The Simpsons isn't subject to the regular rules of television. And because of that,
a lot of plots and fates are left dangling, never to be resolved. So we're looking at
some big questions that The Simpsons posed over the years, and which it never fully answered.
The Simpsons has been on so long that its opening sequence is almost as famous as the
show itself. With more than 600 episodes under its belt, most Simpsons fans could recall
it from memory.
We've got Bart writing a sentence on a classroom blackboard wall a few dozen times as punishment,
Lisa getting kicked out of band practice for playing jazz, Maggie getting picked up with
Marge's groceries and being swiped across a cashier's barcode scanner, and Homer cutting
out of work when he hears the whistle blow, carelessly allowing a nuclear rod to bounce
around after him.
Every one of these events warrants some inspection. Bart abandons the chalkboard when he hears
a school bell ring, but why does a bell ring when this is obviously his after-school punishment?
And why is Lisa's band class, often depicted as part of her regular school day, being held
after class? These events suggest that it's about three or four o'clock, which seems early
for Homer's nine-to-five gig to end.
As for Maggie getting scanned, a price pops up for the grocery cashier, meaning Maggie
is seemingly wearing a barcode. According to The Telegraph, Simpsons creator Matt Groening
stated the price that appears on the register is $847.63. It was the cost of raising a child
in 1989, when the show first appeared on FOX.
A running gag in The Simpsons wasn't only hilarious wordplay, but its characterization
of Bart Simpson as a rude, cynical troublemaker. Bart would call Moe's Tavern and ask to speak
with someone, and he'd always give a made-up name that was either an insult or a pun. Moe
would then call out to the assorted barflies:
"Seymour Butts? Hey everybody I wanna Seymore Butts."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Bart would then descend into a fit of giggles, and realizing he'd been pranked yet again,
Moe would threaten acts of violence against the caller, should he ever discover their
identity.
But Moe should've figured out over a dozen times that his frequent prank caller is the
eldest Simpson child. Homer is one of Moe's best customers and Moe is a family friend.
But it's good that we, the audience, get to enjoy his ongoing confusion.
C. Montgomery Burns is the town villain who owns the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.
He once blocked the sun, he's stolen puppies, and he's incredibly old. He's fond of using
old-timey insults like dunderpate, answers the phone by saying:
"Ahoy hoy?"
...and tries to stack his company's softball team with dead professional baseball players.
Burns' age is clearly just a vehicle for jokes and hilariously archaic words, but it doesn't
make his age clear. His birth year has been given as both 1881 and 1890, making him at
least 100 in the Simpsons universe. But in the Season 4 episode "Last Exit to Springfield,"
there's a flashback to Burns as a boy in 1909 visiting an atom-smashing mill as a school
age boy, placing his birth around 1900.
Also, in the Season 2 episode "Simpson and Delilah," Burns' age is said to be 81, although
in a few other episodes, that age changes to 104. And when Springfield's oldest man
dies at age 108, Burns takes his place. He could even be older, but it's obvious that
the writers won't make it clear, or let this joke die.
In the sixth season episode "Fear of Flying", Homer is rewarded for helping an airline hide
its coverup by mistaking him for a pilot. But their resulting trip is cancelled because
Marge suffers a panic attack while awaiting takeoff. They get off the plane, and Marge
sees a psychiatrist to find the cause of her fear of flying.
A repressed memory reveals that Marge hates flying because when she was very young, she
found out her father was secretly a flight attendant and not a pilot like she had thought.
At the end of the episode, Marge is cured of her fear and gets on a plane with the family,
only for it to run off the runaway and crash into a lake.
Marge's deep discomfort with flying remains both intact and justified, something which
doesn't mesh with events in earlier seasons. The Simpson family goes on to take multiple
vacations and trips via airplane, Marge included. She never seems to be anything but totally
comfortable and relaxed before and during these air voyages.
According to The Simpsons wiki, it's theorized that the episodes are out of order, which
could explain Marge's inconsistent comfort with flying.
A permanent fixture at Moe's Tavern is Barney Gumble. He's seemingly always inebriated or
in the process of becoming inebriated. Barney's obvious alcoholism is a dark but frequent
source of comedy. He once won the Springfield Film Festival with his beautiful and haunting
movie about his battle with the bottle, and viewers learned that he had a promising future
until Homer gave him his first beer the night before the SATs, setting Barney on a drunken
path.
"Lachrymose is to dyspeptic as ebullient is to...effervescent! Alright! Harvard here I
come!"
In the Season 11 episode, "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses," Barney swears off beer, joins Alcoholics
Anonymous, and adjusts to a life in recovery. But his addictive tendencies still run deep,
and he still hangs out at the bar because Moe buys an espresso machine, whereafter Barney
eliminates his dependency on alcohol by getting hooked on caffeine.
A well-groomed Barney is shown drinking latte after latte until one day Barney is once more
permanently a slob knocking back brewskies. So what exactly led Barney to fall off the
wagon and why? Unfortunately, we haven't gotten an answer yet.
Throughout the series, Homer meets lots of new people and invents, makes, or schemes
his way into just about everything. In the Season 2 episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?,"
Homer's estranged half-brother, Herb, is a successful car company owner who lets Homer
design a car that's such a flop it destroys the company and leaves him destitute. After
being homeless for a while, Herb returns in the Season 3 "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
and stays with the Simpson family for a while until he gets back on his feet.
With Maggie's help, Herb develops a baby translator, and it's an instant success that makes him
wildly rich once more. To show his appreciation, he buys Homer the expensive luxury recliner
he's had his eye on.
