You're going to be hearing an awful lot about this episode today, on the 30th anniversary of what is arguably the most important Simpsons episode of all-time - the one that started it all (albeit more by chance than intention). So, I'll start by bringing up the one thing that nobody ever acknowledges about this episode - it has one heck of a horrifying title. I'm aware that it's a reference to the "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" lyrics of "The Christmas Song", a seasonal favourite penned by Robert Welles and Mel Tormé, and first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1945. It sounds positively gruesome when taken out of context, however. When this episode was released to home video in the early 90s (for a long time, I believe this was the only Simpsons episode available on VHS in the US, although more episodes were released to international markets), it bore the more generic but less threatening title of "The Simpsons Christmas Special" (which also appears onscreen in the episode itself). This was the title by which I knew it for years, and so when I finally learned of its official moniker I was more than a little taken back (not least because I wasn't overly familiar with the title's origins at the time). It's a peculiar choice of title, because it simultaneously conjures up images of warmth and homeyness but also pain and disturbance, which is perhaps entirely befitting for an episode that offers such a genial introduction to the Simpsons' world while forcing the characters to undergo all kinds of humiliating discomfort before they earn their feel-good ending.
Unless you fell off your own proverbial Christmas tree yesterday, then I'm guessing you already know the story of how this unassuming seasonal episode came to shoulder the burden and the honor of launching one of the most celebrated shows in television history, so I will keep this brief. "Some Enchanted Evening" was originally intended to kick-start the series, but the staff were so dismayed with how the animation turned out for that one that they sent it back to South Korean animation studio AKOM for an extensive revamping. The production delays meant that the series missed its intended fall premiere and was held back for a number of months, and the holiday-themed "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was a beneficiary of this, being bumped to the front of the queue so that it could keep its obligatory December spot. Had "Some Enchanted Evening" not endured its infamous hiccup and the episodes aired in their production order, then "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" would have been the eighth episode of the series, although it does play convincingly like it was written to be the series opener, with Marge's Christmas letter deftly establishing who each of the family were for anyone who might have missed out on the Tracy Ullman shorts. I mean, if you're a particularly astute Simpsons viewer, then I think you easily could figure out it belongs slightly later on in the season, even without glancing at production codes or reading up on the series' history. The animation is notably sleeker and more refined than the next three or four episodes that succeed it, and what little Lisa gets to contribute conforms better to her post-"Moaning Lisa" characterisation than to the early stages of the season, where she still retained some of her Ullman rowdiness. We also get a mild continuity problem, in that Homer is already the plant's safety inspector, a position he would not acquire until two further episodes down the line, and there are one or two characters who show up casually over the course of the story who would have received more dramatic, personalised introductions had the episodes played in their correct production order (I am somewhat sorry that Skinner missed out on his intended debut moment in "Bart The Genius", which was so meticulously constructed). But otherwise it's a perfect transition into longer-form Simpsons.
