Debuted back in December 1989, "The Simpsons" was the "perfect thing at the perfect time," said executive producer Al Jean. Indeed, their timing was excellent.
While primetime animated TV families, such as "The Jetsons" and "The Flintstones", had their own moment in the '60s, there had never been anything quite like "The Simpsons" to hit the air. After 600 episodes later, it still desires to set itself apart.
According to CNN, the show - about dad Homer, mom Marge, and kids Lisa, Bart and Maggie - aimed to be a sometime-crude, always-funny look at family life, with social commentary and satire woven into the mix.
"It was about a family and it was written in an adult manner where people could relate to it no matter who they were," Jean told CNN in a recent interview. "And since then, we've just worked incredibly hard."
Many have changed since its start. Now, it exists in a TV landscape in which it's not the only envelope-pushing cartoon on the block. There's also "Family Guy and "South Park."
It would be easy for the show to lose its way, but the minds behind "The Simpsons" learned how to navigate its success.
On the technical side, the people in the said aspect work hard to keep episodes timely. Thank to technology and digital animation, that made the technical side easier than it was in the early days.
Creator Matt Groening reveals that there's a collective effort of about 500 people to produce an episode of the show, but they're now able to turn around timely shorts with relative ease.
"Coming up with fresh stories that haven't been done by us or by 'South Park' or 'Family Guy,' that's harder," Jean admitted. "There are thousands of episodes of primetime animated shows that weren't there when we started."
Meanwhile, News America reports that the voice cast of "The Simpsons" is under contract with the show through Season 30, but Jean claims it's "certainly possible" the show could go beyond that.
Therefore, as long as he whole cast is interested in continuing, the writers will keep pumping out the stories, Jean said.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
