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A discriminating comedy that appeals indiscriminately, ''The Simpsons'' remains a popular AND critical favorite. High-minded reviewers dig the brainy pop parodies; parents guffaw over the domestic strife; their kids eat up the rebel humor and catchphrases (''Eat my shorts!''). Indeed, if any of TV's nuclear units can be dubbed our First Family, it's this maladjusted crew: boneheaded nuclear plant safety instructor Homer; his blue-haired moral compass, Marge; miscreant fourth-grader Bart; precocious second-grader Lisa; and pacifier-slurping Maggie. As they bumble their way through poignantly tweaked sitcom archetypes (in danger of failing history, Bart makes Homer proud by buckling down and earning a D minus), ''The Simpsons'' have defied and defined family-com convention.
One need only flip the TV dial to feel the torque of the show's wake -- and we're not just talking about the current animation craze. ''The Simpsons'' created the prototype for '90s TV: the arch self-awareness of its target market; self-indulgent references to both pop and high culture; dead-on, dangerous farce; and the selling of dysfunction as mainstream. Shows as seemingly disparate as ''South Park'' and ''Frasier'' owe a debt to Homer and his brood. And where would today's teen movement be had ''The Simpsons'' not shown that youth-oriented didn't necessarily mean ''D'oh!''?
None of this entirely explains, of course, why ''The Simpsons'' -- the current longest-runnning prime-time comedy -- has aged so well. Part of the answer lies in the show's unrivaled freedom, which creator Matt Groening fought hard for from the beginning. Unlike so many of his sitcom-creating peers, he managed to keep his vision pure, resisting audience testing, research, and network fiddling. ''Matt's a genuine iconoclast,'' says longtime ''Simpsons'' producer George Meyer. ''He doesn't like any bridles, even socially prescribed ones. He's just an ornery guy who wants to go his own way.''
The wonderful irony of ''The Simpsons'' is that like the Trojan horse, it hides its greatest weapon: Within the cynical self-consciousness and clinical deconstruction is a mother lode of heart. ''Matt never lost sight of the essential thing that made 'The Simpsons' really good, which was, yeah, people love the really weird lines and everything, but what hooks you in is that you really believe that these people exist,'' says Conan O'Brien, a writer for the show before he left to host ''Late Night.'' ''If the show becomes too Ivy League smart-ass and too self-indulgent, then it all goes south. The reason the show is greater than the sum of its parts is because Matt knows this is a family that has real emotional connections to each other. And although that may not be the element that everybody recites, subliminally that's what keeps you coming back for the wiseass comments.'' -- Dan Snierson