On that note, it's worth pondering how things might have turned out if the initial animation for "Some Enchanted Evening" hadn't been such a far cry from the producers' visions, and it had opened the series the fall of '89 as intended? Would the show still have been such a runaway smash from the go? I have to admit that I'm not so sure. On the surface, it might seem like a no-brainer, given that it's still the exact same material, but then to quote some one-off character who wouldn't show up until Season 7, that's the problem with first impressions - you only get to make one. The obvious advantage that "Enchanted" would have boasted over "Roasting" as a debut episode is that, there, all five family members have important and functional roles to play in how the narrative pans out. It feels like it was purposely written to showcase how the Simpsons operated as a family unit, as opposed to just focusing on any one character and having the others support them. By contrast, "Roasting" is very much a Homer and Bart affair, with the female Simpsons being regulated to the sidelines, particularly during the second half, where they literally stay in the living room waiting for the boys to return from their long, dark journey into the desolate December night. And yet, in all other regards, "Roasting" does feel like a more appropriate starting point for the series, not least because it's a much warmer, gentler Simpsons offering than "Enchanted", which leaps head-first into surprisingly mean and cynical territory. "Roasting" may be the most consistently downbeat installment out of the original thirteen, but it's grounded by a tenderness to which "Enchanted", by comparison, appears to be allergic. There, things take a hair-raising turn when Homer and Marge go out and unwittingly leave the children in the care of master criminal Ms Botz (voice of the wonderful and much-missed Penny Marshall), a fraudulent babysitter who doesn't exactly radiate goodness even prior to dropping her ruse. But even before we get that far, we have a despairing Marge already at the point where she's prepared to dump her negligent husband, who sheepishly attempts to remedy the situation with a measly rose and a night at a seedy motel (complete with queasy-looking waterbed). From its would-be opener, the series wasn't making any bones about how fundamentally derelict the relationship was between Homer and Marge, nor just how repugnant their children were to anyone who didn't have the privilege of bearing them from their own loins (even if their rambunctiousness occasionally proved useful in apprehending dangerous home intruders). Although the show's brutal honesty about the family's flaws would go a long way in endearing them to legions of viewers, "Enchanted" has a particularly sour, sardonic tone to it that some might have found alienating straight off the bat. It feels as if the writers were still figuring out how to make the Simpsons dysfunctional without making them seem like the family from Hell.
"Roasting" already seems worlds apart from "Enchanted", in that it has a greater sense of emotional charity toward its characters. It's an all-round cosier slice of Simpsons life...to the point that some viewers are inclined to brand it as cute in the pejorative sense. Notably, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood of I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide don't dish out a whole lot of positives on this one, slating the opening pageant sequence in particular as "cutesy and all-American", while whole-heartedly praising the episode it displaced as series opener as "the perfect template". Nathan Rabin of The AV Club is more positive about "Roasting", but acknowledges that its status as a seasonal special does obligate it to be "unusually sentimental and nakedly emotional." I wouldn't deny that "Roasting" pushes for the heartwarming factor more forcefully than any its brethren, but it's no sugar-fest either; in fact, being a seasonal special also permits a certain level of drawn-out emotional despair that's also not matched elsewhere in the season. Oh sure, we'd see Homer pushed to a much lower point than this just two episodes down the line, when "Homer's Odyssey" sees him so overwhelmed by self-loathing that at one point he seriously contemplates hurling himself into a river with a rock affixed to his waist, but "Roasting" examines his feelings of personal failure and inadequacy from a quieter, less melodramatic stance that seems all the more convincing. The "realism of the first season" with which Martyn and Wood seem to have a problem is one of the episode's greatest assets, for "Roasting" revolves around a small, yet very relatable kind of festive crisis - the gloomy realisation that your Christmas is a far cry from the glitzy corporate ideal (epitomised here by Ned Flanders, who outdoes Homer's pathetic attempt at a light display with his blaring animatronic monstrosity, which now seems hilariously secular in light of the direction that his characterisation would go - can you imagine today's Ned favouring a display that says "Xmas" over "Christmas"?). This isn't the kind of crisis that could potentially break the family, as in "Homer's Odyssey", "Life on The Fast Lane", "Homer's Night Out" and the first act of "Some Enchanted Evening" - we sense here that the family do have Homer's backs and aren't going to begrudge him if he's unable to shower them with material luxuries - but it nevertheless carries a bitter sting that's sustained right up until the inevitable happy ending. "Roasting" is cruel and packed with suffering in the way that the most evergreen of seasonal stories always are - so long as there's light at the end of the tunnel, the world loves nothing more than a generous helping of human misery at Yuletide to remind us that there is hope in the darkest hour. To that end, Homer is pretty much the George Bailey of this particular story - the luckless guy who can't catch a break, despite his earnest efforts to provide for those around him. It also helps that it keeps a firm handle on that characteristic Simpsons wit, which prevents it from becoming overly sappy - for example, in a scene where Bart, having learned what Homer is putting himself through, makes a heartfelt profession of admiration for his father, which takes the form of a backhanded compliment. "You must really love us to sink so low."
