“Yellow skin, goldfish eyes and three-fingered hands aside, it’s no coincidence television’s most enduring family – the gleefully animated Simpsons – is also its most human. Compared to the truly stale antics of live-action TV dads John Ritter and Jim Belushi, beer-guzzling family man Homer Simpson is wholly flesh and blood, the suburban patriarch as misguided bonehead, yes, but also as long-suffering, well-intended husband and father.
When The Simpsons debuted as the first primetime animated series since The Flintstones after a string of shorts on the Tracy Ullman Show in 1987, the series towered creatively over its three-dimensional competition. But the funny thing is, it got better. For those of us who recall Do The Bartman or those Don’t Have A Cow, Man T-shirts, there was a time when the show centered on 10-year-old Bart Simpson, a skateboarding, spike-topped underachiever who drove his teachers and parents crazy.” Read More >>>