Not many animated series have made as huge an impact as The Simpsons did on the world. Ever since its release, the series has had a massive fan following. In fact, the series apparently became so popular in its release year that it started receiving reviews from the First Lady of the United States of America back in the day.
Barbara Bush opens up about The Simpsons
The Simpsons will arguably go down in history as one of the greatest animated series of all time. The series was created by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon back in 1989 and revolves around the story of a dysfunctional family that burlesques a lot of things including society, politics, popular pop culture, and more.
However, despite being a success in the early 90s, the First Lady of the United States at the time, Barbara Bush criticized the show in an interview with People. Talking about The Simpsons, she said,
“It was the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but it’s a family thing, and I guess it’s clean.”
The former president of the United States, George H.W. Bush also backed up his wife in a famous address where he took a dig at the popular satirical series in 1992. He said,
“We need a nation closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons.“
However, this time, The Simpsons decided to hit back at George H.W. Bush, and in the very next episode of the series, the family is shown watching the president’s address live on TV. After hearing the line about The Waltons, Bart said,
“Hey, we’re just like the Waltons! We’re praying for an end to the depression too!”
For the unversed, The Waltons was a historical drama series that was based in the time of World War 2 and The Great Depression.
The writer of The Simpsons talks about how many of their predictions end up being true
The Simpsons are quite popular in the prospect that many events that are shown in the show earlier turn out to be true in the future. From the tragedy of 9/11 to Donald Trump becoming the president of the United States, The Simpsons have really predicted so many events correctly that some fans even speculate that the writers are members of some secret underground organization that pulls the strings of the world from the shadows.
However, those are just theories as one of the original writers of the series, Al Jean once revealed in an interview with NME. He said,
“One of our writers, the guy whose episode predicted Donald Trump as president, said it best: ‘If you write 700 episodes, and you don’t predict anything, then you’re pretty bad. If you throw enough darts, you’re going to get some bullseyes…'”
Al Jean further revealed that most of the predictions that the show had made were just crazy coincidences including the tragedy of 9/11 and the pandemic of Covid-19.
The Simpsons has been a massive critical success since its release and has also received dozens of accolades throughout its run spanning over three decades including 37 Primetime Emmy Awards and 2 Peabody Awards.
All episodes of The Simpsons are currently streaming on Disney+.
