The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album – Matt Groening, 1991 ★★★½

The Way They Was

You can’t hurl a dead Snowball I across the internet without hitting an online debate around the question: When did the longest-running sitcom in American history jump the shark? Everyone knows “The Simpsons” today is no longer the show it was; when did the rot set in?

As a former bigtime Simpsons fan whose devotion fled sometime between the rise of Britney Spears and the fall of Enron, I feel I have company in my lack of clarity. Some cite specific episodes as their turn-off points; for me it is not that simple. Re-discovering the early Simpsons, in the form of this tie-in book published in the second year of their 28-years-and-counting run, brought that home.

First things first: The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album is a solid joy. Presented in the form of a scrapbook put together by the family matriarch, Marge Simpson, it details life’s little milestones for her, husband Homer, and their three offspring, bratty Bart, bright Lisa, and pacifier-sucking Maggie. It is illustrated in the same distinctly cartoony format as the show itself; as if plucked off the family sofa on Evergreen Terrace.

Dedicated to the memory of their first cat, Snowball I (“We’ve reupholstered the couch you shredded, but not our love for you”), the Family Album is a generously-accoutered if sparsely-written continuation of the sitcom’s warm-hearted parody of middle-class American life as presented during the first two seasons of the show.

If you saw the second-season episode “The Way We Was,” and can imagine an extended treatment of that in print, you will go a long way toward appreciating the approach taken by creator Matt Groening and his unnamed collaborators here.

Marge’s scrapbook includes girlhood snapshots of the day she straightened her trademark skyscraper ‘fro with a clothes iron, Homer’s fourth-grade class photo at Springfield Elementary School, and a letter from Springfield General Hospital welcoming baby Bart into the world: “We must ask that you remove your son no later than 5 p. m. today, so that we may ensure the well-being of the other newborns.”

There are also photos taken during family vacations, such as Homer disco-dancing atop Potato Rock, “our state’s most wondrous rock formation.” If you, like many Simpsons fans, wonder what state that is, the Family Album offers some contradictory clues, as Springfield and its immediate environs include ample coastline, desert, and snow.

Curiosities abound: Family trees of Marge and Homer inside the front and back covers show their lineage connects with that of C. Montgomery Burns, the ogre-like owner of the power plant where Homer works. A postcard from Marge and Homer’s “second honeymoon” gives the family address as “73 Walnut Lane,” not Evergreen Terrace.

I love especially the little touches here: coasters, matchbook covers, and suchlike that line the margins of each page. Having pulled this book from a basement, I was initially suckered by the many illustrations of squashed ants which appear ground into the pages.

There are recognizable references to episodes which aired in the first two seasons. Many connect to “The Way We Was,” such as prom photos of Marge (both with Homer and Artie Ziff, who was Marge’s actual prom date but dumped shortly after for getting fresh). Other references include a business card from Emily Winthrop’s K-9 College (“Bart’s Dog Gets An F”); an article highlighting Lisa’s befriending jazz legend Bleeding Gums Murphy (“Moaning Lisa”); and a baseball card for Springfield Isotopes mascot Dancin’ Homer Simpson (“Dancin’ Homer”).

There are even a set of poker chips from the all-night wedding chapel where Marge and Homer tied the knot in the Season 3 flashback episode “I Married Marge.” Maybe that episode was far enough along in development, and closely enough connected to the subject of the book, to rate an early call-out?

Other bits are unique to this book, and more enjoyable for it. A cover from a pamphlet from Springfield’s Un-Natural Museum Of Barnyard Oddities (mentioned in the episode “Old Money” but, to my knowledge, never visited) detail such exhibits as “The incredible pig that looks just like Churchill!” Bart’s younger days as a member of the Junior Weasels are memorialized by a souvenir arrowhead. A pair of photos record Maggie floating away while seated a balloon-festooned chair on her first birthday.

A sample pair of pages from the book, in this case showcasing Marge Bouvier Simpson's early girlhood and family origins. Image from https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-simpsons-uncensored-family-album/matt-groening/9780007212286.

If I have a gripe, and I guess I do, it’s that there isn’t more of this material in the book. No storyline lasts more than a single page; nearly all are captured in a single illustration. I’ve heard brevity is the soul of wit, but this is ridiculous.

You do get some text in the form of newspaper clippings, birthday cards, and notes, but most of the pleasure provided here is visual. As the series went on, it became more laden with still-frame visual gags; this book serves as an extension of that before it became a dominating aspect of the show.

My favorite pages relate to Marge and Homer’s teenage musical tastes, which connect to “The Way We Was” episode but builds on it with many playful digs in the direction of 1970s macramé earnestness. Homer’s favorite singer-songwriter from that decade is revealed as a fellow named “Joshua” who wrote such deathless lyrics as this:

You do your thing

And I’ll do mine

Free to Be

You and Me

And if, by chance

We find our Karma entwined,

With no strings attached,

Then that’s the

Bag we are in...

Marge adds a handwritten note about Joshua: “I understand he sells real estate in California now.”

The Simpsons always spoofed pop culture, yet this book brings out something which has been lost in that respect, that it started out as not our culture per se but rather a funhouse mirror of same. The musical acts mentioned by Marge, like Joshua and the Larry Davis Experience, were unique to their world. All the major landmarks depicted here are connected to Springfield; they may have real-world counterparts but remain tied to the meta-universe designed by Groening and company.

In that way, the book reflects the show as it existed in the first two seasons, before it was invaded by out-of-hand cameos, topical references, and virtue-signaling. Seasons 1 and 2 were about establishing the family and its immediate environment, and the Family Album serves as a convincing extension of this.

I think that is what made the show so successful out of the gate. In fact, “The Simpsons” as a series never drew as many viewers as it did in Seasons 1 and 2. This despite the fact Season 1 consisted of only 13 episodes; from the series’ December 1989 debut through to September 1990, there was precious little original content to beguile viewers, and a lot of sub-par animation and writing on view, yet something pulled people in more than later fare which was often much crisper and funnier, at least when I was paying attention.

Put it down to charm. Flipping through the pages gave me a solid sense of that goofy charm, of stepping back in time and recapturing what I once enjoyed without noticing. “The Simpsons” themselves may be based on parody, but at least at this early stage, of a sort grounded in eminently recognizable, observational humor of the finest kind.

“It’s funny because it’s true!” Homer exclaimed in the second-season episode “Homer Vs. Lisa And The Eighth Commandment.” That is also the case in the pages of The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album.