It’s the one that has outwitted and outplayed just about all other shows – and that threatens to outlast them as well. “Survivor”? Be serious. It’s “The Simpsons.” My criteria were simple. The great American show has to embody the breadth and depth of who we are. And the shallowness. I considered “The Wire,” David Simon’s heroic attempt to show us the nuts, bolts, nit and grit of how a modern city works (or doesn’t), and “Deadwood,” David Milch’s raunchy microcosm of how we civilized ourselves. I thought about “The Honeymooners,” “All in the Family” and “Roseanne,” our three great comedies about everyday working stiffs and our dreams. Worthy candidates all, but none of them has the scope and seeming inexhaustibility of Matt Groening’s cartoon about a curiously yellow family and the town of Springfield, at once generic and unique, where they live and shop.
SOURCE: Newsday