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With well over four hundred episodes and a full-length feature film under its belt, The Simpsons has changed the face of the world forever. Award-winning and critically acclaimed, the program delivers solid messages about family, society, and the environment. The series, steeped in irreverence, enjoys a far more colorful history and has had a greater impact on the world than most television shows. The Simpsons has given us phrases such as "D'oh!" and "Meh," which have become a part of everyday language for many people. Enormously influential towards many other animated and live-action prime time programs, the show is the longest running American sitcom of all time.
The Family
The Simpson family, who reside in the fictional American community of Springfield, include Homer, a father who gives bad advice and works as the safety inspector at the local power plant; Marge, a loving mother and wife who tries to keep peace in the family; Bart, a hell-raising 10-year-old; Lisa, a philosophical 8-year-old who loves to play the saxophone; and Maggie, the baby, who communicates by sucking her pacifier.
The family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball II. Despite the passing of yearly milestones such as holidays and birthdays, the Simpsons do not physically age. Springfield itself is filled with many unique characters including relatives, co-workers, friends, teachers, townspeople, and local celebrities.
Origins and Early History
In need of filler material for Fox Broadcasting Company's "The Tracey Ullman Show", Pauly Platt, a fan of Matt Groening's "Life in Hell" comic strip, suggested that Groening be brought in to work on the program. The Simpson family was created in less than fifteen minutes while Groening waited in the foyer to James L. Brooks' office. He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The show first appeared on April 19, 1987 as a series of thirty second spots. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the drawings would be cleaned-up in production. However, the animators only re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in these shorts.
Response to the Ullman shorts was so positive that in 1989 work began on adapting The Simpsons into a half-hour series for Fox. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with Fox that prevented the station from interfering with the show's content. Groening has said that his goal in creating the series was to offer the audience an alternative to "the mainstream trash" that they were watching on television. The Simpsons was originally set to debut in the fall of 1989 with the episode "Some Enchanted Evening". However, during the first screening of the episode, the producers discovered that the animation was so horrible that most of the episode needed to be redone. The producers actually considered aborting the series if the next episode, "Bart The Genius", turned out just as bad, but it only suffered from minor problems. The producers convinced Fox to move the debut to December 17, 1989, and aired "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" as the series' pilot episode. The show then premiered as a regular series on January 14, 1990. The Simpsons would go on to become Fox's first television series to rank among a season's top 30 highest-rated shows.
The show was controversial from the very beginning. Many parents and conservatives characterized the rebellious Bart as a poor role model for children. Simpsons merchandise and t-shirts were banned in several United States public schools. In October 1990, U.S. First Lady Barbara Bush called The Simpsons "the dumbest thing she had ever seen." In January 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush made a speech in which he said: "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family, to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons." The Simpsons' writers rushed out a reply which aired three days later before a re-run of "Stark Raving Dad" in which Bart stated "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."
Due to the new show's success, Fox decided in 1990 to change The Simpsons' time slot. The station moved the show from 8 PM on Sunday night to 8 PM on Thursday night where it would compete against NBC's top-rated "Cosby Show". The Simpsons' producers were against the move because the show had been in the top 10 while airing on Sunday and they felt that the move would badly hurt its ratings. "The Cosby Show" beat The Simpsons every time during the 2nd season and The Simpsons indeed fell out of the top 10. It would not be until 1992's "Homer at the Bat" episode that The Simpsons would finally beat "The Cosby Show" in the ratings. The show remained on Thursday night until Season 6, when it was moved back to Sunday night.
Production
Groening and Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and are also creative consultants. Sam Simon, who was a creative supervisor for the first four seasons, also receives an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the series since 1993. The Simpsons' show runner acts as head writer and supervises the show's production for at least an entire season. Show runners in past years include Groening, Brooks, and Simon (Seasons 1-2), Al Jean and Mike Reiss (Seasons 3-4), David Mirkin (Seasons 5-6), Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein (Seasons 7-8), and Mike Scully (Seasons 9-12). Al Jean resumed show runner duties in Season 13 and has held the position ever since.
The show's writing team consists of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas each December. The main writer of each episode pens the first draft. Group re-writing sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show’s voice actors. The leader of the group sessions is George Meyer, who has developed the show since the first season. Each episode takes approximately six months to produce from beginning to end. Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on The Simpsons' staff. One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before departing.
The Simpsons has six main voice actors. Dan Castellaneta performs Homer, Grampa, Krusty, Barney and other male characters. Julie Kavner speaks the voices of Marge, Patty, and Selma, as well as several minor characters. Nancy Cartwright performs the voices of Bart, Ralph, Nelson, and other children. Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa, is the only cast member who regularly voices only one character. There are two actors who do not voice members of the family but play a majority of the male townspeople; Hank Azaria voices recurring characters such as Moe, Chief Wiggum, and Apu, and Harry Shearer provides voices for Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, and Ned Flanders, among others. Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Marcia Wallace, Maggie Roswell, and Russi Taylor voice the many other supporting characters. Guest stars with frequent roles include Kelsey Grammer (Sideshow Bob), Joe Mantegna (Fat Tony), Phil Hartman (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz), Jon Lovitz (Artie Ziff), and Albert Brooks (Hank Scorpio).
Seasons 1, 2, and 3 were animated by Klasky-Csupo, who also worked on the Ullman shorts. In 1992, the show's production company, Gracie Films, switched domestic production to Film Roman, who continues to animate the show to this day. Additional animation is done overseas in South Korea by AKOM, Rough Draft Studios, and Anivision. In 2002, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint.
Simpsons episodes began to be broadcast in high-definition with the premiere of "Take My Life, Please" on February 15, 2009. The title sequence of the show was also redone in HD - the first full, permanent revamp of The Simpsons' opening titles since its premiere in 1989.
Merchandise
The series has spawned an abundance of merchandise bearing the likenesses of Groening's creations. In the early 1990s, one would have to look far and wide to find a place where there was not a Simpsons mug, beach towel, t-shirt, board game, watch, puzzle, or backpack with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie proudly telling the world that the owner is a Simpsons fan.
Collections of original music featured in the TV series have been released on the albums "Songs in the Key of Springfield" and "Go Simpsonic With The Simpsons". Several songs have been recorded with the purpose of a single or album release. The best known single is "Do the Bartman", which was co-written by Michael Jackson and became an international success. By 1996, among entertainment properties, total sales of Simpsons merchandise worldwide was second only to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".
After an oversaturation of Simpsons merchandise on the market in the early 1990s, starting in 2000 Fox attempted to revive production of items featuring OFF. Several lines of Simpsons action figures by Playmates Toys hit store shelves, a few Simpsons video games such as "The Simpsons Road Rage" and "The Simpsons: Hit & Run" were released, and Simpsons episode collections began to be released on DVD. The Season One DVD is the second best selling television DVD of all time, behind the first season of "Chappelle's Show".
Honours and Achievements
The Simpsons has been honored with twenty-four Emmy Awards, twenty-six Annie Awards, five Genesis Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for "Best Musical or Comedy" in 2002, and many more accolades. The show has been nominated for the "Outstanding Animated Program" Emmy every year except 1993 and 1994. In 1996, The Simpsons became the first animated series to win a Peabody Award, and won it "for providing exceptional animation and stinging social satire, both commodities which are in extremely short supply in television today." 2007's The Simpsons Movie was nominated for several awards including a Golden Globe.
On January 14, 2000, The Simpsons received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star is located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. Also in 2000, Entertainment Weekly critic Ken Tucker named The Simpsons the greatest television show of the 1990s. In 2002, the series ranked #8 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time" and in 2007 it was included in Time Magazine's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time". Furthermore, in 2008 the show ranked #1 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years" and Empire Magazine named The Simpsons the greatest TV show of all time.
In February 1997, The Simpsons surpassed "The Flintstones" as the longest-running prime-time animated show in the United States. In 2004, the series replaced "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" (1952 to 1966) as the longest-running American sitcom. Lastly, in 2009 The Simpsons surpassed "Gunsmoke" (1955 to 1975) as America's longest-running scripted TV series in prime-time.
The Simpsons Family Values
You know you've made it when the President of the USA starts giving you free publicity. Matt Groening, creator of the American animated series The Simpsons, could scarcely credit his luck when, in 1992, the then President George Bush declared in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention that: "The nation needs to be closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons."
Before you could say "read my lips", Groening had filmed a scene where the notoriously brattish Bart Simpson is watching Bush's speech on television. "Hey, we're just like the Waltons," Bart exclaims. "We' re praying for the end of the Depression, too."
Speaking down the line from Los Angeles last week, Groening looks back in wonder. "You can't believe it when the President acts like Elmer Fudd," he says.
When Bush lost the 1992 Presidential election, Groening exacted further revenge on screen. "Our conceit was that Bush wanted somewhere quiet to retire to, so he picked the town with the lowest voter turnout in the US - Springfield, which is the Simpsons' home town. He moved in next door to them and then he and Homer (the Simpsons' paterfamilias) became bitter enemies."
Having dominated the American airwaves since 1987, The Simpsons can happily indulge in such elaborate conceits. The good news is that we can now, at last, enjoy their antics on terrestrial TV. After powering Sky One's schedules for some years (the show is made by Fox TV, part of the Murdock stable), the Emmy Award- winning series has now landed on BBC1.
With its political, satirical elements, its witty movie pastiches and its send-ups of stars, the show appeals to both adults and children. Yet despite his huge success, Groening still likes to cultivate the image of a subversive. "In all my work, I've tried to contrive an alternative to what is out there," he contends. "There are already plenty of cow-towing, regular forms of popular culture."
Bart, Homer and Marge Simpson's unruly 10-year-old son, expresses the show's anti-authoritarian stance. He does all the things we would like to do but are too bourgeois to try.
"A bratty kid is the acceptable face of rebellion," Groening muses. "You can assign to Bart whatever resentment or anxiety you feel towards life.
"There's a long tradition in comedy of the guy who gives the finger to propriety," Groening continues, "from Huckleberry Finn to the Marx Brothers to Jim Carrey. There's room for a TV show that says our leaders don't necessarily have our best interests at heart. My problem with television is that it is so scatter-shot. With The Simpsons, I try to have a sustained attitude you can hang onto. That's why Homer works at a nuclear plant - so we can continue to make points about the nuclear industry."
The right-wing Christian movement in the US has power that British "clean- up" campaigners can only dream of. Lobbyists complain about The Simpsons' bad influence on the young. "The Simpsons are certainly not good examples. But if you see something on The Simpsons, it doesn't mean you should go out and do it yourself. Kids are clever enough to realize they are not being pandered to."
But how can a programme that prides itself on being anti-establishment be so popular? "Here in the US the show has been seen for eight seasons, " Groening says. "It's hard to be shocking when you're so familiar. We didn't bring civilization down. But we pushed back the boundaries of entertainment. And as long as the world is full of people who can't take a joke, we'll continue to make them the butt of our jokes."
Keeping Up With The Simpsons
While many long-running shows slip into a creative coma after only a few years, The Simpsons has managed to stay fresh and funny for eight seasons. Even people who don't watch the show are aware of the dysfunctional family living in small-town Springfield, U.S.A.: Homer, a faithful but oafish father who works at the local nuclear power plant; Marge, the socially conscious mom; Bart, the mischievous 10-year-old; Lisa, the bright, sensitive daughter; and baby Maggie, who's only ever spoken one word ("Daddy").
The show, created by cartoonist Matt Groening ("Life in Hell"), had its humble beginnings as a short weekly segment on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. Two years later The Simpsons debuted on Fox, giving the fledgling network its first real hit. Since then, the show has spawned its own culture - hit songs ("Do the Bartman"), T-shirts ("Don't Have a Cow, Man") and language ("Aye Carumba!"). Today, The Simpsons still pulls in good ratings and continues to surprise us with its clever, twisted take on everyday life.
TV Guide talked to the creative team behind The Simpsons and discovered 10 rules for keeping a TV family on top:
1. Always be real "One thing about The Simpsons," says executive producer Josh Weinstein, is that "even though it's a cartoon, in a lot of ways it's more realistic than a lot of sitcoms."
And that's how it must be, says Groening, who keeps close tabs on his characters. A few years back, Homer lurched violently out of character and Groening had to pull things back into reality. "What I try to do is remind everybody on the show that we have to stick to certain rules," he says. "We're the only cartoon show where, when people hit the ground, they're actually bruised and bloody."
2. Never tell the same joke twice The producers boast that their show has twice as many jokes as the average sitcom. "We've done tens of thousands of jokes," says Weinstein. "And we never do the same joke twice."
Sometimes, you have to watch an episode twice to catch a joke - which is a good thing, says Groening. "There are the obvious jokes, the visual sight-gags, the subtle literary allusions and at the most subtle, what we call the freeze frame gags - jokes you can only get if you videotape the show and play it back in freeze frame. What we try to do is reward people for paying attention."
3. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite "We rewrite every show on average five to seven times, and they have to make us laugh at every stage," says executive producer Bill Oakley. "When we edit the show, we go through it another 10 times. Every time it's got to make us laugh or it's got to be changed."
Groening hears some jokes 40 or 50 times. "Generally, if a joke makes it on the air," he says, "it means that we are pretty happy with it."
4. Don't hire sitcom writers "We don't like to hire people who have worked on sitcoms," says Oakley. "We like to get them from weirder areas - variety shows like Letterman or Conan O'Brien that tend to do a lot more experimental stuff. We want people who are not ruined by the standard sitcom form."
5. Banish the network brass "Network TV goes through a 'blandifying' process," says Weinstein, who claims that The Simpsons is virtually tamper-proof. "We never get notes from the network saying 'We don't get this reference to [former U.S. president] Grover Cleveland.' They're not allowed to have any input at all." Adds Oakley, "Other shows, like Seinfeld, have similar deals."
Groening confirms that the suits at Fox have kept their distance. "I think it's partly because they didn't understand animation, so they didn't know how to interfere with it," he says. "Second of all, it's no fun to hang around on the set, because there is no set. You can't come down and flirt with beautiful young starlets, because there aren't any. Although, you know, I'm pretty good lookin'."
6. Think big, within reason "Every episode can have the look of a $50- or $60- million dollar movie," says Oakley, "because we can have an unlimited number of sets. The family can go to Australia or even into space and it doesn't cost any more than having them sit in their living room."
There are still some restrictions, says Groening. "The animators have begged us, please, don't have any more circus trains crash into passing parades and spilling over into the zoo. The director had to go on a long vacation after that show."
7. Use the whole town "Over eight years, we've developed a town full of characters," says Oakley. "Apu became a fully fleshed out, real person a few years ago. Moe the bartender, Mr. Burns or Principal Skinner can also provide the engines for stories." Adds Dan Castellaneta, who provides the voice of Homer, "it's such a rich place to mine. You can certainly never be at a loss to do something."
8. Treat guests stars like family Many Hollywood stars have jumped at the chance to appear in cartoon form on The Simpsons, including Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman and Michelle Pfeiffer. Paul and Linda McCartney have guest-starred, as have David Duchovny, Rodney Dangerfield and the Smashing Pumpkins. But even stars have to follow the script.
"I'm not very fond of us having the celebrity come on and play him or herself," says Groening, although he does feel honored that "these luminaries agree to help our little show."
"On lousy sitcoms," adds Oakley, "they'll write in a star and go 'Elizabeth Taylor will come on and promote her perfume.' We never write around a star, but if we have a new character that's a big role, we often go after a star." Like they did with Taylor, who spoke baby Maggie's one and only word.
9. Draw the laughs While the emphasis is on the writing, Castellaneta says that "the animators add a huge percentage of the laughs. The timing and the facial expressions adds a lot more dimension."
Much of the credit lies with cartoon veteran Phil Roman, whose studio has meticulously animated the series since the start of the fourth season. "There are changes made at every point," he says. "It's more like doing 22 or 24 half-hour features a season in terms of the quality and the demands."
10. Be clever, not nasty Finally, if you think of The Simpsons as simply Bart saying, "Eat my shorts," think again. While this has always been a 'toon with 'tude, Groening feels that people who see the show simply as subversive and anarchistic just don't get it. "My goal from the very beginning has been to not get mired in this kind of sour, 'ain't like horrible' kind of humor that is the hip stance these days.
"I think we're able to get away with some fairly dark comments about our culture by leavening it with lightness. The fact is, the show is a celebration - that's been my main goal from the very beginning."
The World's Best Dad
He's the head of a famously dysfunctional family, he's a drunk, and he's far too fat - he's even been vilified by former President George Bush. But Homer Simpson is a great dad to his three children. As our youngsters grow up in a world where image is everything, Homer is an antidote to the superficial. He isn't bothered what he looks like or what people think about him - he simply cares about his family and trying to do the right thing.
For instance, in one episode of The Simpsons, Homer's son Bart comes home from school moaning that he doesn't get all the computer games that his friends do. Many parents today will understand just what that pressure is like. But rather than dashing out and trying to offset his parental guilt with expensive presents, Homer makes his son laugh by clowning around. By doing that, he shows he is able to give Bart what all children want more than anything - time and attention.
He also impresses upon his child that there is more to life than material goods. Homer, a manual laborer in a nuclear power plant, is an individualist who teaches his kids not to worry too much about what others think of them. He manages to chart his own course to avoid peer group pressure.
One of the ways he stands out from the crowd is by refusing to go to church. In one episode he skips Sunday service and has the best day of his life, while his wife Marge, fearful for his soul, prays fervently for him. Then Homer sees God in a dream and says: "I'm a good man, I care about my kids - why do I have to go to church and be told I'm going to hell?" God agrees with him and says: "You've got a point there." Homer has proved it is possible to be good without having to go to church.
To his kids - Bart, Lisa and Maggie - and to children everywhere, Homer shows the right thing to do is to act from your heart. The Simpson family have often been described as dysfunctional by politicians, moral campaigners and pundits. This seems to be based on Bart's rebelliousness and Homer's love of beer and TV. But the fact that the Simpson family is not perfect is what makes them so influential for our children.
They are a family with real failings who have real problems just like the rest of us. And, just like the rest of us, they try to muddle through. Homer's concern for his children's worries, however minor, is something many of us busy parents could do well to emulate.
In one episode, Lisa doesn't get the part she wants in the school play. Homer helps her realize that every part is important, however small. That's what life's about. Making children appreciate we all have a role to play in society however great or small.
There is also strong communication within the Simpson family, something often missing in our hectic real lives. These characters eat meals together, chat and laugh. It's a social occasion which is often missing from households today, where everyone runs to their own timetables.
Homer is a great parent because he would do anything for his kids. Most importantly, Bart, Lisa and Maggie know this. There is an episode in which Homer and Marge are found to be unfit parents because they've gone off to a health spa, leaving Bart, Lisa and Maggie with grandpa. As a result the kids are taken away and sent to live with the next-door neighbors, born-again Christians, the Flanders family. Homer reproaches himself for being a terrible father and undergoes a parenting class. In the confusion that follows he becomes baptized by accident.
But the point is that for all their shortcomings Homer and Marge are prepared to do anything for their kids - and the youngsters love them for that. Bart and Lisa realize their parents may not be educated enough to have all the answers to their questions. But Homer and Marge are honest about what they don't know - and what they do. That honesty, so critical in a good relationship between parents and children, enables Homer to maintain the respect of his kids even when he is being at his most stupid.
In one episode, Homer admits that he is no good at Maths and Lisa is delighted when he enlists her help to put bets on football. Lisa feels fulfilled and needed. Respect means that Homer doesn't have to be a tyrant in his own home. All parents can learn from Homer's ability to control his kids without yelling or using bribery. Homer is clearly not the brightest of characters but he is a great dad because he cares and tries to understand who his children are and why they do what they do.
When Bart gets drunk, the neighbors are outraged. But Homer recognizes some of himself in Bart's actions. He knows it was an accident. He is not quick to condemn without considering how he himself might have acted at the same age in a similar situation.
And Homer is a hands-on dad, too. He'll happily pick up crying baby Maggie and feed her a bottle. As a "boyish man" it's natural for Homer to do activities with Bart, such as seeing a baseball game together. But it takes a mental leap for him to realize that it is just as important to spend time with Lisa, who sometimes feels neglected. She's a bright spark but still needs fatherly attention. So he has heart-to-heart chats with her and goes to concerts to hear her play her saxophone.
Homer shows how all children deserve, and need, attention from their parents if they are to develop into confident adults. Homer may not always get the actions right but he cares about his kids, listens to them and is honest with them. We can all learn a lot from that.
300 Episode Mark
It is, of course, wholly indicative of how painfully geeky the sworn disciples of Homer can be that The Simpsons' 300th episode is being greeted not as an occasion for celebration, but as a lightning rod for picayune controversy and renewed bellyaching about how the show's not as good as it used to be.
Yes, technically tonight's thoroughly manic Simpsons episode, "Barting Over" - in which Bart emancipates himself from his parents ("Don't you like being a dude?" cries Homer) - is neither the 300th to be produced nor the 300th to be aired, as it has been widely promoted on the Fox network and in publications such as this. That honor actually belongs to "The Strong Arms Of The Ma," the Feb. 2 Simpsons show wherein a 'roid-raging Marge bulked up on various muscle-building powders and potions after being badly shaken by a mugging.
It's very difficult to find a straight answer why milestone status has been bestowed on tonight's episode. Some rationalize that the 300 figure doesn't account for two early holiday specials, while Fox maintains that there was some discrepancy between the original, scheduled broadcast date - deep in the heart of the ratings-mad February sweeps - and the number of episodes that were eventually aired leading up to it. Conspiracy theories abound in online Simpsons discussion groups as to why The Man has moved on from Kennedy assassinations, UFO cover-ups and the destruction of the World Trade Center to covert manipulation of Simpsons numbers; none will be repeated here.
In the end, it doesn't matter. That a show as fearless, funny and flamboyantly subversive as The Simpsons has survived on the air with no real lapse in popularity for 14 seasons - and with at least another two to come before the show's latest contract with Fox expires in mid-2005 - deserves commemoration and commendation whether or not the "official" 300th episode lines up with the actual one.
And while die-hard fans might fret over the particulars, The Simpsons - which, let's not forget, threw itself its own "138th Episode Spectacular" in 1995 - doesn't seem to be taking the moment too seriously.
At one point in tonight's episode, Marge remarks to Lisa: "I can't count the number of times your father has done something crazy like this." Lisa responds with 300. "Hmm," says Marge. "I could have sworn it's been 302."
A nice blast at the whiny "worst episode ever" contingent. So, in fact, is the whole 14th season. "Barting Over" - which deploys gags and pop-culture references (Ornette Coleman, Arthur Miller, Michael Jackson's infamous baby-dangling escapade, pro-skater Tony Hawk, Blink 182, Samurai Jack and Bart's old Butterfinger commercials all figure briefly in tonight's plot) at a furious rate on par with The Simpsons' acknowledged, mid-'90s peak - continues a creative resurgence in the show that has been apparent since Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello and Lenny "Don't you have a crotch to stuff?" Kravitz allowed themselves to be mercilessly ridiculed in the season premiere.
It has been an "on" year for The Simpsons, a return to the rapid-fire joke barrages and semi-linear plotlines of old after a few up-and-down seasons that occasionally tested the resolve of even the hardiest Simpsons apologists.
The Simpsons at a low ebb is still 20 times better than every other primetime series ever, mind you, and recent seasons have produced some genuinely brilliant moments: "Skinner's Sense Of Snow," "Jaws Wired Shut" and the Run Lola Run parody "Trilogy Of Error" all come immediately to mind, as does "Weekend At Burnsies," the almost cripplingly funny episode where Homer developed a chronic appetite for medicinal marijuana.
In between, however, whereas once there was the occasional middling misfire (anything with Bleeding Gums Murphy or Michael Jackson in it, for instance), there were suddenly complete duds like "Simpson Safari," the woefully unfunny singing-cowboy homage "The Lastest Gun In The West" and "Bart To The Future," a lame 2000 outing that foresaw Lisa as president and Bart as Jimmy Buffett in the future - and which Entertainment Weekly rightly dubbed the "worst episode ever" in a recent survey of favorite Simpsons shows.
The writing this season at least seems to be making a conscious effort to echo the series' golden years in blistering pace and tone.
There are stories again, too, rather than weird-for-weird's-sake plot twists and blatant, self-referential mugging designed specifically to irk self-appointed online critics. Second viewings of Marge's breast-implant misadventure, "Large Marge," or last week's "Pray Anything" - a head-spinningly blasphemous episode that found Homer throwing a day's-long "beer bash" at Springfield United Church while Rev. Lovejoy was forced to preach at the Bowl-A-Rama - are required not to figure out what the hell just happened, but to catch all the gags that were missed while laughing. That's a crucial difference from the past couple of seasons, which tended to baffle as much as they amused.
The Simpsons is still far more consistent than it has any right to be, in any case.
My love has certainly never wavered, in case the litres of ink I've previously expelled about the show in this newspaper hadn't tipped you to that already. We're not at the 300th Simpsons column yet, but we are hovering around 30, and letter writers regularly catch Simpsons references in my everyday copy that weren't even intentional. There will be more in the future, I'm sure.
None of these words, though, will ever come close to explaining why I and the millions like me adore this show so much. The reason, intangible, can be found in my favorite episodes, I suppose: "Rosebud," which features the hysterical "64 slices of American cheese" incident; Sideshow Bob's Cape Fear parody (for the rakes); "Three Men And A Comic Book" (for its Comic Book Confidential parody); the Monorail (everything about it); and Monty Burns' tour de force performance in "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds."
"Mother Simpson" I hold particularly dear, too, because it begins with some of the most sustained, intense hilarity the show has ever known - when Homer fakes his own, gruesome death to get out of a day's labor ("Best $800 I ever spent!") - and ends on a note of genuine, affecting sadness, as Homer's long-lost, '60s-radical mother flees into the night, leaving him alone and unusually contemplative in the desert.
It might be the best episode ever, but you know how hard it is to choose. There are 300 of the damn things, after all. Or 302. Whatever. I don't count 'em, I just watch 'em. Again and again and again. And I'm still lobbying the CRTC for that all-Simpsons channel.
The Simpsons & Religion
When the animated television series The Simpsons first appeared more than a decade ago, it was denounced by many across the nation, nowhere more vigorously than from America's pulpits. Moral leaders said that this nuclear but dysfunctional family was the latest evidence of cultural decay.
"We need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons," President George Bush told the National Religious Broadcasters in 1992.
As cartoonist Matt Groening's show approaches a new season Sept. 26, it continues to be a source of controversy, now drawing criticism from a Roman Catholic watchdog organization. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights cited several jokes about the church. In one case, pressure from network officials this past season forced the show's producers to alter a line about the Catholic Church from the original show when the program aired in rerun this summer.
But both the initial denunciations and the recent controversy obscure the fact that God, Christianity and Christians are more a part of the Simpsons' daily lives than any other prime-time network series, at least shows not specifically devoted to religion, such as Touched by an Angel.
"Right-wingers complain there's no God on TV," Mr. Groening said in a recent interview in Mother Jones magazine. "Not only do the Simpsons go to church every Sunday and pray, they actually speak to God from time to time. We show him, and God has five fingers -- unlike the Simpsons, who only have four."
The Simpsons, which airs locally at 7 p.m. Sundays on Channel 4, is consistently irreverent toward organized religion's failings and excesses -- as it is with most other aspects of modern life. But God is not mocked. When characters face crises, they turn to God. He answers their prayers. The family believes in heaven and hell and ridicules cults. The next-door neighbors are committed fundamentalists.
Some in the religious world have recognized this phenomenon. Three years into the series, in 1992, the show was the subject of a favorable master's thesis at Pat Robertson's Regent University. "While it may not completely resonate with the evangelical Judeo-Christian belief system," wrote Beth Keller, "The Simpsons does portray a family searching for moral and theological ideals."
William Romanowski is looking for a video of Homer the Heretic, an episode of The Simpsons, to use in a class he teaches at Calvin College, a Christian school in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The author of Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life, Mr. Romanowski said the episode is instructive because "it tries to get at the role God and religion play in people's everyday lives."
Homer, who works at a nuclear-power plant, often expresses gratitude at the dinner table, even extending well beyond sustenance, thanking God "most of all for nuclear power, which is yet to cause a single, proven fatality, at least in this country."
The Simpsons' blessings are decidedly mixed. After a particularly disastrous Thanksgiving, Homer loses it as he offers thanks "for the occasional moments of peace and love our family's experienced ... well, not today. You saw what happened. Oh Lord, be honest. Are we the most pathetic family in the world or what?"
In Bart Gets an F, the boy is threatened with repeating a grade if he fails a test for which he is not prepared. Desperate, Bart asks God for one more day to study. "Prayer, the last refuge of the scoundrel," Lisa scoffs as she overhears her brother. Nonetheless, a freak snow storm closes school the next day, saving him.
"I heard you last night, Bart," Lisa tells him. "You prayed for this. Now your prayers have been answered. I'm no theologian. I don' t know who or what God is exactly. All I know is: He's a force more powerful than Mom and Dad put together, and you owe him big." Bart acknowledges, "Part of this D-minus belongs to God."
Homer's understanding of theology is undeniably hazy. Asked by Bart what his beliefs are, Homer answers, "You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work in real life. Uh, Christianity."
Homer does not doubt the existence of God, even when he decides not to go to church. Instead, he wants to start his own sybaritic religion, which occasions a divine visitation.
"I'm not a bad guy," he tells God, who wears a robe and sandals but whose visage is unseen. "I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to hell?"
God replies: "Hmm, you've got a point there. You know, sometimes even I'd rather be watching football."
"So I figure I should try to live right and worship you in my own way," Homer concludes. But he changes his mind about church and religion a few minutes later when he is dragged from his burning house by Ned Flanders, a neighbor.
Ned is a doofus -- there is no other word for him. He is such a goody-goody that he doesn't let his equally devout children use dice when playing board games because the playing pieces are "wicked." Ned is righteous but not self-righteous. He is fired from Springfield Elementary School, where he is filling in as principal, for saying "Let's thank the Lord" over the intercom.
Abused constantly by his oafish next-door neighbor, the relentlessly upbeat Ned returns only love and good works. When Ned suffers a breakdown and is condemned by the church, Homer tells members of the congregation: "This man has turned every cheek on his body. If everyone here were like Ned Flanders, there'd be no need for heaven: We'd already be there."
The Flanders family is portrayed "fallibly but sympathetically, " said Michael Glodo, professor of Old Testament and preaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Oviedo, Fla. "They are simple, sincere, earnest -- a good package of virtue, especially in a postmodern culture where cynicism and irony and satire are the prevailing sentiments."
No one would mistake Homer and his family for saints. In many ways, they are quintessentially weak, good-hearted sinners who rely on their faith -- but only when absolutely necessary.
"They have captured a very common understanding of who God is," said Mr. Glodo, of Reformed Theological Seminary. "It's a very functional view of religion."
Cast & Crew Behind The Show
It may be the story of an ordinary yellow-skinned dysfunctional family in a 'normal' American town, but The Simpsons has always been an extraordinary television show. In the decade since their British TV debut, the groundbreaking animated series has comfortably emerged as the best-known and best-loved animated show in the history of television. It's also become a worldwide cultural phenomenon, spawning such unforgettable catchphrases as "Ay Carumba!", "Don't have a cow, man!", and, of course, "D'oh!"
