Following their savage deconstruction of parent-child bedtime interactions, it was only a matter of time before The Simpsons moved onto taking down another much-revered family ritual - the twice (or thrice) daily gathering around the table for a good old-fashioned social binging. Whereas "Good Night" dealt with the failures of the adult Simpsons to instill a sense of nocturnal domestic security in their impressionable offspring, "Dinnertime" looks at their failure to model basic etiquette, in part due to their own inability to work from the same page. The animation in "Dinnertime" is still extremely crude, although it had evolved considerably since the eye-popping scrappiness of "Good Night", with the family now starting to look more like their familiar selves and Marge's trademark beehive hairstyle beginning to scale its full dizzying heights. In "Dinnertime" we also see Homer and Marge's respective personalities beginning to sharpen - although ostensibly the short deals with Marge's uphill crusade against her family's collectively hideous table manners, it is effectively about the relationship between Marge and Homer; the kids are present, but they get next to no dialogue here. I noted in my review of "Good Night" that Homer's characterisation was somewhat different in the Ullman shorts, for he was a notch more conscientious when it came to keeping his family in order, although right from the start his basic underlying gag was always that he was never too outstanding a role model, partly because was something of an oafish brute, but mostly because, at heart, he was fundamentally one of the kids himself. Meanwhile, Marge had the burden of being the sole responsible adult in the family (Lisa would eventually assume a wisdom and maturity beyond her years, but at this stage she was still an unruly hellion herself). "Dinnertime" offers a glimpse into the dynamics of their lopsided marriage, demonstrating both Homer's crippling lack of self-awareness (although at this stage in Homer's character development, it's not entirely clear if he's being deliberately flippant or if "Good drink! Good meat! Good god, let's eat!" really is his idea of reverence) and the endless frustration and disappointment nestled beneath Marge's thankless daily grind (Marge was always the emotional glue holding the family together, and "Dinnertime" cements that her talents were doomed to be eternally unappreciated).
"Dinnertime" was the last Simpsons short of Season 1. Meaning that in that alternate universe where The Tracey Ullman Show stuck with Dr N!Godatu as its sole commercial bumper, this is where the family would have ended their run. In that regard, we might view the closing moments to "Dinnertime" as the punchline to not merely this particular slice of Simpsons life, but also to the entire conceit of The Simpsons in their most primitive state. In the fourth act, Marge makes one final perfunctory effort to push her barbaric family, their mouths too clogged up with food to be capable of forming words, one step closer to civility by feebly attempting to initiate a conversation, only for Homer to take this as his cue to have Bart wheel in the TV. The appearance of the chattering cyclops effectively shuts down whatever hopes Marge might have had of genuine interaction with her family (although perhaps this is indeed what she expected - I notice that Marge doesn't seem particularly perturbed when Bart produces the TV). The real punchline, however is to be found in the overheard dialogue coming from the newscast as the short fades out and the television brings in a disturbance all of its own:
"On tonight's news, bus plunge kills 43. Freak roller-coaster accident decapitates..."
Obviously, those are some fucked up news headlines right there.
For the first season of The Tracey Ullman Show, the shorts never ventured beyond the walls of the Simpson household, giving exclusive attention to the family's domestic sphere and the day-to-day chaos which characterised the most ostensibly banal of their activities. The television at the end of "Dinnertime" offers our first fleeting window into the outside world, the gag being that the Simpsons are merely the tip of the iceberg in a universe defined by chaos and the frightening capriciousness with which it dishes out death and destruction. This isn't the first time in which we've seen just how integral the television set is to the family's daily life; this was the focus of the second Ullman short, "Watching TV", in which the box was depicted as a never-ending source of blaring light and moronic jingles, underscoring the mindlessness of the three-way struggle between Bart, Lisa and Maggie to exercise control over the channel-selector dial. "Dinnertime" also explores the effects of 24-hour media saturation, alluding to the paradoxical manner in which it bombards us with images of carnage, heightening our day-to-day anxieties about the world we live in while also eroding our shock at the ubiquity of said carnage and encouraging us to revel in the spectacle, as reflected in the nonchalance with which every family member but Marge regards the ridiculously macabre news headlines. We've spent the past seven shorts gawking at this barely-human family as they slob around in their natural habitat, but at the end of "Dinnertime" the tables are essentially turned, as the Simpsons break from their domestic wilderness and look to the wider world for escape and enlightenment, to find only a sickening abyss gazing back at them.
Oh, and for a short centred around the revolting eating habits of freaky neon demons, "Dinnertime" has fewer stomach-churning visuals than one might expect, although I do find myself eyeballing with suspicion the rather unappetising-looking mush that Marge has prepared. Like, what the hell is it? It's purple! How many savoury dishes are there that are purple? I guess it could have beetroot as a primary ingredient, but why is is moving around by itself in the opening scene? Is it just an example of the weird early Ullman short animation, or are they attempting some kind of surreal sight gag in which the purple foodstuff is somehow alive? Either way, it's creepy.
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