Springfield Now

Scott Hardie | June 28, 2014
Would The Simpsons be a better show today, with more options for story material, if the creators had decided from the beginning to age its sprawling cast of characters in real time? Bart and Lisa would be in their thirties now with children of their own.

Steve West | June 28, 2014
Different, certainly but can anyone guarantee better? The obvious advantage of an animated series is the Groundhog Day effect of each show taking place on essentially the same day. The effects of aging stars that killed shows like Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch has no meaning here. I'm still not tired of the material and am content to see the glimpses of the children as adults in occasional storylines.

Samir Mehta | June 28, 2014
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 4, 2014
I've posed this question to others and been told that the show would have had to resort to "Cousin Oliver" solutions where new younger kids would have had to be introduced every few years whether they belonged or not. I disagree that such a thing would have been a necessity, but it might or might not have helped. I just wondered after 25 years on the air, what the show might have been like if a quarter-century had actually passed for its characters, and what new storylines could be developed. Obviously it would have required a different approach from the start that they couldn't have foreseen needing. I've heard DVD commentaries with the writers in which they talked about expecting cancellation after every episode in the first year, and then expecting cancelation after each of the first few seasons, and then expecting to run out of material after season 7 or 8 or 9, and not really realizing until season 10 that this show had a very long future ahead of it.