View source for Shorts season 1

== Production ==
{{main|History|The Simpsons shorts}}
[[Matt Groening]] conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of [[James L. Brooks]]'s office. Brooks had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his ''[[Life in Hell]]'' series. However, when Groening realized that animating ''Life in Hell'' would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family.

The [[Simpson family]] first appeared as shorts in ''[[The Tracey Ullman Show]]'' on April 19, 1987. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned-up in production, but the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes. The animation was produced domestically at [[Klasky Csupo]], with [[Wesley Archer]], [[David Silverman]], and [[Bill Kopp]] being animators for the first season. After season one it was animated by Archer and Silverman. [[Gyorgyi Peluce]], the colorist, decided to make the characters yellow.

In the fourth and final season of ''The Tracey Ullman Show'', the Simpson family already had their own half-hour series, ''[[The Simpsons]]''. In the first two seasons the shorts were divided into three or four parts, but in the third they were played as a single story. [[Tracey Ullman]] would later file a lawsuit, claiming that her show was the source of ''The Simpsons'' success and therefore should receive a share of the show's profit. Eventually the courts ruled in favor of the network.