Writing
Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on The Simpsons' staff. One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before replacing David Letterman as host of the talk show Late Night. English comedian Ricky Gervais wrote the episode "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife", becoming the first celebrity to both write and guest star in an episode.
Characters
The Simpsons are a typical family who live in a fictional "Middle American" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Planta position at odds with his careless. He is married to Marge Simpson, a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker; Lisa, a precocious eight-year-old activist; and Maggie, a baby who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. The family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball II. Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes. Despite the passing of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays, the Simpsons do not physically age and still appear identical to how they did at the end of the 1980s.
The show includes an array of quirky characters: co-workers, teachers, family friends, extended relatives, and local celebrities. The creators originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokesters or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. However, a number of them have gained expanded roles and subsequently starred in their own episodes.
Springfield
The Simpsons takes place in the fictional American town of Springfield, without any geographical coordinates or references to US states that might identify which part of the country it represents. Nevertheless, fans have tried to determine the town's location by taking the town's characteristics, surrounding geography, and nearby landmarks as clues. As a response, the show has become intentionally evasive in regard to Springfield's location. The name "Springfield" is a common one in America and appears in over half of the states. Springfield's geography, and that of its surroundings, contain coastlines, deserts, vast farmland, tall mountains, or whatever the story or joke requires. Despite this, Groening has said that Springfield has much in common with Portland, Oregon, the city where he grew up.
Themes
The series centers around a family and their life in a typical American town. The town of Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. By having Homer work in a nuclear power plant, the show can comment on the state of the environment. Through Bart and Lisa's days at Springfield Elementary School, the show's writers illustrate pressing or controversial issues in the field of education. The town features a vast array of media channelsfrom kids' television programming to local news, which enables the producers to make jokes about themselves and the entertainment industry.
Some commentators say the show is political in nature. The show makes jokes across the political spectrum. So, the writers often portray authority figures in an unflattering or negative light. In The Simpsons, politicians are corrupt, ministers such as Reverend Lovejoy are indifferent to churchgoers, and the local police force is incompetent Religion also figures as a recurring theme. In times of crisis, the family often turns to God.
Opening sequence
The Simpsons' opening sequence is one of the show's most memorable hallmarks. Most episodes open with the camera zooming through the show's title towards the town of Springfield. The camera then follows the members of the family on their way home. Upon entering their house, the Simpsons settle down on their couch to watch television. One of the most distinctive aspects of the opening is that several segments are changed from episode to episode. Bart writes something different on the school chalkboard, Lisa may play a different solo on her saxophone, and a different visual gag accompanies the family as they enter their living room to sit on the couch.
Halloween episodes
The special Halloween episode has become an annual tradition. These Halloween episode usually involve the family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting and often parody or pay homage to a famous piece of work in those genres. They always take place outside the normal continuity of the show. Although the Treehouse series is meant to be seen on Halloween, in recent years, new installments have premiered after Halloween.
Humor and language
The show uses catchphrases, and most of the primary and secondary characters have at least one each. Notable expressions include Homer's annoyed grunt "D'oh!", Mr. Burns' "Excellent..." (drawn out as "eeeexcelllent
") and Nelson Muntz's "Ha-ha!". Some of Bart's catchphrases, such as "¡Ay, caramba!", "Don't have a cow, man!" and "Eat my shorts!" appeared on t-shirts in the show's early days. The episode "Bart Gets Famous" mocks catchphrase-based humor, as Bart achieves fame on the Krusty the Clown Show for saying "I didn't do it."
The most famous is Homer's annoyed grunt: "D'oh!" So ubiquitous is the catchphrase that it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe. The first listed usage comes not from The Simpsons, but from a 1945 BBC radio script in which the writers spelled the word "dooh". The director of The Simpsons told Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known exclamation in the TV series.
Other Simpsons expressions that have entered popular use include "Cromulent", a word used in "Lisa the Iconoclast", "Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in "Bart the Genius". Other are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords". The dismissive term "Meh" has also been popularized by the show.
Awards
The Simpsons has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series: 23 Emmy Awards, 24 Annie Awards, a Peabody Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, TIME magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series, TIME included Bart Simpson in the publication's list of the century's 100 most influential people. Bart was the only fictional character on the list and Ken Tucker named The Simpsons the greatest television show of the 1990s, Homer would place ninth on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Greatest TV icons", Homer Simpson voted into first place in 2001's 100 Greatest TV Characters, The Simpsons ranked #8 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, They ranked in TIME's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time."
The Simpsons 