Today, not even Homer Simpson himself would be dumb enough to question the enormity of The Simpsons' global impact. Yet while Homer could probably recognize the show's success, he would almost certainly find it very difficult to pinpoint the secret of its appeal. In fact, the question of why The Simpsons is so popular remains something of an ongoing topic of debate among the show's cast and crew, including the series' esteemed creator, Matt Greening.
"Every one of us has a slightly different answer," explains Greening. "Most television is very flat and shallow - not to knock other TV shows, but it is. On The Simpsons, what we try to do is reward you for paying attention. If you don't pay attention, it's a very funny, brightly coloured show with lots of moving images. If you pay attention, there are actually references to other things that are going on in our lives and in culture, like movies and books and so on. So if you have a few brain cells, you're not completely insulted - just partially," he laughs.
Groening's view of The Simpsons as a multi-layered and deceptively complex show is shared by its current head writer and Executive Producer, Mike Scully. "It's also one of the few shows left - if not the only one - that the family can sit down together and watch," says Scully. "If you sit down with your kids and watch it, it's not a chore. There's something in it for everybody. I think that's also because as fans grow up, they get older and they continue to watch the show, they start to understand it on a different level. I think that helps it."
Each Simpsons cast and crew member may have slightly different theory about the show's appeal, but Groening is pleased to report that all the series' makers agree on The Simpsons' distinctive style and tone. Everyone involved with the production also makes their own contribution to its success.
"This really is a shared vision," states Groening. "There's surprisingly little disagreement about the direction of the show. There's some, and we duke it out, but there is a consistency of tone. We're very consistent."
The "team spirit" that pervades the making of The Simpsons is probably best demonstrated by the show's scripting process. Although each episode is normally credited to a small number of writers, everyone on the series is encouraged to suggest additional ideas and gags.
"You help out other people with their episodes and they help you out with yours," elaborates Mike Scully. "So in the end, you know, hopefully, everyone's made a contribution. You get to work with the best on this show, from writers to actors and animators. You'd be crazy not to take advantage of that."
Once a script has been completed, it is recorded as written (in 'natural dialogue form') by The Simpsons' cast in preparation for the show's animators. Interestingly, because the show's principal cast members each voice a number of different characters, the recording process constantly requires them to alternate between their various Springfield counterparts.
As confusing as it sounds, though, actor Harry Shearer feels that The Simpsons' use of sequential recording is actually one of the series' greatest assets. "On a lot of animated shows, you go in and you just rattle off your part and you leave and they put it together later," explains Shearer. "From the beginning, these shows have been done like dramatic episodes. The continuity and the ability to hear each other and react to each other - even if each other happens to be your other self at certain points - I think explains why what comes out of The Simpsons is not just voice work, but acting."
During the recording process. The Simpsons' cast often find inspiration by drawing upon different aspects of their own personalities. This is certainly true for Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum's real life alter ego, actress Nancy Cartwright.
"As far as Bart goes, I think we all have a little bit of Bart inside of us." notes Cartwright. "Bart's kind of the little guy who gets away with doing everything that we all wish we could get away with. So, I mean, I could go into detail for you. I got expelled from school when I was in seventh grade for writing something nasty in the rest room.
"As far as Nelson goes - 'Haw, haw!' - I never did that as a kid! I'm not sure about Nelson, but he provides a great outlet for me, as Bart's nemesis; he allows me to be able to have that part inside of me and contribute to the show. He's this angry guy, he's really tough and a bully, and it's really great fun to play. I think every actor likes to play something that's challenging and I find Nelson pretty challenging.
"And Ralph Wiggum - 'My cat's breath smells like cat food' - he's a sweet, innocent guy, and I think he's sort of the sweetheart of the group. He's so innocent it doesn't really matter what he says, and that's kind of fun to be able to say something and know that everybody's going to respond in a certain way."
Nancy Cartwright's co-stars. Harry Shearer, Tress MacNeille and Hank Azaria, all have their own tongue-in-cheek perspectives on their relationships with their Simpsons counterparts.
"Since I play both Burns and Smithers, I guess the main thing that draws out in me is my own deep self-love," jokes Shearer. "But, as Matt pointed out, all the characters I play have in common a corrupt venality, and I have a deep well of that to draw on!"
"I like playing Agnes Skinner dearly because I figure I'm going to be her one day," laughs MacNeille. "It's all practice."
"I've done so many voices since I was a child, it's a nice outlet for that," reveals Azaria. "Otherwise I'd be insane somewhere!"
This year, members of the general public have been given their first chance to actually witness The Simpsons cast at work in a live script-reading performance. The first of these took place at the American Comedy Arts Festival in February, and was followed in August by the Simpsons-Mania Tour 2000 readings in Edinburgh and London. During the latter performances. Harry Shearer was really struck by the show's global popularity.
"The script that we performed had a lot of jokes that seemed, to me, to have a certain dependence on American language, particularly American music," he explains, "and all of those got the appropriate laughs. So it amazes me the degree to which American is everybody's second language now. You go to Australia or Scotland, they have their own culture, but they also have our 'wonderful' culture as well!"
In Groening's mind, things like The Simpsons live script-reading are more than just a fun diversion for the show's makers and its audience. On the contrary, he feels that they could prove crucial to the show's survival beyond its current 12th season.
"Animation takes an incredible amount of sustained energy and attention," he points out. "I'm hoping that these kinds of really fun things - going out and actually meeting the people who really love the show - will keep the show alive for that much longer."
Another development that might give The Simpsons a new lease of life is the production of a movie. When quizzed about the likelihood of a Simpsons film. Groening admits that it's a complicated issue right now. "I think that there's a business answer and a creative answer," he states. "The business answer is that no deals have been struck. The creative is, I think, what we all agree. We would like to do a movie if we could do something that's not redundant; that's not the same as the TV show.
"I think we've figured out how to do a half-hour TV show really well and the idea of extending it to 90 minutes and doing a big movie is a little daunting, because, basically, every episode of The Simpsons is like a mini-movie. If you filmed it live action, it would cost lots of money."
Groening confirms that "there have been some mutterings" about a Simpsons movie between the show's producers and 20th Century Fox, but "nothing serious." In the long term, however, he feels that a Simpsons movie almost seems inevitable. "I have no doubt we'll do a movie eventually," he declares matter-of-factly.
Regardless of the franchise's future. The Simpsons has certainly come a long way since it began life as a series of animated shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show. Reflecting on the series' many triumphs, Groening turns to Executive Producer George Meyer to reveal what most of the show's cast and crew believe has been The Simpsons' very greatest achievement.
"One time a child saved his brother because he had seen the Heimlich manoeuvre on the show," reveals Meyer. "Let's see Friends save a life!" adds Harry Shearer with a chuckle. Besides letters from life-saving viewers, the makers of The Simpsons have also received numerous gifts from the show's fans. One of these presents proved particularly memorable for Groening.
"Several years ago, we got a box of cookies that came in a box of dog biscuits and they were shaped like little bones," he recalls. "And the letter that accompanied this said, 'This is my new invention: cookies in the shape of dog biscuits. Please try them.' But they came in a dog biscuit box. And I brought them into the writers and they ate them,' he laughs.
The Simpsons has, of course, earned an army of celebrity fans, many of whom have made guest appearances in the series. This particular trend looks set to continue for as long as the show is in production.
"We haw a long list of celebrities who have asked to be on the show," confirms Groening. "We're just going down the list! Virtually any rock band you can think of under the age of 60 wants to be on the show."
White most celebrities have jumped at the chance to voice a character in The Simpsons, the show's producers were disappointed that former US President Ronald Reagan declined an invitation to guest star in the show. "We tried to get President Reagan once," reveals Executive Producer Al jean, "and he wrote a really nice letter saying 'no'. That would have been fun."
Despite President Reagan's absence, Springfield hasn't been short of memorable visitors in The Simpsons' 10-year history. From the central Simpson clan to their friends, neighbors and distant relatives, The Simpsons utilizes well over 100 regular and recurring characters. It's no wonder, then, that the true father of Springfield, Matt Groening, finds it difficult to choose just one of The Simpsons characters as his personal favorite.
"I like them all for different reasons," he insists. "What's fun is that these characters are now established. We have hundreds of characters in Springfield, and use 40 or 50 per episode. They're well established and the second they come on the screen, you know who they are. And it's really fun to write jokes for them.
"I like the characters who have one or two lines an episode. A lot of Hank's and a lot of Harry's characters and Anne's and Tress' are secondary. I know Homer is going to get laughs, I know Lisa and Bart are going to get laughs, but when we can get laughs out of the more obscure characters, that's really great.
"I have to say that if I have a specific favorite character, it's probably Lisa Simpson," he reveals with a grin. "Because I think she's the only one who's going to escape Springfield some day!"
Judging by The Simpsons' enduring success, it could be a long time yet before any of the show's cast and crew escape Springfield. As Homer might say, "Woo-hoo!"
A Few Articles
Toon Terrific 1993
Year after hilarious year, The Simpsons keeps outdoing itself with wry sarcasm, topical themes, and superb scripting that put most other comedies to shame. Now in its fourth season, The Simpsons (Fox, Thursdays, 8-8.30 p.m.) has never been better. At a time when half-hour TV comedy is reaching a new level of self-referential daring -- you can't fully appreciate the intricate, in-joke pleasures of great shows like NBC's Seinfeld and HBO's The Larry Sanders Show unless you've also watched a lot of really bad TV -- the Simpsons continues to emphasize that there's a big world out there that television barely touches upon.
In its constant acknowledgment of history, current events, and forms of art and entertainment other than television, The Simpsons is probably the most realistically surreal cartoon series ever; the show is always striving not only to be funnier but also tighter, more precise in its sarcasm, and (in its own brusquely unsentimental way) more moving. Artist-writer Matt Groening's animated clan started out in 1987 as subversive little squiggles squeezed in between the live-actor sketches of The Tracey Ullman Show, but Groening has long since rejected subversion in favor of cultural aggression. He has said that he created these bright yellow, bulgy-eyed characters -- Homer and Marge Simpson, along with their children, Bart, Lisa, and infant Maggie -- to "offer an alternative to the audience, and show them there's something else out there than the mainstream trash that they are presented as the only thing."
Groening has remained true to his intentions. In fact, the series' Feb. 4 edition -- in which Bart, angry with Homer, disavows his father and applies to the Bigger Brothers Agency for a surrogate dad -- may be the best Simpsons show ever. Devised by writer-producer Jon Vitti, it is a masterpiece of tiny, throw-away details that accumulate into a worldview. When Bart and his Bigger Brother, Tom, go to a baseball game, for example, it's Tomato Day at the stadium; the pregame festivities include a speech by "the recruiter for the Springfield Communist Party," a grizzled old man who gets booed and pelted with red, rotting fruit before he opens his mouth.
A subplot involves Lisa',s crush on a vapid teen idol named Corey, and her uncontrollable urge to call a 900 number (only "$4.95 a minute") that features taped messages of Corey reciting things like "words that rhyme with Corey" ("Um, story ...allegory...Montessori"). How did Lisa learn about Corey and his money-leeching phone service? We notice that her bedroom contains a copy of Non-Threatening Boys magazine.
Groening's writers tend to make their sharpest points quickly, matter-of-factly. In a quiet moment Tom says, "Bart, I could kiss you -- if the Bigger Brothers hadn't made me sign a form promising I wouldn't." Earlier, Bart's schoolteacher Mrs. Krabappel (her nicely sour voice supplied by Marcia Wallace of the '70s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show) thanked our little antihero for bringing in a deadly looking, U.S. Navy-made "neural-disrupter" gun for show-and-tell. Don't thank me," says Bart briskly, "thank an unprecedented eight-year military buildup." (Groening, once asked if his politics weren't left of center, said, "I like to think of myself as middle of the road, but the rest of our culture would define me as loony left.")
But the Simpsons aren't winking, ribcage-nudging rebels; if anything, they're touchingly sincere. Groening and company want to suggest that family life is so complicated, so full of inarticulated desires and fears, that it can never be reduced to a mere collection of wisecracks. The closest the series has ever come to offering a "message" has been in a few episodes this season that mercilessly satirize the alcohol industry in the form of the profoundly cynical "Duff" beer company ("Can't get enough of that wonderful Duff" is its slogan).
In one episode, Bart and Lisa's Aunt Selma brings them to Duff Gardens amusement park, where they take in the "beeraquarium" (soused fish swimming woozily in frothy suds) and the "Beer Hall of Presidents" (a mechanical Abe Lincoln quaffs endless cans of Duff). A few weeks later the show has Homer trying to give up Duff for a month, with great difficulty. The episode is hilarious, in part because it makes alcoholism seem like such an absurd horror, you have to laugh.
With each season, the writers seem to concentrate on deepening and enriching a different character. Last year it was Homer's marvelously vile boss, Mr. Burns; this season it's Lisa. Always the smart, well-behaved middle child, Lisa has evolved into an adolescent confused and frightened by her buzzing hormones. In addition to being permitted a few tantrums and some satisfying revenge upon the bratty Bart (she recently mounted an elaborate sciencefair exhibit to answer the question "Is My Brother Dumber Than a Hamster?" in the affirmative), Lisa has also been the object of a little boy's mad crush.
People have been investing strong emotions in cartoon characters at least as far back as Mickey Mouse; the sustained cleverness and, yes, humanity of The Simpsons proves that our devotion is not misplaced.
The Best TV Show Ever 1999
I dissed Lucy. I stomped on Mary Richards' earnest little hat. Norman Lear, Steven Bochco, all TV's anointed greats I told them to eat my shorts. At least, I suspect, that will be the reaction I'll get for naming one of the most praised and reviled shows of TV history "The Simpsons" as the best TV show ever in TIME's listing of the greatest artworks of the 20th century.But before you sentence me to write "I Love Lucy" 500 times on the chalkboard, let me explain myself. There are a good 10 or so shows one could easily argue for as TV's best, "All in the Family," "M*A*SH," "The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite" (my #3) and "The Twilight Zone," to name a few. My job, as I saw it, was to choose one program I could confidently send into space as an example of television as a distinct genre at its best. (Thus I excluded shows, like "Playhouse 90" and "The Ed Sullivan Show," that were really more about using TV to broadcast other genres.) The following are five of many reasons I like NASA before me would choose to launch Homer:
(1) It's great 20th-century art. "Ulysses," "The Godfather," "Rhapsody in Blue" 20th-century art has been about smashing barriers between high and low culture, intermingling prosody and pulp fiction. Most of the finest shows in TV history, like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (my #2 of the century), "The Cosby Show" and "Hill Street Blues," don't; they aim for the solid middle. (Some greats like" I Love Lucy" were more strictly vaudeville; some, like "Twin Peaks," aimed elite and ended up noble failures.) "The Simpsons" aims both higher and lower than its predecessors, not afraid of either highbrow literary references or butt jokes, offering something for everyone from grad-school snobs to grade-school snots much as Shakespeare and Chaucer did centuries ago.
(2) It was the best series of television's best decade. The '70s were the real Golden Age of television in terms of the quality of the average show the last period when networks grabbed massive chunks of the populace with smartly written programs like "MTM," "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H." Yet in sheer numbers the '90s had it beat, precisely because people saw more television than any other decade. And the same forces that ended "broad"-casting the fragmentation of the audience enabled Fox to gamble on and thrive with a brash, satiric series from an alternative-newspaper cartoonist. In a decade packed with breathtaking innovations from "Seinfeld" to "The Sopranos," "The Simpsons" is the show that captured the '90s cold from beginning to end the consumerism, the media saturation, the stresses on families and civic culture.
(3) It has TV's greatest cast. No other series has developed as numerous and fully fleshed a supporting cast as the population of Springfield. The writers of "The Simpsons" opened worlds within worlds, investing seemingly minor characters with full back stories and lives. Any character who showed up for a few seconds one episode might carry entire episodes later on: Apu, Smithers, Barney the drunk. To look at one of these B-listers, Krusty the Clown, is to understand the endless fertility of "The Simpsons." Beginning as a prop for Bart and Lisa to watch on the family TV, Krusty developed a story of ethnic identity (born Herschel Krustofsky, he rebelled against his rabbi father) and became a satiric stand-in for the entire entertainment industry. By comparison, "MTM"'s Chuckles the Clown (murdered by an elephant while leading a parade dressed as a peanut) was the jumping-off point for perhaps the finest TV episode ever, but he was never drawn in the detail "The Simpsons" gave Krusty.
(4) It is every television series. It's a loving satire of home and society, just as trenchant and ultimately warm as "All in the Family" and Norman Lear had the advantage of writing at a time of a clearly drawn generation gap and social turmoil. It's a workplace comedy, like "Dick Van Dyke," "Taxi" and "MTM," and with the incomparable villain Montgomery Burns, it shows that the job is more than just a warm surrogate family. It's a political satire, like "M*A*S*H," but with an even broader range of targets from Burns's money-fueled run for governor to education and privatization (most recently, when Bart and Lisa's school was bought by a toy company for test-marketing purposes) and a more nuanced, less ideologically certain point of view. Both timeless and au courant, it was not just the comics; it was the news.
(5) It is no other television series. In 1997 critic Steven Stark omitted "The Simpsons" from his survey of television's 60 top shows, "Glued to the Set," saying that it had not influenced as many other shows as "I Love Lucy" or "Dragnet." Although Stark's argument looks less convincing with every year, it still has some validity but that's precisely why finally "The Simpsons" is TV's best. We have words for the phenomenon Stark notes. We call it uniqueness. Inimitability. What "The Simpsons" has accomplished for 11 consistent seasons and no other canonical TV show has had the same legs may never be copied. And as long as Matt Groening and company keep it on the air, who cares? One greatest show of all time is plenty, thank you very much. As the century ends, we should be thankful one of its finest artworks is still being created, week after week.
America's First Family
Dysfunctional and degenerate they may be, but after ten years the Simpsons have proved that a family that plays together stays together. Nick Griffiths meets the faces behind America's best-loved family since the Waltons "Several years ago, we tried to get Al Gore on the show and were turned down, very politely," says Mike Scully, writer/producer of The Simpsons. "Now he's running for President, he called us. As far as I was concerned, he'd had his chance.
It's February and Scully is in Aspen, Colorado, with The Simpsons' creator, Matt Groening, and members of the cast to attend the four-day US Comedy Arts Festival. Among the main attractions is The Simpsons Live, a read-through onstage by the cast of two separate Simpsons episodes. These have been billed as highly as appearances by Steve Martin, Jerry Lewis and Robin Williams, and far more highly than those by a host of much smaller acts, including Britain's own League Against Tedium.
Matt Groening (pronounced "graining"), the 46-year-old multimillionaire creator of the show, is a chunky, bearded man with tiny specs, a floppy fringe, Simpsons baseball jacket and baggy jeans. He looks like a big kid.
Oregon-raised and LA-based since college, he conceived the Simpsons family for producer James L. Brooks as a brief animated segment within the new Fox network's Tracey Ullman show. The shorts ran from 1987 and were developed into a full series that made its debut on American primetime - the first since The Flintstones - two years later. From the off, it was a hit, topping Fox's ratings. "It's hard to figure why it exploded so quickly," says Scully, before offering his own theory: "At the core is a family, and everyone can identify with that, which is probably why it plays well overseas, too."
The Simpsons are: Homer, the father, the self-centred, well-meaning oaf; Marge, his wife, the rock; daughter Lisa, the family's social conscious; and son Bart, its antisocial tendencies. Little Maggie is still in nappies - she exists partly to give Homer the opportunity to lose a baby. They mess up and frustrate each other, but they've bonded, albeit with bungee rope.
Strewn around them are Springfield's inhabitants: the Scrooge-like owner of the nuclear power plant where Homer works, and his sycophantic (closet-gay) assistant; the doughnut-obsessed police chief; the holier-than-thou neighbours; the corrupt mayor; the drunken losers in Moe's Tavern - all caricatures of familiar people, from the media or from personal experience. If the comedy or the animation didn't hook you, the soap-opera element would. It's not hard to see why The Simpsons spread through America, Britain, Australia, the world - 94 countries at the last count - particularly among children already sold on cartoons.
The Aspen venue for the Simpsons events is the Wheeler Opera House, built at the height of the silver boom in 1889, recently renovated and boasting the sort of balustrades that cowboys were always being pushed through. On the Simpsons nights it throngs with thirty- and fortysomethings, offspring and a smattering of teens (Aspen is expensive). Both shows are sell-outs and people have to be locked out, on one occasion prompting a scuffle.
The seven-strong cast, augmented by a narrator, take the stage, including Dan Castellaneta (Homer and others), Nancy Cartwright (Bart and others) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa). Among them, they will voice around 30 characters.
The first show finds Harry Grimes, a new power-plant executive, being hounded unintentionally into this grave by Homer. In the second, Lisa falls on love with school bully Nelson Muntz (Bart to Lisa: "I'll probably never say this to you again, but you can do better"). It doesn't matter that both episodes have aired previously on television. Watching Cartwright alone, a short, smiling woman, do Bart Simpson is surreal and deeply impressive.
Stripped of the visual distraction of animation, you also realise how relentlessly clever and funny the scripts are.
Afterwards comes the Q&A session. "Give us a 'Doh!'", "Who does Krusty?", "Who does Ned Flanders?" - nothing insightful, more a celebration. After Thursday's show, Scully acknowledges, "It's times like that when you realise just what an impact the show has on people. A lot of comedies about families come and go, but this one just caught people off guard. The Simpsons were dysfunctional yet you could also see that they loved and stuck by each other. People like that because they don't see it enough in real life."
American sitcoms had a habit of portraying the family as shiny-toothed, wholesome and untroubled, playing to the aspirationally spirited viewer.
Then in 1987, Married... with Children came along, followed by Roseanne, populated by insensitive, bawling parents and spiteful, put-upon children.
The success of both suggested that people were quite ready for television to have a pop at the American dream. At the same time, The Simpsons had arrived, an altogether quieter, more comforting half-hour, but with its own cartoon take on the perplexing reality of family life.
Unwittingly, it hit the Zeitgeist, which the American networks misread as a public craving for more primetime animation. "So without a lot of thought to character and content, they rushed all these show on air and the public rejected most of them," Scully explains. "The networks then tried to rationalise and thought The Simpsons was a fluke, that people don't like animation." Finally, they realised, if a show is done well, it doesn't matter if it's animated.
Without The Simpsons, there would have been no Beavis and Butt-head, Duckman, King of the Hill or South Park. It redefined television animation, spawning shows that seem far more extreme by comparison - which naturally helped its own continual acceptance into the mainstream.
For every action, of course, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
"Every time there's a fad that kids really like, there's gonna be a grown-up going, "Something's wrong here," says Groening. "It happened with video games, heavy metal, rap, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and now Pokémon - though they can't quite figure out what's wrong with it yet."
And it happened initially with The Simpsons. Homer was a disgraceful role model; Bart's insolence to his elders would encourage the same. Bart Simpson T-shirts (notably "Underachiever and Proud of It") became so popular that some schools banned them for their subversive messages. The nuclear power industry waved its own placard. "In the words of one editorial," says Groening, chuckling, "we were needlessly causing the American people to be afraid of nuclear power."
So influential was this cartoon deemed that the President waded in. During his 1992 election campaign, George Bush railed, "We're going to keep trying to strengthen the American family. To make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons." (His wife, Barbara, called the show the "dumbest thing" she had ever seen... then later apologised.)
In a small way, The Simpsons probably contributed to the demise of the Bush administration. "It didn't fly with a lot of Americans," recalls Scully.
"People who enjoyed the show didn't want to be told that they were watching something bad or stupid, or something that's wrong for their kids." Adds Groening, "We turned around and said, 'The Simpsons are just like the Waltons - we're both praying for an end to the depression.'
"I have a secret motto which is, 'To entertain and to subvert'. I've tried to keep that in my work since I started doing cartoons," Groening continues.
"It's not so much trying to change the minds of people who are already set in their ways [meaning adults], it's to point out to children that a lot of rules that they're told by authorities who do not have their best interests at heart. If we can point out that teachers, political leaders, your parents, or your peers may be foolish, that's a good lesson. Think for yourself."
Serious issues crop up regularly in The Simpsons, cloaked in humour and vivid animation; the environment, corrupt media and politicians, ineffective policing, the restriction of religion. Some media commentators might find the campaigning surprising coming as it does from a show that did so much to help the launch of both the Fox Network and Sky Television (both part of the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of The News Corporation, parent company of The Times), and which continues to attract the punters (averaging four million in the States, last season, and around a million here). Gary Newman, co-president of 20th Century Fox Television, admits, "The Simpsons put the Fox network on the map for good." Murdoch was even invited to play himself in the show, and accepted. Scully remembers the recording: "I was nervous about it, because the dialogue we had written wasn't the most flattering, He had to identify himself as, 'Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant.'"
"The best humour has a strong point of view, and I don't have to agree with it. My politics are fairly progressive but I can enjoy right-wing morons who are funny," says Groening. "Television touches on an issue then dances away from it and never comes back to it. So it has the illusion of having a strong point of view, but the real point of view of television is that nothing matters, because it's going to be replaced in the next millisecond by something different, and then replaced again and again. That's one reason why, in conceiving the show, I made sure that Homer worked in a nuclear power plant, because then we can keep returning to that and making a point about the environment."
The Simpsons' influences are more contrived than surface impressions might suggest. But let's not forget the dumb stuff - Simpsons merchandise generated $2 billion worldwide in its first 14 months alone. That includes the usual clothing, bedding and alarm clocks, but also Australian Bart, Homer and Lisa asthma-inhaler covers, car mats, cheque-book holders, condiment sets, bandages and sunscreen with moisturisers.
Sam Young, a 36-year-old government attorney, flew to the Comedy festival from Minnesota purely for The Simpsons. He met his best friend through the show: "I heard him say 'Doh!' one day at law school and went over and started a conversation." A collector of the merchandise, he spent $3,300 on two animation cels alone, and $500 on a trading card drawn by Groening. His study and living room are full of Simpsons clutter, including a 4ft-tall Homer. His girlfriend finds this "charming", he maintains.
For a decade, the series' characters have been used by advertising agencies to promote their products: most recently, a Portuguese bank, a British luncheon snack, a detergent, and by Heinz and Pepsi in France. Cartoon characters won't sway the public? I bought a Butterfinger bar in America purely because Bart had one and Homer wanted it, and it wasn't very nice.
Then there are the catchphrases: "Doh!", "Aye carumba!", "Don't have a cow, man!", "Mmmm... [insert name of foodstuff]"... Nations ring to them.
"Seldom does a week go by when I'm not out somewhere, a store, a gas station, wherever, and I hear somebody say 'Doh!'," reckons Scully. "It happens all the time." "Eat my shorts!" Bart's catch phrase for the unwelcome, was recently included in the revised Oxford English Dictionary of Quotations.
So this television show, a mere animation series, has helped bring down a president, brushed aside the wheedling attentions of a vice-president, quietly subverted the world's youth (apart from in China, possibly, where Bart's behaviour is genuinely frowned upon), been stamped all over what we wear, influenced what we eat and where Portuguese people bank, changed the face of contemporary animation and inveigled itself into our exclamations.
Professor Stephen Hawking - who has appeared in it - even requested that guests to his millennium New Year party dressed as a character from The Simpsons. Hawking, cleverly, went as himself.
Now academics are using it in schools and in Universities. Having the Donut and Eating it: Self-Reflexivity in The Simpsons is Professor of Literature Alistair McCleery's lecture, part of the Introduction to Cultural Studies module, for his students at Edinburgh's Napier University. He chose the programme for its "sheer ubiquity. I wanted to stress to students the need to be active consumers of culture, and to show that even the most seemingly superficial popular culture would repay analysis through greater understanding of what made it tick. I also find it very funny."
"I get lots of letters from teachers and college professors who have used The Simpsons to illustrate some point in class," says Groening. One, for instance, used an episode spoofing the Prohibition era to explain the subject to her students. The Simpsons continually makes reference to history, film, television and literature - from Citizen Kane to Edgar Allan Poe - regurgitating it to an audience for whom Rosebud might once have meant nothing.
Testament shows that families watch The Simpsons together, in the same living room. In an age of meals-on-the-move, three-television households, computer games and the Internet, it is a fact of which Groening and Scully are justifiably proud. And it applies across the generation, equally popular with each major demographic group, aside from pensioners. "People over 60 just fail to see the humour in cartoon characters," says Groening.
"Although, I must say, my mother, who's 80, loves the show, and so do all the friends in her reading group."
Should people miss the references, ignore the messages or remain blinkered by the cartoonish aspect, the series still has the potential to bond together disparate family members. Just as, at the beginning of each episode, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie all gather to watch the television, so we gather to watch them. We are all, unwittingly, Simpsons.
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| More than a hundred names flash on the screen in the final few seconds of The Simpsons every Sunday night: the writers and actors, animators and editors, technicians and producers who collaborate on that hit Fox show. Some of the jobs are, well, unusual. There are layout artists and background artists, color designers and a whole crew of people who do nothing but double-check other artists' work, making sure they didn't smudge anything. And there are almost as many other people, another hundred names, who get no credit at all. And credit is due.
In just a few months, The Simpsons has become the shining star in Fox's lineup, a regular entry in the Nielsen top 15 despite the fact that at its heart this is guerrilla TV, a wicked satire masquerading as a prime-time cartoon.
The Simpsons of Springfield are dysfunctional in the extreme, a family of unwitting victims who have no idea why life keeps knocking them around. Homer Simpson works in the local nuclear plant, a safety inspector who sleeps on the job. He's the leading candidate to replace Ronald Reagan as America's most befuddled father figure. His response to practically any crisis is to mutter unintelligibly and slap himself on the forehead. This is not your standard cartoon hero.
It takes six months to complete a half hour episode of The Simpsons. It's a twisted journey that spans two continents, costs more than a half-million dollars per show, requires lots of math, and, most of all, involves practically no one who wears a tie.
How do those scores of people do it? They're not really sure. Every week, it seems, they barely finish on time. The production marathon invariably ends in a desperate deadline sprint. Dialogue is changed at the last minute, scenes rewritten even after the animation is done. On most Saturday nights, less than 24 hours before the show goes on the air, the producers are still working, still adding sound effects, still fiddling with anything left to be fiddled with.
Ay, caramba!, as Bart Simpson would say.
''The last 10 days are really very hairy,'' explains Sam Simon, who shares executive producer credits with James L. Brooks and the show's creator, cartoonist Matt Groening. ''When I used to work on Taxi or Cheers, we'd usually have three weeks to edit a show at our leisure. But with The Simpsons, we usually don't see the completed show until the night before it airs. It's all very down to the line.''
In fact, the production process is not unlike the opening montage that begins every Simpsons episode, the frenetic scenes where we see family members Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie careening toward home, a collection of accidents waiting to happen. They bolt out of doorways, and screech around corners, averting potential disaster at every turn.
It's a miracle that any of them make it alive, but every week they somehow manage to emerge from the chaos, just in time for the start of the show.
