While the best cartoon ever made debuted 39 years ago on April 19, 1987, its earliest releases would be unrecognisable to modern fans of the series. Some sitcoms are influential, some are incredibly important, and others reshape the entire history of television itself. For example, MASH helped popularise the workplace sitcom format, meaning the phenomenally popular series can be partially credited with the success of everything from Brooklyn 99 and The Office to DMV and Abbott Elementary.
Similarly, if it weren’t for The Simpsons, adult animation may never have become a mainstream force in American television, let alone the dominant mode of small-screen comedy creation for the last four decades. Without The Simpsons, there would be no Family Guy, no South Park, no Bob’s Burgers, no King of the Hill, and no American Dad. What makes this so striking is the fact that The Simpsons didn’t even start out as a normal TV show. Instead, the series first premiered as a series of brief animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.
Producer James L. Brooks, who worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show before producing The Tracey Ullman Show, expressed interest in including animated shorts as part of the series back in 1987. When he reached out to cartoonist Matt Groening, Groening initially considered turning his semi-successful Life in Hell cult comic strip into animated shorts, before realizing that this would mean handing over the rights to the strip to TV producers. At the last minute, Groening instead pitched shorts about a dysfunctional cartoon family.
These short segments on The Tracey Ullman Show featured crudely drawn versions of Bart, Lisa, Homer, Maggie, and Marge, and they instantly became a hit with audiences. Their success led Fox to commission the first full-length episodes of The Simpsons in 1989, and this eventually resulted in the iconic franchise viewers now know and love. With The Simpsons Movie 2 on the way in 2027, the series has produced over 800 episodes in the years since 1987, as well as releasing a 2007 movie spinoff that earned over $500 million at the box office.
While Brooks and Groening are often credited with the success of The Simpsons, the late, great Sam Simon was also a pivotal creative force in the show’s development. In retrospect, the short-form vignette format of the show’s earliest outings was a vital part of its success, as this led The Simpsons to develop the mile-a-minute gag rate that later became a hallmark of its Golden Age. While early seasons of the series can be surprisingly grounded upon a re-watch, the Golden Age of The Simpsons from seasons 3-11 relies heavily on the fast pace of sketch comedy.
It is this era that proved formative for much of the adult animated comedy that dominated the airwaves in the decades that followed. Even the creators of more recent critical hits like Adult Swim’s Smiling Friends and Netflix’s BoJack Horseman have credited this era with an outsized influence on their shows. By starting out as a series of shorts that only had a few moments to win over viewers, The Simpsons sharpened its writing style and became the entertainment industry powerhouse that the show is now known as.
