I clearly remember buying this during my lunch hour from a nearby Best Buy, just not the exact day other than it probably was a Tuesday when all new media used to arrive. A DVD player had joined my household around 2000. Can’t call if it was due to the VCR crapping out or we got caught up in the frenzy fueled by The Matrix. If I didn’t own a player by then, I would’ve bought it alongside this set. The Simpsons had been syndicated on Fox affiliates since 1994 and they used to be a great alternative to most prime-time schlock at 9 PM weeknights…until Murdoch forced them to build local propaganda teams by 1997. Then the reruns moved to 5 or 6 PM. Either way, the DVDs were a relief to have since the majority of programs get trimmed another couple minutes in syndication so we can be bombarded by more fucking advertising. With this boxed set, I could re-experience and re-enjoy those 13 magical episodes from the Winter/Spring of 1990! The lack of ads, the clarity of DVD (despite a CRT-based TV) and the return of missing material made these discs bingeworthy. How I miss having a DVD player capable of storing multiple discs at a time! It’s not the same as streaming, namely when you want to pore over the post-show credits and details.
The side effect I stumbled upon via these DVDs were the commentaries. The Simpsons having them was nothing new. Commentaries from the movie/show’s contributors were a selling point for DVD to woo the diehards and probably to sway them from laserdisc. If it helped with mainstream audiences buying this new format, it would be a happy accident. Hopefully, someone who really knows laserdisc can chime in and say if commentaries existed on that medium. I lean toward ‘no’ due to their storage capacity being limited, hence the rise of DVD and eventually Blu-Ray.
Back to commentaries…
Personally, I generally hated them. I love movies and TV, but I often found few DVDs had material worth listening to as the participants gave their inside baseball anecdotes on how a particular shot was set up or who designed the buttons on a shirt worn by the lead characters, just ugh! The few I experienced were usually vanity projects and it didn’t add much to the enjoyment. I can’t remember if I took someone’s recommendation or I rolled the dice with The Simpsons. Either way, I was amazed. Firstly, there were commentaries on all 13 episodes involving James L. Brooks, Matt Groening and key people involved in the writing and directing. Secondly, these people’s stories were engaging, funny and truly informative on how the little cartoon that could became an institutional player in modern comedy and animation.
They quickly became mandatory listening for us fans. The commentaries educated me on :
- How the show is made.
- How funny the writers are when they got to speak.
- Who was responsible for certain jokes.
- Which directors/artists specialize in particular characters or actions.
- How the episode changed as it progressed from pitch to what aired on Fox.
Without these awesome nuggets of information, I probably wouldn’t have gained the level of enjoyment I’ve had all these years with not just The Simpsons but also Futurama, Mission Hill, Disenchantment, F is for Family, Big Mouth, The Critic and anywhere else former Simpson writers and directors go. The anecdotes told by these incredibly creative people have created a gold-standard I now expect in commentaries. It’s also why I’m glad Fox continued to make the DVDs and Disney better follow. Streaming is great for the instant gratification it provides when I want to watch something immediately. I’m just bummed in how there hasn’t been any attempts to include them. It’s not a bandwidth issue since Netflix alone provides audio and subtitles for multiple languages in the US; I stumbled upon it when I got hooked on the South Korean Action/Horror show Kingdom. All Western languages are offered with subtitles and audio including Mandarin, Japanese and Korean. Maybe in time, the new original and really innovative shows streaming services have given us will come with commentaries later or maybe on DVD; Stranger Things is available that way. I need to investigate this with others.
Until then, I’m buying DVDs of The Simpsons to the end because those commentaries have strengthened my connection, my love and my fandom. I know without the DVDs providing the extra audio track these reside on, I probably would’ve never met Dana Gould or David X Cohen in person, I would’ve never written Bill Oakley or Michael Price questions about their writing, I wouldn’t have learned about how Dan Castellaneta based Krusty’s voice on the WGN’s Bozo while his appearance is a nod to Rusty Nails of Portland from Brad Bird’s childhood and the biggest hidden gem, I would’ve never read John Swartzwelder’s incredible, so-funny-they-hurt-to-read novels.
Thank you all to the dozens of people who’ve taken the time out of their careers, lives, whatever to reminisce and illuminate us on something close to my heart for 30-plus years. You also made a DVD/Blu-Ray feature better than the creators planned.