#TBT -- Classic Simpsons: Introduction
I was raised on The Simpsons. From the ripe young age of six years old, I was hooked on America's favorite anti-nuclear family. I still remember the VHS tape I had at that age that my mom must have recorded for me at the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2. It had seven episodes on it, all in the order they aired (skipping only "Dancin' Homer"):
"Krusty Gets Busted" (Season 1 Episode 12)
"Some Enchanted Evening" (S1E13)
"Bart Gets an F" (S2E1)
"Simpson and Delilah" (S2E2)
"The Simpsons Halloween Special" later renamed "Treehouse of Horror" (S2E3)
"Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish" (S2E4)
"Dead Putting Society" (S2E6)
To this day, I consider these some of the best Simpsons episodes ever and each one always makes me incredibly nostalgic because they were the foundation of my love for The Simpsons and also because I watched them over and over and over and over and OVER when I was just a wee lad. I would even sometimes have sleepovers at my house and I would put this tape on and my friends and I would watch it until we all zonked out. But it was only the beginning.
I grew up not only watching Golden Age Simpsons every Sunday on Fox but since it was smack dab in the middle of the Golden Age, I also grew up watching a steady stream of classic episodes in syndication every afternoon when I got home from school (instead of, you know, doing my homework...as the French would say, very Bartesque). In the days before DVD box sets, I got to watch all the best Simpsons episodes over and over on channel 39 and I became addicted.
Sadly, during my last year of middle school, the show, then in its tenth season, began to slip noticeably in quality. I was still young, so I still enjoyed Season 10 but even I began to notice that the show wasn't quite what it used to be. By the time I started high school, it was into Season 11, which was as much worse than Season 10 as Season 10 was worse than Season 9. That's when I (along with many others) pretty much gave up on watching new episodes of The Simpsons. But the Golden Age would live on in all our hearts forever. And that's what this new feature here on Vundablog is all about.
If this blog is about one thing, it's about us completely geeking out about things we love and there are few things that all three of us here at Vundablog love more than Golden Age Simpsons. In that spirit, we introduce a new Throwback Thursday feature wherein we will be posting delightfully geeky tributes to classic Simpsons episodes. Each edition of "Classic Simpsons" will include a short synopsis of the episode, a slightly longer analysis of why we love it, a slew of fun facts taken mostly from the DVD commentaries of each episode and the book "The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family," and a quick(-ish) run-through of our favorite moments complete with screencaps (all images, of course, belong to Twentieth Century Fox) and sometimes, if we're really lucky, some amazing GIF animations care of the lovely folks over at SimpsonsGIFs.
It's the least we can do to express our love and gratitude for one of the greatest, most important television shows of all time. I only hope we can do it justice with our tributes.
NEXT WEEK: Season 8, Episode 9 - "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer" ("The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer")