On the heels of the very successful “Every Simpsons Ever” marathon, FX has finally launched SimpsonsWorld.com. A website where you can really go down the rabbit hole with everything “Simpsons:”re-binge watch every episode ever, track episodes by popularity, watch bonus clips, read script pages, and more. There are playlists like the “15 Best Ralph Moments: The Most Adorable Playlist on the Internet.”
Simpson’s World is also available via the FX Now app, but you have to authenticate.
And therein lies the first of a few problems.
1) It’s not available if you have Verizon Fios in some markets, which, as I stole my brother’s cable log-in credentials like any respectable older sister, just reminded me of how stingy FX is with letting me access their programming. Trying to catch up on “Sons of Anarchy” requires Wayne Unser-like patience.
2) You can’t share clips or content via the site, a feature that should be coming soon. But maybe we should enjoy the calm before we are inundated with customized “Simpson’s” clips in all of our social media feeds and Buzzfeed articles
3) Commercials, commercials, and more commercials.
The concept is still noteworthy for other networks who want to leverage their stash of legacy content. James Poniewozik over at Time imagines in app experiences for all sorts of programming:
And while it’s not every show that could take advantage of this kind of destination viewing, it could work for more than “The Simpsons”. If “Friends” hadn’t done a streaming deal with Netflix, for instance, I could easily imagine a Friends World, letting you customize clips, search for favorite quotes and skip around through every possible permutation of who’s dating whom. It doesn’t even need to be comedy-only: imagine creating a Law and Order World, with the rights to each season and spinoff of the franchise, searchable and drilled deeply for data and themes. (I’m envisioning a vast crime map of NYC with everyone murdered by “L&O” plotted on a block-by-block level.)
It’s that ability to geek out over the data that makes it interesting. You can choose episodes to watch by popularity, tracked with a little graph and series timeline you can scroll through. You can access scripts, find patterns. Showrunner Al Jean told CNN Money:
Most sites will give you episodes of [a] show, and maybe some background, or additional material. This gives you everything. The whole run of the show, the information from our various books and research that we’ve done. Every script page can be accessed. When the app is fully complete there’s going to be cross-referencing, so if you want to see every appearance of Moleman, you can do that. I don’t think there’s anything now that remotely approaches what this is going to do. It’s definitely a window into the future.
It sounds like a thesis project for media studies students, or, at the very least a good attempt at engaging anyone who wants to geek out. Until they can unbundle the content from cable authentication or work on those promised, customized clips, we won’t know how or when fans are engaged with it and how deep into Simpson’s World people really want to go.