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The Simpsons: The Complete
Second Season
Studio: Fox
Year: 1990-1991
Rated: NR
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 full frame
Not since decades earlier when The Flintsones
became the first successful animated prime time
program, has anything quite matched or surpassed
what The Simpsons has become.
Over 10 years later, The Simpsons is
still growing strong.
The Simpsons Second Season was a big
improvement over its previous season in that not
only did the animation become much better with
more refined details made to the characters, but
the story lines improved as well.
The Season Two set arrives in the same type of
packaging as the Season One set. Housed in a
handsome outer case with a TV cut-out screen
window, the inner case pulls out and opens into
a 5-pane gatefold that stores a total of 4 DVD
discs that sit in plastic hub housing. A pocket
on the end holds a booklet (not available for
review). The outer panes contain cute animation
of the Simpson characters exchanging heads. One
of the outer panes contains a personal introduction
to Season Two by show creator, Matt Groenig, who
talks about the Simpsons mania that hit America
during this season, and, some of his favorite
episodes.
Fox seems to have set a theme for this Second
Season set. That theme is the exchange of character
heads and bodies. You first take notice of this
theme when you open up the gatefold and look
at the DVDs inside. Spinning the DVDs in their
housing, you can interchange the body artwork
on the disc with the heads of characters that
circle the box.
The menu system of the DVDs also play on this
theme, but we'll get to that in a moment....
There are a total of 22 episodes spread across
the 4 discs, with the average episodes per disc
at being 6.
There are some real gems in this season, and I
took a look at four of them that I consider amongst
my favorites:
In Bart Gets an F, we find Bart failing
history class. His teacher, Mrs. Krabappel is
losing patience with him, threatening to hold
him back another year. What is Bart to do? He
makes a deal with school geek Martin Prince. If
Martin can tutor him and help him pass the final
exam, Bart will help Martin become cool. When
Martin reneges on his side of the bargain, Bart
must cram for the ultimate test on his own. Will
he pass?
In Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on
Every Fish, we find Bart and Lisa fishing
in the polluted stream near Springfield's
nuclear power plant when they pull up a three-eyed
fish This draws a slew of negative reaction to
plant owner Mr. Burns. In order to fight the
bad press, Burns decides to run for Governor.
All seems to go well for his campaign until he
sits down for dinner with the Simpsons family.
In Bart Gets Hit By A Car, Mr. Burns hits
Bart with his car, sending him on a trip to heaven
and hell while he's unconscious. After consulting
the crooked attorney Lionel Hutz, Homer and Marge
attempt to sue Mr. Burns for a million dollars.
It looks as if this could be a cool won million,
until it gets discovered that the Simpsons have
exaggerated Bart's injuries.
My favorite episode, Itchy, Scratchy & Marge
takes a look at cartoon violence, and what could
be more violent than The Itchy & Scratchy Show?
After Maggie hits Homer over the head with a mallet,
Marge wages a one-woman campaign against the show
and its creators. The result? You'll be in
stitches as you watch the new toned-down episodes
of Itchy & Scratchy where they "Love and Share"
and enjoy lemonade with each other.
How is the transfer?
It's nice to see that transfers have slightly
improved over Season One. This probably has much
to do with the fact that the overall production
of the season had improved.
Transfer quality is exceptional. Any flaws that
I found was due to the original source. Realize
that these are not quality animations that are up
to the standards of a Disney film. You will
undoubtedly notice the shift of colors in one
particular area of a character as that character
moves from one position to another. I think the
clarity of this DVD presentation brings out more
of those tiny flaws that you probably never noticed
as much during broadcast run.
With the exceptional clarity of DVD, the brilliant
colors within the animation just pour out across
the screen. Colors look extremely vivid, taking
on an almost neon-florescent quality -- especially
in the deep blues of Springfield lake or Mr. Burn's
hair. Watching these episodes gives you the same
sort of awe factor as watching posters in black light.
I hate to say it, but perhaps I was just too
engrossed in being entertained by each of these
shorts to notice any heavy use of surrounds. For
that reason, at least on the episodes I watched,
I don't rate the 5.1 remix as very effective. Most
of the dialogue and action remained in the front
sound stage. Overall sound quality was very robust,
and I even noticed some LFE activity from the
subwoofer, mostly during the show's opening credits.
Special Features
Let's first talk about the MENU feature of
these individual DVD discs, as they are going
to become sort of fascinating at first, and then
a complete annoyance soon after.
As you pop in the DVD, you come to a very odd
menu that features 4 Simpson characters in an
outer circle with a button in the middle.
