In his 2005 book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson views The Simpsons as a prime example of how pop culture has become increasingly sophisticated and intellectually charged towards the end of the twentieth century. Referencing the fan-maintained online resource The Simpsons Archive, Johnson notes that the average Simpsons episode includes some eight movie-related gags such as a plotline, a line of dialogue, or a visual pun on some movie sequence (p. 223). Additionally, there are references to other elements of cultural history, such as TV shows and pieces of popular music. Similarly, as William Irwin and J. R. Lombardo note, “From the venerable name of ‘Homer’ to Lisa's ‘Howl,’ to parodies of The Raven, Cape Fear, and All in the Family, The Simpsons links itself to high culture and popular culture alike” (2001, pp. 81–82).

Hence, when The Simpsons started to take off from the late 1980s’ rather shallow media landscape, the series did not just captivate a growing loyal audience; commentators, critics, and scholars were likewise fascinated by the show. As Jason Mittell has observed, critics typically appraised the program's quality by distinguishing The Simpsons from earlier cartoon shows. Thus The Simpsons was declared to be “more than just a cartoon” by offering “intelligent comedy” which “appeal[ed] to adults as well as to children” (quoted in Mittell 2001, pp. 18–19). Perhaps even more than previous forms of “quality TV” (see Feuer, Kerr, and Vahimagi 1984; Thompson 1996), The Simpsons demonstrated that television and art do not necessarily preclude each other.