The production of a Simpsons episode starts with the executive producers and writers locked in a room, or, more precisely, a suite at the St. James' Club, a members-only hotel in Hollywood.
Simon says, ''We just shut off all the phones and come up with story ideas.'' Last year, only Groening, Brooks, and Simon concocted the basic plot lines. Now there's a staff of writers (with credentials that range from Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman to Harvard Lampoon) who sit in on the initial story meetings. All of them toss out scenarios, story lines, jokes, whatever pops into their heads.
This tag-team approach to creative writing is a new experience for Groening. After 10 years of drawing ''Life in Hell,'' the anxiety-ridden comic strip that is the spiritual and stylistic forerunner of The Simpsons, he was accustomed to working alone. But Groening, 36, was ready for a change. ''I definitely wanted to do this,'' he says. ''It meant an end to my loneliness.''
Even so, Groening says he might never have taken a shot at television if not for Brooks, the Academy Award-winning writer and director (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News) who was also behind some of television's most celebrated comedy series, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi. It was Brooks who first approached Groening about creating one-minute animated versions of ''Life in Hell'' to be used between segments of The Tracey Ullman Show. Rather than surrender the rights to his comic strip characters, Groening created a whole new brood, the Simpsons, who made their debut in April 1987, on the third episode of the Ullman show.
''First of all, I was just honored that (Brooks) liked my little cartoon,'' Groening says, ''but also it was his clout that allowed the show to be made without compromise.''
As story lines are being developed, Groening has three main concerns. He doesn't want the show to pull punches just because it's a cartoon, and he doesn't want jokes or plots to be ''too sitcommy.'' The Simpsons, he insists, is meant for adults. On the other hand, he doesn't want the show to be too dark. And this from a man who once titled a cartoon ''If parents love you so much, how come they do such awful stuff to you?''
''A lot of humor writers, when the boundaries are loosened up, don't get funnier; they get meaner,'' Groening says. ''That's something I really didn't want to happen with The Simpsons. And it hasn't.''
After the hotel session, the surviving story lines are blocked out on index cards, and each episode is assigned to a writer, who comes up with a working script. Then there is a series of rewrite meetings, with Groening, Simon, and the rest of the staff heavily involved.
''Everybody throws things in,'' Groening says, ''including a lot of people who don't get credit. That happens all through the process, animators suggesting sight gags, actors doing ad libs. All of this gets done sort of by consensus.''
The last rewrite comes after the actors have done a read-through rehearsal. ''We call it a table draft,'' Simon explains, ''because we get the actors around a big table and hear them read it through. That's our last chance to make big changes in the script, to see which scenes work, which ones need reworking, everybody getting a chance to pitch better jokes. It's something that's never been done on a cartoon show before.''
A few days later it's time to record. | |
| Creation of the Show's Music | |
The conductor raises his arms. An expectant silence settles over the room. The orchestra seems to tense as one body, and the count begins.
Then, on cue, the music surges forth - a Las Vegas show band sound that would delight Wayne Newton.
The music builds to a crescendo, only to halt as abruptly as it began. The conductor lowers his arms and turns to his audience for approval.
His audience doesn't exactly approve. "I want to be able to hear that drum," says Jay Kogen, a producer of The Simpsons and the author of the "Old Money" episode. In the story, Grampa Simpson inherits a small fortune from his girlfriend. At this point in the episode, Grampa is off to Las Vegas on a casino junket, in hopes of doubling his inheritance.
A busload of geriatrics from the Springfield Retirement Home pulls up to the casino. Flashing neon signs, spouting fountains and toga-clad cocktail waitresses take over the screen... accompanied, of course, by a burst of show-band sound.
When you sit down to watch The Simpsons, you may not even notice the music - unless Lisa plays the blues. But it's an indispensable part of the presentation, every bit as important (and sometimes every bit as subtle) as the visual details that appear in the corners of numerous scenes.
"The music helps to sell the reality of the show, more than it helps to sell any joke in the show," Kogen says. "Because the people are drawn, and sometimes the drawings can't convey everything, the music helps a great deal."
Composer-conductor Alf Clausen takes Kogen's point about selling the reality of the show a step further: "We don't consider The Simpsons a cartoon. These are real people.
"More important, what I have found on this show is that the editing is a lot tighter than in a typical dramatic show format. It's difficult to find long spaces for fitting in music. The stories are detailed, and the editing is tight. Sometimes I only have three or four or five seconds to play something sad, before it changes gears and goes someplace else."
You may be surprised to find out how much work goes into the music behind each episode. Assisted by a handful of skilled technicians, Clausen assembles the complete score for a single show, to be played by a 40-piece orchestra. They have five days to do it.
The process begins on Monday, 11 days before the episode will be aired. The first step is called the 'music spotting session.' Clausen, Kogen and a group of music and special effects people view the show without benefit of sound - no dialogue, no music.
"We go through the show," Kogen says, "and we talk about what music we need and where we need it. Clausen gives his ideas, what he'd like to do. And they're usually right on target."
That figures. Clausen's credits as a composer for television include Moonlighting and ALF. He has received seven Emmy nominations.
"It's a collaborative effort," Clausen says. "I look at the scene and then evaluate the observations that were made in the spotting session. Then I try to compose a piece of music that will fit emotionally to what they've asked for. Once I have a general idea as to the style of the music, the nuts and bolts part of it starts.
"Sometimes they just leave it up to me and say, 'We know there should be music there. Do something.'"
Clausen has all of three days to work on the "nuts and bolts" of composing the music. (Between finishing his work and recording it in the intense, four-hour Friday afternoon session, Clausen must leave time for copyist Joann Kane and her staff to extract the orchestral parts.)
After the spotting session, music editors Chris Ledesma and Bob Bedecher prepare a set of "music spotting notes" for Clausen. These take the form of a numbered list of music cues. Each includes a brief description, a starting time, a stopping time and an approximate length. An average episode of The Simpsons contains 30 music cues.
Once the music cues have been assembled, Ledesma and Bedecher break down each cue into "timing notes," observations about each scene.
Clausen explains the timing notes: "If a guy turns, if a guy pokes somebody in the shoulder, if a guy falls over dead, the music editors will describe, in seconds and one-hundredths of seconds, the exact timing of each one of those pieces of action.
For example, a 3.7-second scene could have many different actions. Clausen's tools for merging his composition with the scene include:
- the timing notes;
- a computer;
- a "click-track," which is an extremely precise type of digital metronome that the orchestra members will hear in their headphones during the recording session;
- "visual streamers," various colored bars that will pass across the screen of the video monitor next to Clausen during the recording session. (Incidentally, Clausen will be the only person in the studio with a video monitor.)
Using the visual streamers, which mark the beginning and end of the music sequence, Clausen can plot the music so that it precisely matches the action on the television screen.
During the three-day process of composing the score for each episode, Clausen can turn to a team of specialists, which includes:
- Orchestrator Hummie Mann. If Clausen is pressed for time, he can give Mann a "sketch" of his needs. Later, during the recording session, Mann will serve as Clausen's "ears" in the control booth.
- Music contractor Mike Rubin. Using an overall list drawn up by Clausen, Rubin selects the players who will perform the show's music.
- Carol Farhat, head of television music for Twentieth Century-Fox. Farhat co-ordinates all the musical elements in the show, from renting the recording studio (in this case, Evergreen Studios on the CBS lot in Studio City) to negotiating for the rights to a song called for in a particular show's script.
- Two teams of engineers. Either the Fox team of Armin Steiner and Terry Brown, or the freelance team of Rick Riccio and Steve Bartkowicz.
It is Friday afternoon, 2:00. Through the heavy glass of the control booth, a visitor can see the orchestra, surrounded by microphones.
A small group sits jammed in the booth. Behind producer Kogen are three engineers, working the maze of switches and levers on the sound board. Also on hand are members of The Simpsons' writing staff, making sure the "feel" of the music corresponds to what came out of Monday's spotting session.
Outside, members of the orchestra scan their music sheets. This is their first look at Clausen's work, and they will sight-read as they perform. To a visitor's untrained ear, every passage will sound perfect the first time it is played, but it often takes several recorded attempts before the entire staff is satisfied.
Less than a week later, the show will appear on the Fox Television Network. Midway through the episode, a tiny bus will pull up to a glittering casino. In the background we'll hear the sound of an orchestra - a "Las Vegas" sound, but with a special Simpsons touch. | |
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Dan Castellaneta
On The Simpsons, Castellaneta usually plays several characters in each episode. But his biggest role is as Homer. Among other roles, he has played Krusty The Clown, Barney, Groundskeeper Willie, Hans Moleman, and Grampa.
Castellaneta is a native of the Chicago area. He has been acting since he was six years old. His first voice character was an impersonation of old-time movie star Edward G. Robinson. He made it to the stage, working in classics like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. Tracy Ullman saw Castellaneta performing at Chicago's Second City when she was filming Vice Versa. Castellaneta turned down an offer to be in the Nothing In Common TV series to work with Ullman. Her flexible structure and a chance to play all kinds of characters interested him.
Since he's been on The Simpsons, his voice talents have gotten him far, working on cartoons such as Eek! The Cat, The Tick, and providing the voice of Earthworm JimDisney's AladdinClayfighter 63 1/3. Dan started performing in Ben Jonson's 1610 play "The Alchemist" in 2000, and has been behind the microphone once again with small roles in Rugrats In Paris and in the movie versions of Recess The Cat In The Hat, and Hey Arnold! He switched Groening cartoons to play the Robot Devil in Futurama, and in August 2004, he received his third Emmy award for his voice work on The Simpsons.
Castellaneta could be seen more recently doing guest spots on shows such as Arrested Development and Stargate SG-1.
Nancy Cartwright
Nancy Cartwright provides the voice for Bart Simpson. A lot of viewers would have thought a male provided Bart's voice, but that is not so. She also provides the voices of Nelson, Todd Flanders, Ralph Wiggum, Kearney, and Database, all of which are male characters.
Nancy's voice has been featured in an endless array of Saturday morning cartoons, including Galaxy High, Fantastic Max, Richie Rich, Pound Puppies, and My Little Pony. More recently, she has provided voices in Cartoons such as Goof Troop, Animaniacs, Aladdin, Toonsylvania, Rugrats, Problem Child, Felix The Cat, and Disney's Timon And Pumbaa. Her face has appeared in Cheers, and Baywatch Nights to name a few. Tracy Ullman added Cartwright to the cast of her show back in 1987, which got her the role of Bart when the show was still a series of shorts.
Recently, Nancy has done voice work in God, The Devil, and Bob and has scored another major role providing the voice of Chuckie on Rugrats after fomer voice Christine Cavanaugh quit in 2001. She also provides his voice on the spin-off All Grown Up.
As Bart, Cartwright gets as much mail as all the other cast members combined. "The piles of mail are bigger than she is," says Harry Shearer. "She is more surprised than anyone that her character has become a modern day folk hero."
When not filming on The Simpsons, Nancy takes her work worldwide, in a stage show titled "My Life As A Ten Year Old Boy", in which she speaks of her life and her time as the voice of Bart Simpson. She also regularly appears as voice of Rufus in Kim Possible.
Julie Kavner
Julie provides the voices of the three Bouvier sisters, Marge, Patty, and Selma. She doesn't do any other voices because her voice is restricted, but she has when required provided the voice of Jacqueline Bouvier and Aunt Gladys. Julie is probably the cast member most familiar to television audiences in America. She is best known as Rhoda's sister, Brenda Morgenstern on... Rhoda. Julie played Brenda from 1971 - 1978. She won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1978. Kavner also appeared on Tracey Ullman's show since it started, which is how she got the role of Marge.
Since appearing on Tracey Ullman and The Simpsons, Kavner has performed in major films such as Awakenings, Forget Paris, Deconstructing Harry, and providing the voice for the parrot in the 1998 remake of Dr. Dolittle. She also played Midge Dexter in the TV series "Tracey Takes On..".
Most recently, Kavner peformed in an off-broadway play called "The Vagina Monologues" in February 2000. She has also done voice work in the movie Someone Like You and played Timon's mom in the video release The Lion King 1 1/2 released in 2004. Her most recent work can be seen in Adam Sandler's 2006 movie Click as Trudy Newman.
Yeardly Smith
Full name Martha Maria Yeardley Smith. Yeardley Plays the character of Lisa on The Simpsons. She doesn't do any other characters since her voice is so unique. Smith is a very experienced actress with a wide range of roles in movies and TV. She's appeared in such films as She-Devil, Heaven Help Us, Maximum Overdrive, City Slickers, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, and As Good As It Gets.
On television, she has starred in Mom's on Strike, and Herman's Head. She has also guest starred on Sydney Brothers, Mama's Family, Murphy Brown, and The Tracey Ullman Show. She has appeared in a semi-regular role on Dharma And Greg playing Marlene, and had Guest Roles on Nash Bridges and Teen Angel.
Yeardley isn't heard on many other cartoons either. We put this down to the fact that her voice is practically Lisa's voice. Not that it doesn't make her any less talented, of course. In recent years she's stuck to guest spots on Dharma And Greg and Becker, as well as lending her voice to Simpsons video games.
Yeardley expanded her voice credits on The Simpsons in the past couple of seasons, voicing characters named 'Lisabella' and 'Lisa Jr,' which were intentionally given the same voice as Lisa.
Harry Shearer
While not providing a voice for one of the five family members, Shearer does over 100 voices on The Simpsons, which is more than most cast members do. His most famous voices include Mr Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, Otto, and Kent Brockman.
Shearer, a Los Angeles native, began acting at the age of seven. He made his film debut in the classic Abbott and Costello Go To Mars and had a small role in the first Cinemascope movie The Robe. When the last days of network radio made way for the early days of live TV, the young thespian appeared often on The Jack Benny Show as well as appearances on GE Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and played the role of Eddie Haskell in the pilot episode of Leave It To Beaver. Harry gained national recognition as one of the creators and stars of This Is Spinal Tap, where he portrayed heavy metalist Derek Smalls in the mock rockumentary. Harry was a writer and cast member of Saturday Night Live for two seasons.
Harry's other film work includes Oscar, The Fisher King, Wayne's World II, Little Giants, My Best Friend's Wedding, Godzilla, The Truman Show, Small Soldiers, EdTV, Dick, and most recently, A Mighty Wind and Chicken Little.
His recent television appearances have been on Dawsons Creek, MadTV, and Just Shoot Me among others.
Hank Azaria
Hank Azaria has about as many regular character roles on The Simpsons as Harry Shearer, but when it comes to one-timer or bit-roles, Hank provides the bulk of them. He is responsible for the voices of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Carl, Dr. Nick, Snake, Kirk Van Houten, Bumblebee Man, Sea Captain, Professor Frink, Cletus, and Disco Stu just to name a few.
Before his work on The Simpsons, Azaria hadn't done a lot of work in the industry besides some guest spots on Family Ties and Growing Pains as well as some straight-to-video films. Since joining The Simpsons, Hank Azaria has appeared in many successful television and film roles. You might recognize his face from his roles in the movies Pretty Woman, Now And Then, Heat, Godzilla, Celebrity, Mystery Men. On television, he has appeared on Fresh Prince Of Bel Air and Mad About You, and given a familiar recurring role as Phoebe's ex-boyfriend David on Friends. His recent acting credits are Bark, Euology, Shattered Glass, and Captured.
Prior to working on the show, Azaria was a bartender in New York. Azaria married actress Helen Hunt in July 1999 but soon after filed for divorce in December 2000.
Azaria recently produced and starred as the lead character in Showtime's Huff for two years before the show was cancelled in June 2006. His other recent credits include Dodgeball and Along Came Polly.
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# The show grew from 30-second segments that aired between comedy sketches on "The Tracey Ullman Show". In 1992, Ullman sued unsuccessfully to earn a share of the show's merchandise related profit.
# Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart, first tried out for Lisa's voice.
# This is one of those series that doesn't have a specific first episode. The first episode created was "Some Enchanted Evening" (pushed to the end of the first season because scenes were being re-animated). It was first aired on May 13, 1990. The pilot episode was "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (aired December 17, 1989). However, the series premiere was "Bart the Genius" which aired on January 14, 1990.
# Many of the characters are named after series creator Matt Groening's family and relatives, including Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie, which are the real names of his parents and younger sisters.
# The main characters were given a yellow coloring to attract the attention of channel surfers.
# Characters' full names: Lisa Marie Simpson, Bartholomew Jojo Simpson, and Homer Jay Simpson.
# Marge and Lisa have four eyelashes while Maggie has three eyelashes.
# Homer (Dan Castellaneta), Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Lisa (Yeardley Smith) are the only characters to have dialogue in every episode. Marge (Julie Kavner) also appeared in every episode, but she did not deliver any dialogue in the episode 'Krusty Gets Kancelled'.
# Although Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa appear in every episode, there are at least two episodes where Maggie does not appear: "The Last Temptation of Homer" and "Lisa's Date with Density".
# When appealing to Danny Elfman for the prefect theme song, Matt Groening gave him a cassette tape of songs similar to the one he wanted. The tape included "The Jetsons" theme, selections from Nino Rota's Juliet Of The Spirits, a Remington electric shaver jingle by Frank Zappa, easy-listening music by Juan García Esquivel, and a teach-your-parrot-to-talk record.
# In the opening credits, the cash register shows $847.63 when Maggie is "scanned" (the figure was taken from a survey done at the time that said that this was the average monthly cost of caring for a newborn baby - food, clothes, health, etc.). But during "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", the credit sequence is paused and the machine is shown to read "NRA 4EVER".
# Yeardley Smith (Lisa) and Marcia Wallace (Edna Krabappel) are the only cast members who do only one voice on a regular basis.
# The original voice of Homer on "The Tracey Ullman Show" and the beginning of the first season was inspired by Walter Matthau, as the original sketch of Homer had a large overbite. However, Dan Castellaneta dumbed him down and said "my jaw would go out, my neck would go in, and then my I.Q. would drop about 70 points."
# The animation in the series became noticeably more sophisticated and fluid after the first season. Also changed after the early episodes was Homer's voice (which was made higher pitched and less intelligent-sounding than it initially was), Chief Wiggum's hair color, and Smithers' skin color (he is black in his first appearance, but becomes yellow/caucasian in all future appearances). Early episodes have a slightly different opening credit sequence. After Homer tosses the radioactive rod into the street, Bart is seen skateboarding but we do not see any recognizable characters in the streetscape as we do later. The skateboard sequence ends by showing a group of generic townspeople running after a bus. We then see Lisa riding home on her bike, overloaded with schoolbooks, parking it in the garage just before Homer's car pulls into the driveway (after which the credits continue as usual).
# Executive producer James L. Brooks wanted the 4th season episode "Kamp Krusty" to be "The Simpsons Movie" but when the show's crew had trouble getting the episode up to normal show length, the plan was dropped.
# Matt Groening based the character Bart Simpson on the character of Dennis in "Dennis the Menace", which he watched as a child but was disappointed that Dennis was not as mischievous as he was in the comic strip.
# The character "Krusty the Clown" was inspired by a real-life TV kiddie show host named Rusty Nails and Dan Castellaneta's voice characterization was based on Chicago television legend Bob Bell who portrayed WGN-TV's Bozo from 1960-1984.
# Krusty the Clown's real name is revealed as Herschel Schmoikel Krustofski and Herschel Pinkus Yerucham Krustofski in different episodes.
# Hank Azaria has said that he conceived the voice of Moe as a bad imitation of Al Pacino. While Azaria has claimed in interviews that this is how Moe's voice was created, the character's voice was actually originated by voice actor Chris Latta (also sometimes credited as Christopher Collins).
# Hank Azaria has told that he adopted his characters' voices from celebrities and people he has met. Among others, Chief Wiggum's voice is based on Edward G. Robinson, Lou's on Sylvester Stallone, and Comic Book Guy's on Azaria's roommate in college.
# Chief Wiggum and Apu were created by Hank Azaria. According to Azaria, Apu was created during times when Hank did not have a car while in Los Angeles and the only place in walking distance was the 7-Eleven shop. Apu was also based on Peter Sellers in "The Party" and is named after the title character in Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy.
# Moe's Tavern is based on a real bar called Fireside. It is located near Loyola Marymount University where David Mirkin went to college.
# Although Bart's middle initial of 'J' has since been confirmed to stand for "Jo-Jo", early in the show's life some sources incorrectly suggested that it stood for "Jebediah", after the town's founder, Jebediah Springfield. This same error was also sometimes attributed to Homer's middle initial of "J", which has since been confirmed to stand for "Jay".
# Bart's birthday is April 1st. If Lisa is 2 years and 38 days younger, her birthday would be February 22nd.
# Milhouse says that he is three months younger than Bart.
# Ralph Wiggum was named after Ralph Kramden on "The Honeymooners" because the character was intended to be a loudmouthed, smaller version of Homer. He wasn't established as Chief Wiggum's son until "I Love Lisa", the fifteenth episode of the fourth season.
# Kang and Kodos (the aliens) are named for two "Star Trek" characters - Kang was a Klingon warrior, and Kodos was an Adolf Hitler-like mass murderer.
# Fat Tony's real name was given as William "Fat Tony" Williams in "Bart the Murderer", but in every episode after, his name is given as Anthony "Fat Tony" d'Amico.
# In one episode, mobster Fat Tony mentions that he "hasn't cried this hard since I paid money to see Godfather III. Joe Mantegna, who plays Fat Tony, played Joey Zasa in "The Godfather: Part III".
# Dr. Nick is named after George "Dr Nick" Nichopoulos, who was charged after Elvis Presley's death for prescribing thousands of doses of narcotics to cater to Elvis's massive appetite for prescription drugs.
# The character Professor John Frink is named after a producer of the show and based on Jerry Lewis's character in "The Nutty Professor".
# The salesman character Gil who can't catch a break is based on Jack Lemmon in "Glengarry Glen Ross".
# In the DVD commentary for Season 4, it is said that Bumblebee Man is based on a character in a Mexican sitcom that played a lot in southern California involving otherwise normal-looking people and someone dressed as a "red cricket". The speakers in the commentary do not provide more information, but this is almost certainly a reference to El Chapulin Colorado, a character played by Roberto Gómez Bolaños "Chespirito", and that appeared in his own show and in sketches from other shows.
# While the character of Hans Moleman appeared a few times in various background scenes, he made his first speaking appearance in the episode "Principal Charming" in the second season. At this point, his name, as shown on a driver's license, was "Ralph Melish" (a name previously used by "Monty Python's Flying Circus"). His appearance provoked quite a stir among the writers, because he was written as a generalized "old man" part, but he came back from the animators, in the words of creator Matt Groening, "looking like a shriveled potato". They then ended up jokingly referring to him as Moleman, and eventually giving him the permanent name of Hans Moleman.
# The Many Deaths of Hans Moleman:
* Forced off the road by Homer; flies of a cliff
* Otto runs his AMC Gremlin off the road; it hits a tree and explodes
* His thick eyeglasses act as a magnifying glass and set him on fire
* Is executed in Springfield after Homer eats his last meal
* Burns, on an ether-induced hallucination, drills into Moleman's head thinking he's the Lucky Charms leprechaun
* Engulfed by an anti-escape orb as Marge escapes from the Movementarians
* Blown up by an explosive éclair meant to poison Homer
* Knocked out by Homer in jail with a book (possible death)
* The French neutron bomb Springfield, presumably killing Hans along with most everyone else
* Hauled away by thugs at the retirement home when he makes a comment about the senior-edited "Gone with the Wind" they are watching (he is possibly killed)
* Seen trapped in the phone booth in the bird sanctuary (which becomes a parody of Hitchcock's "The Birds")
* Drowned in quicksand in "Simpsons Tall Tales"
# The Simpsons' home address has been mentioned several times and has not been the same:
* In "Blood Feud" - 94 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, USA
* In "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" - 59 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, TA
* In "Bart the Lover" - 94 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, USA
* In "Kamp Krusty" - 430 Spalding Way, Springfield, USA
* In "New Kid on the Block" - 1094 Evergreen Terrace
* In "Marge in Chains" - 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield
* In "Homer the Vigilante" - 723 Evergreen Terrace
* In "Bart vs. Australia" - 742 Evergreen Terrace
* In "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" - 742 Evergreen Terrace
# When Homer is accused of sexual harassment, a show called "Rock Bottom" does an exposé on him that falsely portrays him as guilty. They later quickly scroll a list of apologies down the screen. Here they are:
* 1. "Peoples' Choice Award" is America's greatest honor.
* 2. Styrofoam is not made from kittens.
* 3. The U.F.O. was a paper plate.
* 4. The nerds on the internet are not geeks.
* 5. The word "cheese" is not funny in and of itself.
* 6. The older Flanders boy is Todd, not Rod.
* 7. Lyndon Johnson did not provide the voice of Yosemite Sam.
* 8. If you are reading this you have no life.
* 9. Roy Rogers was not buried inside his horse.
* 10. The other U.F.O. was an upside-down salad spinner.
* 11. Our universities are not "hotbeds" of anything.
* 12. Mr. Dershowitz did not literally have four eyes.
* 13. Our viewers are not pathetic, sexless food tubes.
* 14. Audrey Hepburn never weighed 400 pounds.
* 15. The "Cheers" (1982) gang is not a real gang.
* 16. Salt water does not "chase the thirsties away".
* 17. Licking an electrical outlet will not turn you into a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger.
* 18. Cats do not eventually turn into dogs.
* 19. Bullets do not bounce off of fat guys.
* 20. Recycling does not deplete the ozone.
* 21. Everything is 10% fruit juice.
* 22. The flesh-eating virus does not hide in ice cream.
* 23. Janet Reno is evil.
* 24. V8 juice is not 1/8 gasoline.
* 25. Ted Koppel is a robot.
* 26. Women aren't from Venus, and men aren't from Mars.
* 27. Fleiss does floss.
* 28. Quayle is familiar with common bathroom procedure.
* 29. Bart is bad to the bone.
* 30. Godfry Jones' wife is cheating on him. (note: Jones was the host of "Rock Bottom")
* 31. The Beatles haven't reunited to enter kick boxing contests.
* 32. The "Bug" on your TV screen can see into your home.
* 33. Everyone on TV is better than you.
* 34. The people who are writing this have no life.
# In 1997, The Simpsons broke "The Flintstones" record for longest-running prime time animated TV show. The show also holds the record for most guest stars in a television series.
# In one episode, Principal Skinner reveals that his prisoner number in Vietnam was 24601. That same prisoner number was Hank Jennings' in "Twin Peaks" and Jean Valjean's in "Les Misérables".
# Sideshow Bob also has the same prison number, as seen when he is corresponding with Selma while still in prison. ["Dear inmate #24601..."]
# The motto for The Springfield Penitentiary is "If you committed murder, you'd be home by now!"
# In "The Lastest Gun in the West" the bank robbers at the end of the episode are apparently using M41A Pulse Rifles from the movie "Aliens,".
# In the episode when Lisa is elected president of Springfield Elementary she gives her email address as smartgirl63_\@yahoo.com (she says it as: smart girl six three underscore backslash at Yahoo dot com).
# Carl's last name is Carlson (BABF12) and Lenny's last name is Leonard (EABF14).
# The squeaky voiced teenager's name was finally unveiled in a deleted scene from the 5th season of the Simpsons: Jeremy.
# People banned for life in the Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop are: Bart, Milhouse, Sideshow Bob, Nelson, and Matt Groening.
# The name of Bart's principal, Seymour Skinner, is taken from behavior specialist B.F. Skinner. Harry Shearer claims his idea for the voice of the principal was partially based on Charles Kuralt.
# Sideshow Bob is voiced by "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer. In "Brother from Another Series", Cecil, Sideshow Bob's brother, is featured, and is voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who plays Frasier's brother, Niles, in "Frasier". Cecil also mentions Maris, Niles's never-seen wife, which is said ironically, since Bart is covering Cecil's eyes.
# A TV critic titled his article "Worst Episode Ever!" after watching a late '90s episode, and criticized the show's writing. In the later seasons, there are many episodes in which the Comic Book Guy criticizes a character by saying "Worst episode ever!" and "Worst [action] ever!" in reference to the TV critic's article.
# Some of the store and place names around town:
* Gun Shop: BloodBath and Beyond
* Pastry Shop: The French Confection
* Investing service: IPO Friday's
* Museum: Louvre: American Style
* Family Restaurant: Texas Cheesecake Depository
* Soup Kitchen: Helter Shelter
* Seafood Restaurant: The Fryin' Dutchman
* Middle eastern restaurant: Two Guys from Kabul
* Discount Store: Try 'n' Save
* Dog Obedience Schools: Eastside Ruff-Form School, Professor Von Bowser's Sanitarium For Dogs
* Music shop: Suicide Notes and Tommy Toots
* New Age Shop: Karmaceuticals
* Girls school: Saint Sebastian's School for Wicked Girls
* Repo man: Repo Depot
* Outdoor Clothing Store: Malaria Zone
* Gourmet Food store: Eatie Gourmet's
* Toy Store: Valley of the Dolls
* Roach Motel: The Ritz Carlton Hotel for Vagrants
* Comic book store: Androids Dungeon
* Air conditioner store: It Blows
* Boys' Clothing Store: Wee Monsieur
* Law Office: I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm!
* Healthcare Facility- HMO (Hibbert Moneymaking Organization)
* Joke/Novelty Shop: Yuckingham Palace
* Jewelry store: The Family Jewels
* Shop selling casserole dishes: Stoner's Pot Palace
* The eye care center: Eye Carumba
* Donut Shop: Lard Lad Donuts
* Toy Store: J.R.R. Toykins
* Toy store in Chinatown: Toys "L" Us
* Junkyard: Uriah's Heap
* Girls' Clothing Store: Saks Fifth Grade
* Many of the characters are named after major streets in Portland, Oregon, where creator Matt Groening grew up. Examples: Flanders, Lovejoy, Terwilliger, and Kearney
# Three of The Beatles have appeared on the show - George Harrison ("Homer's Barbershop Quartet"), Ringo Starr ("Brush with Greatness") and Paul McCartney ("Lisa the Vegetarian").
# When The Who appeared on "The Simpsons", Pete Townshend was portrayed by his brother Paul Townshend.
# In the episode "The Itchy and Scratchy Movie", Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson are said to have made pseudonymous appearances in a movie. This was a inside jab at the fact that both Jackson and Hoffman had provided voices during the first few seasons of The Simpsons, but neither was credited under his real name.
# Matt Groening has confirmed that Michael Jackson did provide the voice (under the name John Jay Smith) for the character bearing his name in the episode "Stark Raving Dad". He did not do any singing which was done by an impersonator. Dustin Hoffman's appearance was as Mr. Burgstrum from the episode "Lisa's Substitute" where he was credited as Sam Etic.
# Elizabeth Taylor, Mark Hamill, and Joe Mantegna are the only actors to play both themselves and a fictional character on the series.
# The very first Itchy & Sratchy cartoon is called "Steamboat Itchy", a reference to the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie".
# Homer's trademark was the expressive "D'oh!". After a few seasons, that particular word was finally considered valid, accepted and finally appeared in the online version of The Oxford Dictionary. According to Dan Castellaneta, the word means "annoyed grunt" as it was written in the script. He came out with the word "Dooooh..." from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and made it quicker for animation.
# The satirical take on Rio de Janeiro in "Blame It on Lisa", in which the streets of the city are teeming with monkeys, rats, thieving orphans, kidnapping cabbies and oversexed children's show hosts dancing suggestively on Carnival floats, provoked a threatened lawsuit by the Rio board of tourism against the producers of the show. In response, executive producer James L. Brooks released a statement saying "we apologize to the lovely city and people of Rio de Janeiro," but added, "If that doesn't settle the issue, Homer Simpson offers to take on the President of Brazil on Fox Celebrity Boxing." Rio tourism board president Jose Eduardo Guinle proceeded with exploring legal action, but eventually got over it. The show's writers, however, did not. After board spokesman Sergio Cavalcanti told Reuters that Guinle was most offended by "the idea of the monkeys, the image that Rio de Janeiro was a jungle", the writers made a running gag of it. In addition to Homer's reference to "the monkey problem getting worse" in Rio in "The Regina Monologues", Krusty the Clown also reveals in "Mr Spritz Goes to Washington" that immigration officials are constantly hounding him because his monkey sidekick, Mr. Teeny, is from Brazil, adding, "His uncle was the Head Monkey on the Bureau of Tourism."
# In a episode where Maggie is in her crib, Maggie is seen holding a bunny which is the main character in Matt Groening's comic strip, "Life in Hell".
# Celebrities have been known to be so eager to make a guest appearance on The Simpsons that they'll even play themselves in an unflattering light. For instance, Jasper Johns played himself as a kleptomaniac, Gary Coleman played himself as a pathetic has-been, and Tom Arnold played himself as an obnoxious non-talent who gets fired into the sun for being such a bad actor.
# For a short period of time the show was dubbed to Swedish in Sweden, but after receiving mountains of hate mail the network brought back the original show.
# Bart's anonymous prank calls to Moe were inspired by "The Tube Bar Recordings", tapes of actual prank calls to Louis "Red" Deutsch, a New Jersey bartender famous for his violent temper (the pranksters, John Elmo and Jim Davidson, got the idea to prank him one day when, while passing his bar, they saw him beating up one of his customers for not drinking fast enough). Deutsch would unfailingly respond to the prank calls with a stream of cursing, abuse and threats.
# In one episode a letter to Mr. Burns from the Simpsons does not show the state the Simpsons live in, but shows Mr. Burns as living in Springfield, New Jersey.
# In the episode "Lisa the Greek" Lisa, angry at Homer for tricking her into helping him gamble on football, makes a bet that if she loves him the winner of the Super Bowl will be The Washington Redskins and if she doesn't The Buffalo Bills would come out on top (Washington won). Actually when the show premiered just before the Super Bowl those two teams were actually squaring off in Superbowl XXVI and Washington came out on top 37-24. Over the next three years Fox made it a tradition to air the episode just before the Super Bowl and change the dialogue so that the teams would include whatever teams were playing that year. According to the DVD commentary Lisa accurately picked the winning team every single year.
# In the early episodes, Sherri and Terri were the biggest bullies in Bart's class. Currently they serve as background filler, their significance having decreased over time from tormentors to deliverers of small lines to faces in the crowd.
# The barber shop in Springfield is called "Hairy Sheerers" - named for Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer.
# The name of the music store next to Moe's is King Toots.
# Most of the main cast of "Cheers" has appeared on the show. Most notably, Kelsey Grammer as Sideshow Bob. In an episode where Homer was kicked out of Moe's Tavern, he seeks a new bar, and walks into Cheers. This is where the other "Cheers" cast members voice their old characters. However, Grammer's character of Frasier does not speak.
# In the episode "Lisa's Wedding", the full name of the man she is engaged to is Hugh St. John Alastair Parkfield.
# In the episode "A Tale of Two Springfields", Springfield is split into two area codes, 636 and 939. This would put half of Springfield in Missouri and the other half in Puerto Rico.
# Donald Sutherland guest starred in the episode "Lisa the Iconoclast". He also appeared in the 1975 movie "The Day of the Locust", where he played a character named Homer Simpson.
# In the episode "Homer3" (Treehouse of Horror) where Homer enters the third dimension at the back of the bookcase, you can see the numbers and letters 46 72 69 6E 6B 20 72 75 6C 65 73 21 float by. This is actually hexidecimal code for "Frink rules!" (you can check by putting this code in your browser bar (only works in Internet Explorer): 'about:%46%72%69%6E%6B%20%72%75%6C%65%73%21').
# In the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episodes, Mr Burns collapses on a sundial pointing his arms at S and W - which to his eyes look like M and S, identifying the initials of the shooter. This resulted in several characters having their names permanently expanded just for the sake of red herrings: Seymour Skinner's name was revealed as M. Seymour Skinner (it's written on a diploma behind his head in one scene); Moe the Bartender became Moe Szyslak; and Sideshow Mel's name was revealed as Melvin Van Horn, presumably to eliminate him (although it could have still been interpreted as not MS but SM - Sideshow Mel).
# Members of the Springfield Fire Departement are: Otto, Apu, Barney, Chief Wiggum, Krusty, and Mrs. Van Houten.
# The poem that Homer attempts to read in episode "The Way We Was" is the weird poem that Steve Martin recites in both "The Man with Two Brains" and "L.A. Story".
# Matt Groening has stated that his initials appear in any animation of Homer Simpson. When looking at Homer from the side, one can see that the zig-zag of his hair forms an "M", while his ear forms the "G".
# The last episode to feature the voice of the late Phil Hartman was "Bart the Mother" which aired September 27, 1998. In it, he voices Troy McClure in a nature video about birds.
# In the episode "Marge in Chains", Marge is accused of shop lifting and hires Lionel Hutz, played by Phil Hartman, as her attorney. In the middle of the trial, Lionel gets an urge for whisky, so he calls his AA sponsor, David Crosby of Crosby Stills Nash and Young. When Crosby answers the phone he is looking at the CSNY emblem on an album, which Phil Hartman designed himself in the late 1970's.
# In one episode the Simpsons' phone number is given as (939)-555-0113
# In the episode "Lisa's Wedding", during Kent Brockman's news coverage, the list of celebrities who have been arrested:
* The Baldwin Brothers Gang
* Dr. Brad Pitt
* John John John Kennedy
* George Burns
* Infamous Amos Grandson of Sam
* The Artist Formerly Known as ('Prince' 's symbol shown)
* Tim Allen, Jr.
* Senator and Mrs. Dracula
* The Artist Formerly Known as Buddy Hackett
* Madonnabots: Series K
* Sideshow Ralph Wiggum
* Martha Hitler
* Johnny Neutrino
# In episode "Duffless", Lisa says she is laughing at a joke from "Herman's Head". Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa, was one of the stars of "Herman's Head".
# In the episode "Radio Bart" Bruce Springsteen was originally asked to appear instead of Sting.
# In "Uncle Homer's Day Care", if you pause the transition from the school lunch scene to the "Mitten" scene at just the right second, you can see a rough sketch of the shot of Bart drawn in pencil on normal paper.
# In the episode "Behind the Laughter" a scene depicted Homer and the cast looking at an episode they just completed in which the family talk about visiting Delaware. Homer mutters to the director, "This'll be the last season." A few episodes later, the conversation about Delaware was actually worked into the show.
# Penn Jillette & Teller's appearance in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (Episode 11.6) has a rare moment for the duo: Teller, the almost-always silent one, seems to have a speaking part of five lines. But Teller did not provide his own voice for the character based on him in the episode. The voice attributed to Teller was that of a Simpsons cast-member. This has been confirmed by Teller, and several people who have spoken with him, or have watched the film Penn & Teller Get Killed, in which Teller speaks a few lines at the end.
# As in most cartoons, the characters have only four fingers on each hand - except God, who always has five. However, in what is probably a mistake, God has four digits during Homer's dream at the end of "Homer the Heretic".
# The footage of Ren & Stimpy in the episode "Brother from the Same Planet" was not taken from "The Ren & Stimpy Show" - it was created for the episode.
# In the episode "Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes?" retired boxer Joe Frazier and Barney get into a fight. Originally Barney was going to win the fight but Frazier objected so the script was changed so that Barney lost.
# In the episode where Homer hires a private detective to find out more about Lisa, Homer tells the private detective that his email address is chunkylover53@aol.com.
# In the episode, "Bart's Comet", Kent Brockman shows a list of people that are gay. The list goes by very fast and is almost impossible to read. The names on the list are:
* Matt Groening
* Ken Tsumura
* George Meyer
* Joel Kuwahara
* Bill Dakley
* Elizabeth Jacobs
* Josh Weinstein
* Jane O'Brien
* Annette Anderson
* Jennifer Crittenden
* Mike Scully
* Dominique Braud-Stiger
* Greg Daniels
* Joseph A. Boucher
* Al Jean
* Ping Warner
* Mike Reiss
* Craig Feeney
* Richard Raynis
* Don Gilbert
* David Mirkin
* Jacqueline Atkins
* Chris Ledesma
* Mark McJimsey
* David Silverman
# Although it was believed that Dr. Marvin Monroe was killed off in 1995, he reappeared in "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" (FABF05), in which he tells Marge that he has been "very sick".
# Before he opened The Leftorium in the third season, Ned Flanders described his occupation as "the pharmaceutical game".
# The distinctive voice of "Lunchlady Doris", as well as various other characters, belonged to the show's script supervisor Doris Grau. She provided the voice until her death in December 1995.
# According to the Simpsons creators, their most frequently parodied film is "Citizen Kane" followed by the films of Stanley Kubrick, especially "2001: A Space Odyssey", "The Shining", and "A Clockwork Orange".
# The "Yeeeeees!" character is based on a character played by Frank Nelson on "The Jack Benny Program" on radio and television who would make himself known by that distinctive "Yeeeeees!"
# In one episode Bart cheats at a marathon by sneaking into the race at the end disguised as an Italian entrant; in his victory speech he cries out "I use up all of my English!". This is the opening line from Roberto Benigni's Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actor (it was a reference to the fact that he'd already won Best Foreign Language Film earlier in the evening).
# Bender, the robot in "Futurama", made an appearance in the episodes "Future-Drama" (GABF12) "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade" (DABF20) and "Missionary: Impossible" (BABF11) with other Fox Network characters.
# In the episode "The Front", a cartoon writer for the Itchy & Scratchy Show expresses frustration at the show and says he wants to start a sitcom about a sassy robot. Six years later, Matt Groening & Co. made "Futurama"'s main character Bender, a sassy robot.
# Series creator Matt Groening had his name removed in protest from the credits of the episode "A Star Is Burns", in which Jay Sherman from "The Critic" visits Springfield.
# Homer's e-mail address chunkylover53@aol.com, as seen in the episode "The Dad Who Knew Too Little", was registered by writer-producer Matt Selman, who also replied to e-mails from fans testing it.
# "Barting Over" was billed by FOX as the series' 300th episode because it was considered to be the 300th episode produced. However, FOX does not count the Christmas Special pilot towards that total. So technically, it was actually the 301st. FOX was very adamant about airing the "300th" episode on the same day as the Daytona 500 auto race, which is one of the biggest ratings draws of the year for the network, so they pushed the air date back to February 16th. So when the episode finally did air, it was actually the 302nd to do so (Christmas special included), even though FOX was hyping it up as #300. To further add to the confusion, all previous milestone episodes (100th, 138th, 200th, 250th) were based on airing order rather than production order, and with the Christmas special included.
# On the show, Bart's shirt is almost always orange. Yet, on most Simpsons merchandise and memorabilia, Bart's shirt is light blue in color. There are also products featuring Bart in a red shirt, though these seem to be less common.
# In the scripts, Homer's "D'oh" is written as "(ANNOYED GRUNT)", Marge's disapproving murmur is written as "(FRUSTRATED MURMUR)", and Professor Frink's mumblings are written as "(FRINK NOISE)".
# The blue/red discrepancy of Bart's shirt is referenced in one episode. Homer holds out Lisa (who wears a red dress) to tease a bull, then, thinking that he can placate the bull with something blue, he reaches for Bart, only to find him wearing his red shirt. He asks, "Where's your blue shirt?" to which Bart replies that he doesn't have one.
# Ranked #6 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever!" (May 30, 2004 issue).
# Homer Simpson was ranked #1 in TV Guide's list of "TV's 10 Biggest Brats" (March 27, 2005 issue).
# Ranked at #1 in multiple Channel 4 TV polls in the United Kingdom - "The 100 Greatest TV Characters"(2001), "The 100 Greatest Kids TV Shows" (2001) and "The 100 Greatest Cartoons" (2005).
# Springfield is 678 miles from Mexico City and 2,653 miles away from Orlando, Florida. Entertainingly, both cannot be true.
# Homer's character was ranked #35 in TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" (June 20, 2004 issue).
# The official city motto for Springfield is "Corruptus in Extremis".
# The Simpsons have usually had a Betamax VCR, and an 8-Track player in Homer's car.
# Many people objected to the lyrics in the New Orleans song from the episode "A Streetcar Named Marge". In response to this, Bart's lines on the chalkboard the next week read "I will not defame New Orleans."
# Van Halen made a brief appearance during the "Behind the Laughter" episode, in which Willie Nelson states that his plan to get the Simpsons back together also included getting Sammy Hagar to make amends with Van Halen. On March 26, 2004, Van Halen officially announced that Hagar was once again the lead singer for the band.
# In the episode "Bart vs Australia", Lisa and Marge are buying souvenirs from an Australian shop, Lisa asks Marge if she can buy a Didgeridoo to play. In Australian Aboriginal tradition, women are not allowed to play a Didgeridoo.
# End credits to "The Poke of Zorro", (in the episode "E-I-E-I-D'oh"):
* Zorro - John Byner
* Robot Zorro - Shawn Wayans
* Mrs. Zorro - Rita Rudner
* Scarlet Pimpernel - Curtis "Booger" Armstrong
* King Arthur - Cheech Marin
* Man in the Iron Mask - Gina Gershon
* Wise Nun - Posh Spice
* Stupid Nun - Meryl Streep
* Time Traveler #1 - Stone Cold Steve Austin
* Orangutan at Dance - "Puddles"
* Gay-Seeming Prince - Spalding Gray
* Man Beating Mule - Eric Roberts
* Mule Beating Man - "Gus"
* Hiccupping Narrator - Pele
* President Van Buren - Robert Evans
* Corky - Anthony Hopkins
* Voice of Magic Taco - James Earl Jones
* The Producers would like to thank: Film Board of Canada, The Philadelphia Flyers, The Makers of Whip Balm, Mr. Robert Guccione, The Teamsters Pension Fund, AAA, Best Bail Bonds, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis "Booger" Armstrong)
# In "Simpson and Delilah", Homer cures his baldness with an expensive product called Dimoxonil. This is a play on the word monoxodil, a standard ingredient in such real-life baldness cures as Rogaine.
# In the German version, Uter is from Switzerland.
# The telephone number at Moe's Tavern is 764-8437, or SMITHERS. This was revealed in the episode "Homer the Smithers" from season 7 when Mr. Burns tries to call Smithers but does not know his phone number. Naturally, SMITHERS was his only guess.
# In "Treehouse of Horror III", one of the segments, "Dial Z for Zombies" has Bart accidentally read a spell that raises the dead. The magic words he reads are actually the names of various condom brands.
# Homer Simpson was named #5 by Bravo TV's "100 Greatest TV Characters of All Time".
# Matt Groening has stated that since the fifth season in 1994, the episodes' running time have been shortened by two minutes, which he claims could be just enough time for an entire subplot.
# Websites mentioned on the show link to actual websites. These sites are more or less show-related sites that offer fans wallpaper downloads for their computer. The sites include, but are not limited to, www.whatbadgerseat.com, www.dorks-gone-wild.com, and www.sexyslumberparty.com.
# To celebrate the Simpsons' tenth anniversary in 1999, Entertainment Weekly asked Matt Groening to select his ten favorite episodes of the show. His choices were:
* 1. "Bart the Daredevil"(1990)
* 2. "Life on the Fast Lane" (1990)
* 3. "Much Apu About Nothing" (1996)
* 4. "A Streetcar Named Marge" (1992)
* 5. "In Marge We Trust" (1997)
* 6. "Homer's Enemy" (1997)
* 7. "Treehouse of Horror VII" (1996)
* 8. "Natural Born Kissers" (1998)
* 9. "Krusty Gets Busted" (1990)
* 10. "There's No Disgrace Like Home" (1990)
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Groundskeeper Willie: Ach Wendel. Tis a mighty puddle of puke.
Wendell: I'm sorry.
Groundskeeper Willie: That's all right lad. You reminded me of why I got into this work in the first place.
Bart: I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?
Bender: Great, you guy are my new best friends!
Homer: You wish!
[Homer throws Bender out of the car destroying him]
Principal Skinner: [over the intercom] Attention please, I need a volunteer for a thankless chore.
[Lisa raises her hand]
Principal Skinner: Shall I assume the only hand in the air is Lisa Simpson? Thank you, Lisa.
Bart: Mom, am I a butch or a femme?
Marge: [with hand lifted] Honey, you can be anything you want to be.
Bart: [after they watch a foreign film] I was so bored I cut the pony tail off the guy in front of us.
[holds pony tail to his head]
Bart: Look at me, I'm a grad student. I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year.
Marge: Bart, don't make fun of grad students. They've just made a terrible life choice.
Grampa: [banging a slipper against a pot in a state of senility]
[shouts]
Grampa: The Swedish are coming! The Swedish are coming!
[Tom Brady is riding a scooter down the football field]
Tom Brady: [shouts] Everyone sucks but me!
Homer: D'oh!
Homer Simpson: Sometimes, Marge, you just have to go with your gut.
Marge: You *always* go with your gut. How about for once you listen to your brain?
Marge: [the Simpsons are touring Toronto, Canada] So, I see you drive on the left up here.
Tour Guide: No, ma'am. I'm drunk.
Bart: Can I have a beer?
Homer: All right, but not the imported.
Marge: Homer!
Homer: You've got to set limits, Marge.
Grampa: We're the baddest punks in our age bracket!
Mr. Burns: Oh, so mother nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys.
Grampa: [to Homer] Make me proud... or at least less ashamed.
Marge: There's no shame in being a pariah.
Lisa: Dad, what's a Muppet?
Homer: Well, it's not quite a mop, it's not quite a puppet, but man...
[laughs hysterically]
Homer: So to answer your question, I don't know.
Krusty the Clown: This I don't need.
Mr. Burns: I can't be responsible for what my goons are ordered to do.
Marge: [Marge has entered a demolition derby] Don't hit me! I'm not like you people, I'm loved!
[the Simpsons are housesitting at Mr. Burns' mansion. They are eating dinner at Mr. Burns' oversized dinner table]
Marge: This all seems a little elaborate for Sloppy Joes. I know what the other 12 forks are for, but I don't know what to do with this one.
Homer: Why Marge my dear, I believe you are supposed to scratch your ass with it.
Marge: Homer!
[scratches rear with fork]
Marge: Ooh...
Robot 1: Hey, these cards are mine.
[table falls]
Robot 2: Now look what you've done.
Robot 1: I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me.
Robot 3: Let's forget this whole thing happened.
Homer: What the heck is this, a tea party? Somebody kill somebody.
[Homer smashes a bottle on a robot's head. The robots begin to shoot Homer, who dives under a table]
Marge: What is it with you and robots?
Homer: I don't need your pity or your money.
[pockets money]
Ron Howard: Usually when you say that, you give the money back.
Bart: Leonard Nimoy? What are you doing here?
Leonard Nimoy: Wherever there is mystery and the unexplained, cosmic forces shall draw me near.
Bart: [flippantly] Uh-huh.
Hot Dog Vendor: Hey Spock, what do you want on your hot dog?
Leonard Nimoy: Surprise me.
[TV executives want Homer for a TV ad about bald and impotent men]
Homer: Well, I am bald and important!
Mr. Burns: Thank you, come again. Smithers, release the hounds.
Apu: [two bullies walk out with store merchadise] Thank you steal again.
Apu: Yeah I finked on Homer but he deserved it. Never have I seen such abuse of the "Take A Penny, Leave A Penny" Tray.
Cletus: He really speaks to me, the average Joe six-tooth.
Cletus's Wife: When did you get another tooth?
Cletus: The sidewalk.
Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.
[Burns learns about the stock market crash of 1929]
Mr. Burns: Oh no. Smithers, why didn't you tell me about this market crash?
Smithers: Well, sir, it happened 25 years before I was born.
Mr. Burns: Oh, that's your excuse for everything.
Homer: I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode. I think it was called, "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down."
Homer: God is teasing me. Just like he teased Moses in the desert.
Marge: *Tested,* Homer. God *tested* Moses.
Moe: Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.
Moe: I've been planning this vacation for years. I'm finally going to see Easter Island.
Homer: Oh, right, with the giant heads.
Moe: With the what now?
Reverend Lovejoy: This so-called new religion is nothing but a pack of weird rituals and chants, designed to take away the money of fools. Now let's say the Lord's Prayer 40 times, but first, let's pass the collection plate.
Kang: Holy fleurking schnit!
[Bart's looking for his dog]
Willy: Yeah, I bought your mutt - and I 'ate 'im.
[Bart gasps]
Willy: I 'ate 'is little face, I 'ate 'is guts, and I 'ate the way 'e's always barkin'. So I gave 'im to the church.
Bart: Ohhh, I see... you HATE him, so you gave him to the church.
Willy: Aye. I also 'ate the mess he left on me rug.
[Bart stares]
Willy: Ya heard me.
[Bart doing a newscast on a kids news show]
Bart: Joe Banks, 82 years young, has come to this pond everyday for the past 17 years to feed the ducks. But last month Joe made a discovery: the ducks were gone. Some say the ducks went to Canada, others say Toronto. And some people think Joe used to sit down there near those ducks. But it could be that there's just no room, in this modern world, for an old man and his ducks.
Rainer Wolfcastle: [singing] Mein bratwurst has a first name, it's F-R-I-T-Z / Mein bratwurst has a second name, it's S-C-H-N-A-C-K-E-N-P-F-E-F-F-E-R-H-A-U-S-E-N.
Rupert Murdoch: What the bloody hell?
Marge: Bart, would you like to say grace?
Bart: Yesum!
[Bart says grace in Latin]
Homer: What the hell was that?
Lisa: Bart's speaking Latin, the language of Plutarc.
Homer: [Homer looks blankly] Micky Mouse's dog?
Homer: Me hungry.
[the Simpsons are on a wagon train in the Old West]
Homer: [singing] Cleaning my gun with the safety off, safety off, safety off, cleaning my gun with the...
[gun goes off, killing a buffalo]
Lisa: Dad, you just killed a poor, defenseless buffalo!
Homer: A poor, *delicious* buffalo. He'll be enough food for the whole wagon train.
[shoots another buffalo]
Lisa: Why did you shoot that one?
Homer: Dessert.
Homer Simpson: Huh? What's wrong? House ran away? Dog on fire?
Kent Brockman: The phony pope can be identified by his high top sneakers, and incredibly foul mouth.
Homer: [while watching a meteor shower] I wish God were alive to see this.
Homer: [Bart has offended Lisa, and he's surprised she's visibly angry at him after saying that nothing is wrong between them] Son, when a woman says nothing's wrong, it means everything's wrong. When a woman says everything's wrong, it means everything's wrong. And when a woman says that something *isn't* funny, you'd better not laugh your ass off!
[Ned has the ability to foresee one's death]
Ned Flanders: Homer, you will die eating a submarine sandwich.
Homer: What kind of bread is it?
Ned Flanders: Country parmesan.
Homer: Woo-hoo!
Moe: Yeah, you said it, Barn.
Moe: Homer's right! We're gettin' the Joan Collins special!
Kent Brockman: [talking about the people of "New Springfield" when a new area code divides the town] They use low-class expressions like "Oh, yeah!" and "Come here a minute."
Homer Simpson: [watching the TV with Bart] Oh, yeah, they think we're low class. Hey, Bart, come here a minute.
Bart: You come here a minute.
Homer Simpson: Oh, yeah...
Moe: Enough chit-chat, let's see how you like flaming trash!
Elf: Welcome to Santa's Village, where it's Christmas everyday! Closed on Christmas.
Chief Wiggum: What IS your fascination with my forbidden closet of mysteries?
Homer: So I says, blue M&M, red M&M, they all wind up the same color in the end.
Chief Wiggum: See ya in court, Simpson. Oh, and bring that evidence with ya; otherwise, I got no case and you'll go scot-free.
Dr. Hibbert: We don't believe fur is murder, but paying for it sure is.
Bart: Dad, I think I need some fresh air. Can I go to the park?
Homer: Do I have to sit up?
Bart: No.
Homer: Knock yourself out.
Apu: Silly customer, you cannot hurt a Twinkie.
Comic Book Guy: Last night's "Itchy & Scratchy" was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world. Homer: Hey boy. Wanna play catch?
Bart: No thanks dad.
Homer: When a son doesn't want to play catch with his father something is definitely wrong.
Grampa: I'll play catch with you.
Homer: Go home. Marge: Lisa, normally, I would say that you should stand up for what you believe in, but you've been doing that an awful lot lately...
Bart: Yeah, you made us march in that gay rights parade.
Homer: And we cant watch Fox because they own those chemical weapons plants in Syria. Homer: Homer no function beer well without. Homer: Kids, just because I don't care doesn't mean I'm not listening. Homer: Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you? Moe: [after beating up a Homer dummy] Who's the sociopath, now? Homer: But every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old. Remember that time I took a home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?
Marge: That's because you were drunk.
Homer: And how! Homer: What's the point of going out? We're just going to wind up back here anyway. [a rock flies through Mr. Burns' office window]
Mr. Burns: Look Smithers, a bird has become petrified and lost its sense of direction. [while watching a faculty talent show]
Bart: I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks *and* blows. Maude Flanders: They were having S-E-X in front of C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N.
Krusty the Clown: Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down. [Ralph is lying in bed]
Ralph: Daddy, these rubber pants are hot.
Chief Wiggum: You'll wear 'em till you learn, son. Homer: Password.
Bart: We just want to get a snack from the fridge.
Homer: Access denied!
Bart, Lisa: But Da...
[Homer uses a sleeper hold on Bart and Lisa knocking them out]
Marge: Homer! I don't want you using your new sleeper hold on the children!
Homer: They be OK in half an hour.
Marge: And another thing, I asked you to take out the garbage three days agos and it's still... ngghhh.
[Homer uses his sleeper hold on Marge]
Homer: [Homer looks at his watch] Hmm, dinner is not for another half hour. Gahhh!
[Homer uses his sleeper hold on himself and bangs his head on the dinner table while falling to the floor] Milhouse: [singing] When a man loves a woman...
Lenny: Which one are you? The man or the woman?
Carl: Nice one, dude. [Bart wants to learn about sex]
Homer: I think he should learn about it the way I did.
[Flashback of Homer as a child, he is at a zoo watching monkeys]
Homer: Zookeeper!
[points to monkeys]
Homer: Those two monkeys are killing each other!
Zookeeper: [whispers in Homer's ear] They're having sex.
Homer: Oh... Homer: Wow. Sprawl-Mart has everything, even videos of talking Christian vegetables.
Vegetable Moses: [zooms in on TV] We will not build your food pyramid. Let my pickles go! Bart: Ay, carumba! Homer Simpson: Books are useless! I only ever read one book, "To Kill A Mockingbird" and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the colour of his skin... but what good does *that* do me? [in a comic book store]
Milhouse: I need a mask to hide my face. What have you got for five dollars?
Comic Book Guy: For a paltry five dollars all I can offer you is a mask from the discount bin. You have your choice of Richard Nixon or Bart Simpson.
Milhouse: Why do you have masks of Bart?
Comic Book Guy: One came free with every box of Bart Simpson action figures.
Milhouse: Why does Bart have his own action figures?
Comic Book Guy: They were a marketing tie-in with the comic book.
Milhouse: Why does Bart have a comic book?
Comic Book Guy: Your questions have become more redundant and annoying then the last three "Highlander" movies. Marge: C'mon, Homer, Japan will be fun. You like Rashoman.
Homer: That's not how I remember it. Besides, if we wanted to see Japanese people we could have gone to the zoo.
Marge: Homer.
Homer: What? The guy who washes the elephants is Japanese. His name is Takashi. He's in my book club. [Comic Book visits a dating service and grabs all the one-nighter presentation videotapes]
Clerk: Are you going to call all those women?
Comic Book Guy: No, the tapes will do just fine. Bart: Here Homer I got you this book "Chicken Soup for the Loser".
Homer: Hmmm is it any good?
Bart: I don't know but it inspired Bill Buckner to open a chain of Laundromats. Agnes Skinner: You failed, Seymour. What is it with you and failure? [Kodos and Kang appear at The Simpsons' door]
Homer: Oh no, Mormons!
Kang: Actually, we're Quantum Presbyterians. Homer: Two hours? Why'd they build this ghost town so far away?
Lisa: Because they discovered gold right over there.
Homer: It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything. Guide: Founded by prostitutes in 1849, and serviced by prostitute express riders who could bring in a fresh prostitute from Saint Joe in three days, Bloodbath Gulch quickly became known as a place where a trailhand could spend a month's pay in three minutes.
Homer: Three minutes.
[whistles]
Marge: I never realized history was so filthy. Homer: Look, all I'm saying is, if these big stars didn't want people going through their garbage and saying they're gay, then they shouldn't have tried to express themselves creatively. Chief Wiggum: They only come out in the night. Or in this case, the day. [Homer is using butter as a pencil holder]
Marge: Is that my butter?
Homer: Can't talk - taking another delicious memo.
[Licks tip of pencil as if about to write]
Homer: Mmmmm... memo. Moe: They think they're so high and mighty, just because they never got caught driving without pants. Lisa: Dad, just for once don't you want to try something new?
Homer: Oh Lisa, trying is just the first step toward failure. [Homer tries to gain passage on an escape rocket]
Homer: I am the piano genius from the movie "Shine".
Guard: And your name is...?
Homer: Uhh... Shiney McShine. [Why he prefers the original "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."]
Homer: At least that Jimmy Stewart version had that giant rabbit who ran the Savings & Loan. Newspaper editor: We're looking for a new food critic, someone who doesn't immediately pooh-pooh everything he eats.
Homer: Nah, it usually takes a few hours. Marge: Only your father could take a part-time job at a small town paper and wind up the target of international assassins. Mr. Burns: Next. Mr. Burns: Smithers, you could learn a thing or two from this braying moron. Chief Wiggum: We'll track down Simpson with your vehicles anti-theft system.
Car System: Car gone Car gone!
Chief Wiggum: Yeah, we know that. Where has it gone to?
Car System: Car gone! Car gone! Car gone! Homer: Must kill Moe Wee! Must Kill Moe Wee! Apu: Here at the Kwik-E-Mart we believe in America. Please do not beat me up anymore. [Kang and Kodos are cooking the Simpsons]
Bart: Am I the only one in horrible pain?
Homer: You're the only one who won't shut up about it. Professor Frink: Let the commencing beginulate! Homer: *Finally*... Science has joined forces with Revenge. TV Announcer: [At the end of a commercial for a combination hair restorer/penis enlarger] Possible side effects include loss of scalp and penis. Lisa: It seems every week the Simpsons go through a situation like this. My suggestion is to just ride it out, make the occasional smart-aleck quip, and next week, we'll return right to where we were, ready for another wacky adventure.
Bart: Aye carumba.
Lisa: That's the spirit. Mel Gibson: John Travolta flew me over in his jet. Now I have to help him move next weekend. He deliberately waited until we were in the air to ask me. [in the car on the way to Florida]
Lisa: Mom, Bart's sitting next to me.
Bart: Mom, Lisa's growing.
Marge: Quiet, you two. You know your father's just had a breakdown.
Homer: My pockets hurt. Homer: Oh, they have the Internet on computers now. Lisa: I'm so glad you're home. Bart's acting funny.
Homer: "Ray J" funny or "O.J." funny? Homer: Son, I just want you to know I have total faith in you.
Bart: Since when?
Homer: Since your mother yelled at me. Rev. Lovejoy: I remember another gentle visitor from the heavens. Who came to earth... and then died... only to be brought back to life again. And his name was: E.T., the extra-terrestrial. I love that little guy. Lionel Hutz: And as for your case, don't you worry. I've argued in front of every judge in the state. Often as a lawyer. Bart: Aren't we forgeting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa. [observing the farm's green glow after Homer put toxic chemicals on it]
Marge: It's eerily beautiful. Are you sure it's safe?
Homer: You know what they say - sometimes you have to break the rules to free your heart.
Marge: You got that from a movie poster.
Homer: Well, when there's nothing left to believe in, believe in hope.
Marge: Where'd you get that from?
Homer: From the producers of "Waiting To Exhale". Homer: It's like David and Goliath, only this time David won.
[Lisa sighs]
Lisa's Brain: I know, I heard it too. Here's some music.
[Piano music plays quietly. Lisa smiles contentedly] Homer: Just because I don't know doesn't mean I don't understand. Kent Brockman: Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the Army, but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory. Kent Brockman: Springfield has come down with a fever: football fever. If you have the fever, there's only one cure. Take 2 tickets, and see the game Sunday morning.
Public Service Announcer: Warning. Tickets should NOT be taken internally.
Homer: See? Because of me, now they have a warning. [Writing a food review]
Homer: The bread was... the bread was...
Santa's Little Helper: Ruff.
Homer: You've been pitching that one all night.
Santa's Little Helper: Chewy? [Homer and Bart are being taunted for riding in an electric car]
Gay Robots: One of us. One of us. One of us. Homer: Please don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them. Homer: Well, I hope you've learnt your lesson, Lisa: never help anyone. Homer: You mean you gave away both your dogs? You know how I feel about giving. Bart: Man, I'm so bored.
Milhouse: Wait until we're teenagers, then we'll be happy. Homer: If it doesn't have Siamese twins in a jar, it's not a fair. Homer: These candidates make me want to vomit in terror. Ned Flanders: A rude Frenchman. Why I never. Homer: Boy, everyone is stupid except me. Homer: [to Bart] I always knew you had personality. The doctor said it was hyperactivity, but I knew better. Mr. Burns: Smithers, release the robotic Richard Simmons. PBS Pledge Drive Host: It's easy to see why it's England's most long-running series - and we're showing all of them, all 7 episodes. Lisa: Mom. Dad's on PBS.
Marge: Mm? They don't show police chases, do they? Homer: People will think what I tell them to think when you tell me what to tell them to think. [Marge is working at a real estate firm]
Lionel Hutz: I've been getting a lot of calls about you, Marge. People just love your no-pressure approach.
Marge: Well, you know what we say: the right house for the right person.
Lionel Hutz: I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The right house is the house that's for sale. And the right person is anyone. Mr. Burns: So, Smithers, what are you doing this weekend. Something gay, I expect?
Smithers: What?
Mr. Burns: You know, light and fancy free. Mothers, lock up your daughters. Smithers is on the town.
Smithers: Oh. Of course. Principal Skinner: There's no justice like angry-mob justice. Marge: Aren't you going to perform the last rites?
Rev. Lovejoy: That's Catholic, Marge. You might as well ask me to perform a voodoo dance. [Lisa sees a sign for a "Yahoo Serious Festival"]
Lisa: I know those words, but that sign doesn't make sense. Bart Simpson: I want to be emancipated!
Homer Simpson: Emancipated? Why do you want that? Don't you like being a dude? Lisa: Dad, I still don't understand how you could just give my room away?
Homer: Honey, what's your favorite movie?
Lisa: Well, until you taped over it, "The Little Mermaid".
Homer: That's right. "The Odd Couple". Meet your new, mismatched roommate- Bart.
Bart: I'm going to make your life a living hell.
Lisa: Ohh...
[Homer hums "Odd Couple" theme, shoves Lisa into the room and runs away] Lisa: Thank you, Mr. President.
Bill Clinton: No, thank you, Lisa. For teaching kids everywhere a valuable lesson: If things don't go your way, just keep complaining until your dreams come true.
Marge: That's a pretty lousy lesson.
Bill Clinton: Hey, I'm a pretty lousy president. Mayor Quimby: Oh, dear God. Can't this town go one day without a riot? [Homer uncovers a scheme to supply low-grade milk to the school]
Homer: They're milking rats. Rats.
Mayor Quimby: [to Fat Tony] Rats? You promised me dog or higher. [about to watch dinner theater]
Ned Flanders: Dear Lord, please let tonight's production be better than Othello starring Peter Marshall. Homer: Once you go to the Vatican, you can't go back again! [Homer is missing work, and puts a manatee in charge]
Smithers: I believe that's a manatee posing as Homer Simpson, sir. Homer: I think I saw him in Rent, or Stomp, or Clomp, or some piece of crap like that. Homer: If he's so smart, how come he's dead? Newspaper Tour Guide: And each paper contains a certain percentage of recycled paper.
Lisa: What percentage is that?
Newspaper Tour Guide: Zero. Zero is a percent, isn't it? Marge: You love Shake n' Bake. You used to put it in your coffee. Lucy Lawless: I'll take you home.
[Lucy flies, carrying Bart and Lisa]
Lisa: Hey, Xena can't fly.
Lucy Lawless: I told you, I'm not Xena. I'm Lucy Lawless. Homer: We can outsmart those dolphins. Don't forget - we invented computers, leg warmers, bendy straws, peel-and-eat shrimp, the glory hole, AND the pudding cup. [after the angel hoax is exposed]
Homer: What the hell are we going to do with 10,000 angel ashtrays?
Bart: I could take up smoking.
Homer: You damn well better. [Pulling broccoli from Homer's corpse]
Dr. Hibbert: Another broccoli-related death.
Marge: But I thought broccoli was...
Dr. Hibbert: Oh yes. One of the deadliest plants on earth. It tries to warn you itself with its terrible taste. Homer's ghost: Marge you gotta help me, I have to do one good deed to get into heaven.
Marge: Well I got a whole list of chores: clean the garage, paint the house...
Homer's ghost: Whoa whoa whoa. I'm just trying to get in, I'm not running for Jesus. Homer: I want to set the record straight: I thought the cop was a prostitute. Marge: [sings] How many roads must a man walk down / Before you can call him a man...
Homer: Seven.
Lisa: No, dad, it's a rhetorical question.
Homer: OK, eight.
Lisa: Dad, do you even know what "rhetorical" means?
Homer: Do *I* know what "rhetorical" means? Mr. Burns: If the house catches fire, call this number.
Marge: Uh-huh. The fire department.
Mr. Burns: Yes. They're new. But they're good. Ned Flanders: Homer, I think you hit something.
Homer: I hope it was Flanders. Lionel Hutz: Well, I didn't win. Here's your pizza.
Marge: But we did win.
Lionel Hutz: That's okay. The box is empty. [Showing Simpsons "outtakes."]
Troy McClure: If that's what they cut out, what they leave in must be pure gold. Maude Flanders: Neddy, I've had just about all I can take of Homer Simpson's torso. I'll go get some hot dogs.
Ned Flanders: No foot-longs.
Maude Flanders: I know, they make you uncomfortable. [Moe is describing a plan to Homer]
Moe: Okay Homer, this olive is you...
Homer: Mmm... me... Homer: Marge, can I go out and play? Homer: Well crying isn't going to help. Now, you can sit there feeling sorry for yourself or you can eat can after can of dog food until your tears smell enough like dog food until your dog comes back, or you can go out there and find your dog.
Bart: You're right.
[Gets up and leaves]
Homer: Rats. I almost had him eating dog food. Homer: [to Lisa] You stupid know-nothing know-it-all. Homer: [Comforting] There, there. Shut up boy. Lisa: Where's that music coming from?
Marge: And all the liquor?
Homer: It's a party, Marge. It doesn't have to make sense. [Fanzo threw a Barbie in the fire and strangled a Krusty toy]
Bart: Why is it destroying other toys?
Lisa: It must be programmed to do so to eliminate competition.
Bart: You mean like Microsoft?
Lisa: Yeah. [while trying to get a convict's parole granted]
Jack: I shot a guy named Apu.
Marge: Hmmm... Well a lot of people shoot Apu. Ralph: Your toys are fun to touch. Mine are all sticky. Krustyburger manager: We need more secret sauce. Put this mayonnaise in the sun. Chief Wiggum: Oh, sure. We'd all love some *real* friends, Marge. But what are the odds of that happening? Ralph: That's where I saw the leprechaun. He told me to burn things. Barney: David Crosby? You're my hero.
David Crosby: Oh, you like my music?
Barney: You're a musician? [playing a religious board game]
Lisa: Where are the dice?
Todd Flanders: Daddy says dice are wicked.
Rod Flanders: We just move one space at a time. It's less fun that way. Homer: There's your giraffe, little girl.
Ralph: I'm a boy.
Homer: That's the spirit. Never give up. State Comptroller Atkins: This grant ensures a light bulb in every classroom, and a high-definition TV for the teachers lounge. Bill Clinton: I know you don't think you're good enough for me, but believe me, you are. Hell, I done it with pigs. Real, no-foolin' pigs. Judge Snyder: The clown is down. Mr. George Willson: Simpson, you?re a menace!
Mrs. Martha Wilson: Leave him alone George.
Mr. George Willson: Martha, I want a divorce.
Mrs. Martha Wilson: Oh thank you, you've made me so happy. Waylon Smithers: [with a very attractive woman] Sir, you knew I was on a date.
Bart: Mr. Smithers? But I thought you were... you know...
Waylon Smithers: Oh no, I'm straight. As long as I keep taking these shots!
[injects shot into arm]
Waylon Smithers: I love boobies! Psychiatrist: Is there a lot of screaming at your house?
Bart: Well, my dad's always yelling about the white man keeping him down. Homer: Gee, Mr. Burns, you're the richest guy I know; way richer than Lenny.
Mr. Burns: Yes, but I'd trade it all for a little more. Homer: What are you kids doing?
Lisa, Bart: Practicing tennis
Homer: That's tennis? Then what's that sport where the chicks whale on each other?
Bart: Foxy Boxing?
Homer: [disappointedly] Yes. That's what I wanted. Oh.
[Homer cries] Kent Brockman: We win again. But the real winners here are Marge's Hors D'Oeuvres.
Homer: How do you come up with such witty remarks?
[focuses in on ear plug/mic]
Guy in the van: I guess you could say its my racket.
Kent Brockman: I guess you could say I'm Iraqi.
Homer: Get off my property. [about the hurricane]
Homer: All right everyone, it's the standard Grampa drill... everyone into the cellar. Ned Flanders: You ugly hate-filled man.
Moe: Hey. I may be ugly and I may be hate-filled but... uh... what was that last thing you said? Dr. Foster: You are free to roam around the grounds but do be warned one of our patients *is* a cannibal. Try to guess which one... I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Homer: Lisa, I want you to remember me just as I am right now, filled with murderous rage. Homer: Never fear. The cosmic fool is here. Lisa: Miss Tan, I loved The Joy Luck Club. You really showed me how the mother-daughter bond could survive adversity.
Amy Tan: No, no, that's not what I meant at all. I can't believe how wrong you got it. Just sit down, I'm embarrassed for both of us. Mr. Burns: Mr. Simpson, you're smarter than you look, or sound, or our best testing indicates. Superintendent Chalmers: Seymour, why are there children walking on my head? Marge: Church should help you with your everyday life.
Homer: It should, but it doesn't. Now who wants to go down to the dump with me? Doug: In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Homer: I'll field that one. Let me ask *you* a question. Why would a grown man whose shirt says "Genius at Work" spend all of his time watching a children's cartoon show?
[embarrassed pause]
Doug: I withdraw my question.
[starts eating a candy bar] Sideshow Bob: Rakes, my arch enemy.
Bart: I thought I was your arch enemy.
Sideshow Bob: I have a life outside you, Bart. Comic Book Guy: Ack. There is no "emoticon" to express what I am feeling right now. Comic Book Guy: Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix. [Bart has just described the island paradise he envisages]
Nelson: How many monkey butlers will there be?
Bart: One at first. But he'll train others. Marge: Homer, why aren't you at work? You're late.
Homer: They said if I came in late again that I would get fired, and I can't risk that, so I'm not going. Homer: Biatch? Me? [after Poochie the dog debuts on the Itchy and Scratchy show to a lukewarm response]
Homer: I liked it... right?
Homer's Brain: You don't wanna know what I think... Now look sad and say "D'oh!...?
Homer: D'oh!... Marge: Everybody's afraid of something.
Homer: [smugly] Not everybody.
Marge: Sock puppets.
Homer: [shrieks in terror] Where? Where? African tour guide: Night, night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs paralyze. Bart: Eat my shorts. Bart: Don't have a cow, man. [Professor Frink has just re-animated his dead father using mechanical organs]
Professor Frink: All your organs have been replaced with machines, but that doesn't make you any less of a man. Except that you don't have a penis. Bart: Hey wait a minute, man. You don't have to leave just because Superintendent Chalmers tells you to. You've spent your whole life following orders. From your mother, the army, Superintendent Chalmers. For once in your life, stand up for yourself, man.
Principal Skinner: Okay, Bart.
Mrs. Krabappel: Let's go, Seymour.
Principal Skinner: Okay, Edna. Homer: When was the last time Barbara Streisand cleaned out your garage? And when it's time to do your laundry, where's Ray Bolger? I'll tell ya. Ray Bolger is looking out for Ray Bolger. Marge: And our kids are getting lazy.
Bart: I'm not lazy, I'm... hey, Lisa, finish my sentence for me.
Lisa: Why don't you finish your own darn...
[falls asleep, falls off couch] Homer: How was everyone's day at school?
Bart: Horrible.
Lisa: Pointless.
Marge: Exhausting. It took the class 40 minutes to locate Canada on a map.
Homer: Oh, honey, anyone could miss Canada. All tucked way down there. Homer: Oh, everything looks bad if you remember it. Doctor: Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything.
Mr. Burns: You mean I have pneumonia?
Doctor: Yes.
Mr. Burns: Juvenile diabetes?
Doctor: Yes.
Mr. Burns: Hysterical pregnancy?
Doctor: Uh, a little bit, yes. You also have several diseases that have just been discovered - in you.
Mr. Burns: I see. You sure you haven't just made thousands of mistakes?
Doctor: Uh, no, no, I'm afraid not.
Mr. Burns: This sounds like bad news.
Doctor: Well, you'd think so, but all of your diseases are in perfect balance. Uh, if you have a moment, I can explain.
Mr. Burns: Well...
[looks at his watch]
Mr. Burns: [the Doctor puts a tiny model house door on his desk]
Doctor: Here's the door to your body, see?
[bring up some small fuzz balls with goofy faces and limbs from under the desk]
Doctor: And these are oversized novelty germs.
[points to a different one up as he names each disease]
Doctor: That's influenza, that's bronchitis,
[holds up one]
Doctor: and this cute little cuddle-bug is pancreatic cancer. Here's what happens when they all try to get through the door at once.
[tries to cram a bunch through the model door. The "germs" get stuck]
Doctor: [Stooge-like] Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo. Move it, chowderhead.
[normal voice]
Doctor: We call it, "Three Stooges Syndrome".
Mr. Burns: So what you're saying is, I'm indestructible.
Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even slight breeze could...
Mr. Burns: Indestructible. Homer: I see the light... it burns! Bono: [after Homer invades U2's Pop-Mart concert] Wait, people. He's talking about waste management, that affects the whole damn planet!
The Edge: Awww, here he goes! Anyone fancy going to Moe's for a pint?
Adam Clayton: Can I come?
The Edge: [looks at Larry Mullen Jnr] No!
Adam Clayton: [whispers] Wankers!
[Edge and Larry turn around, and Adam pretends to be tuning his bass guitar] Ned Flanders: That is one bitching ride.
Rod Flanders: Daddy said a bad word!
Ned Flanders: Oh, lighten up, Roddy. Lisa: The student strike will continue until you restore music and art.
Principal Skinner: What about gym?
Lisa: [dismissive] Eh. Ralph: Lisa's a sellout! Lisa's a sellout! Hey, Lisa. What's a sellout? Homer: I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretzky and the Pope combined. Mrs. Krabappel: As you know, Bart, one day your permanent record will disqualify you from all but the hottest and noisiest jobs. Homer: That guy impressed me and I am not easily impressed. Wow. A *blue car*. Homer: It's everybody's fault but mine. Sideshow Bob: [hypnotizing Bart] You are in my power.
Bart: [in a hypnotic voice] I am at your command.
Sideshow Bob: I didn't say anything about command. If you are in my power, say so.
Bart: I am in your power.
Sideshow Bob: That's better. No, go back to command. I like that better. Marge: I thought you said the law was powerless.
Chief Wiggum: Powerless to *help* you, not punish you. Homer: I know! If I sink to the bottom, I can run to shore. Homer: I'm like that guy who single-handedly built the rocket and flew to the moon. What was his name? Apollo Creed? [after Apu's wife Manjula gives birth to Octuplets. Apu has been awake all night trying to put them all to sleep, and has fallen asleep himself]
Manjula: [Waking Apu up] Apu, it's 4:00 am, your late for work.
Apu: [Wakes Up] Oh, I just had the most beautiful dream where I died.
Manjula: Oh, no you don't. Not 'til they're out of college.
Apu: Listen, I'll die when I want to. [Before performing his back treatment]
Homer: One, two, better not sue. Homer: Lenny and Carl suck. Oh, don't tell them I said that Marge, because I don't want to lose their dear friendship. Barney: I think we'd be all better off if each country had its own planet. Marge: Homer, is this how you pictured married life?
Homer: Yeah, pretty much, except we drove around in a van solving mysteries. Homer: There's a $10,000 bill in it for you.
Barney: Oh yeah? Which president is on it?
Homer: Um, all of them. They are having a party. Jimmy Carter is passed out on the couch. [Kang and Kodos have taken the form of Bob Dole and Bill Clinton]
Kodos: I am Clin-Ton. As overlord, all will kneel trembling before me and obey my brutal commands. End communication.
Marge: That's Slick Willy for you, always with the smooth talk. Kent Brockman: Senator Dole, why should people vote for you?
Kang: It does not matter which way you vote. Either way your planet is doomed. Doomed. Doomed.
Kent Brockman: Well, a refreshing bit of candor from Senator Bob Dole. Professor Ludwig: Ms. Simpson, do you think there is something funny about the term tromboner? [in the Michael Crichton & Stephen King Bookstore]
Hans Moleman: Do you have anything by Robert Ludlum?
Storekeeper: Get out. Snake: [busts open a loaded cash register] Oh... Good-bye student loan payments. Ned Flanders: How do you do it, Homer? How do you silence that little voice that says "Think"?
Homer: You mean Lisa? Homer: The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication. Homer: Ohhh, stupid movies. Who invented these dumb things, anyway?
[menacingly]
Homer: Was it you, Bart? Homer: You can't outsmart carnival folk. They're the cleverest folk in the world. Just look at the way they sucker regular folk with their crooked games. Grampa: Son, you're as stupid as a mule and twice as ugly. So if a stranger offers you a ride, I'd say take it. Ned Flanders: The Lord has drowned the wicked and spared the righteous.
Maude Flanders: Isn't that Homer Simpson?
Ned Flanders: Huh, looks like Heaven is easier to get into than Arizona State. Bart: Dad, is this art or is it vandalism?
Homer: That's for the courts to decide. Krusty the Clown: You, sir, are an idiot. Apu: [singing] Oh give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above
Bart, Lisa, Ralph: [singing] Don't fence me in.
Apu: [singing] Sir you cannot pee unless you are an employee.
Homer Simpson: [singing] Can't keep it in.
[Homer kicks in the bathroom door and uses the facilities] Homer: Is this episode going on the air live ?
June Velany: No Homer, very few cartoons are broadcast live. It's a terrible strain on the animator's wrist. Homer: "To start, press any key." Where's the "Any" key? Marge: This is the worst thing you've ever done.
Homer: You say that so often that it's lost *all* meaning. Lenny: There's nothing like revenge for getting back at people.
Carl: Vengeance isn't too bad either Moe: Who'd have thought a whale would be so heavy? Ralph: Hi, Principal Skinner! Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers! I'm learneding! Homer: Oh Bart, don't worry, people die all the time. In fact, you could wake up dead tomorrow. [reading a sign, "Do Not Touch - Willy"]
Homer: Do not touch Willy. Good advice. Bart: I smell a museum.
Homer: Yeah, good things don't end with 'eum,' they end with 'mania' or 'teria.' Troy McClure: Welcome to the Knowledgeum, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such automated information kiosks as "Welcome to Springfield Airport" and "Where's Nordstrom?" While you're enjoying our Hall of Wonders, your car unfortunately will be subject to repeated break-ins and...
[Fades]
Homer: What'd he say? What about my car? Duff book of records: Springfield is now the fattest city in the U.S.
Homer: Woo Hoo. In your face Milwaukee. Marge: Homer, we can't take his money.
Homer: Aww, I can't take his money, I can't print my own money, I have to work for my money. Why don't I just lay down and die. Homer: Is there anything you can prescribe, Doctor?
Dr. Hibbert: Fire, and lots of it.
Marge: Oh, that's your cure for everything. Homer: I'm back...
Marge: Did you rent "Waiting to Exhale"?
Homer: [sadly] No... they put me on the "Waiting to Exhale" waiting list, but told me not to hold my breath. Chief Wiggum: Do it for this adorable little puppy. Look at the puppy, Marge.
Marge: That's your hat.
Lou: She's good, chief. [a gay pride parade is marching past the Simpson home]
Gay men: We're here. We're queer. Get used to it.
Lisa: We are used to it. You do this every year.
Gay man: Aww, you take all the fun out of it. Homer: But I can't leave the country. What about my wife and kids?
Smithers: That can be shipped. Principal Skinner: Order, order. Do you kids wanna be like the real UN or do you just wanna squabble and waste time? Ralph: The doctor said I wouldn't have so many nose bleeds if I kept my finger outta there. Homer: Save me Jeebus. Cartoonist: Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?
[backpedaling]
Cartoonist: Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that.
[pause]
Cartoonist: I'm fired, aren't I? Kent Brockman: The Who will be playing tonight at Springfield's historic Yahoo Search Engine Arena. Mr. Burns: Whoa, slow down there maestro. There's a NEW Mexico? Restaurant Owner: C'Mon. You gonna kill him with a pastry? I've seen this man eat a bowl of change. Homer: [drunk] See, the thing about my family is there are five of 'em: Marge, Bart, girl Bart, the one that doesn't talk, and the fat guy. Oh, how I loathe him. [the Simpsons are buying tickets to a PG-13 movie]
Lisa: Mom, why is this movie rated PG-13?
Marge: [reading pamphlet] It says it may contain brief rudeness, adult explosions, and scenes with Garry Shandling.
[Bart and Lisa shudder] Chief Wiggum: Slink away boys, slink away. Mel Gibson: I'm too old for this.
Homer: How old are you, anyway?
Mel Gibson: Well, I'm told I can play anyone from 28 to...
Homer: Sorry I asked. Bart: I wasn't going to gamble. I just wanted a Bloody Mary. Fidel Castro: Ahhh, the Americans aren't *so* bad, they named a street after me in San Francisco.
[Aide whispers in his ear]
Fidel Castro: It's full of *what*? [Bachman Turner Overdrive is playing at a county fair]
Bart: Who are those pleasant old men?
Homer: It's BTO. They're Canada's answer to ELP. Their big hit was TCB.
[Bart stares at Homer]
Homer: That's how we talked in the '70s. We didn't have a moment to spare. Announcer: Now, let's take a look at a young Charles Bronson's brief stint replacing Andy Griffith in "The Andy Griffith Show"
Barney: Where's Otis? He's not in his cell.
Bronson: I shot him.
Barney: Well that's... what?
Bronson: And now, I'm going down to Emmett's Fix-It Shop.
[cocks gun]
Bronson: To fix Emmett.
["Andy Griffith Show" theme plays] Chief Wiggum: At this time we have no leads but I can safely say that Apu didn't suffer.
Lou: It looks like he suffered to me chief.
Chief Wiggum: Aw jeeze Lou. How long were you planning on letting me drink this stuff? [Burns and Smither have been watching Bart Simpson's human interest story on ducks. Burns is crying]
Mr. Burns: Smithers, do you think maybe my power plant killed those ducks?
Smithers: There's no maybe about it, Sir.
Mr. Burns: Excellent. [repeated line]
Mr. Burns: Excellent. Marge: Homer, the Lord only asks for an hour a week.
Homer: Well in that case, He should've made the week an hour longer. Lousy God. Police Chief Clancy Wiggum: Put out an APB on a Uosdwis R. Dewoh... Uh, better start with Greek town.
FBI Agent: That's Homer J. Simpson, chief. You're reading it upside down.
Police Chief Clancy Wiggum: Uh, cancel that APB. But, uh, oh, bring back some of them, uh, gyros.
FBI Agent: Uh, chief... you're talking into your wallet.
[credit cards unfold out of Wiggum's wallet] [the Professor Fink theme song]
Professor Frink: Professor Fink, Professor Fink/He'll make you laugh/He'll make you think/He likes to run and then the thing with the... person. [Bart is faking illness to get out of a test he hasn't prepared for]
Bart: Ohhhh, my ovaries. Barney: [drinking beer from the tap at Moe's] Uh-oh, my heart just stopped.
[pauses]
Barney: Oh, there it goes. Homer: Just a statue? Is the Statue of Liberty just a statue? Is the Leaning Tower of Pizza just a statue? Homer: Lisa, would you like a donut?
Lisa: No thanks. Do you have any fruit?
Homer: This has purple in it. Purple is a fruit. [At the Kwik-E-Mart]
Dr. Hibbert: [Speaking to Apu] Marge is right, sugar is not only fattening but it's also terribly, terribly addictive... Uh, is my carton of Pixie Sticks in?
Apu: No, it hasn't come in yet.
Dr. Hibbert: [Pounds his fist on the counter] Dammit. When they come in you call me at this number.
Apu: [Reads the number Dr. Hibbert gives him] 911? Homer: Family meeting. Family meeting.
[the rest of the family runs into the dining room and quickly takes their seats]
Homer: Okay, people, let's keep this short. We all want to get home to our families.
[all laugh]
Homer: All right, first item: I lost our life savings in the stock market. Now let's move on to the real issue: Lisa's hogging of the maple syrup.
Lisa: Well, maybe if Mom didn't make such dry waffles. There, I said it.
Marge: Well, maybe if you'd eat some meat you'd have a natural lubricant.
[gasps and turns to Homer]
Marge: You lost all our money?
Homer: Point of order - I didn't lose ALL the money. There was enough left for this cowbell.
[rings it softly and the bell breaks apart in his hands]
Homer: Damn you, eBay. [Talking about Agnes Skinner in a low-cut dress]
Abe Simpson: What's keeping that dress on?
Sideshow Mel: The collective will of everyone in this room. Warden: He drew a unicorn in space. I ask ya, what's it breathing?
Homer: Air?
Warden: Ain't no air in space.
Homer: There's an Air & Space Museum... Groundskeeper Willie: All right Skinner, that's the last time you'll slap your Willie around. [Skinner hands Edna Krabappel an ice cream cone]
Mrs. Krabappel: Oh Seymour, you shouldn't have. It's going to go straight to my thighs.
Principal Seymour: Well Edna, it just might have some company. [after days and days on a hunger strike, Homer hallucinates]
Homer: Hey, who are you?
Ghost: The ghost of Cesar Chavez.
Homer: Why do you look like Cesar Romero?
Ghost: Cause you don't know what Cesar Chavez looks like. [Krusty does a Halloween show, reading off cue cards]
Krusty the Clown: Tonight I'm going to suck...
[waits for second cue card]
Krusty the Clown: ...your blood. Homer: The sun? That's the hottest place on Earth. [Homer and Marge have been called in to the school to talk to Principal Skinner]
Principal Skinner: Thank you for coming.
Homer: Thank you for getting me out of work. Lisa: Bart, this is priceless.
Bart: Priceless like a mother's love, or the good kind? Lenny: So then I said to the cop, "No, you're driving under the influence... of being a jerk." Marge: Homer, did you jimmy open Mr. Burns' liquor cabinet?
Homer: Ooh "Jimmy" is such an ugly word, Marge. Unless you're talking about Jimmy Smits. Moe: Bring us your finest food, stuffed with your second-finest.
Waiter: Very well, the lobster stuffed with tacos. [Homer is driving Mayor Quimby's limo]
Mayor Quimby: Just remember... you represent the office of the mayor. So always comport yourself in a manner befitting - quick. Honk at that broad. Lisa: All we found were these oozing berries, and they look pretty poisonous.
Ralph: I ated the purple berries... oooh, oohh
[falls to ground]
Ralph: ooohhh.
Lisa: How are they Ralph? Good?
Ralph: They taste like... burning. Principal Skinner: Hello, Edna. I know we had dinner plans tonight, but instead I'm leaving town forever. [a rat steals the key]
Ralph: The pointy kitty took it. [answering a prank phone call from Bart]
Moe: Moe's Tavern... Yeah, just a sec, I'll check.
[calling out]
Moe: Uh, Amanda Hugginkiss? Hey, I'm looking for Amanda Hugginkiss. Aw, why can't I find Amanda Hugginkiss?
[whole bar bursts into laughter]
Barney: Maybe your standards are too high!
Moe: [into phone] You little SOB! If I ever find out who you are, I'm going to shove a sausage down your throat and stick starving dogs up your butt! Chief Wiggum: Ok all you have to do is record on this tape and get fat Tony to say something incriminating.
[Looks at tape]
Bart: Hootie and the Blowfish?
Chief Wiggum: Hey, it was cheaper than a blank tape.
[Discussing Science versus Religion]
Ned Flanders: Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well, I say there are some things we don't want to know. Important things. [Bill Clinton is playing the saxophone in a marching parade]
Moe: Hey Clinton, get back to work.
