Bart and Lisa Visit Kamp Krusty in The Simpsons - Complete Fourth Season

The Simpsons quickly became very popular after the show began airing in 1989 on FOX. At that time, I didn't get FOX, so I wasn't watching the show. Even once I had the station, it was still several years later before I started watching the show. I was quickly hooked and have been picking up the DVD sets. I recently watched The Simpsons - The Complete Fourth Season.

Matt Groening first developed the Simpsons characters for short segments that filled in between sketches during The Tracey Ullman Show. The segments were very short, so there wasn't much in the way of character development and the animation was really very crude and rough. That didn't stop the characters from becoming popular enough for FOX to give them their own show. It has been on the air ever since, airing its 400th episode in May of 2007. The Simpsons Movie, a full length feature movie, was released on July 27, 2007. Groening also created another animated show, Futurama, that began airing in 1999.

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpsons have been the main focus of the episodes with Bart and Homer receiving more attention than the females in the family. The family wasn’t really typical and they ended up in several unique situations throughout the episodes. Those things did add a lot of the humor for the show. Homer and Bart did a lot of things that made me laugh. Some of the humor was more adult in nature or slightly gross which could bother some people. Several other characters said and did things that were funny.

Every episode in the fourth season was self contained with a plot that didn’t carry into other episodes. That is how most of the episodes have been throughout the first three seasons as well. Once in a while, something that happened in a previous episode was briefly mentioned. There was one episode, So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show, that featured a lot of clips from several previous episodes. For several episodes, more than one plot was woven together. More than once it seemed like one aspect would be the main focus of an episode and then it went off in a whole different direction. I thought that always worked when it was done and it did make the episodes interesting. That practice is still used in the newer seasons and it was done in the movie as well.

While most of the episodes were focused in on the immediate Simpsons family, other characters were also featured. Selma, one of Marge’s chain smoking sisters, played a larger role in Selma’s Choice. She and her twin sister Patty turned up briefly in other episodes as well. Krusty the Clown has turned up briefly in many episodes since Bart and Lisa watch his show all the time. He did get featured slightly more in Kamp Krusty and Krusty Gets Kancelled. Grandpa Simpsons, Homer’s father, has turned up every so often, usually when he is visiting the family and they are visiting him at the retirement home where he lives. He did have a bit more to do in the episode The Front.

The third special Halloween episode, Treehouse of Horror III, aired during this season. Once again, the episode featured three short stories with a scary feel. I don’t think I had seen the episode before I watched it on this DVD set. Even though I didn’t see these episodes when they first aired, I have been watching the episodes that air in syndication for several years now. There were other episodes, like Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie and Marge Vs. the Monorail, that I didn’t see before either. This season did contain several episodes that many now consider classic episodes, like Kamp Krusty, A Streetcar Named Marge, and Mr. Plow. The episode Lisa’s First Word was a flashback episode that showed Lisa as a baby.

A group of voice actors provided the voices for the main characters as well as some of the minor, supporting characters. The same actors that did the voices in the first three seasons were back for this season as well. Yeardly Smith and Marcia Wallace are the only ones who normally only provide voices for one character. Julie Kavner, the voice of Marge, also does the voices for Selma, Patty, and their mother when she makes one of her rare appearances. The voices for the regular and semi-regular characters sounded like they had in the previous seasons with Chief Wiggum sounding just a little bit different.

In addition to the regular group of voice actors, this season also included several guest stars. Phil Hartman returned to voice Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz, minor character who turned up every so often, in addition to one or two other characters that were just in one episode. Jon Lovitz provided the voice of the director of the musical in the episode A Streetcar Named Marge. Lovitz has provided voices for other characters in previous seasons as well. Bob Hope, Tom Jones, Sara Gilbert, Linda Ronstadt, Adam West, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Nimoy, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Brooke Shields, Barry White, David Crosby, Johnny Carson, Hugh Hefner, Bette Midler, Luke Perry, and the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers also provided voices as guest stars, sometimes as themselves.

The episodes were created with the same type of animation that had been used in the first three seasons of the show. Bright, vibrant colors were used in most of the episodes. One of the stories in Treehouse of Horror III was in black and white which did fit with that particular story. I thought that the animation was well done throughout the season. I believe that the animation was cleaned up for the DVD set since it seems to look crisper than I remember the episodes looking when I had seen some of them on television. The only change to the opening sequence was with what Bart was writing on the chalkboard at the beginning and how the family arrived on the couch at the end of the credits.

DVD Information

The Simpsons - Complete Fourth Season contained all twenty-two episodes from the fourth season on four discs. The set has the same type of unfolding case, with one disc per panel, that was used for the previous three seasons. There was another message from Matt Groening on one of the panels. In this one, he briefly mentioned some of the fan favorite episodes included in the fourth season as well as sharing that his favorite Simpsons line of all time was in one of these episodes.

The booklet was changed slightly and included a little more information. The first page listed the episodes and which disc they were on. The principal cast was named and the extras were listed by which disc they were on. There was also an icon key which explained what different little icons that would be used throughout the rest of the booklet meant. Different icons were used for different extras that were in each episode. There were short summaries for each episode that included the original air dates and mentioned if there were any guest stars featured. I really liked how the booklet indicated what extras were connected to each episode.

The main menu for each disc offered the option of either playing each episode one at a time or to play all the episodes one after the other. There was only a little bit of animation on the menu screens. Matt Groening and some other people connected to the show provided commentaries for every episode again. There was the option to listen to Groening read his message that was included on the DVD case. Some of the episodes had an option for an illustrated commentary. There were also animatics, animation showcases, special language features, commercials, and deleted scenes for a few episodes. There were two featurettes on the first disc that were connected to controversy related to the show. The Cajun Controversy talked about how some controversy was caused by a song in the episode A Streetcar Named Marge. Bush vs. Simpsons featured a few people discussing how Barbra Bush had criticized the show and how a letter was sent to her from Marge in response. I don’t remember having heard about either of those things before.

Episode List

Kamp Krusty
A Streetcar Named Marge
Homer the Heretic
Lisa the Beauty Queen
Treehouse of Horror III
Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie
Marge Gets a Job
New Kid on the Block
Mr. Plow
Lisa’s First Word
Homer’s Triple Bypass
Marge vs. The Monorail
Selma’s Choice
Brother From the Same Planet
I Love Lisa
Duffless
Last Exit to Springfield
So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show
The Front
Whacking Day
Marge in Chains
Krusty Gets Kancelled

The Simpsons - The Complete Fourth Seasons contained some of the most entertaining episodes of the series. This set didn’t have a lot of extras, but it is still worth having for fans of the show.

Simpsons Reviews
The Simpsons - The Complete First Season ~ The Simpsons - The Complete Second Season ~ The Simpsons - The Complete Third Season ~ The Simpsons - Season 5 ~ The Simpsons - Season 6 ~ The Simpsons - Season 7 ~ The Simpsons - Season 8 ~ The Simpsons - Season 9 ~ The Simpsons - Season 10 ~ The Simpsons - Season 11 ~ The Simpsons - Season 12 ~ The Simpsons Movie ~ The Simpsons Clue ~

Futurama Reviews
Futurama - Volume 1 ~ Futurama - Volume 2 ~ Futurama - Volume 3 ~ Futurama - Volume 4 ~ Futurama: Bender's Big Score ~ Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs ~ Futurama: Bender's Game ~ Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder ~