Two months ago, The Simpsons started its 36th Season. Anyone who saw the first episode live in 1989 is now older than Homer Simpson. However, while I have enjoyed the start of the season, I can’t help but point out the last 3 or 4 years have seen an obvious change in creative direction. When the show started in the early 90s, it was considered incredibly original and subversive to the Family Sitcom trope. As the 90s rolled into the new millennium (under the of showrunner Mike Scully), the show would put itself into more and more risqué situations to appear edgy. However, in recent years, the meter has now gone in the opposite direction: while we still expect most characters to be cynical, selfish, and violent, this has now made way for more unexpected wholesome endings that might work. For instance, I even find it incredibly bizarre how Bart’s new permanent teacher Ms. Payton is a competent teacher, as if it’s NOT normal for all school workers to be jaded and burnt out.

A couple of years ago, the show was experimenting with more serious, non-canon direct homages such as Season 33’s “A Serious Flanders” and “Pixelated and Afraid”. However, I feel the real “things have changed” moment was the release of Season 34’s “Lisa the Boyscout” which was nothing but a bunch of hilarious crack ideas that would never make it into the show before now. Whereas prior episodes has experimented with “being serious”, “Lisa the Boyscout” went in the opposite direction, embracing the craziness to a 10 . The show revolved around a normal broadcast of a new Simpsons episode being hijacked by hackers, who start broadcasting “unreleased” clips of the show supposedly created in prior seasons. The episode showed that it can work without the expectation of any continuity.

Another example is Season 34’s Tree House of Horror XXXIII Segment “Simpsons World”, in which we saw a parody of Westworld but a Simpsons amusement park full of self-reference moments throughout the show’s history. It was overloaded with reusing jokes from the show’s history and it was amazing probably one of my favorite segments the show ever did. It also tried literally killing the hedge meme, but we’re still getting that joke reused every year. This puts the show in a weird situation: can it work by being self-referential but without any continuity?

Season 36’s premiere brought us “Bart’s Birthday” a non-canon episode where every single series finale cliche is embarked on. Comic Book Guy becomes a father, Moe closes down his bar, and Mr. Burns dies and is simultaneously getting a happy ending with Smithers. It managed to be subversive by trying to meet as many audience expectations as it could, as if the series was never coming back.

Now 5 episodes into Season 36, we have “Women in Shorts” which was basically a retelling of the classic Season 7 episode “26 Short Films About Springfield”, but only focusing on the female characters within the show. While it was a terrific episode with many movie and TV references, it is also obvious that a lot of the segments were not canon (while some may have been).

I strongly embrace the idea that the show should not have a clear “ending” that we saw in Bart’s Birthday. Take for instance the ending to the Season 2 episode “Blood Feud”, Homer gets mad about not getting an award for saving Burn’s life but ends up with a giant Olmec head that sits in the family basement to this day. To which Marge points out it is not a happy or sad ending, it is just an ending. In the end, isn’t that just what real life is? There are never any guaranteed happy endings.

I think this concept of playing incredibly loose with continuity while constantly giving character-breaking moments works for the show. We now have over 800 episodes focusing on the citizens of Springfield, we know who all of them are and don’t care whether or not they will change. As long as they can stay consistent, but if they can make references to older episodes subtly, it will work. 

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