‘The Simpsons’ Season 35 Review: America’s Funniest Family
The legendary animated show begins its new season with ‘Homer’s Crossing,’ and the jokes remain smart, dense and relentless.
Thirty-five years ago, which can’t possibly be true, cartoonist Matt Groening was making the rounds of news outlets in New York, hawking his new, prime-time animated series. He was fairly well-known already—his comic-strip “Life in Hell” was a mainstay of the alternative weeklies (newspaper-like publications, FYI) and had gotten the attention of producer James L. Brooks, who drafted Mr. Groening to make “bumpers” to fill gaps between skits on “The Tracey Ullman Show.” Now, the cartoon family created by the very likable and unassuming cartoonist would be getting their own half-hour on Fox.
The Simpsons, Homer’s Crossing
Sunday, 8 p.m., Fox
“The Simpsons” was a smash from the first episode (“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”) and the biggest news in prime-time animation since “The Jetsons” (whose opening musical number inspired Danny Elfman’s “Simpsons” theme). As a new season begins, and “The Simpsons” celebrates its 35th year on the air, what one has to marvel at is not just how consistently funny it has been, and for so long, but how it has skate-boarded, Bart-like, along a razor-thin edge of propriety.
Looking back at some classic moments, we see that “Kamp Krusty” was basically a concentration camp. When gangsters were holed-up in a house in Springfield, postal carriers casually pulled automatic weapons out of their mail bags. The town’s corrupt mayor, Diamond Joe Quimby, still sounds like Edward Kennedy. And Otto the school-bus driver has been stoned since 1989.
The new season begins with “Homer’s Crossing,” in which absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially when it is in the hands of Homer Simpson—America’s id, its reigning doughnut enthusiast and, according to some, the discoverer of the Higgs boson, some 14 years before it was officially discovered. After Otto disappears with his bus, having eaten an entire sheet pan of acid brownies, the town is facing a transportation crisis that can be solved with the addition of one parent volunteer (“just one engaged parent,” pleads Principal Skinner during a PTA meeting) to act as a crossing guard. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” exclaims Homer, who instead of listening to the meeting has been watching a trailer for a “Revenge of the Nerds” reboot on his phone. (“John Cena is playing Booger!”) In typical Homer fashion, Homer has dragooned himself into the job.
Reviewing a “Simpsons” episode is close to pointless, unless the point is to spoil all the good jokes. I will spoil only a few. The style of the animation hasn’t changed much at all since the transition from the “Ullman” show to the first few seasons of the series, when it morphed dramatically from its scratchy (and itchy) origins, the family having been based on Mr. Groening’s dashed-off renditions of the characters—Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, Maggie, etc.—and which he assumed the animators would refine. They didn’t at first. But the charm of the show has really been about the writing and the vocal performances. Yeardley Smith has always been Lisa, Nancy Cartwright has always been Bart; Julie Kavner has immortalized the moral force that is Marge Simpson; and Dan Castellaneta owns Homer. Harry Shearer (Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns) has done multiple roles, as has Hank Azaria, whose Apu Nahasapeemapetilon of the Kwik-E-Mart has been deemed impolitic of late but was always good for the image of immigrants and convenience-store owners, especially when he was gently chastising Bart. (“Your gargantuan cone is making a mockery of our self-service policy.”)
Mr. Azaria is also responsible for Chief Wiggum, who in the new episode expresses his gratitude after Homer saves his son, Ralphie (Ms. Cartwright), from an oncoming car. (“You ever need a parking ticket thrown out, or someone else’s DNA left somewhere, just let me know.”) But Homer parlays his sudden hero status into a power grab, creates an empire of orange-vested hooligans, tosses accusations of “defunding” at his critics and derides the “wokesters” who don’t understand Homer’s importance. (“Guys like me are the last line of defense between your school kids and guys like me who text when they drive!”)
The inevitable happens, though conclusions are not really the point in a “Simpsons” episode, or in the 35 seasons of “The Simpsons.” The richness is in the tossed-off lines of comic dialogue, the visual jokes you might not even get the first time, and the frequent convergence of the two—“Brunchhausen by Loxy,” for instance, is the restaurant that Chief Wiggum says has been “poisoning people to get attention.” That’s a lot to unpack. Would it get a “ha ha” out of Nelson Muntz? It is hard to say, because Nelson is a troglodyte. But “The Simpsons” has always had a little something for everybody, and every funny bone.
Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.