100 Favorite Shows: #12 — The Simpsons
“Life with the Simpsons. What choice do I have?”
Who could have predicted that three seasons of bizarre, surrealistic sketches about cartoon yellow humans on The Tracey Ullman Show would have resulted in one of the most massive cultural phenomenons of all-time? That’s exactly what happened when The Simpsons was spun-off from the Fox variety series into their own animated sitcom, debuting on December 17, 1989 from the development of Matt Groening, James. L. Brooks, and Sam Simon. Since then, The Simpsons has been, well, everything and it’s pervaded every aspect of the lives of human beings, let alone the Americans satirized by the series. Centered around the average, middle-class family (comprised of Homer (Dan Castellaneta), Marge (Julie Kavner), Bart (Nancy Cartwright), Lisa (Yeardley Smith), and Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), as well as a town of thousands, portrayed by versatile thespians Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Russi Taylor, and more), The Simpsons has been on the air for 32 seasons (and counting) and 702 episodes (and counting). It may never go off the air with the possibility of its conclusion as ludicrous as the notion that they’d eventually receive a star on the Walk of Fame when they first came to the world. What The Simpsons is was never — and will never be — replicated; it remains a singular achievement in American culture.
(Spoilers for The Simpsons, if you’ve somehow avoided them after thirty-two years, exist within this essay.)
How do you rank The Simpsons? This project is entitled, “100 Favorite Shows,” so I’m not evaluating these shows by some metric of pseudo-objective quality against one another; I’m genuinely placing them in an order of those I love the most. But how do you evaluate love for a series that’s been around for your entire life — and then nine years prior to your existence, too? How do I divorce my childhood nostalgia of obsession with The Simpsons, because they had funny names and bright colors, from my current understanding that it’s one of the most incredible pieces of American art ever created? Do I evaluate The Simpsons from the perspective of “greatest satire ever” or do I have to take in consideration the original intent of the series being long gone, in favor of 30+ seasons of merchandise, diminishing quality, and over-saturation? Can a show lose favorability, simply because it kept going well past its prime (The Simpsons Movie was perhaps its last great installment with a harkening back to ol’ reliables, like the EPA and stunt performers)? Or do I need to consider its complete legacy, which consists of 7:30 reruns every night as initial exposure, a delightful adaptation of Cluedo, and even a hilarious attraction at Universal Studios?
These were the questions I faced when I returned to a handful of Simpsons installments to take notes on for this project. And I felt all of those questions fade away as soon as the iconic theme song (which I’ve heard probably over a thousand times in my life) began playing. It just made me so happy, so comfortable, and so excited for all the different forms of comedy I was about to experience all over again.
Parody and Referential Humor
The ultimate goal of The Simpsons, especially in its first eleven or so seasons, was to comprehensively satirize the culture of the United States. Political satire, religious satire — all of these were vital. But The Simpsons built a great deal of its visual language on the preconceptions of culture that came before it. After all, to satirize American culture is to satirize American pop culture. This includes references to Dragnet, The Silence of the Lambs, A Streetcar Named Desire, and, more recently, Boyhood. It includes Homer inserting himself into the lyrics of The Flintstones’ theme song in an amusing rendition my sister and I must have annoyed each other with countless times as children. In terms of a satirical pop culture microcosm, it would be best to look to season four’s “Last Exit to Springfield.”
The episode centers around Lisa’s need for braces, which prompts Homer to advocate for his union at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to keep their dental plan, in the face of cuts proposed by Mr. Burns. The episode title alone references the novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn, about a union leader who is corrupted by business leaders. And while there’s plenty of union/crime references to make (Jimmy Hoffa and the New York Giants, allusions to The Godfather), the scenes unfolding in the dentist’s office often feel like they’re parodying eighteen different cultural points at once.
“Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?” the dentist demands of Ralph Wiggum, after the dim child pretended to brush his teeth three times a day. The scare tactics are emblematic of myriad police interrogation scenes from the past, like from The Offence. When Lisa arrives, the dentist provides her with nitrous oxide and she floats amidst the fantasy sequence like she stars in The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film. Following this, Lisa’s look with braces is a hybrid of Frankenstein’s monster and Jack Nicholson’s Joker. All of these moments unfold in rapid succession, even without considering Mr. Burns’ later behavior in turning Springfield into Pottersville and then listening to the union protest with a Grinch-esque hand to his ear.
It’s as exhausting as it is exhaustive, but I felt singularly awed by the audacity of every frame of The Simpsons seemingly paying homage to something that had come before, all while forging an identity for itself across network sitcoms, none of which resembled the yellow family and their town of misfits.
