The Great Pandorra wrote:
But seriously! Do these children not age?! Though changes have taken place (mostly due to changing styles) once the character is fully fleshed out and introduced in the familiar form he/she does not ever grow unless it's in a time sequence of some kind [:eyetwitch:].
I get that it's comedy and that it's animation but really, after 17, count 'em - seventeen years, you would think Bart could have graduated from that damn'd school!
Isn't that part of the appeal of the show? When you change something it can have a negative impact on your audience. In regular tv sitcoms the characters, especially kids, grow up and physically change. Those 20-30 year olds playing high school kids get older and become 30-40 year olds playing college students. I think that's part of why the Simpsons were around for so long. You didn't see major physical changes.
Now consider it this way, let's say it's a weekly show (1 episode per week). Let's also assume a new episode for every week of the year (which isn't the case because tv is split into seasons so it's actually less) for 52 episodes a year. So if it had 10 years with 52 episodes each that's 520 episodes. 520 days is about a year and a half. Which is not long in real life. So it can make sense that they haven't changed. And this is only possible with animation.