They're Not OK, We're OK

It's Channel 2 in San Francisco, Channel 29 in Toronto, Channel 32 in Chicago, Channel 24 in Milwaukee, Channel 5 in New York City and Washington, D.C. Here in Cambridge, it's Channel 25, and everyone with a television is watching it. The Fox Network is cult TV, and Harvard undergraduates--not to mention graduate students, professors and probably administrators--are proud members of the cult. Here, six Crimson writers talk about their favorite Fox hits. Take a look. Maybe you'll be able to figure out...

It's tempting to overanalyze the humor of The Simpsons, to start to view it not as the funniest show in a long, long time, but as a cultural product of the 1990s, as the ultimate funhouse mirror of American society, reflecting its movies, music, and television in grotesque orange-fleshed, big-headed cartoon characters.

But what is the fun in doing a frame by frame analysis of "The Itchy and Scratchy Show"?

So instead of saying anything clever about Matt Groening's brilliance, I'd like to look at the Simpsons' relationship to the Fox network. What makes the Simpsons so funny, at the most basic level, is that they are losers. Given an opportunity to screw-up--lose a million-dollar law suit, lose a bet, louse up on the job, fail at school--the Simpsons, at least Bart and Homer, will almost invariably come through. No matter how stupid our children are at school, they will never match Bart. No matter how badly we do our jobs, Homer does his worse. (In fact, what makes Lisa so boring is that she never screws up). No matter how much TV we watch, they watch more.

Here we have a family of basically admirable people who haven't got a clue and never will. We can enjoy their occasional moments of cleverness, Bart's imaginative schemes, Homer's seconds of affection, but it all comes out right in the end.