Mmmmm, Simpsons!

I just finally finished watching through the Simpsons Season One DVDs I bought some while back. It's really kind of interesting to go back and look at these earliest episodes now, fourteen years and 300 episodes later, and to notice what kinds of things have changed and what hasn't. It's certainly quite clear that in the first season they were still very much in the process of figuring out what they were doing as they went along. Some of the animation is a bit crude by current Simspons standards, characters are slowly being introduced and developed, and Homer's voice still sounds all weird. But, you know, they had some darned good scripts right from the beginning. Some of these first season eps hold their own perfectly well with the best of the series. My personal favorites from this batch are "There's No Disgrace Like Home" (in which the Simpsons go for family counselling, which turns out to involve electric shocks), "Bart the General" (in which Bart rallies the kids of Springfield against the bullies), and "Krusty Gets Busted" (the first Sideshow Bob episode!). That's some funny, well-written stuff.

The DVDs themselves are pretty good. There's a commentary track on every episode, featuring various writers, producers, and animators, which is cool. The commentaries do tend to get a bit repetitive after a while, and they're not exactly chock full of new and exciting information, but they're enjoyable, anyway. It's just kind of fun to listen to these guys alternately ragging on the lameness of some of their earliest efforts and laughing hysterically at their own jokes. You can tell these people love the show and love what they do, and if you ask me that always makes for the best kinds of commentaries.

There aren't a whole lot of other extras, though. There's a very short documentary on the creation of the show, an even shorter piece on how the animation is done, a number of original scripts, and clips of one particular scene dubbed over in half a dozen different languages. Far and away the most interesting extra, though, is the horrifying glimpse at the original animation for "Some Enchanted Evening." Apparently this was meant to be the first episode of the series, but when they got the (supposedly) finished animation back for it, it was... well, truly, the word "terrible" doesn't do it justice. It's downright painful, in fact, but there's something about it that holds a certain train-wreck fascination. It just has to be seen to be believed. And the commentary track for it is hysterical. Groening and company are clearly too traumatized to talk about it coherently, so you bascially get three mintues or so of anguished moaning, culminating in "the first walk-out in audio commentary history," as producer James L. Brooks apparently decides he just can't take it any more and has to leave. I dunno, maybe it's evil of me to laugh at that, but it's downright impossible not to. Heh.

I gather the season two set is out now, as well... I think I'm going to have to add that to my never-shrinking DVD to-buy list. Sigh. If only I had enough time to watch them all...