All I knew about “The Simpsons” came from animated GIFs that co-workers would insert into inter-office messages.

So when Disney Plus launched and I used its trial version, the first thing I did was try to watch the first season of the animated show — which turns 30 on Tuesday — to get a glimpse into what I had missed all these years. Suddenly, I understood some real-life oddities: for example, my husband’s and in-laws’ habit of keeping bread on top of the fridge.

My husband grew up watching age-appropriate episodes of “The Simpsons” with his brother. I didn’t have cable growing up and occasionally watched state-owned television in Karachi, Pakistan. I was always a serious child and much too engrossed in reading books to pay attention.

How did the world look back in 1989? Thirty years later, would I see any portions of if that I know being reflected back at me?

I began watching with an anticipation for crude humour, bad parenting, disrespect for family members and some degree of meanness. But what I saw, sprinkled with all of the above, pulled at my heart in ways I had not expected. As emotionally intelligent as the show appeared to be on matters such as family dynamics, I was taken aback by how sad some of the episodes were. Was this not supposed to be a comedy?

The Season of the Simpsons’ Discontent

Affordability was a major theme in the first season and my educated guess is that it remains one throughout the series. Homer’s spending habits seem driven by his fear of not being a good breadwinner. He’s competitive and jealous and, sure, they have a house, but their credit score is bad. As someone who’s getting used to renting in Toronto, even I know that does not bode well.

The cherry on top is that Homer’s full-time work is thankless and so is his attempt at working part-time. I imagine the nuclear power plant that employs him having a greater degree of economic stability than most places, but decisions are made that bring down the morale of Homer and his colleagues. There’s a narcissistic boss to whom everyone excessively tries to cater (I mean, imagine being Marge and having to make a specific kind of dessert for your husband’s work party), but his workplace keeps reminding Homer that he is disposable.

Like many of us, Homer seems to derive his self-worth from his job. In “Homer’s Odyssey” (Episode 3), he calls himself a “big, worthless nothing” when he’s fired. Marge tries to help out by waitressing at a diner, but the stress and misery of unemployment drive Homer to the point of considering taking his own life. Thank God an almost accident on the way makes him change his mind. We then see him channelling his rage into demanding pedestrian safety. We sure could use a Homer in Toronto.

With no social media to scroll through in Episode 4 (“There’s No Disgrace Like Home”) the Simpsons go around peeping through their neighbours’ windows to compare others’ lives with their own.

The Simpsons want to find out how well-behaved other families are. To improve his family’s collective behaviour so that they cease embarrassing him in public, Homer sells their television set and uses his daughter’s college funds to book a session with Dr. Marvin Monroe, a self-advertised expert on “family bliss.” He declares the family hopeless, but his advice is sought once again by Marge in a later episode when she finds that Homer isn’t giving her the attention she needs as a woman. Maybe all the couple needed was a counselling session instead of the Stanley Milgram-inspired electric shock experiment that Monroe proposed.

The other deeply dissatisfied character is daughter Lisa, who experiences a sadness she cannot give words to. Marge, meanwhile, is quite clear about what causes her own loneliness. She wants more from her husband, physically and emotionally. Baby Maggie is, well, just too tiny to not get what she wants.

Mothers Keep Secrets Too

Fathers might be keeping secrets they’re embarrassed to share with their family, but mothers too have a few in their closet — or hair.

“Oh, I have my secrets!” Marge says as she reveals a jar of savings hiding in her hair in the first episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”

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That “Mean Girls” line — “Her hair is so big it’s full of secrets!” — makes so much sense now.

Marge keeps Homer’s secrets too but holds him accountable for his mistakes. In one of the most disappointing scenes, Homer is seen with an “exotic belly dancer” named Princess Kashmir. If the Orientalism was not offensive enough, Marge attempts to reason with Homer on how cruel objectification can be for women. I can never speak for them, but I have a feeling the people of Kashmir are being objectified too.

At least one of Marge’s secrets is given an entire episode to show how her secrets eat away at the life she has built with Homer. In “Life on the Fast Lane” Marge drives up to an actual crossroads because of a flirtatious back and forth with another man that tempts her to betray Homer’s love and trust. When Homer realizes he’s about to lose Marge, he tells her how much he loves the sandwiches she makes for him. I held my breath wondering if that would be enough to make Marge stay. Marge’s openness with herself is what helps her decide what steps she must take.

In Episode 6, “Moaning Lisa,” when Marge offers advice to Lisa by repeating her own mother’s advice, you see her struggle with the message itself. But when she realizes that she doesn’t have to pass on what was passed on to her, she offers her own lived truths. The secrets a mother decides to entrust you with are a good place to begin understanding them.

It Is Hard to Love One’s Family

But somehow you end up doing it anyway. It’s clear that Marge’s sisters do not like Homer and think Marge deserves better. But when Lisa rises to her father’s defence after her aunts make fun of him behind his back, I’m left confused. Why would Lisa call him her “model of manhood” even though she’s painfully aware of his flaws?

Is Homer truly a bad father?

Of course, Bart is source of disappointment as well, but he is a child who manages to redeem himself, kind of like Homer. But Homer is no child. It’s in the answering of these questions that the show digs deeper into what it means to love your father despite how easy he might make it to do otherwise.

There’s also a core sense of survival that roots this love. Family sticking up for each other seems to be the reminder the Simpsons need to know they’re not just cogs in the capitalist machine — Bart’s struggle at formal education and the slightest sign of his improvement excites the whole family.

Lisa’s consistent excellence in academics also lands on the family fridge. It’s when the family works together, like Lisa and Bart helping clear the name of an innocent man, that their bickering becomes an outcome of love instead of a lack of it. And at the show’s lowest point, when Homer is attempting to drown his sorrow by drinking, he opens that same fridge to find a cake with icing that reads: “Don’t worry, Daddy, we love you anyway!”

It turns out some stories are universal, even if they differ in the telling.

Bart’s teacher tells a school bus full of kids not to stick their arms out the window because legend has it a child lost an arm that way. I was told that same story in a school van.