At 500 Episodes, How Does 'The Simpsons' Say Something New?

At 500 Episodes, How Does 'The Simpsons' Say Something New?.

"With Sunday's airing of 'At Long Last Leave' on FOX, 8:00 Eastern, the family that defined dysfunctional hits its astonishing 500th episode—a mark reached by only two other primetime scripted TV series, Gunsmoke and Lassie. Neither of which was funny. And neither of which had a tenth of the social impact."

"The Simpsons was revolutionary for being the first show on TV about TV. Ostensibly the story of a nuclear family (pun intended) living in the generic American town of Springfield, USA, The Simpsons, as media scholar Douglas Rushkoff has noted, is really a show about media itself. The first, and by far the most literate TV show to take on mass media and its discontents as a theme, Homer and company have been deconstructing pop culture for our edification and pleasure since the gang at Community were getting meta in grade school. Be it Hitchcock movies, infomercials, the superficial and sensationalistic local news, or Thomas Pynchon novels, the show is a crash course in popular culture, nearly compulsively cataloging and critiquing other media forms.

The Tom and Jerry parody Itchy and Scratchy, for instance. That show-within-a-show obsessively watched by the Simpsons kids was dazzlingly original for pointing out—usually in bloody detail—the rather uncomfortable truth that many Saturday morning cartoon shows for kids are insanely, even sadistically violent. Having that disturbing fact about mass media confirmed by mass media is not only funny, but a profound comfort to an audience."