Let's be fair, it's pretty crap, though in a vastly different way than today's Simpsons crap. They're right in that there's no cohesive tone. You have wacky slapstick visual humor mixed right in with what is supposed to be relatable emotional content. The pilot was a mess, an unadulterated mess. Don't let nostalgia cloud your judgment on that point. There's not much, if anything, in this clip of the stuff that made the Simpsons great.

The first episode of just about everything is crap; there's a lot of figuring out what works and how to get it to fit together. So I admit I'm not judging this by the same standards I would judge, say, a third season episode, because it's inherently apples and oranges.

But I do see elements that work, and concepts they will successfully build upon. That's nothing to be ashamed of, so I don't get why these guys are ashamed, unless they truly are blind to the positives. Marge's inconsistent shape is a dumb thing for them to bitch about.

My guess was that they're bitching about it because it wasn't a conscious decision but something they got back from a cheap overseas animation team that at the time they just had to live with. I don't know that for sure though.

What work is that?

POETV commentary and star rating

I believe he's referring to the commercial that introduced the world to Milhouse: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=104206

Oh, I thought you were talking about the Butterfinger commercial.

Filmation was fucking amazing. They did these Tom and Jerry cartoons where their faces elongated and changed shape and size from one frame to the next, they were absolutely the most astonishing crap and I couldn't believe even as a child that someone actually got paid to do that.

This pilot probably takes things too far and I guess didn't follow their direction, but some of the animation in it is great and really hard to do. I thought it was cool and was surprised how much they trashed it in this commentary.

Honestly, I just have some nostalgia for when the Simpsons didn't have everything set in stone as far as how it's constructed, back when it had some kind of relationship to the way Groening draws and the animators were still trying to figure out how to approach it. Now there's a model sheet for every single angle you could possibly draw these characters from. Everything's down to a science, in smooth high definition. In my opinion that makes the show less funny.

The animation of the show today is 100% robotic and lifeless. The exact opposite of what used to be in episodes like Last Exit to Springfield. Even in the audio commentaries of episodes from season 5 and 6 they keep saying how they don't use certain expression in the characters anymore (maybe because the character's don't have any expressions at all now?) The show went the George Lucas route of making everything digital and with computers, making everything look steril and flat.

Is not that technology can't help make good animation, is just that you don't have to sacrifice actual flow and movement for the sake of shiny ultra-polished colors and angles. Just remember that halloween episode of the shinning where Homer goes crazy. That kind of wild crazy drawings are non-existant in the show today.