So I've been rewatching The Simpsons slowly after a break of over a decade, while also listening to the audio commentaries. I've almost finished the fourth season (which is about the midpoint of the golden era run) and I've got caught with the gnawing suspicion that the commentaries really didn't let the viewers in the know about what actually was going on during the production. In short, it was just a couple of guys having a pleasant enough chat much after the fact. Being a long time Simpsons fan, this just wasn't satisfying enough anymore. Besides, I kind of wanted some closure to a couple of questions on my mind so that I could just leave the show into my childhood which is where it honestly best belongs.

So I picked up a book, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved and read it. It was ok.

The thesis of the book is basically that the many others shaped The Simpsons wasn't really a single auteur's - Matt Groening - creation, but a collaboration of a large group of people and a set of unusual circumstances. This perhaps doesn't come as great news to fans, but it seems like this topic really hasn't been treated elsewhere, so the book is the best thing we got.

Just a couple of bullet points:

1. I enjoyed the parts dealing with the suits: the general broadcasting climate, Fox corporation, Gracie films and it's relationship with the animation studios and the clout James L. Brooks had. It's pretty common to lament executive meddling in works like this, but I gather there were fortuitous circumstances that allowed the creatives to be mostly shielded from in addition to a couple of good executive decisions. On the negative side, Klasky-Csupo had to fight an inhuman amount with the other parties and the co-operation with the Koreans was difficult in the beginning.
2. Finally getting information on the contributions of the neglected creators was satisfying, from Peluce who chose the yellow skin color of the Simpson family, Sam Simon whose role was much larger than Groening's and Brooks', the people of the writers' room, especially George Meyer. On the con side, John Swartzwelder still remained an enigma, which is perhaps my single largest disappointment. You get the image that even his colleagues didn't know much about him, which is kind of a pity. He's the person I had the desire to know most about.
3. Ortved couldn't get interviews with many important people, such as Groening, Brooks and many voice actors. My impression is that a lot of it is simply due to bad blood and a desire to keep Groening as the public ambassador of the show. Sometimes the author has to support his narrative through mining DVD commentaries, which seems like a stretch, but my impression is that a markedly better oral history might simply be impossible.
4. Some of the interviewees were either off the beaten track, such as the former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky and fansite founders, or more interesting than you'd expect them to be like Jonathan Gray, a media scholar or a minor early era layout artist.

The cons:

1. The book is overly long - about a third could have been easily nixed. There's some amount of repetition in the contents.
2. I would have liked to hear more about the voice actors.
3. The author was quite opinionated at times. I don't mind this by itself, but he doesn't tie this to anything save for personnel changes.
4. It's a decade old book now, so nothing about the Apu fiasco, for example.

What other reviews have gotten wrong:

1. Many people complain that Groening has been mischaracterized as some devil. I honestly disagree with this perception. The book makes him appear like he's a genuinely pleasant fellow on an interpersonal level who also got very lucky, had some founding influence on the show yet nevertheless didn't have much in the way of storytelling skills and who headbutted with other strong willed people. On the plus side, he didn't negatively interfere with the production much either.

TL;DR

If you want to know how Simpsons could have happened and who really made the key contributions, the book is possibly the best option you'll have. It's a pretty breezy, gossipy read too. If "Groening didn't do much" isn't an interesting thesis or you would like to read a close reading analysis, this ain't your book.

Thanks for reading, this is a rough draft if any but I decided to still just post it, after all.