TV is the New Reading

‘The Simpsons’ turn

in 20 years of funny

I want to congratulate “The Simpsons” on 20 years of comic funny, along with the 20^th anniversary special hosted by Morgan Spurlock last week. With the Krusty-centric 450^th episode featuring Princess Penelope, and the classic line, delivered from a dumpster as it was rolling away, “Why do clown things always happen to clowns?” And the thumbnail precis on his past marriages (which is always fun on this show -- at some point, nearly everyone has been married to nearly everyone) including the late Eartha Kitt with a scrap of post-mortem comedy -- and which Penelope didn’t mind at all, but Krusty did -- Penelope deserved better, he insisted.

Of course, Krusty the Clown is one of hundreds of side characters we’ve come to know and love in more than 20 years of “The Simpsons.” I still remember “The Bartman” rising as a dance of some sort while Tim Burton’s “Batman” franchise was still good. A few years later they had Bart -- still 10 years old -- do “The Bartman” as a distraction and even Milhouse came down on it as being “so 1991.”

Rather than a clock on the wall, there’s been a calendar on the wall, because Homer and Marge met each other and fell in love anywhere between the late ‘70s and most recently, in a ‘90s “Melrose Place” type situation. Bart has been alive during six presidential administrations which is unusual for any 10-year-old, but unheard of for a 1-year-old like Maggie.

They’ve done ever so many things in their time on the tube, and have visited ever so many places, like London and Ireland and Japan and Australia and lots of roadtrips across America. They’ve explored nearly every aspect of theology and political philosophy and danced with flawless spontaneous choreography through dozens of citywide musical numbers. “The Simpsons,” to my knowledge, presented the first musical production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (“Oh! Streetcar!”) directed by Jon Lovitz as Llwellyn Sinclair in 1992, predating by 15 years Andre Previn’s poorly reviewed opera on the same theme.

Speaking of themes, in 20 years nearly every possible foible and nuance has been explored in these characters. They’ve been wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, they’ve lost everything, they’ve been on the run for their lives from the law. It seems impossible that there are new places to take these characters. Bart has experienced his first kiss several times, Lisa has envisioned multiple weddings, we’ve had several different courtship scenarios for Homer and Marge, but there are some enduring concepts. First, Maude Flanders is dead and has been for years, now, having been knocked from a stadium with a T-shirt gun, and I think that was an excellent public service episode about the dangers of those things.

More to the point, this show works because Homer and Marge are completely in love with each other. They maintain a beautiful dynamic. There’s a drift when Homer isn’t trying hard enough to keep things fresh, and then he tries too hard and Marge is won over all over again. The episode where they were having sex all over the place in public places, including the Springfield Miniature Golf Course, was just a deliciously naughty joy. They’ve made a million pop culture references but most of the time, watching the reruns, you aren’t thrown by them too terribly. I also enjoyed the “Pulp Fiction”-esque episode “22 Short Films about Springfield,” as well as the Troy McClure-hosted “The Simpson’s 138^th Episode Spectacular,” “Marge vs. The Monorail” and “Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken,” which was the one where the kids of Springfield get blamed for a wild night of carousing and vandalism by Homer and crew and a curfew is implemented, and the kids take their revenge to the airwaves, sharing their parents’ secrets, culminating in a song by the kids, adults and seniors of Springfield.

The show has evolved to flow with tenuous connection from scene to scene, sometimes counterintuitively, although you will get no complaint from Homer, who lives so completely in the now there is no contradiction among any one thing by any other. Just other ideas that seemed like good ones at the time, like Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding and Helping, or Mr. Plow, or The Plow King. Or Marge’s investment group, or Homer’s barbershop quartet. And even ones that didn’t seem like especially good ideas, like flooding the town, or moving it five miles down the road to escape a garbage glut, or making a suit out of puppies, or war hero Armin Tamzarian, and while his mom is simply on the lam from the Feds, where has Homer’s homeless brother been for lo these many years? Ah well ... let us never speak of them again.

Leverage

I’ve been enjoying “Leverage” because we only really see the parts of this show that work. When the thief gets herself an earpiece and browbeats the attendant into letting her in because that’s exactly what Kari said to do at the morning meeing the attendant must have missed, that’s the kind of flim-flam artistry that would never actually work in any other similar situation.

Or when the enforcer, Eliot, needs to be a person in the fashion industry, he drapes a scarf around his neck and voila! Instant fop. Or when mastermind Nate Ford needs to be in any situation at all he will adopt a Dutch accent and glasses with tiny frames and he is accepted instantly in a way that makes me afraid for my job. I mean, in the world of “Leverage,” a person can walk in the front door, wave any shiny thing in the air and be accepted as the person who is meant to be there. The same thing happens with “Chuck,” incidentally. The idea is that in a sufficiently large operation, no one person knows absolutely everyone else so if you are making a good show of being the person in charge, you are accepted as the person in charge.

And in this situation, the third season premiere Wednesdays at 10/9c, where they were trying to convince a sweatshop owner of her big break into the legitimate fashion world so as destroy her and help a helpless worker, in the end the international aid volunteers are put in charge of a factory in receivership and the workers get to have lunch. Which might work except there’s no real business model in place but never mind. The bad sweatshop owners are put away, along with some Asian mob figures and the team scoots off to Robin Hood another situation.

And it’s reasonably entertaining. You get to see people being fooled, which is fun, and reasonably intelligent grifters working their dark arts for good, instead of evil. Jeri Ryan hasn’t convinced me she’s much help at all in her addition to the cast, but she’s only been in a couple of episodes altogether so let’s give her some time, and in any event, the team of Hardison, Parker, Eliot and Nathan, with a little additional help from Sophie, is a fun team to watch.

Coming up

Coming up we’ve got a sneak peek series premiere of Mark Valley in “Human Target” kicking off the first of two explosive two-hour blocks of the eighth season of “24,” set this season in New York. That all starts at 8/7c on FOX.

Other fun starts Monday with the second two-hour block of “24” which I think is its usual time, starting at 8/7c on FOX, and “Life Unexpected” on the CW about a girl who tries to leave the foster care system. There’s more “American Idol” ahead of the “Human Target” premiere encore Tuesday night on FOX, and a second “Human Target” airing at its regular time Wednesday at 9/8c on FOX.

“Ugly Betty” has been back from hiatus for weeks now and I’ll probably get to see it one of these weeks, maybe. It’s airing Wednesdays at 10/9c on ABC so I wonder how that slot is doing for them. Thursday ABC premieres something called “The Deep End” which looks like a bunch of young pretty lawyers all having sex with each other so that’s probably going to be a hit.

And the networks are giving over two hours of primetime programming to raise help and awareness for the devastation following the massive earthquake last week in Haiti, called “Hope for Haiti,” beginning at 8/7c on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC.

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