Early Installment Weirdness / The Simpsons

The Simpsons has changed dramatically since the characters debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.

• The Simpsons themselves were originally poorly drawn animations of facial caricatures and were gradually swapped for the current designs as the shorts went on. They were brought back on occasion to show how far they've come, such as in the last segment of "Treehouse of Horror XXV".
• First were the Tracey Ullman shorts (which focused on the Simpsons family and had Lisa as being just as devious as Bart). Then come the first season or so, most of which is very different in tone and humor style to everything that came after it. In general most episodes are rather straightforward antics consisting of one storyline (contrary to later episodes where usually two or three story arcs are combined). The pacing is slow, most of the characters haven't been properly established yet (or don't exist), and the jokes nowadays come off as awkward or too subtle to be funny. The animation is very amateurish, sometimes downright ugly to look at. Even though the show was still more realistic and less cartoony than later episodes, there are still occasional moments where the animation is more typical of a standard cartoon: weird expressions, super quick movements, and rather kid-friendly silly voice acting. The social satire is there, but more subtle than in later seasons.
• One of the original shorts had Bart attempting to steal a bunch of candy bars from a store, then showing little to no remorse for it even as Marge chews him out on it. This feels downright surreal given Bart would later establish there are lines he (generally) won't cross and him stealing something would be taken much more seriously in the show proper.
• In particular, there's "There's No Disgrace Like Home" (in which Marge embarrasses the family by getting drunk in public and Homer is actually ashamed of his family being dysfunctional; like in the Ullman era, Lisa is also as bratty as Bart. Later episodes, like "The War of the Simpsons" and "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" would have it the other way around). The writers' commentary cheerfully admits that pretty much everything in the episode is "wrong" compared to later seasons (except for the personalities of Bart and the ancillary/supporting characters, like Moe, Officers Eddie and Lou, and Dr. Marvin Monroe), though that still doesn't stop it from having a scene that continues to be extremely popular (the climax where The Simpsons give each other electro-shock therapy and cause rolling blackouts all over the city).
• Also notable is the completely different, more gruff voice Dan Castellaneta uses for Homer during the shorts and first part of the first season. The original voice of Homer was based rather closely on Walter Matthau. As well, after the first season or so (after the initial craze died down, but the show still had very strong ratings) the writers realized that Homer was a much better character for generating plots instead of Bart, as long as they kept him fairly unpredictable and dumb. Dan Castellaneta actually says on several commentaries that he never really made a decision to change the voice; he just kept trying his best to match the voice he used in the previous episode, and it slowly changed to one that fit the writing better.
• In the original shorts and much of the first season, the show is visibly more timeless, bearing a closer resemblance to the sixties and seventies, when Matt Groening was a kid. This is evident in things like the cars, the hairstyles (Marge has an unmistakable beehive), the prominence of church, and the existence of things like Krusty the Clown and Itchy and Scratchy. By the second season, the show had pretty firmly locked its time period in the at-the-time present.
• During the first season, a lot of characters had the same general designs but were differently colored; there are the early Off-Model appearances of an Ambiguously Brown-skinned Smithers with blue hair on the season 1 episode "Homer's Odyssey" (which was said to be due to an inking error), Lou the cop (whose skin switched from being black to being yellow due to the show's notoriously bad animation back in the first season), Barney the drunk whose hair matched his yellow skin, Miss Hoover (Lisa's teacher), who had blue hair instead of brownish gray, and Hans Moleman (whom the ink and paint people keep switching from brown to yellow — sometimes in the same episode), among others. Starting with the second season, all of these oddities were ironed out and the characters' colors have remained consistent to this day.
• Homer is not nearly so dumb in the earlier episodes, though he does mix up his facts (when he told Bart that Albert Einstein invented the light bulb in "Bart the Genius") and does initially come off as clueless to his wife's and children's emotional problems. He tends to be portrayed as rash and overly angry in the early episodes, in contrast to later episodes which tend towards depicting him as happy-go-lucky and easygoing. He is also not as much a major focus as he would become in later seasons — only a few episodes of the first season had Homer as the de facto protagonist, with the rest regulating him to either B-plots, supporting roles, or participation in ensemble pieces involving the family as a whole.
• Ned Flanders wasn't the "everything-is-religious" extremist we imagine him being today in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". Of course he and his family are shown celebrating Christmas, but all their decorations are of secular Christmas characters (like Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). In the early episodes, Flanders was just a nice, church-going man who had a beautiful wife and well-behaved children (which made Homer jealous of him). Then came the, well, Flanderization of Flanders and the rest is history. He was also a pharmacist in the first two seasons before starting the Leftorium early in Season 3 (which is widely considered to be the start of the show's "classic" period); but the Leftorium became such an indispensable part of his characterization that many fans don't even remember a time before he owned it.
• In his debut episode, "Bart the General" (as well as his only appearance in Season 1), Nelson Muntz is a genuinely sadistic bully who scares away everybody, and targets Bart especially. In subsequent episodes, he became far more well-known for his mockery of other characters' misfortunes with his iconic laughter ("Ha-ha!") and for being a dim-witted, mean-spirited delinquent with a soft side underneath. He also becomes a friend of Bart's in later episodes (though their friendship is very inconsistent), with Milhouse van Houten and Martin Prince becoming his new bullying targets. He also has two Co-Dragons identical in all but race; later seasons would show Nelson picking on kids either alone or with Jimbo, Kearney, and Dolph (and usually acting more as support in the latter's case).
• Mrs. Krabappel is much meaner in earlier episodes, her being more or less Bart's foil. She would become more three dimensional as a character later on (until the character was retired upon Marcia Wallace's death).
• In his very first appearance, Sideshow Bob is shown to be more or less happy working on Krusty the Clown's show, and you'd never guess he was harboring any of the resentment that would drive him to frame Krusty for armed robbery and become the show's most prominent recurring villain (though the episode, "Krusty Gets Busted" had something to do with Sideshow Bob's change in personality). And with the exception of one really brief scene Sideshow Bob's hair looks completely different than it normally does, instead looking closer to Krusty's replacement sidekick, Sideshow Mel.
• Krusty himself often seemed more genuinely childlike and hyperactive in early episodes ("Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" shows him having trouble not playing to the kids when trying to have a more serious discussion on air), compared to the acerbic, money hungry Nice Character, Mean Actor he is in most modern episodes. Bart's refusal to believe he could commit armed robbery in "Krusty Gets Busted" didn't quite age well, as Krusty getting into legal hot water through his own fault isn't uncommon in his later appearances. In "Krusty Gets Busted" and "Like Father, Like Clown", Krusty is shown having flesh colored skin underneath his makeup, whereas in later seasons Krusty's pale face and red nose are a medical condition resulting from heart disease and chain smoking and Krusty has to wear makeup to look normal.
• During the first three seasons, Chief Wiggum was actually a very serious, no-nonsense cop who didn't like it when people didn't take the law seriously. Season 4 changed all of this and made him the corrupt, dim-witted, gluttonous bungler that we know today. Similarly, his son Ralph Wiggum was a fairly normal kid in his first couple of appearances, but starting with the season 4 episode "I Love Lisa" he was transformed into the adorable Cloud Cuckoolander with special needs that fans of The Simpsons know and love today.
• Ralph Wiggum wasn't initially intended to be Chief Wiggum's son at first; the first time this is hinted at is when Ralph is addressed as "Wiggum" in the first episode of Season 4, "Kamp Krusty". "I Love Lisa" made it canon. Before Season 4, the two characters had no connection; there is even an episode with a parents reunion at school that includes a man modeled off Ralph and obviously intended to be his father.
• For the first two seasons or so, officers Lou and Eddie worked without Chief Wiggum, who, as the Chief of Police, mostly appeared during press conferences or at his desk at the police station. They were also cruel and implied to be corrupt. Once Wiggum was established as a complete buffoon he started appearing more frequently in the field, and the dynamic was shifted so that he is the corrupt one, Lou is the Only Sane Man and Eddie rarely speaks.
