Monday’s Simpsons clip

Hello hello hello. I’ve been through the clips of The Simpsons on YouTube again so that you don’t have to, and today I’ve found what really was a classic clip. It’s the one where Homer defends the sugar he’s stolen off the back of a jack-knifed lorry.

“I can’t live the button-downed life like you [,Marge]. I want it all; the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles! Sure, I might offend a few of the blue noses with my cocky stride and musky odours. Oh! I’ll never be the darling of the so-called city-fathers, who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards and talk about ‘what’s to be done with this Homer Simpson?’”

The Simpsons used to be about jokes which were funny because of the characters that they came through, I think that’s where we see the real decline. The show now is led each week by a wacky storyline and a celebrity walk-on, which makes the jokes more difficult to tie to anything but themselves, and therefore the punchlines – and they are more like punchlines now – less rewarding.

In this scene, knowing the nature of Homer and Marge’s relationship – Marge: Homer’s disapproving guardian – means that Marge’s role doesn’t have to wait until she comes in and speaks at the end: all the time we know that she’s infuriated with Homer, which informs the whole speech, making it funnier – we’re laughing at her despairing at the same time as laughing at Homer for being unhinged. If Homer had done the same speech a few series later, as the character’s personalities have become less important to the show – as it’s become a case of having the characters do and say whatever fits the narrative for that particular episode – they’d have lost half the gag.

Anyone that can’t see that they should have, as was originally planned, ended it after the film – which was naff – was finished, is an idiot or a Fox employee.