When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up, obviously, watching tons of animation; Saturday morning cartoons or anything that we could get our hands on. And then when 'The Simpsons' premiered, that just kind of changed the landscape of everything. We hadn't had prime time animations since 'The Flintstones.'
Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.
The success of 'The Simpsons' really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television.
When we first started, everything was animated, everything was comedy, and there was really nothing that was longer than about two minutes, because that's all audiences would watch.
I'm a great admirer of 'The Simpsons.' It's very surprising because it's backed by a right-wing television company in the U.S., and quite often it's poking fun at the people who would be its audience.
Especially in the last 10 years, the writing on animated shows has jumped by leaps and bounds.
The same sort of thing was supposed to happen when performance animation was invented: Everybody thought it would save so much time. But it became its own niche altogether.
The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
With 'Futurama,' I was just worried that somebody would beat us to it; it seemed so obvious that there should be an animated science fiction show set in the future. And one of the reasons why it's not, I learned, is that it's really, really difficult.