American Satire
The entirety of Springfield’s population also contributed to the comprehensive nature of The Simpsons’ satire. In the famed, “22 Short Films About Springfield,” The Simpsons took us through the lives of a slew of Simpsons characters, many of whom had simply been background players through the first seven arcs of the show. Not only do we get to see the lives of characters who typically prop up the stories of Homer and the family, but we also get to rotate through the dial of Springfield — almost as if the characters on The Simpsons are symbolic of the abundance of cable channels in the world of television. Even more than just Itchy & Scratchy cartoon shorts, we saw a segment for Reverend Lovejoy and Ned Flanders (akin to evangelical television), Bumblebee Man (Spanish-language programming centered around one of the many local celebrities, removed from Krusty the Clown, Troy McClure, and Rainier Wolfcastle), Comic Book Guy (connecting to the Pulp Fiction style of mass obsession), Cletus Spuckler (introduced via a The Beverly Hillbillies-type theme song), Principal Skinner (with a Three’s Company song), and Professor Frink (science/educational programming, promptly snuffed out by the credits).
Not only is this satirizing the television culture in the U.S. (to which The Simpsons undoubtedly contributed), but it’s also depicting how many disparate personalities and occupations exist in Springfield. It’s unlikely that one town would have all of these people cohabiting among one another, but Springfield was not the average town. It bordered Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky because Springfield is television is the United States of America. There’s a mall, a Kwik-E-Mart, a power plant, a Krusty Burger, a Frying Dutchman, over five schools, a television studio, three theme parks, a baseball stadium, and countless other institutions that entertain its population of roughly 30,000. Everything that could serve as a common touchstone for an American person (from any state) exists in Springfield.
It’s not enough for Springfield to satirize American culture by investigating every angle of it, though. They also depict the American people (Springfeldians here) exactly as we are, rather than as we idealize ourselves to be.
Most of the time, this took the form of The Simpsons portraying its characters as helplessly stupid. The stupidity is occasionally blatant (Springfield residents riding an escalator to nowhere and paying no attention to the plummeting bodies ahead of them or “Barney’s movie had heart, but Football in the Groin had a football in the groin”), but other times, it comes in the form of a more “ignorance is bliss” mentality.
“Marge vs. the Monorail” is a perfect example of this frequently revisited identity on The Simpsons. The episode begins with Lenny and Carl transporting Mr. Burns’ toxic waste for unknown purposes, but they don’t care if Mr. Burns is harming their home with it. They don’t necessarily care (“Either way, I’m sleeping good tonight”) about the pervasive evil from the top of their workplace. They’re just content to get on with their work and ask no questions. (Burns, of course, dumps the barrel of waste in a tree, prompting a three million dollar fine by the city.)
With this extra cash, Mayor Quimby (the “Diamond” nickname is just one of many hints to the JFK role he occupies) holds a town meeting to decide where to allocate the funds. At first, it seems like the town is set to rally around Marge’s proposal of filling in town potholes, but when Lyle Lanley (Phil Hartman) turns up mysteriously, he immediately captivates the attention of Springfield with salesman tactics. Portraying his idea of a monorail for the town as a “Shelbyville idea,” Mayor Quimby quickly scrambles to retain Lyle’s attention with, “We’re twice as smart as Shelbyville. Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it.” Needing no further prompting Lyle bursts into a song as a sales pitch (“Monorail!”) and the entirety of Springfield buys into the idea.
Throughout the episode (before Homer is placed into a situation of death and destruction as the monorail’s conductor), more intelligent figures (Lisa, Marge, Leonard Nimoy) do their best to convince Springfield against the unnecessarily excessive monorail in town. But the mob has already spoken (“You should’ve written a song like that guy”) and the mob is one that would sooner listen to Batman over rational scientists who come bearing warnings that “kill the fun.” It’s an episode that aired in 1993, but it does seem oddly pertinent, almost as if The Simpsons maintains the consistent ability to speak to the past, present, and future of America’s misguided exceptionalism. (Is it better to fix the roads or to install a monorail, just because we can and just because it’s shiny?)
It’s not so easy as to simply portray Americans as stupid, though. The Simpsons’ satire goes above such low-hanging grapes and wrassels with the abundance of corruption in American institutions, practically on the same level as The Wire managed. The initial town charter for Springfield entitles the chief constable of Springfield to “two comely lasses of virtue true,” illustrating how beholden we are, as a country, to ye olde traditions. “That could be anyone’s ass,” Mayor Quimby protests to Chief Wiggum when one institution threatens blackmail against the other. Mr. Burns recoils when learning that he spent some of his profits on a single St. Patrick’s Day cookie for his staff. “There’s more where that came from,” Selma remarks when she learns that twenty-two immigrants died while building Duff Gardens. And on and on and on.
