Simpsons Discussion Group Fortnight I: Simpsons Roasting...Open Fire

Cafe Society
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Back during the time period now lost to the Great Board Crash, a grand attempt was made-watch and discuss each of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films, one a week. During this, someone commented perhaps a similar thing could be done for Simpsons episodes, but then though against it. Now, for some reason, I am attempting to do it.

I have decided to start today to commemerate the release of The Complete Second Season on DVD. We’ll do one episode every two weeks for two reasons-one, it’s easier, and two, because nobody knows when Fox is gonna do season 3, so with 35 episodes for 70 weeks, it’s pretty good. I’ll probably downsize it two a week eventually-if it lasts. The AFI 100 were never completed. Let’s see how many Simpsons we can do!

7G08-SIMPSONS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE
12/17/89 by Mimi Pond Director: David Silverman

Sure, it seems strange to watch a Christmas show in August, but that’s where the show started, thanks to problems in the early Korean animation. This is a classic, up there with the greatest Christmas specials of all time.

Notable Quotable:
Homer: “He’s a loser! He’s pathetic! He’s…(slurp!)…a Simpson.”

Simpson Money Loss Count:
undisclosed amount of money in the Christmas Jar, spent on tattoo removal.
$13 from Santa payment ($120 gross minus Social Security, unemployment insurance, Santa training, costume purchase, beard rental, and Christmas Club) , blew at racetrack betting on Santa’s Little Helper
Total (known) money balance so far: -$13
(based on a recent thread, I thought I should track their money woes)

Thoughts:
-The Marge letter-writing scene is a good impromptu introduction to the family, as this is the first time we’ve met the family outside of the Tracy Ullman show.
-Odd to see a giant Santa on top of the Flanders house. Of course, the character wasn’t established at this point in the series-there would probably be a Nativity there if the episode was done today.
-Weird mistake in the final scene (probably done by Korean staff): First close-up of Homer and Marge in final scene (as she says “Something to share our love and frighten prowlers”), the background is upside down. (You can tell by the picture of Bart.) Next close-up (final line, “Number 8-I mean Santa’s Little Helper”), it’s corrected.

Those of you who own the First Season DVD, take a look at 7G08 and post your thoughts.
NEXT TIME: Look for “Bart the Genius” discussion on or around August 20.

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Hey cool! That was me. My main thought for this episode had to do with the school play. Do you suppose the young lad who did the bit about the Japanese version of Santa was an early version of Ralph Wiggum, before he was Ralph much less a Wiggum. He’s certainly got the face and hair.

All in all I think this was one of the best of the first season. And to the commentators, bravo! It was one of the best commentaries I’ve ever heard. Some of the commentaries this first season were better then the shows themselves.

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Let’s list mistakes too

Mistake:

  • The phone cord disappears just before the Homer falls off the roof.
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Yes and no; I never re-started the threads after the Winter Of Our Missed Content, but the weekly movies are still being shown regularly in my apartment. A Clockwork Orange is tonight’s movie, starting in just under an hour, so if anyone wants to drop by . . .

I’ll join in on this as soon as I pick up the Season 2 set – it’s being postponed for financial reasons. (Those being, if I set foot in Best Buy to buy the set, I’ll also get another halfdozen DVDs.)

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Some general thoughts:

I liked The Tracy Ullman Show. I -loved- Matt Groenings’ Life in Hell and totally enjoyed The Simpsons shorts (outgoing to a break and incoming from it) on that show.

The Simpson’s pilot ‘Simpsons roasting on an open fire’ is one of TV’s greatest pilots, experiments, christmas specials. Bart even makes refererences to Charlie Brown, The Smurfs and Tiny Tim to convince Homer that the greyhound Santa’s Little Helper is the Christmas magic.

Homer’s convinced. “Who’s tiny tim?” he asks.

Do go easy on the first season. The animation is poor - and because so much of the animation was happening in parallel - the animators of the first nine or so episodes had -never- seen the works of the other animation teams (Eps take several months to make).