"Roasting" sees an unexpected financial problem threaten the family's prospects of an opulent Christmas - Marge is forced to blow the full Christmas funds on having an unfinished tattoo removed from Bart's arm, while Homer doesn't get the holiday bonus he was anticipating (through no fault of his own either; none of the blue collar workers at the plant received their Christmas bonuses because Burns chose to prioritise the wallets of the upper management. Now there's a man begging to be beleaguered by three ghosts during the night). Rather than break the news of his failure and risk disappointing his family, Homer chooses to shoulder the burden alone, in the dim hope that he can still turn things around in the meagre time he has. "Roasting" finds Homer in a wholly altruistic mood - in fact, I'm not sure if there's another episode where he's quite this completely and utterly selfless from beginning to end. Which is not to say that he's without his faults - at one point, Homer is so wounded by the observation that he's failed even to supply the customary tree for the living room that he drives out to a private reserve and steals one, nearly getting himself gunned down in the process. And yet, his basic motives are so pure, and his struggles against the bum hand life insists on dealing him so unrelenting that he takes on a classic underdog status and retains the audience's sympathies throughout. Which is another reason why "Roasting" makes for a better starting episode than "Enchanted" - both of them cement Homer's status as the perpetual loser who couldn't, but "Roasting" casts him, and his relations with the rest of his family, in a much more favourable light than does "Enchanted". Both the humour and the anguish stem from the assorted indignities he's forced to endure to replenish the family's lost resources - the sequence preceding his aforementioned fir theft is a great example, with Homer driving past various tree vendors as "Winter Wonderland" plays, his (understandable) lack of festive cheer growing increasingly apparent with every unaffordable option on offer. It's a smart sequence for how wittily it undercuts the false merriment of a holiday centred around maximum spending. Of course, Homer is forced to serve that same consumerist culture when he takes a part-time job as a mall Santa, a gig that requires him to pretend to be jolly old Saint Nick and listen to the demands of gullible six-year-olds for numerous hours. The kids he meets on the job don't actually seem all that vile, but he also has to undertake a rigorous round of entirely superfluous Santa training, and finally when Christmas Eve comes he discovers that the corporate fat cats he expected to be his salvation have been bleeding him mercilessly dry the entire time - with a barrage of additional deductions applied to his paycheck, all he gets from his Santa gig is a piddling thirteen dollars.
Unlike "Enchanted", which gives us a preposterous, albeit genuinely threatening antagonist in the form of Ms Botz, "Roasting" doesn't have a traditional villain. The antagonism arises from the coldness of the world around and how painfully indifferent it is toward Homer's plight. His family are supportive, but not even the comfort of his own home provides much refuge. The modest exterior, stacked up against neighbour Ned Flanders' tastelessly extravagant display, is a reminder of his deficiencies as family patriarch, and the inside is later invaded by two of his least favourite individuals, who are intent on rubbing those deficiencies in his face in a more direct manner. "Roasting" sees the start of not one but two of the prevailing animosities of Homer's existence - his one-sided rivalry with Ned, and his mutual enmity with sister-in-laws Patty and Selma, who come to stay with the family for the holidays. Since Homer is so sympathetic here, neither of the opposing parties come across so well in their debut appearances. We don't get to spend a whole lot of time with Ned, but based on what little we have, Homer's resentment toward him here doesn't seem quite so unjustified - he's cheerful, honestly, to the point of smarm, and he doesn't seem to think anything of flaunting his material bounty where Homer can see it (Homer is possibly a bit hard on Todd, though). Ned would later transpire to be a miraculously lovely neighbour who didn't deserve Homer's ire, but in "Roasting" his single purpose is to make Homer look and feel inferior. Patty and Selma would likewise be better developed in the following season and would prove to be two of the series' more complicated characters, but throughout Season 1 their one defining characteristic was that they hated Homer and weren't willing to put up much of a front to the contrary. Unlike "Life on The Fast Lane", where they correctly predict that Homer will let Marge down on her birthday, the viewer knows that their criticisms here are uncalled for, since Homer really is putting his all into coping with difficult circumstances for the sake of his family. Still, their presence is a nice nod to one of the other bugbears of the holiday season - having to rub shoulders and exchange strained pleasantries with the relatives you would sooner give as wide a berth as possible.
"Roasting" acknowledges that the holiday season is esteemed as a time of sacred ideal, but that the reality is frequently quite different, particularly for jaded adults who've already downed one rancid mincemeat pie too many (and presumably, Homer isn't the only person in town facing such a crisis, since all of his colleagues at the plant were also denied their Christmas bonus). Amid Homer's woes as family breadwinner, we get sprinklings of the kids' eye view of the holiday, with Bart regarding the festive conventions with a mixture of healthy irreverence ("there's only one fat guy who brings us presents and his name ain't Santa") and wide-eyed awe, as evidenced in his words of encouragement to Homer: "If TV has taught me anything, it's that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to the Smurfs, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to Tiny Tim, and it's going to happen to us." Bart is wary enough of adult authority to know that the whole Santa story they keep feeding him is a facade, but has far too much respect for the authority of the chattering cyclops to not believe in the intrinsic sanctity of the season. It's here that the episode tips over into its most openly self-conscious mode, with the reassurance that everything will be alright because the TV told us so. This is further underscored in the parallel moments involving the festive cartoon the rest of the family are watching in Homer and Bart's absence, in which the Happy Little Elves contemplate the possibility of becoming Sad Little Elves should Santa fail to find them through a blizzard of snow. The Happy Little Elves were one of these primitive staples of the Simpsons universe that were quickly discarded as the series proper began (a la Frosty Chocolate Milkshakes) - in the Ullman shorts and early episodes, the Simpsons would occasionally watch The Happy Little Elves, who were partly a homage to those Smurfs Bart mentioned earlier, but mainly a send-up of the kind of insipid, wholesome cartoon that The Simpsons itself decidedly was not. Itchy and Scratchy became the show's go-to whenever they wanted to make some meta observation about cartoon conventions or the animation industry in general, and references to the Elves became a lot more sparing after Season 1. Abe dismisses the cartoon as "unadulterated pap" as Lisa finds herself genuinely invested in the elves' hackneyed antics. As noted, Lisa isn't given a lot to do in this episode, but she does contribute my favourite moment, when she stands up for Homer against one of Patty's cutting asides, using that psychotherapist jargon that was her character's trademark at this point in the series. It's a wonderful Lisa bit, encapsulating her perceptiveness and sensitivity in a way that puts the adults' pettiness into perspective, and seeming doubly hilarious coming straight off her ingenuous reaction to the Elves cartoon, which Patty impassively directs her back to. "Roasting" does a nice job of showcasing the dual characterisation that Lisa had already developed over a relatively short space of time, after years of being something of an unknown in the Ullman shorts - hugely precocious, but still recognisably a child (it's not clear if Lisa buys into the whole Santa thing, but she's apparently naive enough to believe that sheer desire and restrained behaviour will get her something as fanciful as a pony).
