Smithsonian Magazine has an excellent interview with "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, to mark the 25th anniversary of the show.
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Groening shares his family history and reflections about retro TV:
You’ve spoken of the “the contradictions not acknowledged” in the sitcoms you watched as a kid. What were those contradictions between TV life and life under your roof?
In TV in the ’50s and ’60s everyone seemed very repressed. Children were unnaturally polite. My favorite character was Eddie Haskell in “Leave It to Beaver. He was so polite but blatantly false in his pretending to be nice to adults—that appealed to me. In the ’70s, and from then on, sitcom banter got so mean and sour that I was baffled. I always thought that half the time someone would say something in a sitcom, and it seemed like the spouse’s response should be, “I want a divorce.” That was the logical reply.
But no one got a divorce back then.
I’m just saying I didn’t like the bland dialogue of most of the ’50s and ’60s, and I also didn’t like the sour arguing that passed for comedy in the ’70s and ’80s. So “The Simpsons” is sort of somewhere in between.
Jewish Simpsons fans might be amazed to learn that the "Count the Homer" website, created by JVibe Magazine in 2000 to encourage teens to count the Omer, is still functioning. As of 2011 (possibly earlier), you can find the site on Twitter, too.
h/t Menachem Butler
