The Golden Age Of The Simpsons: The Looney Tunes Era
I did a series of posts on the first nine years of The Simpsons on the show's fansite, NoHomers.net, under my username C.MontgomeryBurns. I reposted my deconstructions here in a series of posts below. They provide a general overview of each period of the show. All of the posts together are 8,000 plus words. When the fifth season came along there was a new showrunner named David Mirkin whose name I did not remember seeing in the first four years of the show. The thought that came to my head was after watching his first story was, “Oh no…the show is not going to be the same anymore” because I had loved those earlier years. Well thank God I was wrong about that because it was actually far from the truth. Mirkin not only produced what I feel is the funniest period of the entire show but more significantly he is the most important showrunner the series has ever had. At the time David Mirkin was the first and only outsider to be brought in as showrunner. He had carried a very unique style of humor and storytelling that were clearly very different from the original crew’s brand of writing. And with much of the original crew now gone a new generation of writers had to take up the reigns and live up to the standards their predecessors had set before them. All of these factors might have pointed toward the show’s demise as I worried in the back of my head, but the series effectively bucked that trend by embracing all those potential negatives as positives. This I believe was the best decision Mirkin could have ever made as a showrunner for he knew it would have been a fool’s errand to chase down what the original writers had done previously because he was neither them nor a longtime fan of the show like Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein. As risky as the plan was he had to bring his own vision to the show in order for it to remain creatively high in spite of some fans already writing off the series as a shadow of its former self for changing gears. But the show’s evolution during those two years would be a huge benefit for them in the long run. Mirkin showed that the series could continue to develop its own way of writing while still remaining on the same creative level of the previous seasons. He employed the type of zany, surreal, and screw-the-audience jokes one would expect to see from any of the classic Looney Tunes shorts. As a result of his style those years were primary focused on jokes and gags over the heart. But whatever deficiencies the show had in the emotional department were made by the abundance of pranks they had stored up in the laugh factory. And my God were the jokes truly awesome. It’s almost as if Mirkin used a special science to see which gags would work or not in a storyline. He treated the jokes like an artform on to itself as one joke would be surpassed by a funnier gag only for it to be superseded by a more hilarious wisecrack. That really was his unique trick of the trade and his period stands out because it is a individualistic quality that can’t be emulated easily by anyone. There was however more to Mirkin’s style than just the zaniness he brought to the table. The political and pop culture satire became much more biting and sharper under his watch. The stories tackled more adult themes and situations that would not have been done by his predecessors. The story structure was tinkered around through episodes like “$pringfield”, which had five tightly interwoven plotlines linked together under one roof. The series also entered new territory with the two part episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns”, which completed his interpretation of Mr. Burns from a senile old man to a dangerous villain who was at his peak during those years. His biggest game changer though was to move the focus of the show to Homer and away from Bart. This was in some sense the show maturing as it moved on from the days of “Bartmania” to establishing Homer as more of an anchor for the family which paid off big time. It helped the show because if the show had continued to revolve around Bart then the series would have outlasted its welcome with its indulgence of all things Bart. Just think of the scene from “Simpsons Tide” where Ralph remarks how outdated it was for Bart to still sing his song from way back in 1990. Mirkin was very quick to adapt to what the show was all about in spite of him being a newcomer. He always understood what made the series work and he did not mess with that as a showrunner. This is why even though the stories had a different flavor it still retained the spark that had been present since the beginning of the series. His tenure may have skewed toward the funny, but he still made an emotionally charged storyline from time to time. They did not come that often but whenever they did those stories really hit it out of the ball park. “Secrets of a Successful Marriage” is probably one of the most successful Homer & Marge marriage in trouble plots because it really gets you thinking that their union is coming to an end. And “Lisa’s Wedding” is one of those all-time greats that you knew was a masterpiece after watching it the first time. Those episodes were grounded in ways that were much more realistic than their peers before them which is saying a lot. It was into the sixth season when it struck me how similar the show was to Looney Tunes. When Bob Clampett supervised the Daffy Duck stories in the 1930’s he portrayed him as a crazy however naive loon. By the 1950’s Chuck Jones took over Daffy and he decided to do his own interpretation on the character. He moved away from the Clampett view by making the duck into a devious bastard. Now on paper this could have turned out to be awful, especially if it had been done under the supervision of a lesser artist. But Jones had the creative vision and the storytelling ability to make that interpretation work. It is because of that insight that the character did not jump the shark as he evolved. The initial innocence of the character may have been lost in the transition, but the character became much richer in personality and humor. This is why that aspect has been such an integral part of the character in the decades since then. I think of David Mirkin along those same lines. He had the strong vision to lead the show in a totally different direction from his peers and he made it work. While the creative change may have negated the grounded realism of the previous years it nevertheless creatively energized the show’s spirit so that it may continue to consistently produce classic works. As a result the show had developed a new style of storytelling that is now an integral part of the show’s DNA. Mirkin was the right person at the right time to lead the show. He had opened the door for future show runners to bring in their own unique perspectives to the job. I came to that realization just as his tenure was ending which made me sad because I had gotten used to his style. It was throguh his tenure that I learned that it wasn’t such a bad thing for a change in style to happen in the end.