• The Treehouse of Horror specials are slightly different in the first few seasons. The first four of them have Framing Devices to set up the stories ("II" for example has them all happening as nightmares of Homer, Bart and Lisa). They were also initially opened with a segment of Marge warning viewers about the scariness of the episode. The spooky opening sequence also featured names of dead people (or ideals and institutions considered "dead," like television violence, American workmanship, and subtle political satire) on tombstones. These all were dropped due either to lack of time for them or writers struggling to come up with ideas for them. Additionally, the first episode featuring Kang and Kodos the aliens has a third - Serak the Preparer who has not appeared since (Al Jean notes on the commentary that this is because "he costs money," being voiced by James Earl Jones). One of the signature elements of Treehouse of Horror—its use of Death as Comedy—isn't evident in the first few installments, with the first onscreen death of a major character happening in the third.
• In the first five seasons, Itchy and Scratchy are more prominently featured on the show, almost appearing once in every episode when characters are watching TV. In later seasons they appear less and less frequently. The first few episodes involving the characters also seem to suggest they're equally antagonistic, or possibly a similar case to Tom and Jerry of one provoking the other. (The opening goes "They fight and bite", after all.) Subsequent appearances show the series's iconic "Itchy murders Scratchy for no reason" formula take hold pretty quickly.
• The first five or six seasons also regularly feature a couple of characters who would disappear altogether from the show because they just didn't click with the audience: The Happy Little Elves, Marvin Monroe, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Mrs. Glick, the Babysitter Bandit... nevertheless, they appear very prominently in the first two seasons. Radioactive Man would also count. He does appear in later episodes, but always in smaller and rare references.
• Then there are characters who make their debut in early seasons, but would only reoccur more frequently and prominently in later seasons, like Comic Book Guy, Cletus, Sideshow Mel, Database, Superintendent Chalmers...
• The show in its early years were much more cautious about how it used its Special Guest stars. Season 1 had only a couple of celebrity guests, none of whom played themselves. Season 2 was a bit more experimental, but only slightly so: despite the quantity of guests increasing, just three of them play themselves (Tony Bennett, Ringo Starr, and Larry King) and all of them remain distant from the events of the plot—Ringo Starr and Larry King never interact directly with the Simpsons family, and Tony Bennett only does so as a one-off gag. Season 3 marks the point where the show fully embraced the celebrity guest as an almost episodic tradition, with an increasing number of guests playing themselves and interacting with the main cast.
  • Two early celebrities appeared under pseudonyms: Dustin Hoffman from the Season 2 episode "Lisa's Substitute" was credited as Sam Etic and Michael Jackson from the Season 3 premiere "Stark Raving Dad" was credited as John Jay Smith. After Jackson's appearance, the staff told guest stars that their real names must appear in the credits.
• The opening theme is much different in the first season:
  • The clouds that break away into the title card are stratus clouds instead of the more familiar cumulus, and they dissolve. They also cover less of the sky.
  • The school's exterior is painted a very pale purple instead of orange.
  • The classroom where Bart writes the chalkboard gag has purple walls. They became green in Season 2.
  • When Homer leaves work, an unknown man sits behind him eating a sandwich with tongs (subsequent seasons have Mr. Burns and Smithers in the background, changed to Lenny and Carl for the HD intro in 2009).
  • Lisa's saxophone solo is an octave higher. Her solo is also always the same, whereas different variations were introduced in the second season onwards.
  • Bart skateboards past a group of unknown Springfieldians waiting for a bus. He picks up the bus stop sign and the group chases the bus after it passes them. There are also no other recurring characters on the sidewalk when he skateboards, except Krusty's face appearing on TVs; this scene would incorporate more character appearances as the side characters got larger roles in the show.
  • Lisa is given an extra scene where she arrives at the house first, followed by Homer who pulls into the driveway, then Bart who skateboards off his car; the scene of Lisa on her bike was replaced by the rapid-speed pan across Springfield from the second season onwards.
  • This then segues into the pre-HD Marge entry where she nearly runs over Homer as she parks the station wagon in the garage. All subsequent seasons show Homer arriving first, followed by Bart, then Lisa who cuts off Homer after he gets out of his car.
  • Speaking of Homer nearly getting run over, in "Bart the Genius," which is the second episode to be produced, Homer doesn't scream when this happens.
  • In the couch gags, the couch is drawn with extra buttons on the backrest.
  • The TV is orange with the controls located under the screen rather than beside it.
