Simpsons Saturday: 22 For 30
So I have a confession that might damage my credentials as a worthy chronicler of Simpsons sports history: I fell out of watching first-run episodes shortly after release of The Simpsons Movie.
Given The Simpsons Movie premiered 17 years ago in the summer of 2007 — how has it been 17 years?! — that means I have missed essentially half of The Simpsons 35-season run.
Thus, logging onto Disney+ to watch this 2017 episode, “22 For 30,” introduced me to a style of Simpsons episode I don’t associate much with the series. Much of what I enjoy about The Simpsons from its 1990s run is the timelessness of most episodes. While there are certainly episodes heavily influenced by pop culture of the time in the first 10 seasons, some of the more noteworthy examples don’t require knowledge of the reference to appreciate the joke.
Case in point, I watched “22 Short Films About Springfield” numerous times and considered it one of my favorite episodes long before I ever saw Pulp Fiction.
Conversely, “Behind The Laughter” strikes me as an episode that in order to appreciate much of the joke, one would have to be familiar with the format it parodied vis a vis VH1’s “Behind The Music.”
While I’ll credit “Behind The Laughter” for a one-off gag that still cracks me up with the Simpsons winning a Grammy in Metal for a campy jingle called “Simpsons Christmas Boogie” — a parody of Jethro Tull’s 1989 Grammy in the same category — the episode is a fascinating case study in the transformation of The Simpsons.
The series shifted from slice-of-life stories woven into wildly absurdist situations through much of the first 10 seasons, to relying heavily on celebrity cameos and of-the-moment pop-culture gimmicks. For me, an episode like Season 2’s “Dancin’ Homer” feels much more accessible in 2024 than plenty of much more recent entries.
“Behind The Laughter,” for example, makes me think more about how much of a distance memory the prominence of “Behind The Music” in the cultural zeitgeist feels; so much so, I am now curious if VH1 even still exists.
A quick Google search tells me that yes, it does.
In that same vein, I had pause starting an episode with a title referencing ESPN’s “30 For 30” series.
I’ll take this opportunity to divulge a position I once held on which I have since done a complete pivot: When ESPN announced the launch of the “30 For 30” series in 2009, executive producer Bill Simmons did media pitching the concept as revolutionary. I rolled my eyes and thought, “What you are describing are documentaries, which have existed for a long time.”
But I’ve come around on this. “30 For 30” is very much its own separate category within the documentary genre. I noted in my commentary on the Oakland Ballers independent baseball club the HBO documentary “Rebels of Oakland,” and addressed Simmons’ dismissive attitude toward HBO docs as boring.
“30 For 30” sought to bring a certain flare to documentary filmmaking to differentiate from the boring presentation of its predecessors — but what ultimately meant was emphasizing style or substance in far too many cases. To wit, emphasis on who was behind the camera at times superseded the subject matter, like Michael Rapaport’s “When The Garden was Eden” or Ice Cube’s “Straight Outta L.A.”
And, because of the assembly-line production schedule, too many entries seemed to leave a lot of details or potential angles uncovered.
That isn’t to say “30 For 30” lacks memorable installments. “It’s All About the U,” “Ghosts of Ole Miss,” and “Pony Excess” were all excellent. “O.J.: Made in America” ranks among the most transcendent sports documentaries ever produced and was released under the “30 For 30” banner.
However, it’s been years since the “30 For 30” released anything nearly as captivating as “Rebels of Oakland” and “Nine Innings from Ground Zero,” which predate Simmons’ dismissals of HBO documentaries, or the more recent “Say Hey, Willie Mays!”
“30 For 30” titles now seem to mostly be uploaded to ESPN+ with little fanfare, existing as nothing more than streaming-era inventory1. “30 For 30” isn’t a dead brand, like “Behind The Music,” but the series feels like a relic of a bygone era all the same.
So anyway…The Simpsons.
I came with trepidation into this “30 For 30”-themed episode, produced in 2017 the same year when the documentary series began its downward trajectory.
Despite the “30 For 30” inspiration, however, the episode isn’t nearly as reliant on the format being part of the joke as was the case with “Behind The Laughter.” The documentary style does lend to this episode of The Simpsons being entirely different from any I’d seen prior.
Edited in a quick-cut style, the humor’s driven more by nonsequitur gags than it is the plot. In that regard, it feels somewhat like Family Guy — somewhat because the jokes aren’t reliant on pop-culture references. It’s more so the barrage of five-second cutaways than the content that gives off Family Guy vibes.
As for the plot, the documentary tells the story of Bart finding basketball glory before becoming embroiled in a point-shaving scheme cooked up by Fat Tony. There’s plenty of fun poked at college-sports culture — and of note, this episode premiered on the night of the 2017 NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday. Headlines read with quips such as “Boy Scores 50 On Court And On A Test.”
Likewise, as a college basketball junkie, I got a kick out of Homer — as Springfield Elementary Coach — used for jokes referencing both Jerry Tarkanian2 and Bobby Knight.
“22 For 30” also featured some characters and jokes established in the series’ heyday, including an appearance from Mike Tyson-inspired Drederick Tatum and a running bit about Nelson Muntz’s dad abandoning the family.
“22 For 30” lacks the humanity of previous Simpsons Saturday installments “Dancin’ Homer” or “Lisa on Ice,” but provided an entertaining introduction to post-movie Simpsons.
Longtime readers of The Press Break may know how much I loathe the term inventory in this context, which essentially means chum spread around the water hoping some of the streaming-service masses will take a nibble.
An amusing coincidence, at least for me, in a “30 For 30”-themed episode referencing Tark is that HBO released its documentary on UNLV to go head-to-head with the “30 For 30” entry on Michigan’s Fab Five. The latter was billed for Jalen Rose’s involvement but was ultimately two-dimensional and disappointing.
The HBO documentary, “The Runnin’ Rebels of UNLV,” is among my favorite sports documentaries.