Let's look at how the shorts the show originated from actually differ from the actual show
Today, April 19, 2017, marks 30 years to the day The Simpsons premiered on the Tracy Ullman Show as a series of minute long shorts. It's clocked 30 years, that's phenomenal! The only shows that usually run for that long are soap operas like General Hospital or All My Children. And even they've started to die down in recent years.
The Simpsons is one of the most acclaimed and watched sitcoms of all time, and is the most acclaimed and watched animated sitcom of all time, period! But we wouldn't have had our favourite dysfunctional family, had it not been for those little one minute shorts that originated on one of the most popular variety shows of the '80s. To commemorate 'Simpsons Day', here are 5 ways in which the shorts differed from the TV show we've come to grow up on and loved:
1. The Animation: While I can't really peg the animation differences down to concept, since the show has come a long way since its origins in the late 80s, the animation used in the shorts was very primitive. Matt Groening drew rough sketches of the characters and thought that the animators of the shorts would clean them up, but they just ended up tracing over them. These were, of course, refined over the course of the premiere of the show. The Simpsons in the original shorts had pointy hair, bulging eyes, contorted faces and mouths and pale colours, a far cry from the bright colours and 'stable' animation of the TV show.
(Image courtesy: YouTube Screengrab)
2. The Variety of Characters: The Simpsons is one of the most popular TV shows of present times because of the vast variety of characters on the show - from Mr. Burns and Smithers, Carl and Lenny, to Ned Flanders and Moe the Bartender. However, on the shorts, the number of characters is limited. This means just the Simpsons family, all day, all the time. A few of our favourites do pop up like Grampa and Krusty the Clown, but mostly, it's just Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. Not even Snowball or Santa's Little Helper. This is a good move though, since it helps focus the audience's attention on the dysfunctional family. Speaking of which...
(Image courtesy: Tumblr)
3. The Family: I won't lie, I don't watch the Simpsons because of the other idiots, I just watch it to marvel at how stupid Homer could be, how evil Bart could be, how perfect Lisa could be, how mysterious Maggie could be and how Marge can fit her hair through....anywhere. Which is why the shorts are so different from the TV series, because the personalities of the central characters are only developed to a small extent. Homer is just a bad dad, Marge is just a frustrated wife and mother, Bart and Lisa are both mischievous brats and Maggie is a pacifier suckling infant with a surprisingly limited imagination. The characters in the shorts are essentially cavemen compared to the ones we know, love and would avoid on the streets today.
(Image courtesy: YouTube Screengrab)
4. The Music: The Simpsons has its familiar theme song and soundtrack people all over the entire world (and maybe other planets, we don't know!) have come to recognise and adore. The show's music is pretty simple and they stick to the same music throughout every episode. That's one of the ways the shorts feel so aesthetically different from the main series, because there's no music! There's just ambient noises and dialogues. Imagine! The Simpsons without its theme song or the couch gag. As opposed to that we get a normal family sitting on a couch and watching television, I mean who does that?!
(Image courtesy: Tumblr)
5. The Setting: This is the clincher. The Simpsons TV series concerns the wacky adventures of the main characters but these episodes could entail anything possibly imaginable. From alien invasions to movie rip-offs, from musicals to commentaries on topics like religion or industrialisation, the Simpsons show has done EVERYTHING. And we do mean everything! The shorts, on the other hand, are just one minute looks at daily life activities of a comical family. That's it. Bart and Lisa babysitting Maggie. Homer playing catch with Bart. It's not like what they do still isn't side-splittingly funny, it just isn't as all over the place and extravagant and.....EVERYTHING as the TV show is.
(Image courtesy: YouTube Screengrab)
So here you go. Despite the fact that we'd watch the current 28 season long half hour TV show any day, we'd still like to salute the Tracy Ullman shorts for introducing us to the craziest and wackiest family of all time - TV or otherwise.
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 "The Simpsons have come a long way since 1987")
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