Bill Clinton: Make me. [in Homer's dream]
Bart: He thought that trip to the guillotine factory was just for fun, but it was the perfect place to shoot him. [responding to sign on Stoner's Pot Place]
Otto: That is flagrant false advertising. [Kim Basinger is working out, Homer is coaching her]
Homer: And stretch. And strain. And hyperextend. Keep those knees rigid. Jerk that lower back.
Kim Basinger: I'm getting some shooting pains in my neck...
Homer: That's right, force it. Whip that neck.
[Alec Baldwin enters the room]
Alec Baldwin: Does anybody know where this came from?
Homer: Oh, there's that script I wrote. Where did you find it?
Alec Baldwin: It was on my pillow.
Homer: The important thing is, it has the perfect part for you. For either of you. It's about a killer robot driving instructor who travels back in time for some reason. Ron Howard's attached to direct.
Ron Howard: No I'm not.
Homer: Well, he expressed an interest.
Ron Howard: No I didn't.
Homer: Did too. [Bart and Milhouse are watching the original Itchy cartoon]
Milhouse: [reading] "Itchy runs afoul of an Irishman." Watch out, Itchy. He's Irish. Mel Gibson: Come with me to Hollywood.
Homer: You had me at "hello".
Mel Gibson: I didn't say hello. [after finishing building a church]
Homer: Look at what a wonderful prison we've built for God. [Marge accidentally got breast implants]
Marge: You can't call breast implants a minor misunderstanding.
Dr. Hibbert: Look, Mrs. Simpson, if you want, you can come back in 48 hours, and I'll remove them.
Marge: You better. If not, my husbands gonna come back here, and do some malpractice on your face.
Dr. Hibbert: Oh, yes, your husband.
[sarcastically]
Dr. Hibbert: I'm sure he'll be furious. Marge: Every truckload of fish we gut brings us 31 cents closer to those tickets home.
Bart: And I think I've finally found what I was put on this earth to do
[guts some fishes]
Bart: knife goes in, guts come out, knife goes in, guts come out
[pulls out a talking fish]
Fish: Spare my life and I will grant you three...
Bart: [guts the talking fish] Knife goes in, guts come out. [the kids of Springfield are broadcasting adults' secrets, in order to embarrass them]
Lisa: And, by the way, there is somebody in Springfield who's been practicing medicine without a license.
[Dr. Hibbert gulps]
Lisa: That's right. Homer Simpson.
Homer: D'oh! Ralph: Well, well, well. If it isn't that stupid cop from TV.
[picks his ear with his gun] Lisa: Mom, what's happening?
Marge: I'm sorry, honey, but we're renting your room to a satellite network until your father can pay for the destruction of a priceless artifact. Boy, I never thought I'd have to say that again. Homer: Ahh, now to spend some quality time away from my family. [Flanders has been transformed into a cow by Hibbert]
Ned Flanders: Oh, I'm not asking much, Homer. I just want you to squeeze my teats and harvest my milk. [the Simpsons watch "Law and Order: Elevator Inspectors Unit"]
Elevator Inspector 1: Here's the problem, Inspector: the Floor 5 button doesn't light up.
Elevator Inspector 2: I think I'm gonna be sick. [Homer is getting stitches in his eyes]
Homer: I hate getting stitches in my eye. Stupid crows.
Dr. Julius Hibbert: Now, don't be mad at the crows, Homer. They weren't trying to blind you, they were just trying to drink your sweet, sweet eye juices. [Homer is surrounded by crows at Moe's Bar]
Moe Szyslak: All right, get 'em outta here. This ain't no crow-bar. THIS is a crow-bar.
[Moe reaches under the counter and pulls out a portrait of crows sitting at a bar]
Moe Szyslak: See? They got their little stools and everything. [Homer is taunting a shark]
Homer: Come on Sharky. Call yourself the king of the jungle? [Groundskeeper Willy has been turned into an ape]
Dr. Hibbert: Willy, take these folks' luggage.
[to Homer]
Dr. Hibbert: Careful, he might try to gnaw on your crotch.
Homer: Don't worry, I've been around Scotsmen before. Homer: [lying in a hammock, sings] You put the beer in the coconut and drink it all up, you put the beer in the coconut and throw the can away.
[the can hits Flanders on the head]
Ned Flanders: Homer.
Homer: [sings] You throw the can away.
[Another can hits Ned]
Ned Flanders: I said, Homer. Judge Harm: [a women, to Bart] You remind me of myself... when I was a little boy. Agnes Skinner: Seymour, tell these people we're going ahead of them.
Principal Skinner: I'm not the principal of the line, mother.
Agnes Skinner: And you never will be. [Every inhabitant of Springfield has been turned into an animal]
Ralph: [feathers pop out of his back] I'm a dog. Sideshow Bob: Homer, how can one man have so many enemies?
Homer: I'm a people person. [Homer is dressed up as a Teletubby, with a TV and a wire hanger attached to him]
Homer: Hey, Maggie. I'm Homey-Womey, the Teletubby. And, I'm all man, in case you've heard otherwise. Marge: I can't help but feel this is all my fault. It was those North Korean fortune cookies - they were so insulting. "You are a coward." Nobody wants to hear that after a nice meal.
Homer: Marge, you can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, then move on. [the city of Springfield is having an illegal party in the ocean, about 300 yards from American territorial waters]
Bart: [on megaphone] What are you gonna do now, Coast Guard? Huh? You can't arrest us or do anything to us. Lousy Americans...
Coast Guard: [on megaphone] We can't hear you. Come 300 yards closer. [Lenny and Carl are meditating]
Lenny: Who... likes... short shorts?
Carl: I... like... short shorts. [Homer is setting up a rocket Bart purchased]
Bart: This is gonna be cool.
Lisa: And also educational. We can learn about science.
Homer: Science.
Bart: Uh... she didn't say 'science', she said... 'pie pants'
Homer: Mmmm... pie pants... Homer: They expect me to wait here from 9 to 5? That's... how many hours?
[looks at watch; counts fingers]
Homer: 10, 11... denominator... Awww where's Lisa when ya need her? Mr. Kidkill: Escort these gentlemen out.
Gay Dressing Room Bodyguard: Avec plaisir. Homer: [runs into church] Sanctuary. Sanctuary.
Rev. Lovejoy: Oh, why did I teach him that word? Homer: If the Flintstones have taught us anything, it's that pelicans can be used to mix cement. Mr. Burns: Simpson. I've been reviewing your performance record, and it is appalling. It says here that you caused 17 meltdowns.
Bart: I'm not Homer Simpson.
Mr. Burns: I know who Homer Simpson is. Not only that, but you also sold plutonium to the Iraqis... with no mark-up. [Homer donates 10000$ to PBS]
Marge: [to Lisa] From now on, one of us stays home all the time.
Lisa: Agreed. Radio Announcer: So, Monty, tell us when was your first gay experience.
Mr. Burns: Oh, that was when I was 5. My father took me to the park, that was a gay old time. [Barney and Homer are in a helicopter, when they land in the middle of a bridge and stop a beer truck. A six pack falls out]
Homer: You have to do it Barney. You have to save my kids.
Barney: I can't. My nerves are shot.
[grabs six pack]
Barney: Beer.
Homer: [grabs beer] No. I won't let you do it. You have to be sober for this.
[chugs beer]
Barney: You can't drink them all.
Homer: Oh, yeah?
[wrestles rest of six pack from Barney and chugs it]
Homer: I won't let you do this Barney. Not when you've come this far in...
[slurred speech]
Homer: being the greatest pal in the world. I love you. I guess it started at graduation, when I-
[passes out]
Barney: Homer. You brave, brave man. You took 6 silver bullets for me.
Homer: [mumbles] Stay away from my wife. Homer: [reading a sign saying 'Gym'] A gime?
[mispronouncing gym]
Homer: what's a gime?
Homer: [upon entering gym] Ooooh! A *Gime* Marge: [loveingly] Oh Monty! You're the devil himself
Mr. Burns: [shouting] Who told yo-
[realises]
Mr. Burns: oh, and I would say you are an angel, but angels don't dance that well Homer: Take that, Lisa's beliefs! [Marge made a disgusting breakfast]
Lisa: [whispers] Dad, I know a way to get out of this.
[out loud]
Lisa: Say, Dad,
[winks]
Lisa: would you like to see my project for the school science fair?
[winks]
Homer: No, Lisa,
[winks]
Homer: but I sure don't want to eat this crappy breakfast.
[winks] Milhouse: I can't go to juvie, they use guys like me as currency. [on the phone]
Homer: But Mr. Burns, I can't find you funny anymore.
Mr. Burns: I'll either tickle your ribs or feed them to my dogs. Now we're ordering out, so what would you like on your pizza pie...?Extra cheese?" Who do you take me for, Lorenzo de Medici? Nelson: I feel like such a tool. [Marge gets her first unemployment check]
Marge: Three hundred dollars for doing nothing. I feel like such a crook.
George Bush: Don't worry, it gets easier every week. Lisa: My family never talks about library standards. And every time I try to steer the conversation that way, they make me feel like a nerd.
Comic Book Guy: We are hardly nerds. Would a nerd wear such an irreverent sweatshirt?
[open his jacket to show off his shirt]
Lisa: [reading the shirt] "C:/DOS C:/DOS/RUN RUN/DOS/RUN".
[laughs]
Lisa: Oh, only one person in a million would find that funny.
Professor Frink: Yes, we call that the "Dennis Miller Ratio." Bart: [In a creepy English accent] Join us tomorrow and everyday until the curfew is lifted as we'll be revealing embarrassing secrets about Springfield's other adults.
Homer: Well, at least they've already done me.
Bart: [In the same accent] And we have plenty more on Homer Simpson.
Homer: D'oh! [Homer is drunk]
Lisa: You saved us, dad. You did it.
Homer: I could do a lot more things if I had some money.
Lisa: Wha?... Lisa: Poor little Maggie... How many mental competency hearings have you been to, in your short life? Marge: Who cut my brakes?
Homer: Oh, yeah. When I was fixing your car, I kinda spilled all your brake liquid. I didn't want to tell you, 'cause I thought you'd get mad. Homer: Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. Use it, and send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay. Eternal happiness is only a dollar away. Homer: This is Homer Simpson, aka Happy Dude. The court is making me call everybody back and apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power. Homer: Badger my ass, its probably just Milhouse. Scratchy: Hey you're beautiful.
Marge: Aww. Look who's found a new love. That means you'll have to be neutered.
Scratchy: [grabbing himself] NOOOOOOO! Homer: [to Marge] I toil not on ye Sabbath, Woman. A pox on thee! Dr. Hibbert: [Mensa Club is giving a public speech] When are we going to get to my speech?
Comic Book Guy: Quit butting in please. Your IQ is a mere 155 while mine is a muscular 170.
[singing to the Star Trek theme]
Comic Book Guy: I am smart. Much smarter than you. Hibbert!
Professor Frink: You should all do what I do. My IQ is 199 for crying out glaving.
[Accidentally bumps his head]
Professor Frink: 198... 197.
Stephen Hawking: Big deal. My IQ is 280. [Homer is sitting at the dinner table in all black with a balaclava on his head]
Marge: Why all the black?
Homer: Why all the pearls? Why all the hair? Why anything?
Lisa: You look a little nervous, Dad.
Homer: No, YOU look a little nervous, Lisa.
Bart: You're up to something, aren't you, Dad?
Homer: NO. I'm just going out now to commit certain deeds. Krusty the Clown: And this ends Krusty's non-denominational holiday fun fest. So have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, a Krazy Kwanzaa, a Tip Top Tet, and a solemn, eventful Ramadan. Now, over to my god, our sponsors. Krusty the Clown: Kids, we need to talk for a moment about Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum Like Substance. We all knew it contained spider eggs, but the hanta virus? That came out of left field. So if you're experiencing numbness and/or comas, send five dollars to antidote, PO box...
[gets interrupted by a newscast] Homer: If you're going to get mad at me every time I do something stupid, then I guess I'll just have to stop doing stupid things. Kent Brockman: The alien has appeared in the Springfield Forest for the last two Friday nights. Will it appear again this Friday? The entire Channel 6 News Team will be there, except for Bill, the boom mike operator, who's getting fired tomorrow.
[boom mike hits Kent]
Kent Brockman: Very unprofessional, Bill. Kent Brockman: Springfield has been overrun by a strange and almost certainly evil sect, calling themselves The Movementarians. In exchange for your home and all your belongings, the Leader of this way out... and wrong religion, the Leader claims he'll take believeres to the planet, Blisstonia. Excuse my editorial laugh.
[laughs]
Kent Brockman: But...
[pauses]
Kent Brockman: Ladies and gentlemen, I just learned of a new change in management. Welcome, Movementarians. I love you, perfect Leader... and new CEO of KBBL Broadcasting. Ralph: [knocks on door] Hi. Can Lisa come out with her hands up?
[waves to cops hiding in bushes] Private detective: Where's principal Skinner's office?
Groundskeeper Willie: Wait a minute. You can't just walk in there.
Private detective: You know, you're the spitting image of the Aberdeen strangler.
Groundskeeper Willie: Carry on.
[leaves, whistling] Moe: Go home, science girl.
Lisa: I am home.
Moe: Good, then stay there. Bart: [reading] Whoa, Dad's been arrested six times. Aww, Mom's only been arrested twice. [Homer, Lenny, Carl and Barney are sitting in Homer's garage, drinking]
Homer: [to Marge] Barkeep. Another beer.
Marge: Wasn't this supposed to be your tavern?
Homer: It's a family place. Right, kids?
Lisa: Can we go to bed now? Groundskeeper Willie: If it was up to me, I'd let you go; but the Gods have a temper, and they've been drinking all day. [Otto left his fiancee at the altar because of Marge]
Bart: Say, I got an idea. Why don't you stay with us?
Marge: Bart, remember that talk we had about inviting people to stay with us without asking?
Homer: Marge, remember that talk we had about ruining peoples' weddings? Marge: A woman doctor? Well, now I've seen everything. Marge: Well, I guess it was a pretty funny practical joke. I like the ones where nothing catches on fire. Barney: So, I say, when we die there should be two planets- one for the French and one for the Chinese. Barney: What do you mean I forgot my birthday? How could I forget-
[chugs a beer glass]
Barney: - my own birthday? Homer: Careful. These pants cost me 600$.
Moe: 600$?
Homer: Yeah, they're Italian.
Moe: [pulls out shotgun and points it at Homer] All right, hand them over.
Homer: Moe?
Moe: Yeah, I rob now. Social Worker: So, this is your room?
Lisa: Yes. My room is my sanctuary. My family members know that and respect that.
Bart: [runs in] Lisa, I got sprayed by a skunk. Let me rub it off on your sweaters.
Lisa: [takes out stress ball and starts squeezing it] Just ten more years, just ten more years, just ten more years... Homer: I'm gonna come back with the best gift a husband can get a wife- an annulment from my second wife. Abe Simpson: [to Homer] You know, I have a son about your age. [Ginger wakes up next to Abe]
Ginger: Wha?
Abe Simpson: Good morning, honey.
Ginger: Who are you?
Abe Simpson: I'm your husband. We got married yesterday.
Ginger: But, how? We didn't?... You know. Did we?
Abe Simpson: You know, we almost didn't. But you wouldn't take "I can't" for an answer. Marge: If I had known that there were loose women in Las Vegas, I would've never let you go. Barney: [to Adam West] So long, Superman. Your secret identity is safe with me. Homer: Yep, nobody's more wild and youthful than old man Burns. Snake: I'm gonna win you back, even if it means I got to pistol whip this dude
[Homer]
Snake: all night.
Homer: [scared] Pistol whip?
[imagines himself eating whipped cream from a pistol]
Homer: Hmm, pistol whip... [Homer is strangling Bart because he made a popular cartoon based on him]
Bart: [chokes] There's going to be a movie about you.
Homer: [stops choking Bart] Who's going to play me?
Bart: John Goodman.
Homer: [continues choking Bart] Isn't it obvious it should be Gary Oldman? Marge: So you're saying that I should bribe Lisa back to Christianity?
Rev. Lovejoy: Sure. You could save a lot more souls with roller-skates and Easy-Bake ovens, than with this
[lifts Bible]
Rev. Lovejoy: 2000 page sleeping pill. Homer: [in jail; looks out window and sees Moe singing about going to Hawaii] Hawaii? What about Hawaii? Moe, who's going to Hawaii? Am I going to Hawaii?
Chief Wiggum: [bangs on Homer's jail cell] Stop saying "Hawaii" in there. [At an auction]
Homer: Heh, heh, heh. Watch me burn Flanders.
[picks up sheet]
Homer: Ned Flanders bids 50$.
[evil laugh]
Auctioneer: And the recipient of the 100$ bill is Ned Flanders.
Homer: D'oh!
Ned Flanders: This is going straight to the orphanage.
Homer: D'OH! Rainer Wolfcastle: [to piece of pie] You remember when I said I'll eat you last? I lied. Rainer Wolfcastle: Remember when I said I'd eat you last? I lied. Krusty the Clown: Uh, just one thing. Are you guys any good at covering up any youthful and middle-aged indiscretions?
Mr. Burns: Are these indiscretions romantic, financial, or treasonous?
Krusty the Clown: A Russian hooker, you tell me.
Mr. Burns: Oh, no problem. We'll say you were on a fact-finding mission.
Krusty the Clown: I did find out one fact. She was a guy. Bart: This is Milhouse. He's my best friend, because... Well, geographical convenience. [Lisa just wakes up after passing out]
Homer: Lisa? Lisa? Are you ok?
Lisa: Ok? I'm great. I'm ready for the gymnastics class, now. Ich bin ein gymnast.
Homer: Awww, she must've dreamt about Hitler, again. [In a Chinese Krusty factory]
Krusty the Clown: Laziness is counter-revolutionary. [In order to go to College, Lisa convinced two College girls that her house is an off-campus dorm]
College Girl #1: Hey, Lisa. Where've you been?
Lisa: In heaven.
College Girl #2: I love her. She's such a free spirit.
College Girl #1: She has to be, where she lives. That place had a Manson Family vibe... Ralph: Why do people keep running away from me?
[wets himself and smiles] Marge: Sitting that close to the TV is bad for your health.
Homer: Talking to me while I'm watching TV is bad for your health. Marge: You know, you have to stop drinking?
Cowboy: What do you care?
Marge: I don't know. I just naturally I assumed that it was any of my business. Lead Pirate: And now, back to secret pirate island- Hong Kong. Brazillian Kidnapper: [opens suitcase full of money] Ahh, look at all that pink and purple. Our money sure is gay. [Santa's Little Helper has crawled into the vent at Springfield Elementary]
Ralph: Um, Miss Hoover? There's a dog in the vent.
Miss Hoover: Ralph, remember the time you said Snagglepuss was outside?
Ralph: He was going to the bathroom. Homer: Hello, Son. I wanna apologize. I got so caught up in trying to encourage you, that I was blinded to your stinky performance. If you come back and play for the team, I promise I'll never encourage you again. Lisa: I'm trying to call Janey, but I can't get a dial tone.
Marge: Your father refuses to pay the bill, so the company cut our phone lines.
Lisa: [sighs] Why must you fight every utility?
Homer: [annoyed] I told you, I have too much free time. [At Moe's]
Lenny: It's a good thing you stopped smoking the magic grass, Homer. You were getting spaced out.
Carl: Yeah, we were planning an intervention, but I got alcohol poisoning that night. Bart: Why would Duff publish a book.
Lisa: It was designed to settle fights in taverns.
Homer: Whoo-hoo. She said "tavern". I'm going to Moe's.
[runs away and drives off]
Marge: I never agreed to that rule. Moe: Well the only way I can recoup from this is...
[takes out a can of gas, pours it all over his bar, and throws and lighted match on it]
Carl: Um, aren't you supposed to get insurance first?
Moe: Oh crap. [Lisa is missing a crayon; Homer had a crayon removed from his brain making him smarter]
Marge: [reassuringly] Sweetheart, the missing crayon could be anywhere.
Homer: [crashes through living room window and holds up two fistfuls of tickets] Who wants lottery tickets?
Marge: [resigned] Okay, it's in his brain.
[leaves] [Homer holds up Lisa to attract a bull]
Homer: Here, Toro. Here's something to gore.
Lisa: DAAAAAAAAAD.
Homer: Not now, honey. Daddy's busy. [Bart and Milhouse are watching a secret tape of police informants]
Ned Flanders: I really hate to be a snitch.
Chief Wiggum: Don't worry, your yellow-bellied ratting will be held in the strictest confidence.
Ned Flanders: Well, in that case, my neighbor Homer released a radioactive ape into my house. It's, uh, taken over the top floor.
Bart: It wasn't dad's fault. The ape tricked him. Ralph: [after being sprayed by fake blood] I look like cable T.V... Mr. Burns: Damn it, Smithers! This isn't rocket science, it's brain surgery! Manjula: Apu, you have completed the list. You may now move back with your family in your never ending disgrace.
Homer: Wait a minute. You forgot to eat a light bulb.
Apu: Thank you very much, you fat blabbermouth. Sorry, sorry. It's been a rough month.
Homer: [gives him light bulb] Here you go.
[whispers]
Homer: Don't worry. I soaked it in the toilet to soften it up. Professor Frink: Oh, what gave me away? Out of curiosity, was it the "hoyven," or the "maven," or was it the whole guh-HOYVEE... thing... that I do? Fat Tony: Greetings, Homer.
Homer: Hey, Tony. Still with the mafia?
Fat Tony: Uh, yes, thank you for asking. You might remember, a while ago you were done a favor by our... how shall I put this... mafia crime syndicate.
Homer: Oh yeah, that's right?
Fat Tony: Well, I have come to inform you that now it's your turn to do US a favor.
Homer: Wait - you mean the only reason the Mob did me a favor was because they wanted something back in return? Fat Tony. I say good day to you, sir.
Fat Tony: [Ashamed] Okay... I'll go now.
[He leaves the building]
Fat Tony: Hey... wait a minute. Homer: Oh, I almost forgot. While I was at the court house, I had them change your name.
Marge: To what?
Homer: Chesty La Rue.
Marge: CHESTY LARUE?
Homer: Just try it for two weeks. If you don't like it, you can be Busty St. Claire.
Marge: I don't want to be Chesty La Rue or Busty St. Claire.
Homer: Fine. Hooty McBoob it is.
Marge: Goodnight, Homer.
Homer: Goodnight, Hooty.
Marge: Give me those. Homer: I'm sorry. I can't come in today. Religious holiday. The feast of... Maximum Occupancy. Quimby's Assisstant: Election in November. Election in November.
Mayor Quimby: AGAIN? This stupid country. Homer: Ahh. A hungry hungry hippo. [Arnie's helicopter goes down during a snowstorm]
Arnie Pie: Mayday, mayday. We're going down. Tell my wife I love...
Kent Brockman: [Chuckles and shuffles papers] That's great, Arnie. [the Simpsons' drywall collapses and Maggie crawls out of it]
Homer: [in baby talk] Maggie. That's where you were, honey. You were hiding in the drywall, yes you were. Daddy's sure happy Social Services didn't see this, yes he is. Bart: Dad, I can't believe you're risking my life to save your own.
Homer: Son, you'll understand one day, when you have kids. Stan Lee: Say, aren't you the guy who was stalking Lynda Carter?
Comic Book Guy: The term is "courting," thank you. The restraining order says "no-no," but her eyes say "yes-yes." Dr. Hibbert: You can't let a single bad experience scare you away from drugs. Mr. Burns: [to Homer] Young man, I'm making you my executive vice president.
Smithers: Sir, I believe that position was informally promised to me.
Mr. Burns: Oh, Smithers... I would have said anything to get your stem cells. Homer: Lisa, why didn't you warn me? Being a brain has alienated me from all my friends.
Lisa: Dad, as intelligence goes up, happiness often goes down. In fact I made a graph...
[wistfully]
Lisa: I make a lot of graphs... [the oil rig Homer's working on has caught on fire]
Homer: Oh no. This is how faceless Joe lost his legs. Marge: I can't even think of how many times your father has done something crazy.
Lisa: WAIT A MINUTE.
[pulls out a timekeeper]
Lisa: Yup, 300 times. Otto: They call 'em "fingers," but I never see 'em fing. Oh wait, there they go. Moe: Oh boy, it looks like it's suicide again for me. L.T Smash: [watching Bart's Band] Those guys are gonna be huge.
[to Skinner]
L.T Smash: And you tried to get in their way.
Principal Skinner: No I didn't. I even got in early to prepare orange drink.
L.T Smash: Orange drink? What, do you live with your mother?
Principal Skinner: *She* lives with *me*. [in front a "Best Teacher's Award" committee]
Bart: [in a video] This year, I'd like to nominate my teacher- Ms. Krabappel. Shy may not be glamorous or entertaining. She's just a normal teacher who's always there. And, she's never given up on me- Bart Simpson.
[all committee members gasp in horror]
Committee member #1: Bart Simpson? I thought he was an urban legend. Homer: We're going to Disney World.
[Homer is seen in front of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World, while sirens sound and searchlights search for Homer]
"Mickey Mouse": [over loudspeaker] Step away from the wall, step away from the wall.
Homer: It's so beautiful.
[Homer disappears over fence]
Homer: One churro, please.
Cast Member: That'll be fourteen dollars.
Homer: [crying] No. No, no, nooooo. Here. Bart: Stomp that pickle revert.
Otto: Sick lingos, boys.
Bart: I've gotta go to the bathroom.
Otto: Ah, ah, talk to the snowboard.
Bart: Uh, I've gotta blast a douche?
Otto: Douche on. [Phone rings]
Rupert Murdoch: Hello, Murdoch here... 10,000 dollars? You've saved my network.
Bart: Wouldn't be the first time. Homer: Dancing away my hunger pain... moving my feet so my stomach won't hurt... I'm kinda like Jesus, but not in a sacrilegious way...
Moe: Jeez, Homer's losing it already.
Carl: Yeah but his weary shuffling makes my heart smile. Gabriel: Homer, you're a bad man and your seed should be wiped from the earth... no offense, children. [Homer thinks Gabriel is an angel]
Homer: Gabriel, this is a bar where they serve beer, which is the mortal equivalent of your ambrosia.
Gabriel: Homer, I'm not an angel.
Homer: Well, not with that attitude. Lou: Looks like another case of Monopoly related violence, chief.
Wiggum: How do those Parker Brothers sleep at night? Ned Flanders: Sir... There's no reason Sarah needs to do this scene in the altogether.
Sara Sloane: Sam, he's got a point. Katherine Hepburn never showed her breasts.
Movie Director: There's still time. [Bart is preparing a batch of appetizers for Skinner's party]
Lisa: What's with the dog food?
Bart: My theory is - Skinner likes dog food.
[both leave, Homer walks in the room]
Homer: Ooh, a fresh batch of American balls. Chief Wiggum: All right, Simpson, where's the fire?
[Homer points to the police station, which is on fire]
Chief Wiggum: All right, Simpson. You just bought yourself a 417, pointing out police stupidity. Or is that a 413? No, a 413 is a dog, and... um... you're in trouble, pal. [Cheif Wiggum releases some attack dogs to look for Milhouse]
Kirk Van Houten: Will they just find him... or will they find him and kill him?
Chief Wiggum: They'll find him, and, um... um...
Kirk Van Houten: Um, excuse me, you didn't answer my question. You just trailed off.
Chief Wiggum: Yeah, I did, didn't I? [a realtor is showing Bret Hart around Mr. Burns' mansion]
Bret "The Hitman" Hart: Eww. This place has got old man stink.
Mr. Burns: Ooh.
Waylon Smithers: Don't listen to him, sir. You've got an enchanting musk. Homer: [after observing Barney's movie] Wow, I'll never drink another beer again.
Vendor: Beer here.
Homer: I'll take ten. Lisa: Come to Homer's BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB.
Bart: Hey, Homer, what's that B for?
Homer: That's a typo. Marge: You should probably see a doctor about this...
Homer: OK.
Marge: [realizing] A competent doctor.
Homer: D'oh! Homer: Wow, Barney. You brought a whole beer keg.
Barney: Yeah... where do I fill it up? [Buck's house is garnished with steakhouse paraphernalia]
Bart: Wow. It's like you're living in a steakhouse.
Buck McCoy: Why, thank you. Most people just mutter that. Bart: Lis, can you keep it down? I'm in the middle of a crank call here.
Principal Skinner: [on phone] Actually, my refrigerator *wasn't* running. You've saved me quite a bit of spoilage. Thank you, anonymous young man. Homer: Hello, I'd like to speak to a Mr. Snotball, first name Ura.
Moe: Ura Snotball?
Homer: What? How dare you. If I find out who this is, I'll staple a flag to your butt and mail you to Iran. Homer: And I gave that man directions, even though I didn't know the way, because that's the kind of guy I am this week. Homer: See, the great thing about animation is that you don't have to pay the actors squat.
Ned Flanders: [speaking in a different voice] But they can change them and no one would know the diddly-ifference. Homer: [singing along to the tune of Chumbawumba's "Tumpthumping"] I take a whiskey drink, I take a coffee drink, and when I have to pee, I use the kitchen sink. I sing the song that reminds me I'm a urinating guy. Homer: And I got this scar sneaking under the door of a pay toilet. Secret Service Agent: I can do everything from reading bedtime stories to changing diapers.
Grampa: Put me down for one of each. Ned Flanders: Ho ho ho, suckin' down the cider, uh? Hey, word to the wise -
[shows Homer a card]
Ned Flanders: season pass. It pays for itself after the sixteenth visit. You know, most people don't know the difference between apple cider and apple juice, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella. If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. Now, there's two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here...
Homer's Brain: You can stay, but I'm leaving.
[Homer's brain floats away]
Ned Flanders: ...can be yellow, if they're using late season apples. And, of course, in Canada, the whole thing's flip-flopped.
[Homer collapses] Marge: Careful of that apple pie on the back seat...
Grampa: Uh-oh.
Marge: Grampa, are you sitting on the pie?
Grampa: I sure hope so. [Mr. Burns looks through a portfolio of his old stocks]
Mr. Burns: Hmm, let's see...?Confederated Slave holdings." How's that one holding up?
Lawyer: It's, uh, steady. Ron Howard: Is that... vodka... and wheat grass?
Homer: It's called a "lawnmower". I invented it. Want one? Krusty the Clown: [while recording talking doll voices] One. Hey hey, kids, I'm talking Krusty. Two. Hey hey, kids. Here comes Slideshow Mel, I mean, Sideshow Mel. Four.
[laughs]
Krusty the Clown: Bada bing, bada boom. I'm done. Learn from the professionals, kid.
[leaves]
Technician: Uh... we're ready to roll, Krusty. Krusty? Marge: Well if loving my kids is lame, then I guess I'm just a big lame. [At the St. Patrick's Day Parade]
Kent Brockman: All this drinking, violence, destruction of property... are these the things that we think of when we think of the Irish? Nelson: Hey, I'm on TV. Fart. Chief Wiggum: Your story is very compelling, Mr. Jackass, um, Simpson. Let me just type it up on my invisible typewriter.
Homer: Fine. You don't have to humiliate me.
[leaves, a man enters carrying a blowtorch]
Man: I just torched a building downtown and I'm afraid I'll do it again.
