{"id":2228,"date":"2017-05-12T18:27:37","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bowdoinglobalist.com\/?p=2228"},"modified":"2017-05-12T18:27:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:27:37","slug":"the-simpsons-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/television\/the-simpsons-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Simpsons\u201d and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s this one episode of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d where Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, and Ralph are recruited by a record producer named L. T. Smash to join a boy band named \u201cParty Posse.\u201d It turns out that the record producer\u2019s real name is actually <\/span>Lt.<\/span><\/i> L.T. Smash and he\u2019s using Bart and his friends\u2019 boy band music to persuade listeners to join the navy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw this episode when I was eight or nine years old. Every now and then, lines from that episode get stuck in my head, such as Milhouse exclaiming \u201cIt\u2019s NSYNC!\u201d every time NSYNC made a cameo and one of Party Posse\u2019s choruses: \u201cYvan eht nioj\u201d (\u201cjoin the navy\u201d backwards). This is just one of the many, many, many episodes I remember so well.<\/span> It\u2019s funny\u2014some valuable space of my brain that should be reserved for knowledge on doing taxes or fine dining is instead kind of like a kaleidoscope of little memorable \u201cSimpsons\u201d moments. Sometimes when I space out, my brain turns into a small movie theater run by a crusty ol\u2019 film operator smoking a cigarette up in the window at the back of the theater. He lazily puts on a roll of film that\u2019s just a collection of vignettes from my favorite Simpsons episodes and off we go into my unproductive little la la land. In no way am I upset that they take up most of the space up there. Frankly, I find comfort in it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

On April 19, 2017, \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d celebrated thirty years of life since it debuted on The Tracey Ullman show as a skit. As you can see, after three decades it\u2019s sort of blossomed. A milestone for a TV show is one hundred episodes. \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d has aired over six hundred. We can debate all day about whether it has \u201cdeclined\u201d or \u201cis sh***y now,\u201d but that\u2019s not why I\u2019m writing this seemingly personal article about my connection to \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d I actually don\u2019t think my relationship with The Simpsons is at all unique, considering the eight billion people currently inhabiting this planet who have <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> assuredly been exposed to \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d in some form or another. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Simpsons\u201d was my childhood. It was everything. When I came home mad from school, I had \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d When I was bored out of my mind and hated what I was learning in school, I had \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d When I had a bad breakup with a girlfriend in school, I had \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d The height of my \u201cSimpsons\u201d watching coincided with my middle school years, the worst three years of my life. Not \u201cworst three years of my life\u201d in a depressing way because it frankly wasn\u2019t unlike or much worse than anyone else\u2019s. It was just middle school! As it goes, I was a puffy, kumquat-sized little nuisance that hated everything and was mad all the time, wore black t-shirts and listened to Rage Against the Machine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d served as more than respite from school\u2014I genuinely benefited from watching it. In middle school, we read a lot of books and every time we were assigned one, I thought to myself, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d In seventh grade we had to read \u201cLord of the Flies.\u201d As usual, I was skeptical, but something really cool happened: I came home from school one day, turned on the TV, and saw an episode of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d where the kids found themselves stranded on an island and succumbing to the same circumstances described in \u201cLord of the Flies.\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cWait, this is that same story from that weird book I\u2019m reading in class. Why is this same story in \u2018The Simpsons\u2019?\u201d It took me a bit of time to put the pieces together, but I came to the conclusion that they were essentially the same\u2014my first comprehension of a reference. The more \u201cSimpsons\u201d episodes I watched, the more references from an assigned book or play I began to pick up on. Oddly enough, I felt more of a desire to learn because I actually got more into and out of my work in school if it meant I got to see it in \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d I guess my mantra in middle school was, \u201cIf it\u2019s in The Simpsons, it\u2019s cool.\u201d The beautiful thing is, everything you learn in school is in \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t lie to myself or you and try to elevate how the \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d affected me too far beyond this. The truth is, \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d is just a show I really, really enjoyed watching and couldn\u2019t go a day without. It made me feel good if I felt bad and great if I felt good. It was my television show of choice to escape the awful middle school world. I could turn on the TV and watch Bart take off the head from the statue of Jebediah Springfield. I could watch Homer run a business plowing snow from people\u2019s driveways. I could watch Sideshow Bob try to kill Bart. I could watch clips of \u201cItchy & Scratchy.\u201d I could watch Lisa bond with a saxophone player named Bleeding Gums Murphy. I could watch any episode and I would enter this world that became my only focus for thirty minutes (twenty-three with ads).<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time I reached high school I drifted away from \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d I started drifting toward raunchier tastes, for example, \u201cFamily Guy\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia\u201d (which are two great shows in their own right). It wasn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t like it anymore or think it was lame; I just kind of moved on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in my last weeks of college and out of pure serendipity I recently stumbled across a <\/span>ranking<\/span><\/a> of the twenty-five best \u201cSimpsons\u201d episodes. I\u2019m skeptical of things like this, but I always like to check number one to see if I agree. Number one in this list was \u201cMarge vs. The Monorail.\u201d It aired in 1993, making it one of the earlier episodes. To my surprise, I wasn\u2019t familiar with it. I found it online<\/span> and watched it. What a thirty minutes that was: joke after joke after joke after sight gag after sight gag after joke. I could not stop laughing, and that <\/span>one<\/span><\/i> viewing rekindled something in me. I dug around the internet to find my childhood favorites again and I rewatched each one. Thirty minutes turned into three or four hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

It puts a lump in my throat rewatching these episodes. I try to put myself in my younger socks (not shoes, because I watched TV on a couch and shoes weren\u2019t allowed on the upholstery) and I try to remember what it was like watching them for the first time. I reminisce on how they entertained me every afternoon after school, making me feel happy in the cesspool that was middle school.<\/span>
\nTo me it matters less that the show isn\u2019t at the height that it once was. I mean, no show can keep up that level of quality for thirty years, let alone one hundred episodes. Frankly, this isn\u2019t how I want to think of this show. I wrote this article in conjunction with \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d turning thirty because I didn\u2019t want to talk about its decline. I\u2019m not much of a hugger, but I want to give it a big corny, sloppy birthday <\/span>Thank You <\/span><\/i>hug. Only for this show that\u2019s formed such an important part of my childhood and continues to amaze me even as I watch it as a bearded, stinky twenty-two year old. I hope that it keeps airing for as long as the writers, showrunners, producers, voice actors and others involved care to keep it alive, for as long as Homer\u2019s \u201cD\u2019oh!\u201ds are still hysterical, for as long as people still hum along to the theme song. I hope it keeps airing for as long as it still means to people what it means to me.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s this one episode of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d where Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, and Ralph are recruited by a record producer named L. T. Smash to join a boy band named \u201cParty Posse.\u201d It turns out that the record producer\u2019s real name is actually Lt. L.T. Smash and he\u2019s using Bart and his friends\u2019 boy band music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":2232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[243],"class_list":{"0":"post-2228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-television","8":"tag-nostalgia","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}