As you push the middle button, the heads of
the characters spin around. When the spin stops,
the character heads are mismatched to the character
bodies. This is kind of cute at first, until you
realize you have to go through this sequence no
less than 3 times to get to the MAIN MENU.
Fortunately, I found that by hitting the MENU
key on your remote, you can bypass this screen
every time you insert a new disc.
Once you get to the main menu, the list of
episodes on that disc are listed. Clicking
on an episode title brings you to that episode's
personal MENU that contains approximately 10
seconds of unique visual or audio sequence.
Each episode contains commentary by
show creator Matt Groenig, who is joined by
Producers, Writers and Directors (depending on
the episode). You can select the commentary
track from the LANGUAGE menu.
Disc Four contains the SUPPLEMENTAL
MATERIALS section which is loaded with many
interesting goodies that will ultimately please
the die-hard SIMPONS fan.
What could be considered somewhat embarrassing,
a clip from American Music Awards shows
voice of Bart, Nancy Cartwright, in an oversized
Bart costume on stage presenting an award. We
learn through Matt Groenig's commentary, that
Cartwright was not able to hear what was going
on during this performance, and thus, was
basically prancing around the stage with no cues
or direction. It is also interesting to note that
she is pregnant during this clip.
(length: Approx 2.5 minutes)
The second music video from the Simpsons sing
the blues album, Deep Deep Trouble, is
presented in full. In Matt Groenig's accompanying
commentary, he talks about the ease in animating
rap video sequences like this, and the use of
extended character poses in his animation.
(length: approx. 3.5 minutes)
The music video, Do the Bartman (Director's
Cut) is included. It was written in part by
Michael Jackson. Executive Consultant (and director
of the video) Brad Bird explains how the animation
was done in Hungary in a time slot of 2.5 weeks,
and was the hardest project that Brad had ever
worked on.
Remember when Bart started doing commercials
for Butterfinger? Three of those precious
Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger
commercials are included here. Waaaay cool!
Creation Of An Episode features
Senior Director David Silverman who takes us
through the steps of creating an episode from
script to finished picture. David gives us
a very quick overview of the process starting
with a character line from the script. He then
plays that character speaking the line, which in
this case, is James Earle Jones who we hear
courtesy of magnetic tape. From here storyboard
is drawn out along with character design and
background design. The animation is sent overseas
to Korea, where the animation is fleshed out.
Sound Effects and music are added last. The entire
process of creating an episode takes from 5-7 months.
(length: Approx. 6 minutes)
The Simpsons attending The Emmy Awards?
The animated family is superimposed into the
awards ceremony as they announce the nominees
for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Really
funny stuff here, and a terrific job at combining
the live action and animated elements.
(length: approx. 3 minutes)
An Interview with Matt Groening and James L.
Brooks is an original piece from the first
or second season where we learn how the characters
came to be on the Tracy Ullman show, as well as
how each character was inspired and created.
Correct me if I am wrong, but most of this material
was covered in the SEASON ONE set.
(length: approx. 10 minutes)
Art Of The Simpsons is a world of its
own, dedicated to the storyboards, sketches,
drawings and magazine covers that have become
Simpson history. You can view the Storyboards
from two of the show's episodes using your
remote control. Unfortunately, you really can't
get a clear view of the material being shown as
it is presented in a more overviewed form than
detailed. You can view early sketches and
drawings from many of the episodes featured
in Season Two. Finally, you can see Simpsons mania
unfold as the TV family adorns magazine covers such
as Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, TIME and
Newsweek (to name a few). The issue dates
are listed below each magazine representation.
Want to know how The Simpsons translate to other
countries? You can watch Foreign Language
Clips of a selected scene in 5 different
languages. It's funny not only to hear the
language, but the interpretation of the character
voices as well.
Final Thoughts
With all the studios are scrambling to release
television product these days, it's worthy to
note that Fox is still doing it better
than anyone else. Just by taking a look at all
supplemental material added to this Season Two
set (especially the BUTTERFINGER commercials),
you can appreciate the fact that the fans
were always the motivation behind this release.
If I could offer one complaint, it would be
the fact that Fox is really dragging the release
of these sets. To have to wait about a year for
each new set is quite difficult to accept, when
a studio like Paramount is releasing 7 seasons
of Star Trek TNG in the course of a year.
I think most of us would be happy to see Fox
put other television product on hold to get more
seasons out on DVD sooner than they have been released.
After all, The Simpsons is amongst the
very best television Fox has to offer.
The purchase of this set is a must!
Release Date: August 6, 2002
