39 Years Ago Today, The Simpsons Premiered in a Blink-and-You-Miss-It Format — and It Was Nothing Like the Show You Know
Thirty-nine years after its scrappy April 19, 1987 debut, The Simpsons bears little resemblance to the jittery, crude shorts that first hit TV—proof that while MASH helped shape the workplace sitcom, this cartoon went on to rewrite television itself.
Thirty-nine years ago today, a scrappy little family snuck onto TV between sketches and basically rewired the medium. Yep, The Simpsons didn’t arrive as a big, glossy series. It showed up as bite-size cartoons on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, then grew into the juggernaut that made adult animation the default setting for American TV comedy. Wild, considering those first doodles barely looked like the characters you know.
It didn’t even start as a real show
Producer James L. Brooks wanted animated shorts on Ullman’s variety series back in 1987, so he called Matt Groening. Groening briefly considered adapting his indie comic Life in Hell, then realized that would mean giving up the rights. Instead, at the eleventh hour, he pitched a messy, lovable, dysfunctional family: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.
The early shorts were crude in a charming, scribbled-on-a-napkin way, but audiences locked in fast. Fox noticed, ordered full episodes in 1989, and The Simpsons jumped from interstitials to a primetime staple almost overnight.
The short-form origin shaped the comedy
Those ultrabrief Ullman bits forced the writers to land jokes quickly, which turned into the show’s calling card once it went weekly. Credit here isn’t just Brooks and Groening; the late Sam Simon was a huge creative engine in building the show’s voice.
Rewatch the early seasons and you’ll find a surprisingly grounded family sitcom. Then the so-called Golden Age (roughly seasons 3 through 11) blasts in with a sketch-comedy tempo and a mile-a-minute gag rate. That rhythm didn’t just define The Simpsons; it set the blueprint for basically every adult animated comedy that followed.
Why it mattered (and still does)
If MASH helped normalize the workplace comedy and, by extension, cleared some runway for shows like The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Abbott Elementary, The Simpsons did the same for adult animation on a much bigger scale. Without The Simpsons, the TV landscape looks different — probably no Family Guy, no South Park, no Bob’s Burgers, no King of the Hill, and no American Dad. Even newer favorites such as Smiling Friends and BoJack Horseman have creators who point back to that classic Simpsons run as a key influence.
And yes, the comparison list that often gets trotted out includes a random shout-out to something called 'DMV' alongside The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. If you’re wondering what show that is, you’re not alone. Let’s just call that a mystery footnote in the annals of sitcom influence.
The empire it built
- 1987: The Simpsons debuts as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show (April 19)
- 1989: Fox orders full-length episodes; the primetime series launches
- 2007: The Simpsons Movie hits theaters, makes over $500 million worldwide
- 2027: The Simpsons Movie 2 is said to be on the way — we’ll see if that date sticks
Since those rough-sketch beginnings, the series has cranked out over 800 episodes and turned into a decades-spanning industrial machine. The twist is that the thing that made it unstoppable — that relentless, sketchy pace — exists because it had to win you over in seconds, not minutes. The training wheels ended up being the secret weapon.