By Andreas Trolf
Wired.com guest blogger
I can remember watching the first episode of The Simpsons. I was 12 years old and awkward, with the ill-defined aspiration of “being funny.” In the 20 years since, as the show has defined and refined itself and undergone various changes — some for the better, many derided by fans — I have remained awkward.
The blame for this steadfast awkwardness can be (at least partially) attributed to watching The Simpsons with an evangelical enthusiasm. This year is a good one, however, to be a fan. In addition to a new unauthorized book detailing the none-too-pretty history of the show, Marge will be celebrating the fact that no one appears to age in Springfield by posing for Playboy.
Watching the show’s 20th Halloween special, “Treehouse of Horror XX,” which airs Sunday night on Fox, it’s immediately obvious how far The Simpsons has come since the days of ubiquitous bootleg T-shirts (Black Bart and Rasta Bart being the most popular) and being derided by the first President George Bush.
While immediately and hugely popular, The Simpsons needed some time to find its legs. And although all of Springfield’s denizens are richly and fully imagined, the show initially focused on the wrong Simpson.
Bart is a brilliant character, but for all his monkeyshines he’s not compelling enough to be the main draw of the show. Things didn’t really start moving until the writers realized that Homer was most deserving of our attention and adoration.
This year’s Halloween special takes aim at Dial M for Murder, 28 Days Later and apparently Sweeney Todd. The three segments are enjoyable enough, and of them the second — the zombie-themed “Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind” — is the funniest. But overall the episode is unremarkable. After watching it twice, I’m hard-pressed to recall a quotable one-liner, and although Homer does perform a hilarious musical number detailing his homosexual exploits, even that falls well short of the memorable songs of episodes past.
