TVSquad

When documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock first saw The Simpsons, he was a 19- or 20-year-old college kid, still living at home with his mother in West Virginia. Having grown up watching Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and Blackadder, Spurlock was ecstatic to watch The Tracey Ullman Show, the show that would eventually introduce him to The Simpsons.

Twenty years later, Spurlock has established himself as a filmmaker with Super Size Me and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden, and will direct a segment for the upcoming adaptation of Freakonomics. And he'll get to tackle the show he's loved these past two decades as he produces and directs The Simpsons Anniversary Special - In 3-D! On Ice!, which will air Thursday, January 14, 2010.

Spurlock remembers his first impression of the show, watching back in his college days. "When it first came on, I was in college, and it was literally an obsession. It was something that me and all my friends would literally ... at 8 o'clock, we were sitting there on the couch watching this show, and it was something that we all did together," said Spurlock in a conference call with media last week. "For all my four years of college, that was something that we did."

Now we know why Homer weighs so much: he's eating too many Big Macs. Seriously, Fox is capping off their 20th anniversary celebration of The Simpsons by hiring Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock to direct a documentary of the show.

Sadly, since Fox is behind this production, the documentary will likely be biased on behalf of The Simpsons. Possibly even making them into sympathetic characters, thus ignoring Homer's temper and drunkenness, Bart's antisocial psychotic behavior, Marge's ignorance of the aforementioned and Lisa's extreme liberalism. Of course, if all that was taken into account, the documentary would only be about Maggie.

I do hope the documentary has some original material, like a framing sequence with the family. Although that's been done before with the "Behind the Laughter" episode. The Simpsons did it! The title of the documentary says it all: The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D on Ice. In 3-D. On Ice. This is a must-see.

This week's episode of 30 Days (if you don't know the premise, check out the site) is all about living off the grid. Jahari and Vito, two friends that work together at a club, are fossil fuel-guzzling Americans. They don't have many concerns about the environment and simply scoff at all the warnings all around them about resources running out. They're completely confident that it won't happen... at least in their lifetime. They have an 'ecological footprint' (which is pretty much an analysis of how much you waste). According to the report, if everyone in the world lived like Jahari and Vito, it would take the resources of 12.5 Earths to power the lifestyle. So can these two make it in a world without modern "necessities"?