Chief Wiggum: Right. Let me just type that up on my invisible typewriter. Homer: And to think I turned to a cult for mindless happiness when I had beer all along.
Marge: Mmmmm...
Homer: And you, Marge, the bringer of beer. Marge: And punish Lisa for lying to us.
Homer: All right, young lady. March yourself right down to the Quik-E-Mart and get me some chips and a beer. Homer: Beer. Now there's a temporary solution. [Homer places Bart in front of a sexy billboard]
Homer: Well, it's been two hours. How do you feel?
Bart: I dunno. I kinda want a cigarette.
Homer: That's good. Let's get you a pack. What's your brand?
Bart: Anything slim.
Homer: D'oh! Krusty the Clown: Here's a feature never before seen on TV - dumb pet tricks. Catch the rubber ball, Fifi.
[the dog goes for Krusty's nose]
Krusty the Clown: AH. SOMEBODY SHOOT IT. SOMEBODY SHOOT IT. [forming a vigilante group]
Homer: All right, I'll be Cue Ball. Barney can be Eight Ball, Lenny will be Twelve Ball, and Moe, you'll be Cue Ball.
Moe: You're an idiot. Homer: You know Bart, maybe it's just the concussion talking, but anyway you chose to live your life is OK.
Bart: Huh?
Lisa: He thinks you're gay.
Bart: He thinks I'm gay? [Homer reads label on medicinal pot]
Homer: Caution, objects may apppear more edible than they actually are. Homer: Its been three days and my mind is clearer, my sperm count is up and I'm able to recognise simple shapes and patterns.
Lisa: Dad, you just said that three minutes ago. Bart: As long as you're doing things for me, will you tie up your bathrobe when you walk around the house?
Homer: NEVER. Kent Brockman: "What are you lookin' at?" - the innocent words of a drunken child. Lisa: This is pretty far to go just to spite Moe, isn't it?
Homer: It's not about spite, it's about petty revenge, and getting back at that traitor Moe. Smithers: What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job? Marge: Look at this place. The house number is spelled out with letters.
Homer: Get used to it, honey. From now on we'll be spelling everything with letters. Marge: The only thing I asked you to do for this party was put on clothes, and you didn't do it. [Moe is on a soap opera]
Moe: Cleo, you've brought music to my heart, but this relationship can never last. I mean, I'm a doctor and you're a 5000-year-old mummy I brought back to life. [Homer throws pudding at Lenny's face]
Lenny: Ow, my eye. I'm not supposed to get pudding in it. Smithers: Actually, thanks to our creative bookkeeping and corporate loopholes, we only pay about $3 in taxes a year.
Mr. Burns: $3? We're getting screwed. Homer: Oh well. At least we'll die doing what we love: inhaling molten rock. [after Springfield floods, Ned rides out of his garage on a boat filled with animals]
Ned Flanders: I've got two of every animal, but only males. Don't want any hanky panky.
[Some of the animals start making noise off-screen]
Ned Flanders: Now cut that out. Homer: All right, Marge. We'll get your nanny. And to pay for it, I'll give up the Civil War Recreation Society I love so much.
[cut to Moe's]
Moe: All right, Homer's out. We'll need a new General Ambrose Burnside.
Barney: I'm not too fond of our Stonewall Jackson, either.
Apu: The South shall COME AGAIN. Bodyguard: Who's going to protect you?
Mayor Quimby: [points to Homer] HIM.
Homer: WOOHOO!
Marge: Homer, I don't think you were listening to what they just...
Homer: I said "WOO. HOO." [Homer is drunk]
Homer: Have you ever seen that Blue Man Group? Total ripoff of the Smurfs. And the Smurfs, well, they SUCK. Lisa: [running past Moe's] It's noon. That's usually when dad gets the brew shakes. [Moe turns his bar into a comedy club]
Marge: Four drink minimum?
Homer: I'll cover you, honey. Homer: [reading] "Dear Homer, I owe you one emergency donut. Signed, Homer."
[crumbles up paper]
Homer: Bastard. He's always one step ahead. Homer: English side ruined, must use French side... LE GRILLE? what the hell is that? Frank Grimes: Can you believe that guy? He fell asleep inside a radiation suit.
Lenny: He had three beers at lunch. That would make anyone sleepy. Homer: Well, kids, it's Valentine's Day. You know what that means?
Bart: We get to watch TV with the sound turned way up.
Lisa: What are you and mom going to be doing?
Homer: Oh, we're going to be upstairs, making love... ly rope ladders in case of a fire. [Homer's reading a book about corporate success]
Homer: Tip #1- "Live every day as if it was your last". Done and done.
[cut to Homer sitting on a curb, crying]
Homer: I don't want to die. I'm so young. Homer: [singing] I'm shavin' my shoulders. [an African American man dressed like a Gangsta rapper stops Bart in the hallway]
Man: Hey, this class is aces. You go from 'slopper' to 'proper' like.
Bart: Cool.
[Rushes into the room where an old lady is teaching an etiquette class]
Old Lady: The proper gentlemen...
Bart: Etiquette class? But the guy outside said...
Old Lady: Are you accusing my husband of *misleading* you? Good gracious. I should bust a cap in your ass. Ned Flanders: They were bigger than Jesus. Principal Skinner: [over intercom] Attention. All honor roll students will be rewarded by a trip to an archaeological dig. Also, all detention students will be punished with a trip to an archaeological dig. Marge: Homer, Kang is Maggie's father.
Homer: You intergalactic hussy.
[cries]
Homer: Was he better than me? Dr. Nick: 'Inflammable' means flammable? What a country. [Homer is in a car with hippies Seth and Munchie. Marge is walking down the street]
Homer: Hi Marge. We're freaking out squares.
Marge: Oh, Lord...
Homer: What's in your brand new bag, momma?
Marge: Oh, it's that pair of Dockers you wanted. Forty-eight waist with the balloon seat, right?
Homer: [panicking] Marge, not in front of the hippies.
[Seth and Munchie laugh] Chief Wiggum: [speaking on megaphone] Attention hippies. Come out peacefully so we can smash your drug mill and all your worldly possessions. [Homer has to write his full name on an application form but he doesn't know what his middle initial stands for]
Bart: Uh, so Dad, regarding that form, why not just make up a middle name?
Lisa: You might as well. You already made up a phony film credit.
Homer: No. Homer Simpson does not lie twice on the same form. He never has and he never will.
Marge: You lied dozens of times on our mortgage application.
Homer: Yeah, but they were all part of a single ball of lies. The point is, I'm a grown man, and I deserve a middle name. [Homer dies after eating a piece of broccoli]
Homer: Saint Peter. Woo hoo. Got to heaven before you, Flanders.
[wiggles his butt at Earth below]
Homer: Ha-ha-haha-ha. Agnes Skinner: 'Nuff talk, it's smashin' time. Homer: I'm a Spalding Gray in a Rick Dees world. Lisa: Cheer up, Dad. Did you know the Chinese use the same word for 'crisis' as they do for 'opportunity'?
Homer: Yes. Crisitunity. [Homer has joined a crew of "lost souls"]
Woman: We wander the seven seas trying to forget.
Homer: Forget what?
Englishman: Oh, boy, here we go.
Woman: My story of jilted love is long and bittersweet. If anyone has to go to the bathroom, go now. I don't want you walking around during my story.
Englishman: My story's better, it has tigers. Ed Begley, Jr.: I prefer a vehicle that doesn't hurt Mother Earth. It's a go cart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction. Marge: Ooh. I never knew Jim Belushi made so many movies.
Homer: Yeah, isn't it amazing? They're filming one right now in the bathroom. It's gonna be on towards the end of the flight.
[a camera crew films Jim Belushi walking down the aisle]
Belushi: Toga. Toga. Toga 2000.
Homer: Marge. They stole my idea. Woman: We're having a free get acquainted session at our resort this weekend.
Homer: How much is this free resort weekend?
Man: It's free.
Homer: And when *is* this weekend?
Man: It's this weekend.
Homer: Uh-huh, and how much does it cost?
Man: Um, it's free.
Homer: I see, and when is it?
Man: It's this weekend.
Homer: And what are you *charging* for this free weekend? Homer: Ooh, it's been St. Patrick's Day for hours, and I'm still not drunk yet. Moe: I've been called ugly, pug ugly, fugly, pug fugly, but never ugly ugly. Moe: It's like my dad always said: eventually, everybody gets shot. [Homer has just performed the good deed he needs to get into heaven]
Homer: There, did you see that?
Saint Peter: Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't looking.
Homer: I thought you guys were always watching.
Saint Peter: No, you're thinking of Santa Claus. Bart: Hey, dad. Heard you were swearing. Mind if I join in? Crap, boobs, crap! Manjula: Oh, little Maggie, aren't you cute with your little bow.
[does baby-talk]
Marge: Maggie loves baby talk.
Manjula: That was Hindi. Waiter: The Spruce Caboose, the biggest, most expensive train ever built. Some said it was too big to stay on the tracks.
[Points to a picture of the train lying on its side and chuckles]
Waiter: They were right. Bart: Well, Milhouse. Ready to imitate that Jackass show?
Milhouse: The disclaimers make me want to do it more. [Homer has just been shot]
Lisa: You know, Dad, that's probably something you should go to the hospital for.
Homer: After pie. Homer: [to Marge] You know, I've had a lot of jobs... boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty, baby-proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman, carny, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, country western manager, garbage commissioner, mountain climber, farmer, inventor, Smithers, Poochie, celebrity assistant, power plant worker, fortune cookie writer, beer baron, Kwik-E-Mart clerk, homophobe and missionary. But protecting Springfield, that gives me the best feeling of all. Mr. Burns: What are you doing in my corpse hatch?
Chief Wiggum: Mr. Burns, you're under arrest for murder.
Mr. Burns: Uh, did I say corpse hatch? I meant innocence tube. [Bart and Homer are about to race their horse]
Homer: Don't worry. I've seen enough of the "Horse Whisperer" to know how to win a race.
Homer: [whispers to horse] When you're on the race track, run really fast. Nelson: I can't sing without dancing.
J.C. Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick: Fine. Thrust, spin, turn, pivot, pout, jiggy, jiggy, robot, dosido, and close with a Matrix.
Nelson: Nobody pouts going into a jiggy.
Milhouse: Yeah, that's stupid.
Ralph: I want to twirl. Chief Wiggum: Where on my badge does it say anything about protecting people?
Lou: Uh, second word, chief. [the writers of MAD Magazine are in conference]
Writer: Why don't we call it "Everybody HATES Raymond"?
[Everybody laughs]
Chairman: Well, we had to stay here all night, but it was worth it. [after being transported into the "Itchy & Scratchy Show"]
Bart: Lise, look. We're characters in a cartoon show.
Lisa: How humiliating. [filing out medical forms]
Mr. Burns: Social security number? Naught, naught, naught, naught, naught, naught, naught, naught, 2. Damn Roosevelt. Cause of parents death? Got in my way. [on TV, during an "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon]
Quentin Tarantino: What I'm trying to say in this cartoon is that violence is everywhere in our society, you know, it's like even in breakfast cereal, man.
[Itchy cuts off his head and him and Scratchy dance around it] Ned Flanders: You know, a man came into the store today and asked for change for a dollar, and I accidentally gave him three quarters. Took me all afternoon just to track him down. Apu: Mrs. Simpson, bathroom is not for customers. Please use the crack house across the street. Govt Agent: [about Homer's mail] Most people write to movie stars, this guy writes to movies.
[reads letter]
Govt Agent: Dear Die Hard, you rock. Especially the part where that dude is on the rooftop. P.S. Do you know Mad Max? Homer: Olive oil? Asparagus? If your mother wasn't so fancy, we could just shop at the gas station like normal people. [looking at a corporate logo with Lisa's face]
Moe: It makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke. Kent Brockman: [Doing a live newscast] How can I prove that we're live? Penis. Bart: Lis, you made the school worse than it already was. It wasn't exactly San Diego State to begin with. Bart: You could be my father figure.
Homer: No way. I'm not getting my finger prints on that train wreck. Homer: I've joined the Movementarians, Marge.
Marge: You WHAT?
Homer: I've joined the Movementarians. And so have all of you.
Marge: We WHAT?
Homer: All I had to give them was our life savings, the deed to our house, and a commitment of 10 trillion years of labor.
Marge: I can't go along with this, Homer.
Homer: Marge, when I join an underground cult, I expect a little support from my family.
Lisa: Do you think you might have been brainwashed, Dad?
Homer: I haven't been brainwashed.
[Goes glassy eyed]
Homer: Kill the girl. Kill the girl. Mr. Burns: You see me as a God, right, Smithers?
Smithers: Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Burns: You'd kneel before me, wouldn't you?
Smithers: Boy, would I. [while listening to a football game on a Walkman in church]
Homer: Please, please, please, please...
Sportscaster: Yes, it's good.
Homer: IT'S GOOD. IT'S GOOD. IT'S GOOD. It's... good to see you all today. Apu: Elton John.
Elton John: That's my name. Well, not really.
Apu: I hate to sound like a screaming fan, but...
[plane flies just overhead them]
Elton John: That maniac nearly killed us.
Apu: Shall I "Take You to the Pilot?" You see, because that is your song.
Elton John: I hear you.
Apu: Yes, "Somebody Saved Your Life Tonight."
Elton John: Cut it out.
Apu: Oh, well, "The Bitch is Back." Lenny: Ah, alcohol and night-swimming. It's a winning combination. [Homer is talking to Carmen Electra. She knows where his eyes are]
Carmen Electra: Homer, my face is UP here.
Homer: I've made my choice. Mr. Burns: [to a group of senior citizens working for him] I'll take you to the biggest duck-filled pond you ever saw.
Grampa: Hot Diggity. That's how they got me to vote for Lyndon LaRouche. Nelson: ha ha your position has been usurped. Krusty the Clown: And now, in the spirit of the season: start shopping. And for every dollar of Krusty merchandise you buy, I will be nice to a sick kid. For legal purposes, sick kids may include hookers with a cold. [Ned is asked to join in a game]
Ned Flanders: Sports on a Sunday? I don't kno...
Reverned Lovejoy: Just play the damn game, Ned Homer: Hey, shouldn't you be at school?
Bart: Shouldn't you be at work?
Homer: Ah, touch. Marge: Homer, it's easy to criticize.
Homer: Fun, too. [Homer is playing a machine that shoots animated sperm from its gun in the "Let's Make a Baby" section in the knowledgeum]
Homer: C'mon, ovulate, damn you. Ovulate.
Machine voice: You are out of sperm. [Sideshowbob is helping Homer, who has just been elected king of Mardi Gras, find his attempted killer]
Sideshow Bob: Homer it's a trap. You only won because someone filled the poll with these.
[shows votes with all the same handwriting]
Homer: Nevertheless, the people have spoken. Lisa: Dad, I think you're overreacting.
Homer: I think you're UNDERreacting.
Lisa: This session's over.
Homer: This session's UNDER.
Lisa: Goodbye.
Homer: BADbye. [Homer is listening to Lisa playing her saxaphone while he's high on marijuana]
Bart: Hey, Dad, I thought you hated Lisa's sax.
Homer: I did, but now Daddy's new medicine... which you must never use. Because it will ruin your life... helps Daddy see the magical colors that you will never experience... EVER. Jasper: Are they talking about the bordello?
Grampa: No. The burlesque house, so keep your mouth shut. [Lisa is strangling Bart]
Homer: Lisa, no. Your hands are too weak.
[begins strangling Bart] Homer: That's it. This job is too dangerous. I'm giving this badge to the first person I see.
Chief Wiggum: That's funny because this is how I got this job the first time.
Marge: Thank you, chief for saving my husband's life.
Chief Wiggum: I didn't do anything. They took my gun and my badge. They would have gotten my squad car too if I hadn't hidden it under some hay.
Homer: Then who shot all of the gangsters?
[Maggie looks out of the window and cocks her gun and hides it under her crib mattress]
Homer: It's time to go check on Maggie.
Marge: Isn't she sweet? She's probably thinking of the day that she shot Mr Burns.
Homer: Yeah. Homer: [rubs a Christmas tree and it catches on fire] Why does everything I love burn? Homer: I'll be the nicest man in the world!
Marge: Homer, you've said that before.
Homer: Yes, but this time I'm sober! Carla Tortelli LeBec: Sammy, you're too old to go on a date with two twins the same night. You're supposed to marry Diane without Rebecca knowin'!
Sam 'Mayday' Malone: All right, Carla, I'll make you a bet. If this affects my major league comeback, I'll sell the bar. Indian Chief: Drink deep from these cups. The bear urine will make you strong.
[Homer and Bart stop drinking]
Indian Chief: Actually, it's Fresca.
Homer Simpson: [Homer does a spit take] Fresca? [in gym]
Homer: Just think, two months ago I didn't know what dumb-bell meant. [a police officer has mistaken a green-painted Homer for the Incredible Hulk]
Stan Lee: He's not the Hulk... I'M the Hulk.
[rips shirt, growls and tries to change into Hulk]
Stan Lee: I don't understand, I did it once before.
Comic Book Guy: Oh, please, you couldn't turn into Bill Bixby. [Homer, Lenny, and Carl are drunk]
Lenny: Hey, let's go to the little league diamond and drive around the bases.
Carl: No, the Playboy Mansion. Playboy Mansion.
Homer Simpson: Shut up. It's my car and I say we're going to the lost city of gold. [Chief Wiggum is Polonius, Ralph Wiggum is Laertes. Bart, as Hamlet, has stabbed Polonius]
Ralph: Daddy's stomach is crying. Homer: I hope I didn't brain my damage. [Seeing a naked Homer dangling from a balloon]
Spectator: Look at that blimp... And he's hanging from a balloon. Homer: I don't mind being called a liar when I'm lying, or about to lie, or just finished lying, but NOT WHEN I'M TELLING THE TRUTH. Homer: Come on, Lisa. Try and see this from the Omnitouch Corporation's point of view. Dr. Hibbert: Lisa, I'm afraid your tummyache may be caused by stress.
Homer: Whew. That's a relief. Moe: May I have this dance?
Woman: [walking away] It's all yours. Kent Brockman: Human interest stories - they cloud the issues and fog the mind. Lisa: [Lisa is disgusted with Bart's "phony schmaltz" kids' news features]
Lisa: They want cheap sentiment? I'll pump 'em so full of sap they'll be blowing their nose with a pancake. Lisa: Oh, figs. [Lisa offers Homer apples instead of buffalo meat]
Homer Simpson: Oh boy, buffalo testicles. Homer: Oh, Margie, you came and you found me a turkey on my vacation away from workey. Bart: Stan Lee came back?
Comic Book Guy: Stan Lee never left. I'm afraid his mind is no longer in mint condition. [after being stabbed by Hamlet]
Chief Wiggum: I hide behind curtains because I have a fear of getting stabbed. Ray Patterson: Oh gosh. You know, I'm not much on speeches, but, it's so gratifying to leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed, thank you, bye.
Moe: He's right. He ain't much on speeches. [after being corrected by Lisa on the correct pronounciation of "foliage"]
Marge: All that gorgeous... foliage. I can't ex-cape Lisa, our little walking li-bary. Moe: All right, I guess I might as well come clean. I'm not real good with women, and I really wanted to do ya, so I brought along the love tester to help me. As you may have guessed, it's possessed by the dead spirit of my best friend's father. Homer: Hey, Weener Boy... where do you think you'e going? Homer: How much can I get for this?
[He hands the Comic Book Guy a mint condition Joe Dimaggio rookie card]
Comic Book Guy: Well, sir. I'm afraid your card is only worth... EVERYTHING I OWN. Lenny: If you ask me, Muhammad Ali, in his prime, was much better than anti-lock brakes.
Carl: Yeah, but what about Johnny Mathis versus Diet Pepsi?
Moe: Oh, I cannot listen to this again! [At Moe's alma mater, the bartending college]
Professor: Moe Szyslak, you old glass wipe. Lisa: Dad, this lack of sleep is making mom and Maggie crazy!
Homer: Don't you think you're overreacting, talking gumball machine? [first lines of an episode]
Kent Brockman: ...which, if true, means death for us all. [Bart is crank calling Moe's Tavern. Moe answers the phone]
Moe: Moe's Tavern.
Bart: Is Mr. Freely there?
Moe: Who?
Bart: Freely. First initials, I. P.
Moe: Hey, everybody, I pee freely! [singing along with an R.E.M. song]
Homer: Leonardo what-his-name, Herman Munster motorcade, birthday party Cheet-Os, pogo sticks and lemonade, idiotic stupid jerk, that's right Flanders, I am talking about you! Groundskeeper Willie: I lost all me "screw you" money.
Principal Skinner: I'm sorry, Willie.
Groundskeeper Willie: Screw you! Marge: Homer, there's a bird on your head.
Homer: I know, Marge, he's grooming me. [Marge has written a book based on her and Homer]
Lisa: Dad will be upset when he reads that book.
Bart: He'll never read it.
Lisa: What if they make a movie out of it?
Bart: He'll never see it.
Lisa: What if they make a parody of it on Mad TV?
Bart: We're doomed! Homer: I've got it! Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy to get the jack ruby.
Marge: Homer, Jack Ruby was a man, not a jewel.
Homer: Oh, back to square one. Lisa: Wow, there's a lot about bullying I didn't know.
Nelson: Yes, there's a lot of history there. Did you know it predates agriculture? Comic Book Guy: Human contact: the final frontier. Marge: Artie Ziff, why are you living in our attic?
Artie Ziff: Let me explain. I used to run an internet company.
Bart: Say no more.
Artie Ziff: I would stop, but I love the sound of my own voice. [while spying on Homer at the food festival]
Captain McCallister: Homer's undone the top button on his pants.
Akira: He's been walking around like that since Thanksgiving.
Captain McCallister: I'm surprised he doesn't just switch to sweat pants.
Akira: He says the crotch wears out too fast.
Captain McCallister: [shudders] That'll replace the whale in my nightmares! [after Bart and Milhouse are left in charge of the comic book shop]
Milhouse: Okay, here's Comic Book Guy's instructions: A carton of malted milk balls, one box confectioner's sugar, a can of chocolate frosting...
Bart: That's just his shopping list.
Milhouse: No, it's his instructions. [armed with a bottle of chloroform, Homer approaches a security guard]
Homer: I'll give you this bottle of chloroform if you take us to The Who! Rev. Lovejoy: Once the government approves something, it's no longer immoral! Krusty the Clown: I want my comedy to have a timeless quality.
Writer: Here's the final draft on that "Hanging Chad" sketch, Krusty.
Krusty the Clown: [reading] Heh heh. Oh good, you worked in Judge Ito. Bart: Skinner is a nut, he has a rubber butt!
Principal Skinner: Young man, I can assure you my posterior is nothing more than flesh, bone, and that metal plate I got in 'Nam. Marge: [reading the back of a super glue tube] "In case of accidental ingestion, consult a mortician." Homer: Hey, what's lucky hooked up to?
Nurse: A respirator. It breathes for him.
Homer: And here I am using my own lungs like a sucker. Homer: Marge, promise me you'll put me in a home. It's like being a baby, only you're old enough to apreciate it. Bart: [slapping Lisa] Don't hit Maggie. She's just a baby.
Homer: [slapping Bart] Don't hit Lisa. She's a girl.
Grampa: [slapping Homer] Keep your hands off of him Homer! [Bart isn't wearing underwear]
Bart Simpson: Free and easy, Lis. There's nothing like an unfurnished basement for maximum comfort.
Lisa: What are you talking about? [Homer is singing while flossing his teeth]
Homer Simpson: When you have a rib-eye steak, you must floss it. Oh, that meatloaf tasted great. You must floss it. Now, floss it. Floss it good. Nelson: Dad didn't leave... when he comes back from the store, he's going to wave those pop-tarts right in your face! Bart: Lisa made me do it. She cast a witch's spell on me.
Lisa: It's spelled Wicca, and it's empowering.
Bart: Wicca is just a Hollywood fad.
Lisa: That's Kabbala, jerk. Homer: [jumping on a bouncing castle] This must be what it's like in space.
Marge: You've been to space.
Homer: And yet, I've never been to me. [Homer has a fudgesicle stuck to his back]
Homer: Hey Lenny, can you get this Sugar Daddy off my back?
Lenny: All right, but this is the last time! Homer: Oh, I'm in no condition to drive. Wait a minute. I don't have to listen to myself. I'm drunk. Duff Man: [watering his plants] That brown spot needs some H2O! Oh yeah!
Moe: [Moe walks up to him] Hey Duffman! How would you like a sticker on YOUR face?
Duff Man: [Moe slaps the sticker onto his face, Duff man falls to the ground, struggling to get the sticker off] Duffman can't breath! Oh no! Principal Seymour: Fire can be our friend; whether it's toasting marshmellows, or raining down on Charlie. Marge: How did this happen? How did the Simpsons become the bottom rung of society?
Homer: I think it was when that cold snap killed off all the hoboes. Marge: It's the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Bart are you wearing clean underwear?
Bart: Not anymore. Lisa: Elegy for Geezer Rock: Postcard image, thing to see / to think of Springfield is to think of thee. / What thoughts be-pass a'hind thy mien? / Why sky art blue? Why trees art green? / And what, pray tell, did thine eyes see? / Perchance, old friend, they gazed at me. / Brought low by nature's oafish hand / thy crush-ed our reviewing stand. / And twixt thy stones glimpsed I the truth. / All things must pass. Thy face, my youth. Mr. Burns: I love children, particularly their young supple organs. Lisa: [auditioning people for her paper] What kind of journalism experience do you have?
Nelson: I dunno. Making nerds cry?
Lisa: Perfect! You can be our TV critic. Bart, Lisa: Aah! Sideshow Bob!
Sideshow Bob: Please, we've been through so much together. Call me Bob.
Bart, Lisa: Aah! Bob! [Homer wearing a beer keg on his head]
Homer: Look at me! I'm the Prime Minister of Ireland.
[everyone in the bar starts laughing] Marge: You know, Homer, there's $500 in the air conditioning account.
Homer: Oh Marge! Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life sweating like a pig?
Bart: Not to mention eating like a pig and dressing like a pig.
Apu: Don't forget the smell.
Homer: Will you get off of my lawn?
Apu: Why don't you make me?
Homer: Why, you...! Oh, forget it. Krusty the Clown: The faithful people at the Global Positioning System, is all the companionship I need...
[taps the GPS box, which delivers a healthy electric shock]
Krusty the Clown: AAAARGH!
[hurling the box over the side of the boat]
Krusty the Clown: Tell me where you are now you bastard! [Bart and Lisa have been zapped inside the TV, and are being chased by Itchy and Scratchy when Homer changes the channel to "Regis & Kathie Lee"]
Kathie Lee: [cooking soup] OK, now we add salt.
[Bart and Lisa fall into the soup, splashing it]
Regis: OW! My eyes! My eyes! Oh, God! My beautiful eyes!
[Itchy and Scratchy fall in, also splashing]
Kathie Lee: That's it! I'm going home. Dom DeLuise can interview himself.
Regis: My eyes! Chinese Dragon: [singing] American jerks are going home! / Now we sleep for a thousand years! / When we wake, the world will end! Marge: [eight years in the future, praising technology] It's greeat! We can do *anything* now that Science has invented Magic. [when The Simpsons are on holiday in Africa, Bart marks that he has seen a warthog to his animal card]
Lisa: Hey! You didn't see a warthog!
Bart: I'm looking at one right now.
Lisa: Mom! Bart implied I was a warthog!
Marge: Nobody's a warthog!
Bart: What about him?
[Lisa notices that there is actually a warthog right next to him] Mayor Quimby: We will not negotiate with terrorists. Is there a nearby city who will? Warden: You will dance and you will like it. Then you will have punch and you will drink it. Then your eyes will meet and it will be awkward. So help me God! Lenny: [Homer is on his way to bowling a perfect game. Lenny calls the waitress as Homer is about to roll the ball] Miss! Miss!
[Homer looks back at Lenny]
Lenny: Sorry. I was calling the waitress.
[Homer looks back to the pins]
Lenny: Uh, this split you sold me is making me choke.
[Waitress takes banana split]
Homer: [Homer looks back at Lenny] Lenny...
Lenny: What? I paid $7.10 for this split.
Carl: Would you at least call it a banana split, you dumwad?
Lenny: Hey, spare me your gutter-mouth
[Homer throws the bowling ball at Lenny. Lenny groans in pain] K'Tenge: [when he sees the family go down the river]
[shouts]
K'Tenge: Shaka Zulu! [while Homer is sneaking into Burns' mansion]
Moe, Carl, Lenny: [cheering] Homer, Homer, he's our man, if he can't do it, no-one can!
Homer: [beset by hounds] Aaaaargghh!
Carl: Oh, I guess no-one can.
Lenny: He's done for. Let's get out of there!
Moe, Carl, Lenny: Aaaaaahhhhh! Marge: How are the kids supposed to get home?
Homer: I dunno. Internet? Patty: I need a favor.
Homer Simpson: Hang on, I'll get my belt sander and try to grind the ugly off your face!
Patty: Ha, ha, ha, very funny.
Homer Simpson: I wasn't joking!
[pulls out a belt sander and turns it on] Bart: [Smithers walks into the room with a sexy girl at his side] Smithers? I thought you were... ugh... you know!
Smithers: Not as long as I take these injections!
[injects himself]
Smithers: [shouts] I like boobies! Manjula: You remind me of the monkey man who killed my father's chickens.
Lawyer: Yes, I get that a lot. Homer: [singing, while hosing out the back of his ambulance] Here in my car/ I am hosing out blood / Some of it's mine / But most of it's not / Here's Marge. Drederick Tatum: I have been paid millions to endorse these butt-ugly shoes. Bill Gates: I didn't get rich by signing checks. Marge: Get ready, skanks! It's time for the truth train! Rod Flanders: Can I have this shirt that says "Get Bent"?
Ned Flanders: Well, if that means to bend down and pray, sure! Homer: [looking at a picture of refugees in a newspaper] Look at these refugees, Marge. Not even a smile.
Marge: They've undergone terrible hardships.
Homer: Well, moping won't help anything! Krusty the Clown: It's not important to talk about who got rich off of whom, or who got exposed to tainted what... Seymour: [singing] I'm so happy with my evil plan. Say goodbye to music, gym, and art. Soon we will have the perfect school... where fun and excitement never starts.
Groundskeeper Willie: I'm so drunk I can barely see. But it helps me get through another day. My stomach is filled with haggis and ham. I've got to go puke in some hole.
Bart: Lisa is a fool.
Seymour: I think the rules are cool.
Groundskeeper Willie: I'm falling in the pool! Dr. Julius Hibbert: How could you close the school?
Marge: What will become of our kids?
Homer Simpson: Where are the refreshments?
Principal Skinner: Now, you keep asking me that and I keep telling you, over there! Congressman: Why, this news make my blood boil, my left arm feel numb, my mouth taste of copper! Arrgggh!
[congressman collapses]
Marge: He's had a heart-attack! Quick someone do CPR!
Homer Simpson: [singing] I see a bad moon rising.
Marge: No that's CCR!