What’s brilliant about this satire, though, is that it’s never treated as foundational for an episode. It’s as imbued into the show as corruption, carelessness for immigrants, and wariness of expenditures is into American society, as a whole. The jokes are throwaway gags and the 99% in Springfield accepts them all as they come. For the most part, they’re too dumb to consider the implications of the police having power over the mayor or a man with billions of dollars refusing to spend even two dollars. It’s just the life they’ve always known and accepted. And in the case of “Last Exit to Springfield,” Homer isn’t even smart enough to be intentionally manipulated by Mr. Burns. Sure, he doesn’t wait for a second to think about becoming a crooked union leader, but Homer Simpson is no savant. The only reason the union wins is because Homer needs to use the bathroom (and the advocacy of Lisa, a key contributor we’ll get to in more depth later). American ingenuity and prioritization at its finest.
An Insane Pace of Jokes
I have no way of backing this up, but I’m fully convinced that the rate and breadth of The Simpsons’ jokes is higher than any other series. Higher than Veep’s poetic profanity and Arrested Development’s devotion to continuity. Higher than the peak of the British Office. The Simpsons levied out joke after joke, some foregrounded in dialogue, others hidden in the background, with reckless abandon. It was like they thought the show would die after the most recent episode, rather than running for over thirty years of episodes with infinite space for potential jokes.
When Mr. Burns and Mr. Smithers run the power plant themselves, it’s already operating on the level of a Laverne & Shirley parody, but it’s also anchored in the physical comedy of Burns bonking his head and the brief, one-second gag of the robots they hire as employees being “100% Loyal.”
This irony was prevalent throughout many of the characters’ behaviors and statements that were lacking in self-awareness. Most of the time, irony was derived from impossibly clever lines of dialogue provided to Homer Simpson (“Oh my god, I’d be killed!” in reference to slipping on a bar of soap, “Why does death keep coming back to haunt me?” in reference to a falsified tombstone, “Do I know what ‘rhetorical’ means?” in answer to a question from Lisa.) Even down to Lisa’s braces being so old that they can’t get wet, irony was present in practically every scene of The Simpsons, often times in moments as quickly cut away from as Mr. Burns’ robot army.
This one-second, quickly cut joke format also returns when Lisa finally sports her braces on picture day and the photographer, aghast, shouts, “There is no God!” Beyond that, there’s character-based humor (Grampa Simpson is a “living joke” with stories about bumblebees on nickels), humor in misunderstanding (Reverend Lovejoy recommending juvenile therapy after Homer is presumed dead and Lisa skips through the yard), wordplay (“Deadbeat Dad Beat Dead”), and recurring jokes (in the form of countless chalkboard (my favorite is “Science class should not end in tragedy") and couch gags in the intro). The Simpsons was all forms of humor and satire at once, but the density of the jokes on the series are best exemplified in the climax of “Marge vs. the Monorail.”
To stop the runaway monorail, Homer needs to find an anchor and his first thought is to look at Bart, who morphs into the mirage of an anchor (like how characters morph into turkeys or milkshakes when the POV character is hungry) and replies, “Think harder, Homer.” Instead, Homer seizes the oversized “M” (for “monorail”) on the side of the train and tosses it out the window. In succession, it splits Dr. Hibbert’s Siamese twins in half, challenges Captain McCallister’s knowledge of anchors, and sticks into a doughnut — because of course a doughnut would save Homer and all of Springfield. At once, this sequence makes an obvious joke about a sea captain’s preconceptions of anchors, but it also mocks the expensive medical bills the Siamese twins would have otherwise incurred. And American satire is brought into the mix when an oversized doughnut rescues their world from a specific type of disaster. It all seems so effortless, but The Simpsons team worked hard and managed to pull off these types of sequences again and again through the years, layered with humor, double meanings, and deliberate intent.
This pace was also reflected in the aforementioned “22 Short Films” episode, which had the audacity to tell 22 stories in 23 minutes, with one of those minutes being devoted to the (albeit abbreviated) theme song and the premise set-up from Milhouse and Bart. As the two stand on a bridge over the town freeway, they ponder how many stories must be out there in the world (so far, 684, at least). The world of Springfield is expansive, as we see in that brief moment in every intro when the camera blurs past fields upon fields of various figures from Sideshow Mel to Edna Krabappel. With a massive repertoire like this (the main cast features those behind the core Simpsons family members and, essentially, Azaria and Shearer as the company), The Simpsons could pull off flurries of episodes completely devoid of Homer altogether. (Characters like Moe and Apu have probably received more screen time than even someone like Carmela Soprano or Michael Scott.) In this installment, Principal Skinner cooks up some steamed hams, Dr. Nick uses seafood utensils in his medical procedures, and Bumblebee Man takes off his costume. They’re small, intersecting (shoutout to Snake) vignettes about the greater world and they tell us the benefit of The Simpsons’ rich characterizatons and wealth of hilarious players. It’s to explore any facet of culture deemed most thought-provoking for the week. Sitcoms like Cheers were limited to the antics of a bar in Boston. But The Simpsons could embody all things because that’s exactly the design of Springfield, U.S.A. in the first place.