Things work out for Lisa's favourite TV elves, of course, just as they eventually work out for our favourite TV family, but it seems a safe bet that the elves didn't have to attend a run-down dog track in order to obtain their Christmas miracle. On the episode's DVD commentary, there's some brief discussion of the producers' intentions to create a cartoon that was "full of trash", and that's another means by which "Roasting" manages to subvert the conventions of the seasonal cartoons it sends up - the latter half of the episode is characterised by a genuine air of squalor, which becomes more and more prominent as Homer and Bart's journey leads them ever deeper into the dingier side of Springfield's tracks. From the gaudy artifice of the mall's Christmas grotto to the cheerless grime of the employee reception to the dankness of the Springfield Downs, it really does feel like the drabbest possible backdrop against which to set a Christmas special (although there is a sweet exchange between a father and son who've made a tradition of not opening their presents until the eighth race). I acknowledged that we like our seasonal stories to have sufficient lashings of gloom (or what Bart describes as suspense before the miracle happens), but there are times when "Roasting" gets a little too knowingly dirty for comfort. By the time we get to the dog tracks, we find ourselves questioning if this is really the kind of place where Christmas miracles happen. As it turns out, no, at least not in the conventional sense. Homer is advised by Barney to put his thirteen hard-earned dollars on a betting favourite named Whirlwind, but instead backs Santa's Little Helper, a late addition with pitifully low odds because he sees something prophetic in the dog's ridiculous name. It all goes as disastrously as the odds would imply, leaving Homer deflated and Bart tasked with having to re-examine his entire world view ("It doesn't seem possible, but I guess TV has betrayed me"). The two are reduced to having to scavenge through the litter outside the tracks on the slim chance of finding a dropped winning ticket, where they find themselves in the company of none other than Santa's Little Helper, whose abysmal performance has prompted his owner to abandon him. Having to share the gutter with the failed racing dog who dashed their final prospect of redemption is the ultimate confirmation of their status as perpetual losers, and yet the empathy Bart and Homer muster for this outcast animal opens up a whole new avenue of redemption, for there is a common solution to both the Simpsons' and Santa's Little Helper's problems. Their simple act of solidarity reaps a handsome reward, for when Homer arrives home with Bart and the dog in tow and attempts to break the news about his Christmas bonus, the family are so delighted to meet Santa's Little Helper that they scarcely care. The episode ends, then, with a heartening message about how unity among losers can make winners of us all.
Of course, a dog is for life, not just for Christmas...which the problem that this episode does inadvertently set up. Having brought this lovable dog into the family household for the sake of facilitating a happy ending, the series then had to contend with the fact that they were stuck with him. This may be the most contentious Simpsons opinion I'll ever express (way more so than my views on Homer and Marge's marriage), but I actually don't think that Santa's Little Helper was that great an addition to the Simpsons household in the long-term. Unlike Snowball II the cat, who is basically harmless (if understatedly morbid - see below), the show does intermittently keep trying to make episodes with Santa's Little Helper as the focal point, and they never really worked for me, to the extent that I'd rank "Bart's Dog Gets an F", "Dog of Death", "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" and "The Canine Mutiny" as the weakest episodes of their respective seasons. Whenever I watch "Bart Gets An Elephant" or "Lisa's Pony", I'm always amazed at just how much more invested I get in the relationships the family forms with these one-off critters we'll never see again than I do their regular pets, who are mostly just taken for granted. But why carp? For now, things are wonderful, and I've no desire to close this celebration of the 30th anniversary of the series' first episode on a negative note.
Instead, I'll close with something else that most retrospectives on this episode are unlikely to do, with a word of appreciation for the forgotten family member Snowball II, who also receives her formal introduction in this episode (but would have made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo prior in "Moaning Lisa"). Whereas Santa's Little Helper represents seasonal miracles and the possibility of new beginnings, Snowball II is a haunting reminder of the tragedies that have already occurred, her very name constantly evoking the predecessor who had met a horrible end before the series even began, and whom the viewer only knew second-hand via her unassuming replacement. Marge states in her letter that life goes on, but inevitably the scars of yesteryear will ride along with us. I realise that this is probably sounding decidedly negative, but what I'm saying is that Snowball II had always had her unique niche within the household, even if she never received much glory for it. It's not a pretty job, but someone has to remind us that the shadow of mortality is forever hanging over us.
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