• For those who came in after the seventh season, it can be weird to see early episodes where Lisa is eating meat along with the rest of her family. Early Lisa even seemed to have an affinity for fried shrimp. In one episode, she even purchases a cow's heart from the local butcher in order to practice heart surgery!
• The episode titles for the first few seasons were more simple and straightforward, including "Bart the General", "Krusty Gets Busted", "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", etc. Increasingly through the years, the show started relying instead on Pun-Based Titles, to the point that from Season 9 onwards nearly every episode uses that format.
• In early seasons, Lenny and Carl were more frequently seen at the nuclear plant than at Moe's Tavern. In fact, outside of "Flaming Moe's", they would not become regulars there until Season 6.
• Early on, Sideshow Bob and Sideshow Mel never spoke on "The Krusty the Klown Show", using slide whistles instead. This serves to enforce their roles as Krusty's sidekicks. Thus, it was a big deal when Sideshow Bob actually spoke when he took over the show after Krusty's arrest in "Krusty Gets Busted". This conceit was eventually dropped, and Sideshow Mel has been openly speaking since the third season of the show. In both cases, the entire intended joke was that they were cultured, intelligent men stuck in lowbrow roles.
• Season 1's "The Telltale Head" and Season 2's "Bart Gets Hit By a Car" both have the episode titles featured at the beginning of the episode during the opening credits, something that's never happened in any other episode.
• The HD episodes of season 20 had the Simpsons' television replaced by a new flat screen TV in the intro, but whenever it appeared in the actual episodes, it was always the original CRT TV they've had for years. Even more oddly, the old TV made appearances in two Couch Gags. It wouldn't be until season 21 when the new TV would make actual appearances within the episodes.
• In the first few seasons, prolonged shots of the characters facing the camera were a more frequent occurrence. Nowadays, such a sight is generally reduced to only a fleeting glimpse as they turn their heads.
• Early episodes would Fade to Black before commercial breaks, though later episodes would rather Smash to Black instead.
• In "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", Principal Skinner had verbal paraphasia (accidentally replacing one word with another). This never shows up again.
• Three episodes from Season 1 have no Couch Gag: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" opens with a Christmas-themed title card before dissolving into the action while "Bart the General" and "Life in the Fast Lane" fade directly to the episode from the shot of Springfield Elementary. With the exception of Halloween specials, episodes without couch gags wouldn't be commonplace until "The Ned-liest Catch", the Season 22 finale.
• "Some Enchanted Evening" - the first episode written and produced, and meant to be the first to air - is notable in that it doesn't have a "true" Couch Gag. The family rushes in, sits on the couch, and — aside from Bart blinking twice and Marge blinking once — that's it. The intent was that the pilot would play this scene straight, then every subsequent episode would play with or subvert it. The only other episode with this "gag" is "The Call of the Simpsons".
• In the first couch gag (technically the second in production order), Bart pops off his side of the couch and doesn't come down until the Simpsons' television displays the "Created by/Developed by" credits. It would be another 25 seasons (with "The Wreck of the Relationship") until another couch gag would continue into the television scene.
• In early chalkboard gags, Bart commits misdeeds that warrant getting detention such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded classroom or skateboarding in the halls. Starting in Season 2, and in almost every episode featuring them since about Season 8, the chalkboard gags are for trivial events, pop culture references or meta-references about the show.
• When we're first introduced to the music teacher Mr. Largo in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", he shows enthusiasm while introducing Lisa in her class's "Santas of Many Lands" presentation. This contradicts every subsequent appearance where he hates his job and stifles Lisa's creativity every chance he gets. That episode doesn't have the standard opening sequence which includes Mr. Largo's signature role: kicking Lisa out of class for adding a flourish to her saxophone solo.
• Mona Simpson (Homer's mother) is first mentioned in Season 1's "There's No Disgrace Like Home", where Homer reminisces about how she would tell him that he's "a big disappointment". Later seasons firmly establish that she loves her son, and would never say such a thing.^note This may have been an intentional plot point, up until the episode where Homer and Mona reunited he thought his mother had abandoned him because she didn't love him (and he even mentions this to Marge a couple times). As it turns out she was actually on the run from the FBI. She was also voiced by Maggie Roswell in her first few appearances.