Back to the Christmas Pilot Ep - I didn’t see the upside-down background. Do note the big puffy ‘Charlie-Brown-esque’ snowflakes falling at the end. I think it was the 3rd season Halloween-episode they again spoof Charlie Brown when the whole extended family - in the kitchen - shouts ‘Happy Halloween’ and they begin to hum ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ as those same big puffy snowflakes fall.

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Just to clarify, you’re starting with 7G08? So we’re going with episode airing order (a la tvtome.com) instead of production order, right?

Because I believe “Some Enchanted Evening” was the first episode in the production calendar at 7G01, without checking, I might be misremembering.

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You are correct. I’ll add the DVD episodes are in air-date order and mobo85 is celebrating the DVD’s. Production order gets especially wierd when episodes from the previous season are first aired in the following season.

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Ah, thanks for clarifying Corbomite. I haven’t bought the DVDs. I skipped the first, since I find that entire season horrific, excepting possibly “Life in the Fast Lane.” I may buy season 2 when I get some scratch to spare, at least there were a half-dozen or so pretty good episodes, and the animation was much improved. When they get to season 6 (if armageddon doesn’t come first, at the rate they’re going with these), I’ll probably have a copy reserved months in advance :wink:

BTW, if we can actually get EVERY episode reviewed, I know the people at nohomers.net would love to get that archived. Perhaps someone from that board could give an assist on that.

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Seems Fox are making that potentially awkward. :frowning:

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Cease and dismiss, smease and dismiss! We’ll do whatever we want! Maybe I’ll archive them…maybe not.

The one-a-fortnight thing may change eventually…when, I don’t know.

Yes, we are going in airdate order. The DVDs are that way, A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family is that way, and it’s the way we originally saw the Simpsons. (Fox considers the next episode, “Bart the Genius,” to be the first episode as a series.) Besides, it makes things a whole lot easier.

And to keep this on the subject of 7G08-“Mr. Simpson, you dropped your pork chop.”

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I just realized I wrote “two a week” in the OP. That should be “one a week.” I was probably confusing it with “one every two weeks.”

To keep on the subject of 7G08 again-
“Dad, can we open our presents now?”
“You know our tradition, son. Not until the eight race.”

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You know what gets me about this shutdown of nohomers.net is that the site had tacit approval for existence from the Simpsons executive producer. While the site and the related message board relentlessly slam Mike Scully at every turn, his replacement Al Jean has been answering questions posed from the message board and compiled by the website in a monthly feature. It would seem that the Simpsons present producer likes the site and its manager, so why harass that site?

Anyways, if the ep discussions are kept up, I’ll join in when I have the ep. I don’t have the DVDs, but I have about 150 episodes on my computer, so I should be able to keep up with alot of it. Since I don’t have 7G08, I can’t give it the re-watch it deseves to comment on it, it’s been probably 6 months since I saw it.

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Is there no one else who has an opinion on what I felt was a proto Ralph Wiggum?

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He does look like Ralph. Perhaps they kept the design on file and later used it for Ralph. The character of Ralph was originally supposed to be a little version of Homer, but eventually became Chief Wiggum’s dim-witted son. (Like father, like son.)

Another interesting thing regarding character development: Originally, according to the commentary, one of Skinner’s original traits was that he would mispronounce words. There’s a bit of that here: “And now, the fourth grade will now favor us with a melody… er, medley of holiday flavorites.”

The family’s performance of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer over the credits is hilarious. A perfect end to a perfect Christmas special.

Those who do have access to 7G08, and not just on DVD (home-taped copy? Pirate copy? Don’t worry, I won’t tell), may add their comments if they so wish. This is the way we’ll do it for all episodes, as RexDart will do when he has a chance. If there’s nothing really monumental to comment on, we might just go to “Bart the Genius” on the 13th. I’m not sure yet.