[Blarg]

I'm not an avid follower like I used to be. That said, the show changed a lot but not always in clear ways.

At first it was very anarchic. Everyone in the whole family sucked in their way, and there was no clear star. Then came the Age of Bart. "Don't Have a Cow, Man" and whatever about Bart came to take over the series and its marketing and perception -- an old-time equivalent might be the rise of Fonzie in Happy Days. Bart totally took over the show, and the voracious marketing of Bart was on the brink of sinking the show's credibility entirely. It had nearly completely sold out.

A change had to be made to keep the show from wiping itself out from overexposure. Enter Homer. The change to an emphasis on Homer was the last change the show would undergo. It let some steam out of the bloated publicity machine and let us discover the show again. Luckily, it wasn't a bad choice, at first. Homer, the sad sack, was a good character to follow, less shallow than Bart, whose main motivation was just to rebel. Homer had to fight the man, and societal expectations that he would wipe his ass better or something, but he still had to hold a family together. His job in life was deeper and could spawn much more sympathy and many more shows than Bart ever could. So Homer was in!

Unfortunately, humanizing Homer changed him a lot. He lost the true violence and shaky unreliability of his character, and his alcoholism became kind of cute and acceptable. The public were glad to see their favorite series had been pulled back from the precipice. But to appeal to them, the series went too far.

Mr. Burns became likable; so did that cringe-worthy awfulness of an immoral sycophant, Hitler-referenced creep, Smithers. Apu's cut-throatness got sweeter and somehow warmer. Snake became just simply misunderstood and a nice guy if you'd just give him a chance. Wiggum turned from fascist enahbler to jolly old St. Nick with a pistol. Barney changed from a slovenly alcoholic to a slob.

The series eventually lost its spirit. Everything became safe for the outraged Christians, buyers of the leading brand of bath and kitchen tub and toilet stain removers all, who wrote in weekly complaining of the show's blasphemy and political incorrectness. Matt Groenig made so much money it would have been more cmofortable to vomit up than choke down. The old Matt Groenig took off to Bermuda and barely paid attention to what was coming out anymore. Listen to the DVD commentaries and see how often after the transition to Homer-centrism Groenig even rememberws the episodes he sits in to comment on.

The Simpsons originally came on, like Married with Children, as a splash of cold water in the horrified face of American mealy-mouthed smarmy, bad-faith bullsh*T. It was decried as both genius and unkind and unpleasant, the latter being euphemisms for anything that challenged the lugubrious comfort of the sitcom scene, which never lifted a finger to truly offer viewers any original thoght or sincere feeling or insight whatsoever. This was a series that was actually willing to offend. But it was still t.v. Nobody was marrying goats. It was enough, though, that series like this broke the Cosby-reinforced stranglehold on sweet, toxically vapid family entertainment. The terrifying, frigid smiles of the sell-out culture got a stick up their ass when Groenig came along.

He made his errors, and got caught up in misjudgments, like the celebration of wealth-exploding fairly idiotic Bartdom, that one should probably expect. And then he and his crew caught on and made a brilliant rescue by turning the show away from its first accidental focus on Bart to the focus that would guide it forever after -- the cult of Homer.

And then, it made Homer ever stupider, and kinder, and everyone else kinder too. The show lost its bite. It was transfused into Futurama, which Groenig took much more of an interest in. But that show, anarchic, disrespectful, packed with content on level after level, had a comparatively short run, and Groenig has been only a ghost since then. Now that the tenets of the Simpson juggernaut have been in place so long, who is he, merely their creator, to intervene?

Well, there is a Simpsons movie. And Futurama is coming on the air again, someday, so they say. For sure. But right now, it looks from the outside like Groenig is merely spinning his wheels and wondering what to do with all that money, as his baby floats farther and farther away, blind and indifferent to the magic that spawned it.