[updated] — Year The Simpsons Started

The Simpsons had arrived.

To understand the shockwaves, you have to remember 1989. The top-rated show on TV was The Cosby Show —warm, safe, family-values comedy with a sweater-wearing dad who was also America’s favorite doctor. The No. 2 show? Roseanne , which was already pushing boundaries with its working-class grit. But neither had prepared audiences for what Matt Groening, a quirky cartoonist from Portland, Oregon, had cooked up in a Hollywood office. year the simpsons started

It was weirdly tender. And then, a week later, the second episode—the one with the family road trip, a runaway pariah, and Bart famously telling Homer, “You’re a sad, strange little man”—proved the show had teeth. Bartmania exploded. “Eat my shorts,” “Don’t have a cow,” and “Ay caramba!” became playground scripture. Teachers shuddered. Parents worried. President George H.W. Bush would later declare that American families should be “more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.” The Simpsons had arrived