COMMENTARY : Success Hasn’t Spoiled ‘The Simpsons’

When it won its first Emmy last September, “The Simpsons” was ablaze in a firestorm of national publicity. Not even a year old, it was being hailed by TV critics, trashed by some educators, merchandised unmercifully and assigned by Fox to challenge NBC’s ratings king, “The Cosby Show,” for Thursday-night supremacy.

Fans had every reason to be concerned that media overkill and the curse of the sophomore jinx would doom the show and its audience to terminal Bart Burnout.

But as the second season got under way--even as the publicity was subsiding, Toys R Us was starting to return scores of unsold dolls and “Cosby” was winning the touted ratings battle--something was happening, unrelated to the phenomenon, that went against all odds: The series itself just seemed to get funnier and funnier, more and more piquant and socially perceptive, literally outwitting anything else on the tube.

Miracle of miracles: Success hasn’t spoiled “The Simpsons.” It’s the favorite, and deservedly so, to win another Emmy this weekend as TV’s best animated program.

Success hasn’t spoiled the show’s wonderfulness, that is. Within the context of the series, success is always coming along and spoiling the poor Simpsons themselves, until they shuck it off or their fleeting success is forcibly taken away from them.

This past season, for example, Homer found he had a long-lost, filthy-rich brother, an auto magnate whose finances he unwittingly managed to ruin by imparting his sense of bad taste. Grampa Simpson came into an inheritance from his girlfriend, which he finally decided to squander on his run-down retirement home instead of his undeserving family. On a smaller scale, the clan lucked into “free” (i.e., illegal) cable TV service, but eventually grudgingly cut the wires out of guilt and out of commandment-keeping little Lisa’s fear of going to hell.

Morality tales, all. Their ultimate lessons can be a tad on the obvious side--which may come as a surprise to the show’s conservative detractors, who reveal how little they’ve watched it when they lump “The Simpsons” in with the noxious “Married . . . With Children” as part of Hollywood’s “anti-family” trend.

True, Homer is a selfish lug and Bart’s brattiness is the unbridled id personified. But offsetting Bart’s disobedient yin is the polite yang of over achiever sister Lisa, a role model for kids if ever there was one. (“If I hear one more word,” threatened Homer at one point, “Bart doesn’t get to watch cartoons and Lisa doesn’t get to go to college.”) And the boys are always brought around to doing the right thing by the womenfolk, or their own best instincts.

If anything, rather than being truly subversive, “The Simpsons” skirts being preachy in its overtly pro-family messages and undeniably moralistic denouements. Younger viewers are more likely to come away looking for the love underneath their parents’ errant behavior (if they pick up any subconscious message) than to suddenly look at mom and dad as doofuses, as the detractors would have it.

But it never succumbs to cheap sentimentality, for the setups are too fast and cutting, and the writers’ knack for detailing the weird rhythms of (yes) dysfunctional middle-class family life is unerring enough--even in this rushed, hyper-stylized context--that the Band-Aid solutions they come up with to end the stories often have a real warmth rarely achieved in more naturalistic live-action sitcoms.

“The Simpsons” has it all over its non-animated comedy competitors in other ways as well. Right off the bat, Danny Elfman’s thrilling theme music suggests that you’re about to be thrust into a “Batman” world, not a “Bartman” one; the dramatic (never comedic) orchestral scoring throughout each episode makes the two worlds one and the same, as if modest suburbia might be holding out the same roller-coaster twists and turns as an effects-filled fantasy film.

The breakneck pace typically allows what seems like an hour’s worth of story to be crammed into half the time, with no artificial breathing room left for a non-existent laugh track, and dozens of great lines (and sight gags too) run together as breathlessly as Howard Hawks might have in a vintage screwball comedy.

While the dialogue last season was chock-full of literary parodies and sophisticated allusions to Shakespeare (“Good night, sweet principal”), Poe and even Preston Sturges, the animation too was packed with wonderfully weird angles and throwaway homages to Hitchcock or Edward Hopper. And it never looked cheap or rushed.

Re-watch the episode about the disobedient family mutt that shreds Homer’s $125 sneakers--with its hilarious, Gary Larsonesque mongrel point-of-view shots--and know at once why Burton and Spielberg are reluctant to put their long-delayed “Family Dog” on prime-time anytime soon: They have a lot to live up to.

In a welcome avoidance of marketing concerns, the show has moved far afield from over-reliance on stalwart Bart’s smart mouth for chuckles, taking on a wide range of targets. Among a nonstop barrage of satirical barbs, the sharpest are usually aimed at TV itself, through the steady stream of tripe (wrestling, infomercials, soft-porn cable movies, happy newscasters and, of course, homicidal Saturday morning fare) that passes through the omnipresent family tube.

But the scripts have also cheekily covered middle- and old-age dating, free-speech issues, death, affairs, rationalized petty theft, rampant materialism and, of course, how not to raise children.

“The Simpsons,” with all its surface venom and deep affection, is a real American treasure, a certifiable TV comedy classic and the best thing to happen to Thursday nights since bowling and pork rinds.