Here’s a short feature story on the year The Simpsons began—1989—and what that moment meant for television and culture. D’oh! The Year America Met Its First Family
So raise a Duff Beer (root beer for the kids) and remember: It all started in a year when the Berlin Wall fell, the World Wide Web was born, and a ten-year-old in a red shirt told the world to eat his shorts. year the simpsons started
To understand the shockwaves, you have to remember 1989. The top-rated show on TV was The Cosby Show —warm, safe, family-values comedy with a sweater-wearing dad who was also America’s favorite doctor. The No. 2 show? Roseanne , which was already pushing boundaries with its working-class grit. But neither had prepared audiences for what Matt Groening, a quirky cartoonist from Portland, Oregon, had cooked up in a Hollywood office. Here’s a short feature story on the year
That Christmas of ’89, viewers got a present they didn’t know they wanted: a family more dysfunctional, more loving, and more human than anything else on television. And they’ve been watching ever since. To understand the shockwaves, you have to remember 1989