THE SIMPSONS SEASON 30 GUEST STARS SERIES

Unfortunately, he does so in just two pages, and it's rather dismissive. Reiss deserves a modicum of credit for at least addressing the Apu controversy in Springfield Confidential. Just because there is no deeper meaning to Reiss and his fellow writers (who are overwhelmingly white and male), doesn't mean there aren't some deeper meanings imposed by the more diverse culture at large. Mark.)Д«ut with this approach comes a certain narrow-mindedness. (The rest of Groening's own nuclear family? His grandpa Abe his mom Marge, nee Wiggum his sisters Lisa, Maggie, and Patty and his brother. He has a point: For example, there's acres of discourse on how Homer somehow ties into the writings of the ancient Greek poet, whereas the truth is that Groening just named the character after his own dad Homer in the five minutes he had to figure out his animation pitch to The Tracy Ullman Show in 1988. Reiss has spent decades trying to refute any attempts to see deeper meaning in The Simpsons, whether from academics or fans. The first subversion appears in the very first second - when the title appears through the clouds, for one second, you're looking at the words 'the Simps.' Translation: These are simpletons, idiots, doofuses to the core, and you shouldn't take anything that follows too seriously. Did you notice that Lisa's saxophone solo is also different in every single credit sequence? Because of course a show that does the most elaborate couch gag it can muster in the credits every week is stuffed with more easter eggs than you've ever spotted. (Groundskeeper Willie began as a two-line Hank Azaria accent ad-lib, and now the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen are fighting over which town he was born in, since the show has named both.) Or how many of the show's characters and recurring tropes got their start. (The basic answer: painstakingly, over the course of a year from script to screen, with dozens of jokes left on the cutting room floor, some input even now from creator Matt Groening, and thankfully absolutely no input whatsoever from the suits at Fox). Most of the book is focused on answering every burning question you might ever have about how a Simpsons episode gets made. Reiss knows that you don't care all that much about his biography, however he's no Troy McClure. Remember the episode where Homer builds a terrifying clown bed frame for Bart? ( 'Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!') Reiss' father did exactly that for him as a kid, and it looked almost as terrifying as the animated version.

There's a lot of his experience in the show's DNA.

THE SIMPSONS SEASON 30 GUEST STARS SERIES

He co-wrote The Simpsons Movie, alongside a passel of other animated fare that runs the gamut from the utterly vanilla Ice Age 3 to the web series that yielded a gay icon, Queer Duck.ДЄll of which is to say that if The Simpsons has a comedic soul, Reiss is the closest thing to it. He left to launch that underrated 1990s animated sitcom The Critic, then returned to The Simpsons part time from Season 6 onwards. With Al Jean he became co-showrunner for Seasons 3 and 4, considered the finest by many of those Comic Book Guy-like fans. Reiss has been writing for the show on and off since Season 1. How did it happen, can it last another three decades, and what is the biggest threat to The Simpsons' continued existence? If the answers can be glimpsed anywhere, they're in the breezy and surprisingly revealing Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons by Mike Reiss, in bookstores this month. They may not have aged, but at least Homer has a smartphone now.

households have tuned in faithfully every Sunday, an astonishing achievement in an age of declining network viewership. Nothing - not more subversive animated upstarts like Family Guy, nor the insistence of Comic Book Guy-style snobs that it's been declining in quality since Season 10, nor the Apu controversy, to which we'll return - none of this seems to be able to drive a permanent stake through The Simpsons' heart.ДЇor most of the last 10 years, around 8 million U.S. (Stars who consciously modeled their own breakthrough comedy shows on it, as Ricky Gervais did with The Office and Edgar Wright did with Spaced, will never forget.) You have to be well over 30 to remember a time before its subversive-yet-family-friendly brand of humor changed the sitcom scene forever. It's hard to imagine them not being there. Matt Groening just showed us why.ДЄt this point, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie are simply part of the furniture of television.

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