Homer Simpson: Errr...
[singing]
Homer Simpson: Looks like we're in for nasty weather. Otto: Spell AC/DC!
Lisa: A-C-D-C
Otto: Nuh-uh! You forgot the lightning bolt. Townspeople: Aye!
Mayor Quimby: And all those against horsewhipping Homer J. Simpson?
Homer: Nay? Lenny: Hey, what happened? It's bright in the middle of the night.
Carl: You know what this reminds me of. My Icelandic boyhood. Homer Simpson: Who are you?
Andre Agassi: I'm Andre Agassi.
Homer Simpson: The wrestler? Kirk Van Houten: If you see a tie on the door knob, that means I'm with a lady.
Homer: But you don't have a door knob.
Kirk Van Houten: I don't have a tie either! Homer: Time to Trim the Mark
Bart: Way to use the lingo, Homer.
Homer: 10-4, Kemosabe. Marge: Our differences are only skin deep, but our sames go down to the bone. Bart: Woah! God is so in your face!
Homer Simpson: Yeah, he's my favorite fictional character. Chief Wiggum: Well, boys, it looks like we solved the mystery of the missing ham.
Marge: You guys are the world's worst cops!
Chief Wiggum: No, now that I'm off-duty, I'm the world's worst soccer coach. [Comic Book Guy makes a very sarcastic comment]
Lisa: Is he serious?
Professor Frink: [looking at the screen of a beeping gadget] Are you kidding? My sarcasm detector is off the charts!
Comic Book Guy: [extremely sarcastic] Oh, a *sarcasm* detector. Oh, that's a *really* useful invention!
[the sarcasm detector starts beeping frantically and then explodes from overload] Homer: [pulls compliance chip out of his head]
Homer: I did it! And without any brain damage-amage-amage-amage-amage... [Homer bursts into Congress, drunk]
Homer: You call this a bicameral legislature? Homer: [kicks a Saleswoman out of the house] We don't need your high-priced safety junk!
[Maggie falls from an upstairs window. The Saleswoman catches her, and gives her to Homer]
Homer: Oh, thank you. [Driving home from Krusty's comedy show]
Homer Simpson: From now on, I'm going to be just like Krusty and tell it like it is! Marge, you're getting a little fat around the thighs.
Bart: Dad!
Homer Simpson: You too, Bart.
Marge: Oh Homer, be quiet, you're the fattest person in this car.
Homer Simpson: Aw... you didn't have to tell it like it is. Stephen Hawking: [after being asked why he's at Lenny's Birthday Party at Moe's] I live here now, you're looking at the new owner of the Little Ceasers down the street. Pizza pizza Pizza pizza Pizza pizza Pizza pizza; sorry that button sticks. Barney: [drunk, laying on the side of the road] Spell 'remorse'.
Lisa: R-E-M-O-R-S-E
Barney: [singing] That's what beer has done to me! Sockittome, sockittome, sockittome, sockittome! Guard 1: [after Homer destroyed the bill of rights] You just licked off the part that forbids cruel and unusual punishment.
Guard 2: [putting on brass knuckles] Hehe, beautiful. Mr. Burns: [answering the phone] Ahoy hoy?
Krusty the Clown: Homer gave me a kidney: it wasn't his, I didn't need it, and it came postage due- but I appreciated the gesture! Chief Wiggum: [shopping for his wife at a women's clothing store] My wife's looking for something that doesn't make her look like a horse, so, I'm gonna be here for a while Principal Skinner: [an announcement made in front of the entire school] Due to budget cuts we had to sell the plastic skeleton and replace it with this Halloween costume. Also, the class trip to Italy is now "Spaghetti Night" in the school cafeteria, and your $1500 deposit is non refundable. Goodnight! Marge: [reading] "Due to the unscheduled trip to the autowrecking yard the school bus will be out of commission for two weeks. Note by reading this letter out loud you have waived any responsibility on our part in perpetuity throughout the known universe?"
[groaning] Marge: Lisa, you've been interested in nuclear power.
Lisa: Mom I've signed numerous petitions to shut that place down.
Marge: Well there you go.
Bart: Mom you're in the way of the TV if you want to you can fill out my form.
Marge: [Reading] Parent's occupation... Please note that homemaker is not allowed as it is not real work that's why you don't get paid.
[Groans]
Lisa: Bart can take my place at the nuclear power plant.
Marge: But Bart so wanted to see women in the workplace.
Lisa: Well how about aunt Patty and aunt Selma at the DMV?
Marge: [Bart gasps] Thank you Lisa I would have never thought of that.
[Lisa chuckles] | |
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Despite not hitting the silver screen until 2007, the idea of a feature length Simpsons film had been tossed around since the early 1990s. Producer James L. Brooks briefly encouraged the development of 1992's "Kamp Krusty" episode into a movie, but the staff of the show was unable to expand the episode (which was also pegged to be the Season 4 premiere) to feature-length. In fact, the episode itself ran short, and to make it fit the minimum time the Kamp Krusty song had to be lengthened by several verses. Executive producer Al Jean told Brooks:
"First of all, if we make it into the movie then we don't have a premiere, and second if we can't make 18 minutes out of this episode how are we supposed to make 80?"
Additional ideas for a movie included creator Matt Groening's desire to make a Simpsons parody of Fantasia and the late Phil Hartman's pitch to create a live action film based on character Troy McClure. Ultimately, nothing was agreed upon and the film remained in development hell as the series continued its highly successful run on Fox. As the 90s wound down, Groening and former executive producer Mike Scully frequently stated that a Simpsons movie would not be a reality until after the final episode of the show.
"The show takes up too much time right now to get involved in a movie. I don't think we'll do it until after the show goes off the air. We want to do it right." - Mike Scully, 3/8/2000
Development
In 2001, The Simpsons' voice actors re-signed with the show and their new contracts called for them to do three movies. Following this development (and when it became apparent that the show was not ending anytime soon), the staff of The Simpsons and 20th Century Fox began discussions in earnest on finally bringing our favorite family to the theater. In late 2003, Fox struck a deal with Simpsons writers to produce the movie.
Work began on a script for the film, and additional writers and animators were hired so that new episodes of the show and the film could be produced at the same time. Groening and Brooks invited Scully and showrunner Al Jean to produce the film with them. Former director and Pixar employee David Silverman was brought back to direct the film. A dream team of writers from the show's earliest seasons was assembled to work on the movie. Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti all had a hand in the script in addition to Brooks, Groening, Jean, and Scully.
"The idea of the movie is that all of us who ran the show at one point and who have been there from the beginning come together as the writing team." - James L. Brooks, 12/8/2004
Work on the film's screenplay took place in the small bungalow where Groening first pitched The Simpsons to Brooks in 1987. The plot of the film was inspired by a news story Groening had read about a town whose water supply was actually tainted by pig feces. Before all was said and done, the film's script went through over 100 revisions. Animation for The Simpsons Movie began in January 2006, with the Itchy & Scratchy short being the first scene to be storyboarded. The film was produced in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, to distinguish it from the look of the TV series, and colored with the largest palette Simpsons animators had ever had available to them. Brooks chose his good friend Hans Zimmer to compose the film's score. All of The Simpsons' regular voice actors and semi-regular performers reprised their roles as the characters in the movie. According to Groening, attempts were made to include every Simpsons character in the film, with 98 characters having speaking roles. The first of three table reads with the cast took place in May 2005, with Brooks directing the actors for the first time since the early 1990s. The recording sessions were much more intense than those done for the show, with some scenes such as Marge's video message to Homer being recorded over a hundred times.
On April 1, 2006, 20th Century Fox announced that The Simpsons Movie would be released worldwide on July 27, 2007. Editing of the movie ran well into 2007, with some edits taking place as late as two months before the film was released. The film was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "irreverent humor throughout". After a competition between 16 Springfields in the United States to host the American premiere, Springfield, Vermont was chosen and hosted the world premiere of The Simpsons Movie on July 21, 2007. A yellow carpet was used instead of the traditional red.
Plot
While performing on Lake Springfield, the band Green Day is killed when pollution in the lake erodes their barge. At a memorial service, Grampa has a prophetic vision in which he predicts the impending doom of the town, but only Marge takes it seriously. Lisa and an Irish boy named Colin, with whom she has fallen in love, hold a meeting where they convince the town to clean up the lake.
Meanwhile, Homer adopts a pig from Krusty Burger. Homer stores the pig's feces in a silo which Marge tells him to dispose of. However, Homer gets distracted and instead dumps the silo in the lake, polluting it again. Moments later, a squirrel jumps into the lake and becomes mutated. Nearby, Flanders and Bart discover the squirrel during a hike, and the EPA captures it. Russ Cargill, head of the EPA, presents five options to U.S. President Arnold Schwarzenegger to keep Springfield's pollution contained; he randomly picks the action of enclosing Springfield in a glass dome. When the police discover Homer's silo in the lake, an angry mob of townspeople approach the Simpsons' home and set the house on fire. However, the Simpson family escapes through a sinkhole and decides to flee to Alaska.
Cracks start to appear in the dome and Cargill, not wanting news of what he has done to become widespread, plans to destroy Springfield. In Alaska, the Simpsons see an advertisement for a new Grand Canyon to be located on the Springfield property. Marge and the kids decide to go and save the town, but Homer refuses to help the people who attempted to kill them. The family abandons Homer and leaves Alaska but are eventually captured by the EPA and placed back in the dome. After a visit from a mysterious Inuit shaman, Homer has an epiphany and believes he must save the town in order to save himself. As he arrives at Springfield to do so, a helicopter lowers a bomb suspended by a rope through a hole in the dome. Homer climbs to the peak of the dome and descends the rope, knocking down the escaping townspeople and the bomb. Homer grabs the bomb and a motorcycle. After reuniting with Bart, they cycle up the side of the dome and Bart tosses the bomb out through the hole, seconds before detonation. The bomb explodes, shattering the dome. The town praises Homer, who rides off with Marge on the motorcycle into the sunset. The townspeople begin the process of restoring Springfield back to normal.
Will There Be A Sequel?
As Maggie hinted at over the end credits of the first movie, yes there will likely be a second Simpsons Movie one day. Due to the financial and critical success of the first film, the experience The Simpsons' crew gained in producing a movie, and the fact that the voice cast is signed on to do at least one more flick, there are few obstacles in the way of producing a sequel. Nevertheless, if the first movie took well over a decade to be produced and released, how long can we expect to wait for a second film?
"It will happen at some point, but I have no idea when. The first one took us four years – mainly because we don't like to work any harder than we usually do. It's going to be awhile. We'll get to it, I'm sure." - Matt Groening, 7/14/2008
"We would like to do a sequel but not unless we had a script that we believed in as much as that one. That one took fifteen years. It was a labor of love but it was also a labor of work, and that was fine." - Al Jean, 7/26/2008
Don't hold your breath, Simpsons fans. It'll be another several years - and perhaps not until the TV series ends - before we see The Simpsons Movie 2. | |
| The Simpsons Movie Trivia | |
- Twentieth Century Fox registered the internet domain SIMPSONSMOVIE.COM on 22 April 1997, nine years before the movie finally was green lighted.
- The Simpson's movie debuted in Springfield, Vermont on 21st July 2007. 20th Century Fox held a contest to select 1 of 16 possible Springfields (spanning from Oregon to Nebraska to Massachusetts) to decide which city would host the premiere. Springfield, Vermont won, just beating out Springfield, Illinois.
- The script for the voice work was to be kept so secret that the producers personally shred the script after every voicing session.
- Work on the script began in 2003. 158 drafts were written.
- For the entire month of July 2007, as part of a campaign to hype the July 27th opening of the movie, 12 "7-Elevens" stores all over North America changed their names to Kwik-E-Marts, and begun selling products like Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal, Radioactive Man comics, and Squishees - including WooHoo! Blue Vanilla flavor. One store in Burbank, CA reported selling over 57,000 sprinkled donuts matching the one featured in the movie poster. Only 1 of the 12 locations was in Canada - located in Coquitlam, British Columbia (a suburb near Vancouver).
- Moe's Tavern, as it's called in the show, is called "Moe's Bar" in the movie.
- Release prints were delivered to theaters with the fake title "Yellow Harvest". This was also used as a fake working title. It references "Blue Harvest", the fake working title of Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983).
- Director David Silverman had Julie Kavner do over 100 takes of a monologue in which Marge makes an impassioned plea to Homer.
- A 180ft doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the Cerne Abbas chalk giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, UK, to promote this film. Pagans pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away the image, which was created with biodegradable paint that would wash away as soon as it rained.
- The choral version of "Spider Pig" from the movie soundtrack, credited to Hans Zimmer, reached #24 on the British singles chart for the week ending 2007-08-05.
- The states bordering Springfield are: Nevada, Maine, Kentucky and Ohio. This pays homage the long running joke in the TV series of not pinning down exactly where Springfield is located.
- When Homer dreams of going up and down thru several truncated stairs into the ‘Boob Lady’ tent, is a homage to the 1951 art work of M.C. Escher titled "House of Stairs".
- ‘Spiderpig’ by Hans Zimmer reached #3 after climbing from the 20s in the Irish Music Charts. At just over a minute it is the shortest track ever to make it in to the Irish Music Charts. In the UK it got as far as the Top 20.
- At the end of the wedding video, Homer and Marge dance to the song "Close to You" by The Carpenters. On "The Simpsons" (1989), this is the same song that is played in a flashback scene where Homer sees Marge for the very first time.
- Kelsey Grammer, Minnie Driver, Isla Fisher and Erin Brockovich-Ellis all recorded lines for the film but their scenes were cut.
- The sign in Russian, in the scene where Homer tells the family to "believe in America" and pulls aside the curtains in their hotel room, reads "Learn to Speak English or Get Out". The Japanese sign reads "Godzilla Motors". The Greek sign reads "Dimitri's Super Gyros-Souvlaki".
- Among the list of foreign language signs the one in Korean translates to "Learn English with a Texas accent", and the one in Russian says "Learn English or leave".
- The character of Russ Cargill went through two different designs. Burger King, which licensed the right to make give away figurines of the characters, had started making figures of the rejected design when the change was made for the movie. Also, a number of mutated animals were considered for use, including a four eyed deer and five eyed raccoon, when it was decided to use a multi eyed squirrel as the result of Springfield Lake's pollution. However, the five eyed raccoon was included on the BK Marge Simpson figurine.
- Albert Brooks is credited as "A. Brooks," just as he has been in all five (as of 2007) Simpsons episodes he has appeared in (each time as a different character).
- The magazine Grandpa is reading, when Homer falls through the roof, is called Oatmeal Enthusiast. This is in fact a genuine Internet based magazine/journal.
- Two versions were filmed of the scene in which Homer slides into the domed-off Springfield down the bomb rope, knocking people off of it - one was done from Homer's perspective, and another was done from a third-person perspective, showing a side view of Homer coming down the rope. Although the latter scene was used for the final version of the film, the former appeared in theatrical trailers and TV spots.
- According to the DVD commentary, virtually none of the gags from the original draft (written around 2003) made it to the final cut. One of the few exceptions was the fishing scene between Homer and Bart.
- Although Julie Kavner is credited for providing the voices of Marge, Patty and Selma, only Marge has a speaking role in the final film. In addition, Marcia Wallace is credited as Mrs. Krabappel, but she has no dialogue. A scene with Patty, Selma and Mrs. Krabappel speaking can be seen as a deleted scene on the DVD.
- A message from EPA head Russ Cargill precedes the FBI Warning on the DVD.
- The Spider Pig Song has been remixed as a techno Version on YouTube.
- The ring tone from Homer's cell phone is an "anti-cell" joke to warn viewers about turning their cell phones off.
- SPOILER: The bar in Alaska is called "Eski-Moe's", a homage to "Moe's Tavern" in Springfield.
- SPOILER: The painting hanging above Homer and Marge's bed in Alaska is signed "Marge". This pays homage to the painting of the sail-boat above the couch in The Simpson's house, also done by Marge.
- SPOILER: The first new episode of the series broadcast after the release of the movie featured an altered opening credit sequence which included a number of references to the movie including Bart skateboarding through a destroyed Springfield, the multi-eyed squirrel, Russ Cargill, President Schwartzeneger, the Simpson's home in the process of being rebuilt, and Homer pulling into the driveway with the silo strapped to the roof of his car. The couch gag featured Spiderpig/Harry Plopper sitting on the couch, waiting for them. Homer cuddles him and says, "Ah, my summer love!"
- SPOILER: Marge claims that "sequel" is Maggie's first word during the end credits, which is not true. Maggie said her first word in "The Simpsons: Lisa's First Word (1992), and it was "Daddy". But since no one was around when she did say it, it is only natural that Marge assumes that her daughter's first word is "sequel".
- SPOILER: Homer also tried to jump the "Springfield Gorge" in "The Simpsons: Bart the Daredevil" (1990). The ambulance used to transport Homer to the hospital can still be seen sitting where it collided with a nearby tree.
- SPOILER: The double-arched bridge that Homer and Bart pass in front of on the motorcycle when trying to dispose of the bomb resembles the Sixth St. Bridge in Los Angeles.
- SPOILER: The movie marks the first time in the Simpsons canon that a celebrity actually dies. Green Day die during their concert at the lake at the start of the film. Celebrities have died in Halloween specials though.
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| The Simpsons Movie Quotes | |
Homer Simpson: [Pig nudges The plank The Simpsons are using to escape] No, Plopper. If you push that, daddy will die.
Pig: [looks at Homer and pushes plank] Oink.
Marge Simpson: [to Lisa] Honey, thats great. But The very best thing is that he listens to you. Because nothing means more than for a man to...
[looks up in surprise]
Marge Simpson: How did The pig tracks get on The ceiling?
[cuts to Homer holding a pig to The ceiling]
Homer Simpson: [singing Tune to Spider-Man Theme Song] Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig. / Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. / Can he swing / from a web? / No he *cant*, / Hes a pig. / Look out! / He is The Spider-Pig!
Panicky Man: [as The dome is being lowered] Oh, no! What do I do? I dont know what to do! Im alone if I leave, and Im trapped if I stay! In! Out! In! Out! I never saw Venice! [is crushed by edge of
dome]
[watching The credits]
Bart Simpson: [to Homer] Come on, dad, lets go! Ive been holding it since They put The dome on The town!
Marge Simpson: Homer, it was you! You single-handedly killed The
entire town!
Homer Simpson: I know, its *weird!*
Lisa Simpson: This town is just one piece of trash away from a toxic nightmare! But I knew you wouldnt listen. So I took The liberty of pouring water from The lake in all your drinking glasses!
[everyone spits out Their water in disgust]
Moe: See, this is why we should hate kids!
Toll Booth Man: Welcome to Alaska. Heres a thousand dollars.
Homer Simpson: Well, its about time! But why?
Toll Booth Man: We pay every resident a thousand dollars to allow The oil companies to ravage our states natural beauty.
Homer Simpson: [hugs toll booth man] Im home!
Chief Wiggum: [after The Simpsons house collapses into The sink hole] They're Chinas problem now.
Bart Simpson: [on The blackboard, in The open sequence] I will not illegally download this movie.
Homer Simpson: Okay, son. You have only one chance to throw that bomb through The hole.
Bart Simpson: Dad, in case I dont make it, Im sorry I said I wish you weren't my dad.
Homer Simpson: I dont blame you, son. Ive never been that good of a father. Maybe it all starts with The way my faTher raised me. Yes, its all clear to me. Its all just been one long, unbroken chain of...
Marge Simpson: Somebody throw The goddamn bomb!
Ned Flanders: The Good Lord is telling me to confess to something...
Homer Simpson: [whispering hopefully, with his fingers crossed] Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay...
Homer Simpson: Screw Springfield!
Marge Simpson: [gasps] I cant believe youd say something so selfish.
Homer Simpson: Marge, those people chased us with pitchforks and torches. TORCHES! At four in The afternoon!
Marge Simpson: It was 7 at night.
Homer Simpson: It was during Access Hollywood.
Marge Simpson: Which is on at 4 and 7.
Homer Simpson: Doh!
Homer Simpson: Ill let you hold The bomb...
Bart Simpson: The man knows me!
[Homer is whipping The dogs pulling his sled]
Homer Simpson: Run! Run! Run! Run! Run! Run!
Homer Simpson: [The dogs jump over a cliff] Jump! Jump!
Homer Simpson: [The dogs land on The oTher side] Land! Land!
Homer Simpson: [The dogs take a breaTher] Rest! Rest!
Homer Simpson: [The dogs pull The sled again] Run! Run!
Homer Simpson: [Homer sets up camp and begins removing The dog muzzles] Okay, I know weve had a rough day, but Im sure we can put that all behind us and...
Homer Simpson: [The dogs start attacking Homer, causing him to scream
in pain] AGH! Not my whipping arm!
Homer Simpson: [The dogs leave Homer stranded] Why does everything I
whip leave me?
Homer Simpson: [gets up to leave and stops in The aisle] Ooh, floor popcorn! [picks a pile of popcorn up off The floor and begins to eat it]
Girl on Phone: You hang up first.
Boy on Phone: No, you hang up first.
Girl on Phone: Okay.
[hangs up]
Boy on Phone: What The-? She hung up on me!
Marge Simpson: [observing a silo marked "Pig Crap"] Ugh... its leaking!
Homer Simpson: Its not leaking, its overflowing!
Marge Simpson: He filled up The whole silo in two days?
Homer Simpson: Well I helped.
Homer Simpson: [in a noose The angry mob set up] The word "apology" is tossed around a lot These days, but when it comes from in here... [Homer motions towards his heart, prompting someone to throw a buzzsaw at him] DOH!
[The Green Day barge is dissolving in polluted Lake Springfield]
Mike Dirnt: Gentlemen, its been an honor playing with you tonight.
Martin: [walks up to bullies, picks up wooden board] Ive been taking your crap all my life! [beats The bullies in one swipe]
Dolph, Jimbo Jones, Kearney: Uggghh!
Martin: Whoo! This feels good! No wonder you do it.
[Lisa and Colin are separated by The dome and are saying Their good-byes]
Bart Simpson: [singing] Lisa's got a boyfriend, that she'll never seeagain!
[Lisa slugs him out]
Montgomery Burns: Well, for once, The rich white man is in control.
[car tyres screech to a halt outside. The Simpsons silhouettes as the family make Their way to The church door. Their conversation can also be heard]
Marge Simpson: I hate being late!
Homer Simpson: Well I hate going. Why cant I worship The Lord in my own way, by praying like hell on my death bed.
Marge Simpson: Homer, They can hear you inside!
Homer Simpson: Relax! Those pious morons are too busy talking to their phoney-baloney God!
[The family enter The church to total silence and angry looks. They make Their way to Their pew]
Homer Simpson: How ya doin? Peace be with you. Praise Jebus.
[The police have just found Homers pig crap silo, which is marked
"Return to Homer Simpson"]
Kent Brockman: Now, Channel 6 does not endorse vigilante violence. Unless it gets results... which it *will*. [a picture of Homer appears in The upper-right hand corner]
News Text: [flashing] GET HIM!
Ned Flanders: Look at that, you can see The four states that border Springfield: Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky!
Bart Simpson: Oh yeah.
Robot: Red wire, blue wire, black is usually The ground... [begins shaking]... ahhh, so much pressure... PRESSURE!
[grabs Chief Wiggums gun and shoots itself in The head]
Chief Wiggum: He was talking about it, but I never took him seriously.
[Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day sings "da-da-da" to the final part of The Simpsons tune, following his teleprompter]
Billie Joe Armstrong: Alright, well thanks a lot for coming. We've been playing for three and a half hours, now wed like just a minute of your time to say something about The environment.
[There is a deathly silence, followed by huge boos from The Springfieldians. They start throwing things at Green Day]
Barney Gumble: Preachy!
Billie Joe Armstrong: Were not being preachy!
Tre Cool: But The pollution in your lake - its dissolving our barge!
[Moe is sitting in a deck chair. Lisa is standing next to him]
Lisa Simpson: I thought They touched on a vital issue.
Moe: I beg to differ.
[He throws a rock at The stage, which penetrates The bass drum and hits Frank in The crotch]
Tre Cool: Oh.
Mike Dirnt: Gentlemen, its been an honour playing with you tonight.
[Green Day put down Their instruments and bring out violins as The barge sinks. Lisa looks on woefully]
[about The Itchy and Scratchy Movie in The cinema hall]
Homer Simpson: I cant believe were paying to see something we get on TV for free! If you ask me, everybody in this Theater is a giant sucker! Especially you!
[points to us]
[in The middle of The Movie]
Title Card: To be continued.
[pause]
Title Card: Immediately.
Bart Simpson: [on The blackboard, in The open sequence] I will not illegally download this Movie.
Russ Cargill: [enters The Oval Office] President Schawarzenegger.
President Schwarzenegger: Ja. That is me.
Russ Cargill: The pollution in Springfield has reached crisis levels
President Schwarzenegger: Ach! Everything is "crisis this" and "end-of-The-world that"! No one opens with a joke! I miss Danny DeVito.
Russ Cargill: You like jokes, huh? Well, stop me if youve heard this one.
[holds up cage with The mutant squirral]
President Schwarzenegger: [gasp] Look at all those angry eyes and pointy teeth! Its like Christmas at The Kennedy Compound!
Russ Cargill: Mr. President, you chose me, Russ Cargill, most successful man in America, to head The EPA, The least successful organization. Thats why Ive narrowed your choices down to five unthinkable options.
[spreads The files on The Presidents desk]
Russ Cargill: Each one will cause untold misery and...
President Schwarzenegger: [points to File #3] I pick Number Three!
Russ Cargill: Really? You dont want to read Them first?
President Schwarzenegger: I was elected to *lead*, not to *read*. Number Three!
[watching The credits]
Bart Simpson: [to Homer] Come on, dad, lets go! Ive been holding it since They put The dome on The town!
Homer Simpson: [noticing a glow] Uh, whats that ominous glow in the distance?
Angry Mob: [wielding torches] Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill...
Homer Simpson: [looking out The window] Marge, look! Those idiots dont even know where we *live*!
Angry Mob: [looking round, seeing Homer] Kill, kill, kill, kill...
Homer Simpson: Doh!
Chief Wiggum: [shouting at a naked Bart] Stop, in The name of American squeamishness!
Homer Simpson: [talking to himself while trudging through The snow]
Must keep going. Must keep going. No I cant! Yes, you can. No I cant. Yes you can. Oh, shut up! *You* shut up! No, you! No, you! Oh, real mature! Oh, whats the point?
[falls into The snow]
Bart Simpson: [blushing] Did you at least bring my clothes?
Homer Simpson: Shirt, socks, everything you need.
Bart Simpson: [covering up privates] You didnt bring my pants!
Homer Simpson: Who am I, Tommy Bahama?
Bart Simpson: [face is completely red, sobs] This is The worst day of my life.
Homer Simpson: The worst day of your life *so far*.
Homer Simpson: [to Pig] Maybe *we* should kiss, just to break the tension.
Homer Simpson: That was The most incredible experience of my life! And now, to find my family, save my town, and drop ten pounds!
Marge Simpson: Homer, you have to go out There, face that mob, and apologize for what you did.
Homer Simpson: I would, but Im afraid if I open The door, They'll take all of you!
Carl: No we wont. We just want Homer!
Homer Simpson: Well, maybe not you, but They'll kill Grandpa!
Grampa: Im part of The mob!
Bart Simpson: [drunkenly] Mom?
Marge Simpson: Yes honey?
Bart Simpson: You just bought anoTher load of crap from the worlds fattest fertilizer salesman.
Homer Simpson: Youll pay for ruining the golden family moment!
Marge Simpson: Homer!
Bart Simpson: How are we supposed to get to Alaska without any money?
Homer Simpson: Alright, son. If you dont believe me, believe in America!
Russ Cargill: Springfield has become...
Man: Woooo! Springfield!
Russ Cargill: ...The most polluted city in The history of The planet.
Krusty The Clown: Drama queen!
Homer Simpson: Now Homer Simpsons gonna show he has cajones!
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A is for...
Accidents: Brake My Wife, Please
Apu: The Sweetest Apu
B is for...
Bart: Barting Over
Burns: The Trouble With Trillions
C is for...
Chief Wiggum: The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase
Couch gags: The Ziff Who Came To Dinner
D is for..
Disco Stu: Helter Shelter
D'oh!: Jaws Wired Shut
Duff Beer: Old Yeller-Belly
Disaster: Mountain Of Madness
E is for...
Exams: Bart The Genius
Eating: Sweets and Sour Marge
F is for...
Friends: Little Girl In The Big Ten
Fat: King-Size Homer
Family: The Dad Who Knew Too Little
Fear: Treehouse Of Horror VIII
G is for...
Grampa: The Old Man and the Key
Gumble, Barney: Homer's Phobia
Girlfriends: The Bart Wants What It Wants
H is for...
Homer: Poppa's Got A Brand New Badge
Homer: El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage Of Homer)
I is for...
Itchy & Scratchy: The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show
Itchy & Scratchy: The Day The Violence Died
J is for...
Jebediah: Lisa The Iconoclast
Jobs: You Only Move Twice
K is for...
Kwik-E-Mart: Lisa The Simpson
Krusty: Today, I Am A Klown
Kent Brockman: Fraudcast News
Kissing: The Way We Weren't
L is for...
Lisa: Smart and Smarter
Love: Grade School Confidential
M is for...
Moe: Homer The Moe
Milhouse: Bart Sells His Soul
Marge: The Twisted World Of Marge Simpson
Marge: Strong Arms Of The Ma
N is for...
Ned: A Star Is Born-Again
Ned: Home Sweet Home-Diddly-Dum-Doodily
Nelson: Lisa's Date With Density
Nudity: Natural Born Kissers
O is for...
Otto: Das Bus
Offenders: Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 2
P is for...
Principal Skinner: The Principal and the Pauper
Prank Calls: Some Enchanted Evening
Q is for...
Quimby: Trash Of The Titans
Quotes: Gump Roast
R is for...
Reverend Lovejoy: In Marge We Trust
Romance: A Hunka Hunka Burns In Love
Romance: Homer's Night Out
Royalty: The Regina Monologues
S is for...
Santa's Little Helper: The Canine Mutiny
Smithers: C. E. D'oh
Sideshow Bob: Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming
Springfield: 22 Short Films About Springfield
T is for...
Troy McClure: A Fish Called Selma
Teachers: Special Edna
Trouble: The Tell-tale Head
Treehouse: Treehouse Of Horror XIV
U is for...
Unfaithful: Life In The Fast Lane
Unhealthy: Bart Star
U.S.A.: Bart-Mangled Banner
Unforgettable: Call Of The Simpson
V is for...
Veterans: Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in: "The Curse Of The Flying Hellfish"
Vacations: Blame It On Lisa
W is for...
Weddings: A Milhouse Divided
Winning: The Homer They Fall
Work: Homer the Smithers
Wiggum, Ralph: This Little Wiggy
X is for...
Xmas: Miracle On Evergreen Terrace
Xmas: Marge Be Not Proud
Y is for...
Yarn: Tales From The Public Domain
Z is for...
Ziff: Half-Decent Proposal | |