• Several locations on the show looked drastically different during Season 1. The most notable examples are Mr. Burns's office◊ and Moe's Tavern◊.
• If you look carefully at several shots from the first three episodes in production order^note "Some Enchanted Evening", "Bart the Genius" and "Homer's Odyssey" and by extension, all couch gags spanning season 1, you'll notice that the backgrounds are made of a gradient consisting of a random color and white. In the former's case, they're unedited scenes from the infamous original workprint. Every episode produced since has had fully solid backgrounds in every scene, excluding the TV shot after the couch gag in the opening credits as well as things like sunsets which would have gradients in the real world. The exclusively solid colored background convention was used well until the show's switch to HD.
• Throughout the first season, many background characters had spiked hair like the Simpson children. It was later decided that only Bart, Lisa and Maggie should have spiked hair.
  • Similarly, other adult characters would have Flintstones-style beards like Homer. Other than Abe, Krusty^note who was originally supposed to be Homer in disguise, Herb Powell^note who is Homer's half-brother, and Lenny, no one else but Homer should have it.
• Mr. Burns called Homer by his first name in Season 1 episodes like "Homer's Odyssey" and "Homer's Night Out". In later episodes, he always forgets his workers' first names and constantly had to be reminded by Smithers what their names are. Burns not remembering Homer's name even becomes a plot element in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" from Season 6/7.
• The first season was the only season with no Halloween episodes and had 13 episodes instead of at least 20.
• The Complete Season DVD menus initially had different menu designs for each season. Starting with Season 5, however, the DVD menus now follow a consistent "one character representing each episode" design, which has remained the main design for every season afterwards. Other elements, such as the episode sub-menus showing a short clip from the episode in question, and each menu having fully-animated characters would also be codified during this time.
• The first season voice cast. Hank Azaria wasn't a regular cast member yet, being listed as "also starring" or a special guest voice. This also happened in the first half of season 2. Sam McMurray, another cast member from The Tracey Ullman Show, did a few voices in two episodes, possibly anticipating him to be another voice actor to do numerous bit parts in each episode, but that fell through. Chris Latta (credited as Christopher Collins) — the iconic voice of Cobra Commander and Starscream — was the original voice of Mr. Burns and Moe; he wound up being fired after the first season due to being difficult to work with, and Azaria replaced him as Moe (even dubbing over one of Latta's already-recorded episodes), while Harry Shearer took over the role of Mr. Burns.
• The floor plan for the Simpsons' house wasn't drawn until 1990, with the second season being the first one to use it. Because of this, the locations of the rooms were frequently changed around during the first season. For example, the living room was sometimes drawn with a window behind the couch, which looks strange considering how iconic the room is thanks to the Couch Gag.
• The exterior of the Simpson home has mostly been the same except a few season one episodes where the living room and dining room had semicircle shaped windows◊ which were later replaced by the more familiar bay windows.
• The early seasons were inconsistent with the Simpsons' home address before settling with 742 Evergreen Terrace. In Season 3's "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington", mail addressed to Homer lists 94 as the house number. Season 4's "New Kid On the Block" has Bart give the address as 1094. "Homer's Triple Bypass" which is also in the fourth season actually has 742 Evergreen Terrace being the address for Snake Jailbird, who's house is next to Reverend Lovejoy's. In at least one case, even the street given was different (Spalding Way).
• The overall dynamic in early episodes was that the Simpson family were dysfunctional misfits who failed to fit in among their relatively normal social group (this is even central to the plot of "There's No Disgrace Like Home"). As more and more supporting characters were established however, the premise became that the entirety of Springfield was a barely functioning CloudCuckooLand, with the Simpsons no more manic or incompetent than everyone else (and in some cases even the Only Sane Man). This is particularly evident with Bart and Homer's dynamics in Springfield Elementary and the Nuclear Plant respectively, in early episodes they were singled out as exceptional failures, in later ones the joke is that the entire faculty is so corrupt and incompetent that they are simply another dent on their bad track record.
• In the Tracey Ullman short "The Krusty the Klown Show", some kids in the audience had orange or even blue skin. This implies that the creators were at least toying with the idea to expand the depiction of unusual skin colors beyond yellow to portray other races.