This episode hinges upon two very important objects: a device that unlocks the language
of infants and a huge piece of furniture. But the two objects are never addressed again
on The Simpsons. A baby translator would change the world, but is never mentioned again, and
hundreds of scenes have transpired in the Simpsons' TV room, with Homer firmly planted
on the couch and not his fancy chair.
In the Season 4 episode, "Marge Versus The Monorail", frivolously spending town money
on a transit system seemed like such a futuristic and progressive idea. It even had a catchy
song, introduced by monorail proprietor Lyle Lanley, convincing them to give Lanley the
cash windfall collected from Mister Burns for crimes against the environment. Of course,
the monorail was a civic, financial, and political disaster.
But no ramifications or fallout ever seemed to transpire. Not only is Main Street still
all cracked and broken, as Marge pointed out in "The Monorail Song", but the town was left
in far worse shape when a makeshift anchor to stop the runaway monorail ripped through
several streets and buildings. Did Springfield fix all those roads and, if so, how did the
cash-strapped town pay for it? Are the monorail towers, tracks, and trains still hanging around
Springfield? There's also the whereabouts of Lyle Lanley to wonder about.
"Mr. Lanley! Aren't you gonna ride the monorail?"
"Little lady, I'd love to but I have to catch a plane."
"But the ride only takes a minute."
"Yeah well, my plane leaves in less than one minute."
He built the monorail on the cheap and escaped with the rest of the cash, only for his getaway
plane to perform an emergency landing in another town he victimized, where an angry mob confronted
him. It's possible those townsfolk threw him in jail on charges of criminal negligence,
but it still doesn't account for the instantaneous recovery of Springfield.
The Season 12 episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" is undoubtedly one of the strangest
of The Simpsons catalogue. Homer starts a website and spreads rumors and conspiracy
theories that he makes up, until he accidentally gets one right.
When he tells the public that flu shots are performed just before Christmas to incite
the mass urge to shop, he's sent to a strange, spooky, and surreal island prison. Among the
occupants are a man who invented a bottomless peanut bag, Homer's German-speaking doppelgänger,
and a bunch of menacing bubbles.
Homer manages to escape and return home, only to be greeted by Santa's Little Helper who
sprays gas on him and the rest of the family, who later wake up in a state of drugged-out
bliss on the island. Then the scene fades to black, and the credits roll.
The penal island is a lengthy tribute to the bizarre 1960s British TV series The Prisoner,
but this episode isn't established like many Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" segments. For
all viewers know, the "real" Simpsons are still on that island.
The Simpsons has been on the air for 30 years and, as time marches on, people pass away.
Several longtime voice actors on the series have died, including Marcia Wallace, who voiced
Springfield Elementary teacher Edna Krabappel and Russi Taylor, who voiced twins Sherri
and Terri and nerd Martin Prince.
Simpsons writers have approached how to handle character departures of deceased cast members
in different ways. When Wallace died, Mrs. Krabappel died, too, and her death was noticed
and mourned, in particular by her husband Ned Flanders. When Taylor passed on, her child
characters survived, voiced by new cast member Grey DeLisle-Griffin.
Of course, the first big death on The Simpsons came when Phil Hartman passed away in 1998.
Producers opted to instantly retire his recurring characters: washed-up B-movie actor Troy McClure
and Simpson family attorney Lionel Hutz. Writers simply didn't include the characters anymore,
and neither was ever mentioned again. While we know the tragic details of Hartman's passing,
the fates of these characters have never been discussed.
The Season 7 episode, "Much Apu About Nothing", takes on the issue of immigration, or rather
how politicians blame government shortfalls on illegal immigrants. In Springfield, this
transpires when a bear patrol leads to a tiny tax increase, which upsets the citizens so
much that Mayor Quimby blames the new tax on immigrants. Voters then decide on Proposition
24, which would immediately deport every illegal immigrant living in Springfield.
In fear of the measure passing, Kwik-E-Mart owner and operator Apu frantically studies
for the citizenship test. Bartender Moe is also shown taking the test, as is stereotypical
Italian chef Luigi. Apu passes, and Moe and Luigi presumably do, too, as both remain in
town when Prop 24 passes in a landslide. However, the episode ends with a resentful Groundskeeper
Willie on a boat, dressed in the style of a 19th-century European arriving at Ellis
Island, sailing away from Springfield.
Nonetheless, Willie is present in later episodes. It's unclear how he was able to return to
town and his job so quickly and easily. It's not clear if he took a citizenship test or
arranged for legal immigration, or if he somehow snuck back into Springfield from Scotland.
The Simpsons has always been a satirical show, holding an animated mirror up to society to
point out its ills and make fun of them. One target the show never tires of are big corporations
that do bad things.
Homer works for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, where skirting environmental law in
the name of profits for owner Mister Burns is the norm. As a result, Springfield is a
massively polluted and politically corrupt wasteland, where the power plant dumps toxic
waste wherever it wants, while the local government gives only the occasional small fine. One
of the earliest episodes finds Burns' gubernatorial campaign sidelined by a three-eyed fish caught
in a waterway polluted with waste.
Toxic pollution is just a part of life in Springfield, but is exposure to chemicals
why all the residents have sickly yellow skin, bulging eyes, and four fingers on each hand?
Is it why they don't seem to age in a normal way? There certainly have to be even more
ways that nuclear waste has profoundly altered the lives of the residents of Springfield,
and we're just waiting for The Simpsons to answer those burning questions.
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