Making a TV show from scratch was chaotic. That’s why it was important to have executive producer James L. Brooks around. While the creators of The Simpsons were tinkering with things, he helped shield them from the powers that be at Fox. “It was the first time anybody tried to start a fourth network, and so there’s a lot of pressure,” editor Brian Roberts says. “There were a lot of eyeballs on us, especially from up above.”

But thanks to his status as an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, Brooks was able to institute something that turned out to be extremely influential: The network brass would not be involved in the creative side of the show. “When you’re begging someone to do a show, which is what we were mostly doing in those days, you let them do their thing,” says Garth Ancier, Fox’s first head of programming. “He knew me well enough to know I was not about to cramp him.”

That meant no notes on scripts. “That was absolutely crucial to the success of The Simpsons,” writer Jeff Martin says. He can still hear Brooks’ euphemistic instructions on how to deliver each completed episode: “Put it in the mail slot.” And then it’s done. “That helped give the show a distinctive voice,” Martin says, “an edge.”

“The more people put their fingers in it, there’s less of a chance you come up with something that’s very interesting and unique,” writer Jay Kogen says. “The more homogenized things become, the less interesting they become.”

Back then, having that kind of freedom was almost unprecedented. “Very rare,” Kogen adds. “You wouldn’t get that on any other network.” But Fox granted it. All because of Brooks.

The James L. Brooks no-notes rule became legendary. After all, he managed to do what most comedy writers couldn’t: get the paper pushers off his back. “We truly never saw Fox executives,” Martin says. “Didn’t know what they looked like.”

When I asked former Fox network executive Sandy Grushow about the no-notes policy, he admitted to having mixed feelings about it. “Because it really diminishes the role of network executives, which of course all creatives love to do,” he says with a big laugh. “We’re just knuckleheads and obstructionists. And I know that’s not true, because I worked on shows like 90210 and Melrose Place, and those shows wouldn’t have lasted beyond the year had we not gotten in there and rolled up our sleeves.”

But, Grushow adds, “in the case of The Simpsons? Yeah, there was virtually no network or studio involvement.”

One note on the no-notes rule: It’s often slightly misunderstood. First, not all feedback from the network was destructive. “You’d love to be self-flattering and say, ‘We could do our great ideas and not have to do their stupid ideas,’ ” Martin says. “And I’ve gotten dumb notes. But I’ve gotten smart notes too.” The problem was that notes, good or bad or somewhere in between, were a time suck. Not having to deal with them was a luxury. “Just the simple procedure of it takes time,” Martin says. “So, OK, we’ve addressed their notes, now we don’t have quite as much time. We don’t have quite as much energy.”

The Simpsons was made in a bubble that burst long ago. Writer George Meyer is still wistful about it. “I was just thinking the other day about how different the creative environment was when we were working on Season 1,” he says. “We had very little feedback other than ratings numbers and some reviews in newspapers and magazines. No notes from the studio or network, no social media opinions, no blogs, no podcasts … you get the idea. It was glorious!”

Fox executives didn’t give creative feedback, but its censor did. Back then, Avery Cobern was the manager of broadcast standards. Her job was to read every single script and flag potentially objectionable material. She was meticulous. After all, it was on her to make sure the show didn’t do anything that would get the network in trouble. But in hindsight, the notes she sent to the producers were almost as funny as any Simpsons episode.

Some were obvious. Like these: “This Itchy & Scratchy cartoon goes too far. Please do not show a cat coughing up blood.” “Caution that the ‘large-breasted woman’ in the picture is adequately covered.” “Obviously we do not want to show the intimate details of a bris.”

Some were thematic. When Bart becomes mobster Fat Tony’s errand boy, Cobern was worried. “I am concerned that this script makes it seem that Bart is attracted by the criminal lifestyle, willingly joins a gang, and commits illegal acts for the money they give him, and also that Marge and Homer don’t even mind,” she wrote. “The only way for Bart not to be compromised in this episode is if it is believable to the viewer that he was completely fooled by Fat Tony.”

And some were about language. When the “Treehouse of Horror II” script came in, Cobern wasn’t pleased with the way Mr. Burns described his lazy employees. “Please substitute for Burns’ ‘their days of suckling at my teat are numbered.’ It is our policy not to accept this word, since many viewers will merely be offended by it without grasping an implied metaphor. Something like ‘sucking at the bosom of my generosity …’ would be acceptable.” The word teat ended up staying in the episode. As did Bart’s stated desire, despite Cobern’s initial objection, to rename the United States to “Bonerland.”

Simpsons humor was never as blue as Marge’s hair, but there was light cursing and slightly dirty jokes. Like in “Brush With Greatness.” When commissioned to create a portrait of Mr. Burns, Marge depicts the power plant owner as he really is underneath his malevolent exterior: naked, shriveled, and frail. The script ends with the billionaire complimenting the artist. “Your painting is bold but beautiful,” he tells Marge. “And, uh, incidentally, thanks for not making fun of my genitalia.” In response, she says, “I thought I did.”

Before the episode aired, Cobern wrote a memo that demanded cutting the word genitalia. “As constituted, the moral point and a very human moment with Mr. Burns is lost in the shock of the specific body part reference,” she wrote. “Calling specific attention to a man’s sex organs in this way would be certain to offend and anger many viewers, especially parents who are watching this show with their children. Although in previous discussions I requested a very general word such as ‘body’ in this scene, the substitution of your original term, ‘equipment,’ would be preferable and would satisfy our concerns in this context.”

Instead of relenting, 10 Simpsons staffers, including show founding fathers Matt Groening, Sam Simon, and Brooks signed their names to a letter explaining their refusal to replace the word to Fox’s Vice President of Broadcast Standards Don Bay. Even studio head Barry Diller was cc’ed.

“Although we will always fight for our right to use adult language and reject any attempt to turn The Simpsons into a children’s show, there are some particular aspects of this ‘genitalia’ controversy that have moved us to take this strong action,” the letter reads. “In the original draft of this script we used the word ‘equipment,’ and it was rejected. Traditionally, a solution to this type of language problem is to select a more clinical term. Therefore, we chose ‘genitalia.’ ”

The memo asserts that at one point, Cobern did approve the word. “At any rate, it is currently disapproved and you are now proposing ‘equipment,’ which your department had earlier rejected, as the only approved substitute,” the letter continues. “We hope you will not bleep or edit the word, because we cannot help but see such an action as a creative assault on the integrity of our show. We also think that there are no winners or losers in these arguments. Unless we work together, we all lose.”

“When somebody showed me this memo, which I was unaware of, it read like a fucking Declaration of Independence,” says Roberts, whose only writing credit on The Simpsons was “Brush With Greatness.” “And it was signed by not one but 10 John Hancocks in my world.”

The Simpsons was rarely as offensive as parents thought, even when it wanted to be.

To his delight, Fox dropped the objection, and the reference to Mr. Burns’ genitalia—which are visually covered by a hat feather, Marge’s hand, and champagne flutes—stayed in. Roberts wasn’t surprised that Brooks, Simon, Groening, and the writers held their ground over a small detail. This was their show, not the network’s.

The Mr. Burns bit was transgressive. But The Simpsons was rarely as offensive as parents thought, even when it wanted to be. The writers knew that having creative control didn’t give them license to violate broadcast standards. Remember the early episode “Homer’s Night Out,” when Homer is caught on camera canoodling with a belly dancer? Jon Vitti, who wrote it, calls it a “problem episode.” It was a problem because the writers knew that the photograph of Princess Kashmir couldn’t be lewd enough to be scandalous. They understood that there were lines they couldn’t cross.

“George [Meyer] said something really smart when I was sadly trying to figure out what lessons could be learned,” Vitti says. “He said that The Simpsons’ tone just didn’t let us create a photo that was offensive enough to justify how shocked the characters get. It was just a story we shouldn’t have done on The Simpsons.” Vitti felt bad for pitching the idea, but he was reassured when neither Brooks nor Simon—nor anyone else—could help make the story work better. “It’s the only time in my career I sought a do-over,” Vitti says.

When he started writing for The Larry Sanders Show, a sitcom starring Garry Shandling as a late-night host, Vitti noticed a story idea on a bulletin board. The premise? The show-within-a-show’s writers discover and circulate Larry’s sidekick Hank Kingsley’s sex tape. “I immediately recognized it as my chance to write a non-crappy version of ‘Homer’s Night Out,’ ” says Vitti, who indeed went on to write one of the best Larry Sanders episodes: “Hank’s Sex Tape.”

“George was right,” Vitti adds. “The story wanted to have an R-rated HBO reality. It was much happier in that world and was never worth troubling parents and children with on an animated show.” (To be fair to Vitti: There was no real backlash to “Homer’s Night Out.”)

That’s not to say that The Simpsons couldn’t do “adult” episodes. Though the writers rarely set out to come up with material that had a message, when it was called for, they managed to do it well.

The writers room was, of course, filled with very smart people. But as erudite as those people were, they were above all dedicated to producing huge laughs. This meant that commenting on any serious issue was always done with a degree of silliness. Here’s where one of legendary writer John Swartzwelder’s rules comes in. He used to call The Simpsons “a drama done by stupid people.”

At one story meeting for Season 2, Brooks pitched an idea involving Marge crusading against cartoon violence. Afterward, Simon asked the group who wanted to write the episode. Vitti didn’t want to do it. “It sounded difficult and Oh, it’s going to get preachy,” he says. But Swartzwelder, Vitti remembers, immediately volunteered.

“I totally didn’t get it,” says Vitti, who was confused by Swartzwelder’s eagerness. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Sam [Simon], but when we went back to our office, I said, ‘Why do you want to write the Marge–vs.–cartoon violence episode?’ And he just smiled and said, ‘You can’t show someone crusading against the problem unless you show the problem.’ ” At that moment, Vitti had an epiphany. “And as soon as he said it, it was like, ‘Ah, you magnificent bastard,’ ” he says. “It’s like you could just see it. It gave him license to write all the cartoon violence he wanted to write.”

At the beginning of “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge,” Maggie hits Homer on the head with a mallet. (The scene is an extended homage to Psycho.) It doesn’t take long for Marge to figure out where her infant daughter learned such behavior: the hyperviolent show-within-a-show Itchy & Scratchy. In the first act alone, Itchy and Scratchy repeatedly hit each other with meat-tenderizing mallets, Itchy blows up Scratchy with a football bomb, Itchy stabs Scratchy with a butcher knife, Itchy torches Scratchy’s head with a bazooka, and Itchy knocks Scratchy’s eyeballs out with a sledgehammer, then replaces them with cherry bombs, which explode. The gratuitous mayhem leads Marge to organize Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding, and Helping, lead a picket of Itchy & Scratchy International, and piss off company Chairman Roger Meyers Jr. and the cartoon’s writers, who respond by having the cat and mouse team up to attack a shrill squirrel with a familiar blue beehive.

Basically, Marge transformed into an animated version of Terry Rakolta, who, the year before, led an advertising boycott of Fox’s Married … With Children. By the Reagan era, reactionaries unhappy with what they perceived as the increasingly harmful influence of pop culture were sprouting up around the country. The Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by future second lady Tipper Gore, attempted to clamp down on music that was allegedly obscene. Artists banded together to fight the organization, which did succeed in getting Parental Advisory stickers slapped onto explicit albums. Like Marge, Gore was also the subject of ridicule by the voices she was trying to suppress. A genre-spanning lineup of musicians took shots at her on their records.

Around that time, the Satanic Panic was sweeping America. What started with a discredited book featuring claims that a woman suffered horrific ritual abuse—that never happened—caused a media-fueled frenzy. In the ’80s, there were reportedly 12,000 unsubstantiated accusations of satanic ritual abuse. Local news stations reported on the supposed problem. Talk shows were obsessed with it. And lurid accusations made against the employees of a preschool in Southern California spawned a nearly decadelong, heavily covered case that ended with all the charges being dropped. The epidemic, it turned out, wasn’t real.

That didn’t stop the scare tactics. Heavy metal bands were accused of promoting the occult. And a group known as Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) claimed that the role-playing game helped lure kids into devil-worshipping cults. The fear was, needless to say, unfounded.

In 1987 the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, a nearly 40-year-old law that required broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints while covering controversial issues. A year later, uncoincidentally, stations across the country began airing right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. The gay-bashing, racist, misogynistic host aired his grievances daily for an audience of millions. He scoffed at the supposedly liberal invention of political correctness, which he equated to censorship. At the same time, he took pleasure in bullying everyone who disagreed with him.

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This was the world The Simpsons drew from. In the face of ridicule, Marge’s persistence leads to change: The studio begrudgingly sanitizes Itchy & Scratchy. But bored by seeing Scratchy do uncharacteristically sweet things like offer Itchy lemonade, Springfield’s hardened children collectively turn off the idiot box and play outside. Alas, the TV-free utopia doesn’t last long. When concerned mothers recruit Marge to protest a local exhibition of Michelangelo’s David, she rebuffs them and is promptly labeled “soft on full-frontal nudity.”

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Realizing that censorship isn’t the best way to shield her family from negative influences, Marge backs down. And soon, Itchy and Scratchy are once again doing things like engaging in a duel that ends with the former using a planet-enveloping gun to shoot the latter into the sun. As absurdist as it often is, the episode does have a lot to say about parenting and free speech. If adults disliked The Simpsons, they could change the channel. Or turn off the TV.

What no one who worked on the show ever expected to see was the ending of “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” unfolding in real life. In 2023 a Florida school board reportedly forced a principal to resign after three parents objected to an art teacher showing their sixth graders a photograph of Michelangelo’s David. That reality was way too dumb to imagine.

“John Swartzwelder must be really happy,” Vitti wrote back when I emailed him an article about the controversy. “I don’t remember anyone even wondering if we needed to explain why Marge was against censoring David. And to a fault we would explain anything that might confuse anybody. There was zero concern that anybody out there would be rooting for Marge to get David banned. So we predicted the event, but we really can’t say we influenced society at all this time, since America went in exactly the wrong direction.”

To Vitti, “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” was “a breakthrough for us, in terms of the level John took it to.” From then on, if he was struggling with a more dramatic script, Vitti reminded himself of Swartzwelder’s “Drama done by stupid people” rule. It always made him feel better.

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This article was adapted from the new book Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television—and America—Forever, by Alan Siegel. Copyright © 2025 by Alan Siegel. Reprinted with Permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.