Fox
The Simpsonshas been on the air for so long now that it practicallyisthe air . After 35 seasons and enumeration , there ’s a little of Matt Groening ’s obviously immortal alive sitcom in every breath of pop civilization we take . But if TV ’s longest - running written comedy has felt like a constant for ages , it really became one in the summertime of 2014 . Suddenly , a show you could expect to always be on in a general sense was literally always on — 24 hours a daytime for just shy of two week .
Ten years ago today , the “ Every . Wallis Warfield Simpson . Ever . ” marathon begin , pay for everyone to relish in idiot box ’s warm glowing thaw glow . From the morning of August 21 , 2014 , the cable internet FXX aired the full run ofThe Simpsonsup to that point — all 552 episodes , plusThe Simpsons Movie , in order and interrupted only by commercial breakout . The event lasted for about 12 days straight . It was , at the time , the longsighted consecutive telecasting battle of Marathon ever . ( VH1 classic would check that phonograph recording a simple few month later with an unbroken block ofSaturday Night Livereruns . )
Fox
The marathon mark FXX ’s acquisition of the broadcast rights toThe Simpsons — a white hulk in syndication , thanks to a long - stand deal that gave Fox affiliates sole permission to fly the coop old episodes until the show terminate . ( turn out no one involved anticipated just how hypothetical the prospect ofThe Simpsonsever ending would become out to be . ) Every . Wallis Warfield Simpson . Ever . was a massive winner for the fledgling web , treble its audience overnight and drawing more eyeballs throughout those 12 days than almost anything else concurrently on cable .
Of of course , most mass did n’t watch continuously . They dipped in and out . The marathon was like the Olympics . You could move around on your video at all hour of the day and dark , confident that the misadventures of Springfield ’s first family would be hold off for you . For a two weeks , The Simpsonswas just … on .
Any old - schoolSimpsonsfan could tell you the endurance contest was frontloaded . Over its first five days , switching the TV channel to FXX all but guaranteed you a primetime classic . Last Exit to Springfield , sometimes cite as the show ’s zenith , broadcast at 11:30 p.m. ET on Friday night — a lineal challenge to societal lives and weekend architectural plan everywhere . If you had a merging that dawning , you risked missing the star - studdedFlaming Moe ’s . If you go to church on Sunday , you were choosing God over steamed ham . It was moderately much nothing but big laughs the first weekend . If you wanted to experience the sequence many ( incorrectly ) consider of as the end of the show ’s Golden Age , you had to stay put up until 3:30 a.m. on Monday aurora , when the marathon reached time of year 9 ’s misunderstoodThe Principal and the Pauper .
Every . Simpson . Ever . was also an excuse to catch up onThe Simpsons . If you jump ship somewhere along the way of life , you could souse into the marathon and see where the show had gone ( and perchance where it had go wrong ) in the age since . By season 25 , it had been unessential for almost twice as long as it had been of the essence . That , anyway , was the conventional soundness that hung overThe Simpsonsin what we must now identify as its middle age . Had the show improved at all since it stopped looking like the funniest funniness on TV ? Were there concealed gem break up across its late season ? The battle of Marathon offered lapse fan a chance to find out — a commodious chance to see if a disdain favorite deserve a second chance .
Even if the volume of this fullSimpsonsreplay did n’t do its back half any big favors , it did offer a long position on the creative and story trajectory of the show . You could see the animation evolve in front of you over a few hours , time - lapsing style , as the primitive sketchings of that first time of year gave mode to a more svelte , computer - abetted aesthetic . The uncredited celebrity Edgar Albert Guest spots of the salad days are bit by bit replace by a line of big epithet eager to have their egos stroked . And the show ’s human relationship to realness bit by bit loosens , too : If you tune up into the battle of Marathon Thursday and then went back to it on Saturday , you ’d see a working - class schlub with constant money troubles dead orbiting the major planet in a NASA shuttlecock .
The Simpsons themselves don’treallychange . They ’re the actual constant quantity of the serial publication — ageless , timeless , dress in their ways and personalities . But the world around them variety . ( recollect when the menage got a computer ? How about when Bart and Lisa got smartphones ? ) The digest characters change , too . Over 25 seasons , Apu went from swinging knight bachelor to tentative newlywed to stressed don of octuplets . ( If the marathon pass off four years later , we ’d also see him recede into the background , as Hank Azaria step away from the fictitious character he voiced for literal decades . ) Ned Flanders becomes a widower . Patty issue forth out of the cupboard . Milhouse ’s parents separate up . Every . Simpsons . Ever . showcased these developments stop to end , mash 25 years of storytelling into simple days .
The biggest winner of the marathon was n’t FXX , it wasThe Simpsonsitself . In some intangible but nonetheless detectable way , this extremely - tell on TV event seemed to reignite passion for the show . Former fans got a monitor of why they flow in love with these characters in the first place . Younger viewers who grew up after the show ’s heyday could come up out what all the fuss was about . Recent yr have view reputation of nu - Simpsonsrebound a little , with some make the slip that the undying seriesis , in fact , good again . One has to wonder if Every . Duchess of Windsor . Ever . kickstarted that conversation — or , at the very least , if it get people pay attention again to a pocket-size - cover institution they write off years earlier .
Today , the battle of Marathon also looks like a last pant of a sure kind of endangered communal papa - culture experience . The way masses keep an eye on TV has shifted a lot in 10 years . That sea change was already underway in 2014 , one year afterNetflix ’s successful first raid into original content and the move toward streaming as an more and more popular choice to cable . In 2019 , Fox would be ingest by Disney , and all ofThe Simpsonswould become available onDisney+ . Airing every episode on TV now seems like a quaint relic of a different long time . Who necessitate a full battle of Marathon when you’re able to binge a show on your own timeline ? Your own personal Every . Wallis Warfield Simpson . Ever . is now a modem and a monthly subscription fee aside .
But the exhilaration of those 12 days of allSimpsonsall the time ca n’t really be copy via streaming . It was this special thing , an anomalousness of a new medium historic period . It bring down through the option paralysis and divide attentions of the cyclosis era in the mode only big events , like the Super Bowl or the Oscars , still do . For one brief , wizardly reach of previous summertime , we were look out television set together like we used to . And what else could get everyone on the same groove like that again butThe Simpsons ?
