James L. Brooks

The Simpsons’ first warts-and-all history may be better thanks to the producers’ gag order

James L. Brooks, the grand old man of American television, was very busy in 1993-4. Not only was he working on a new movie, As Good As It Gets I’ll Do Anything (a famously troubled film that reached theatres after brutal re-cutting), but he moved his TV operations from Fox to ABC and got two new shows on ABC’s schedule, one for mid-season, the other for fall. The mid-season show is the one everybody remembers: The Critic. The fall show is the one nobody remembers: Phenom, a comedy for ABC’s mighty Tuesday night lineup.

This show ran on ABC in the 1979-80 season. It was created by the same team that did Taxi: James L. Brooks and his gang had been hired away from MTM by Paramount, which gave them immense freedom and large budgets (by sitcom standards). Taxi won four straight Emmy awards for best comedy and was a hit, at least at first; this show didn’t even last a full season.