The First Episode Of The Simpsons Was Almost Completely Different

On December 17, 1989, America sat down to watch "The Simpsons." The animated characters created by Matt Groening first appeared in short segments on the variety series "The Tracey Ullman Show," but by 1989, the Simpson family was ready to take on their own series. 

Or were they? 

The first episode to make it to air was the holiday special "Simpsons Roasting on and Open Fire," in which a down-on-his luck Homer (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) takes a job as a mall Santa. Eventually, the family adopts a greyhound dog named Santa's Little Helper, and Christmas is saved. It may not be the best episode of "The Simpsons," but it certainly made history: as of this writing, "The Simpsons" is still on the air, having just wrapped its 35th season. But back in 1989, a completely different episode of "The Simpsons" could've been the premiere. Then everything changed at the last minute.

When "The Simpsons" was ordered to series by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a team of writers sat down and penned 13 episodes for what would become the first season. At the time, the plan was for an episode titled "Some Enchanted Evening" to serve as the premiere. In this episode, Simpson family matriarch Marge (Julie Kavner) grows tired of being taken for granted by oafish husband Homer. To make it up to her, Homer plans a night out — the couple will first go out to dinner and dancing at a fancy restaurant, and then spend the night at a motel. To make this romantic evening possible, Homer hires a babysitter to watch the Simpson kids: bratty troublemaker Bart (Nancy Cartwright), brainiac Lisa (Yeardley Smith), and non-verbal infant Maggie. 

As it turns out, the babysitter, Ms. Botz (Penny Marshall), is an infamous criminal known as the Babysitter Bandit — a fact that Bart and Lisa learn after watching the crime TV series "America's Most Armed and Dangerous." After being discovered, Botz captures and ties up Bart and Lisa while proceeding to rob the Simpson home. Eventually, Bart and Lisa get free. They knock out Botz, tie her up, and then run to a payphone to call for help. Before help arrives, however, Homer and Marge come home. Assuming that Ms. Botz was the victim of their troublemaking son, Homer frees the Babysitter Bandit, gives her extra money, and then sends her on her way right before the cops and members of the media show up. Homer is reduced to a laughingstock for helping the person who robbed his own house get away. 

If you're familiar with the first season of "The Simpsons," you know that "Some Enchanted Evening" is actually the season finale, not the premiere. So what happened?

After writing the first 13 episodes of "The Simpsons," the creative team behind the show sent the scripts off to South Korean animation studio AKOM. Character and background layout animation was done in-house in Los Angeles, while everything else was handled in South Korea. Since this was the 1980s, there was no way for "The Simpsons" producers to instantly see the animation results — they couldn't be uploaded via e-mail or the cloud; they had to be physically shipped. And so "The Simpsons" team had to wait. 

On the DVD commentary track for "Some Enchanted Evening," "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, who co-wrote the episode with executive producer Sam Simon, says: "Everything was shipped off to Korea ... six months later we saw the results of that first script." And what were those results? According to Groening, "We watched the results of that first episode ... and it was painful. It was truly painful. We sat there in the dark after the episode had finished, and very quickly, the room emptied out, leaving just a few of the people responsible." In the darkness of that screening room, James L. Brooks, an executive producer who helped develop the show, summed things up by stating: "This is s**t." On the commentary track, Brooks adds: "We sat there and saw the worst version of 'The Simpsons' ... you can't imagine how bad it was." 

You can see the rejected early version of some the animation right here. It's overly cartoonish and rubbery, which is the complete opposite of what "The Simpsons" team wanted. 

Fox's original plan was to drop the premiere of "The Simpsons" in the fall of 1989. The producers felt that there was no way they could release what they had, and asked Fox for a delay. Fox obliged, setting the delay for December. This allowed the team behind "The Simpsons" to go back and rework "Some Enchanted Evening." On the DVD commentary track, David Silverman, who co-directed the episode with Kent Butterworth, says that about "70%" of the episode was re-done. 

Meanwhile, the decision was made to release the holiday special "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" first instead. The episode premiered on December 17, and "The Simpsons" was on its way to becoming a hit. As for "Some Enchanted Evening," the re-done episode was finally released as the season 1 finale on May 13, 1990. By that time, "The Simpsons" was becoming huge. By the time season 2 rolled around, "Simpsons" mania was setting in, bolstered by the popularity of Bart. "The Simpsons" became a cultural phenomenon, and while most fans agree that the show is a pale imitation of what it once was, the show's place in pop culture history is firmly secured, complete with a big screen adventure.