"SIMPSONS" HIT 300

By Joal Ryan

Homer's Odyssey has nothing on Homer's odyssey.

Come Sunday, The Simpsons' donut-munching patriarch will have munched donuts in 300 episodes--a TV landmark that has been surpassed by only a handful of primetime sitcoms.

And even if Homer Simpson didn't actually gulp a glazed in each and every show, the point remains the same: The Fox animated comedy, now in its 14th year, has been on a very, very long time. (By comparison, the warrior hero in The Odyssey only was on the road for 10 years--excepting the 10 years he spent on the battlefield, of course.)

Sunday's 300th Simpsons, to be broadcast at 8 p.m. (ET/PT), will find the yellow-hued family in its usual straights--fussing and fighting. Bart sues to become an emancipated minor after learning Homer spent all his earnings from a commercial that the boy starred in as a baby. Per usual, there will be celebrity guest voices--Malcolm in the Middle's Jane Kaczmarek as the judge who sets Bart free; skateboarder Tony Hawk and the rockers of Blink 182 (Tom Delonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker) as Bart's new neighbors.

And, per usual, the episode will be pretty good--maybe even great. At least that's what longtime Simpsons observers have come to expect of primetime's Energizer Bunny.

"I truly believe the show has never lost the edge after all these years," says Webmaster and author Jon Hein.

Hein is an expert on TV shows that lose their edge. His Website is the popular Jump the Shark, chronicling, as it says, "the moments when TV shows go downhill." On it, The Simpsons is cited by users as one of only 16 series to have "never jumped." No show, in fact, has received more "never jumped" votes (1,441 as of Friday) than the Fox comedy.

"It's constantly reinventing itself," says Hein, who penned a book on life's jump-the-shark moments, entitled, yes, Jump the Shark. "It always does something different."

Like the time Michael Jackson (billed as John Jay Smith) crooned a special birthday song for Lisa in a 1991 episode, "Stark Raving Dad"?

Actually, that's not one of Hein's favorites. But he says, unlike other series, one so-so Simpsons hasn't precipitated an overall creative freefall. (See: The birth of Mabel on Mad About You.)

Says Hein: "I think it could go on forever if that's what Matt Groening wanted."

Groening is, of course, the cartoonist who created Homer, et. al. His animated clan, named for members of his own family, including dad Homer, made their primetime debut in 1987, their adventures aired as interstitial shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.

Fox awarded the Simpsons their own half-hour series in 1989, with the first-ever episode, a Christmas special, airing December 17.

In a season that launched a couple of minor hits (Doogie Howser, M.D., Major Dad), Bart Simpson proved the breakout star of 1989-90. The terror of Springfield Elementary was a master of coining catchphrases--"Eat my shorts!," "Ay, carumba!," "Don't have a cow, man!"--and moving tie-in merchandise.

Professor Robert J. Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, says the makers of The Simpsons could have, at that point, easily chosen to pour on the Bart--let the brat take over the show the way, say, a Fonzie took over a Happy Days. But they resisted, and, in the process, he says, discovered the show's real star.

"Homer Simpson is an epic character," Thompson says.

And, according to the professor, The Simpsons is an epic series.

"It's one of the few, if not one of the only masterpieces, that the last half century of television has produced," Thompson says.

Certainly, the box score is impressive: The series is seen in more than 70 countries. In its home country, it's a Top 20 show--with viewership up 12 percent this season. It's won Emmys and Annies (honoring animated film and TV), and nabbed its first-ever Golden Globe nomination for best comedy series just this year.

In the annals of primetime, it is the second-longest running sitcom, behind the inaptly named The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which ran 14 full seasons. With Fox renewing the show through 2005, The Simpsons is on course for a record-setting 16 seasons. At least.

And, if one day, the series really does end, we'll always have reruns. Lots and lots reruns--reruns packed with jokes and references we might have missed the first five times. And reruns, Thompson says, that likely will never date.

Says the professor: "The haircuts are never going to look too '80s or '90s because they never looked too '80s or '90s in the first place."

Yes, Marge's blue beehive is forever.

ETERNAL YOUTH KEEPS 'THE SIMPSONS' FRESH

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For more than a decade they have reigned as television's favorite dysfunctional family, and now "The Simpsons" will soon enter the record books as the longest-running sitcom in prime-time history.

Now in their 14th season of animated social satire on Fox television, that beer-guzzling, doughnut-scarfing family man Homer Simpson and all the good citizens of Springfield have shown no signs of aging as they near their 300th episode. With its ratings on the rise, "The Simpsons" remains one of the most watched TV shows on Sunday night and was one of the rare bright spots on the Fox lineup during an overall slump in the News Corp.-owned network's viewership earlier this season.

It also remains a perennial favorite among critics and in December earned its first Golden Globe nomination in the race for best comedy series, a rare feat for a cartoon show, even though it didn't win.

Earlier this month, the network announced that it had renewed the series for two more years, through May 2005, meaning "The Simpsons" will stay on the air for at least 16 seasons. By then, they will have easily eclipsed the real-life Nelson family on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" as the longest-running weekly comedy series on TV. The Nelsons left ABC in 1966 after 14 seasons on the air.

But long before a very different Ozzy came to MTV as head of "The Osbournes" unruly household on MTV, "The Simpsons" had established itself as a worldwide pop culture phenomenon seen in more than 70 countries.

AGELESS CARTOON

And according to creator and executive producer Matt Groening, eternal youth is a key ingredient of the show's enduring success.

"I didn't expect to be on the air this long," Groening said at Fox's winter showcase for critics in California recently. "One of the great things about doing an animated show is your characters don't age. So your show stays fresh, and you keep the audience fresh. I love '60 Minutes,' but the people who make it are starting to look like the people who watch it."

For Harry Shearer, the voice of Homer's tyrannical boss, Mr. Burns, and the saccharin, Bible-thumping neighbor, Ned Flanders, the challenge of performing several characters is what keeps the show interesting.

"I would get enormously bored, even after seven years, just coming in and doing this one character every week," Shearer said. "For the actors, one of the great things about making this show fun after all these years is all the different characters we do."

One thing is certain. It isn't big bucks that keeps the ensemble coming back year after year.

"Altogether, we still don't make as much as one 'Friend,"' joked Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer, alluding to the reported $1 million per episode earned by each of the six principal members of NBC's hit comedy "Friends."

The actors clearly enjoy their work, even if they have to suffer silly questions from fans at public appearances.

"The strangest question I ever got is: Do I sound like Lisa Simpson when I'm having sex? And the answer is no," said voice actress Yeardley Smith.

D'OH!

Beginning as a string of cartoon shorts on the "Tracey Ullman Show" in 1987, "The Simpsons" debuted as a half-hour series on the then-fledgling Fox network in January 1990.

At the outset, the series centered on the hijinks of the wisecracking, underachieving 10-year-old Bart Simpson, a spike-haired misfit who darts around town on his skateboard and drives his fourth-grade teacher nuts.

But as the show evolved, its focus shifted to Bart's bone-headed father, Homer, who works at a nuclear power plant and punctuates his frequent mistakes with the anguished, half-syllable utterance "D'Oh!" Castellaneta said he adopted Homer's signature expletive from a character in an old Laurel and Hardy film. "I think it's a euphemism for 'damn."'

Rounding out the Simpsons clan are beehive-haired mother Marge, the sensible, good-natured anchor of the family, and Bart's two sisters -- pacifier-sucking baby Maggie, a silent observer of all, and second-grade prodigy Lisa, a baritone saxophone virtuoso and intellectual of the family.

Behind them is a huge cast of regulars who populate the fictional town of Springfield -- extended family members, neighbors, teachers, classmates, Homer's co-workers, his pals at Moe's Tavern, Apu the convenience store clerk, police chief Wiggum and even the Comic Book Guy.

The show derives much of its humor from sharp-edged social commentary, skewering authority figures and such hallowed institutions as public education, politics, the medical profession, law enforcement and the entertainment industry. The series also is known for the steady parade of guest celebrities who lend their voices, and in many cases their animated caricatures, to cameo appearances.

Actress Jane Kaczmarek of "Malcolm in the Middle" will reprise her role as Judge Harm for the upcoming 300th episode of "The Simpsons," in which Bart goes to court to win emancipation from his parents after learning that he starred in a commercial as a baby and that Homer squandered all of his earnings. George Plimpton will appear as himself in a 301st original episode airing the same night.

Those two segments, and a rerun of an episode featuring guest stars Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz, Elvis Costello and Brian Setzer, will air in a 90-minute block on Feb. 16.