of guest voices (none appear
in the first season, with the exception of Mr. Brooks), the true heart of the show is in its supporting
characters, among the most finely-delineated cast of any show on the air.
Film Synopsis: The first season -- 13 episodes -- of America's longest-running comedy series. And that's just the beginning of this comprehensive package.
Technical
| Video: |
Original Academy ratio 1.33:1 |
| Audio: |
ENGLISH: 5.1 Surround
ENGLISH: Dolby Surround
FRENCH: Dolby Surround |
| Subtitles: |
English, Spanish |
It's clear that a lot of thought went
into the packaging for this set.
It's housed in a triple Digipak that slides into a
slipcase. The back of the slipcase is decorated minimally, but for
sales reasons has a features list sheet tacked onto the back with what
Bart would call "booger glue," the adhesive occasionally used on products
like magazine inserts and advertisements that can be stretched to an
enormous length without snapping. The sheet (and glue) may be peeled
off without damage, but should be done slowly. The inside of the
digipack holds the 8-page insert booklet; the discs themselves have images
of the Simpsons family, and in a clever (and understated) move, the
picture behind each disc's clear holder logicallytakes place a few seconds
after the image on the DVD.
The menus for this set are somewhat confusing. The
first disc, for instance, contains the first six episodes, and the
viewer may choose only between them. Once an episode is
chosen, the episode menu permits a choice of audio, scenes,
and supplementary features; however, the supplementary features are the
same throughout all episodes on the disc, and it would have been far more
logical to place the branch point for the supplementary features on the
opening menu rather than forcing the viewer to needlessly choose an
episode first. The included insert details the thirteen episodes with full
credits, including guest stars and original airing date; each episode is
given six chapter stops, corresponsing roughly with the commercial breaks
originally incorporated into the pacing of each show. But for a
package this exhaustive, Fox should have included a printed disc-by-disc
table of contents including the supplementary features. To
rectify this situation, here is a complete list:
Disc 1
Episodes:
Supplementary Features:
-
Original script for "Bart the Genius"
-
Original script for "Bart the General"
-
Original script for "Moaning Lisa"
Disc 2
Episodes:
-
Call of the Simpsons
-
The Telltale Head
-
Life On The Fast Lane
-
Homer's Night Out
-
The Crepes Of Wrath
-
Krusty Gets Busted
Disc 3
Episode:
Supplementary Features:
- Never-before-seen Outtakes from an unaired version of "Some Enchanted Evening"
- Animatic for "Bart the General"
- The Making Of The Simpsons, "America's First Family"
- Foreign Language Clips
- Tracey Ullman short, "Good Night Simpsons"
- Albert Brooks audio outtakes from "Life On The Fast Lane"
- Art Of The Simpsons (Matt Groening's "Life In Hell," and Early Sketches
- Original script for "Some Enchanted Evening"
Supplements
- 3-disc Box Set
- Audio Commentary on each episode by creator Matt Groening
- Original scripts for "Bart the Genius," "Bart the General," "Moaning Lisa" and "Some Enchanted Evening"
- Unaired episode with audio commentary
- "Bart the General" animatics with audio commentary
- Albert Brooks outtakes
- "America's First Family" BBC Special
- Bart T-shirt controversy "ABC News" segment
- "Good Night Simpsons" short from "The Tracy Ullman Show"
- 7 foreign language clips
- 100 early sketches
- 12 magazine covers
The package contains so many special features it's difficult to single one out for discussion. The cream of the
crop may be the audio commentary by Groening, Brooks, and David Silverman which runs
beneath all five hours worth of episodes.
Most of the other features appear on
the third disc of the set, which contains the 13th episode (Some Enchanted
Evening) and
gives the remainder of
its space over to the additional supplements.
Many of us remember the original Tracey Ullman clips and the
episodes from the first season, but we're constantly surprised that we do
not remember the crudeness of the animation when the show was earning its
sea legs; it's a testament to the scripts, among the most consistently
clever writing on TV today, that the promise of the series shines through
the clunky animation and the awkward not-quite-there-yet
voicing. By mid-season, the show was on its way. We greatly
look forward to Fox releases of future seasons.