The playground of Springfield is boundless, but The Simpsons’ beauty was also in that it could, on occasion, narrow its satirical focus and explore the smaller-scale family dynamics between its primary five characters.
Surprisingly, the first “Treehouse of Horror” is a perfect example of this. By now, “Treehouse of Horror” has become such a stylized Halloween tradition that it’s actually used to anchor modern-day Simpsons and provide creative, expressive outlets for writers struggling to work on a show that has doubled the time of its heyday with the time its been on the air since. But in the first installment of the series, the spooky stories revolved nearly solely around the Simpsons themselves. Both “Bad Dream House” and “Hungry Are the Damned” placed the family into preposterous scenarios where, despite the intent of the home to force them to kill one another (“They all must die.” “Are you my conscience?”) and of Kang and Kodos to allegedly eat them, the intent was to explore how they interact and the impact they have on those with whom they come into contact. (The third story, “The Raven,” remains my favorite Treehouse of Horror segment. Not because it gave me nightmares as a child, but because it was my first exposure to Edgar Allan Poe, in the most prominent example of how so much of what I know in this world is derived from The Simpsons.)
“Bad Dream House” is the best lens through which to evaluate how the Simpsons operate around others. When it tells them to “Get out,” Marge replies somewhat calmly, “What on Earth was that?” When Homer finds a portal to another dimension, he starts to toy with it, to which the haunted, sentient home replies, “Quit throwing your garbage into our dimension.” Ultimately, Marge decides to lecture the home, which has tried to corrupt its occupants into murdering one another, and the home decides to warp out of existence. “It chose to destroy itself rather than live with us,” Lisa dryly states, understanding what this means for her own family’s insufferability. It applies to both Homer, whose stupidity saved him from Mr. Burns crushing the union and from the haunted house crushing his and his family’s lives, and to Lisa, whose indefatigable spirit has (sadly, accurately) tired many she meets.
Many Simpsons episodes pose the notion to Lisa that she’s “too smart for [her] own good,” which might have some truth to it. (Her tears after being crushed by political cynicism hurt too much, mate.) The truth comes in the idea that Lisa would probably be happier if she was as dumb as Homer and Bart (and as Marge can be occasionally), but ultimately, I don’t think Lisa would sacrifice her hyper-awareness of the world and the intelligence she applies to it. Contrasted against the conventionally cooler Bart (I adored him as a kid, but now, Lisa is my favorite) and his horror stories that feature immediate scares, Lisa’s telling of “The Raven” is orchestrated in a mood-setting manner. For her love of jazz music and academic prowess, Lisa is still able to have fun (she’s just as excited to go to Duff Gardens as Bart is) because she’s unafraid to be herself (even if her braces make her “socially unpopular. More so”) and provides a guiding light for the kind of Simpson we should strive to be, even if the dimmer folks in Springfield put her down when they mistake her enthusiasm and smarts for “annoyances.” (Case in point.)
“I couldn’t understand how I fit into this family,” Lisa confesses to Mona Simpson in season seven’s “Mother Simpson.” Finally understanding that her passion and engagement with the world stems from Mona, rather than Homer or Marge or Abe, Lisa builds a rapport with her grandmother over feeling like they don’t quite belong and over a hatred for John Knowles. After seven years of isolation, it felt almost cathartic to see Lisa finally dialogue with someone who understood her, rather than simply tolerated her.
In “Marge vs. the Monorail,” Lisa is the lone voice calling for Burns’ three million to go to education in Springfield, an idea that is readily dismissed by the community as “boring” and never revisited. In addition to Marge, Lisa acknowledges the flaws of the monorail, but Lyle skirts her objections by appealing to her need to be recognized and accepted. He compliments her intelligence, resulting in her remaining quiet about the monorail’s faults. At the end, Lisa is representative of many of us, just striving to be accepted for who we are, even if it’s easier for someone brash like Homer to be accepted for who he is, faults and all. After all, it was just as easy for Lyle to trick Homer into buying into the monorail mob mentality with an advertisement targeted directly at him to entice him to become a monorail conductor (his “lifelong dream,” suddenly). That’s because Homer doesn’t crave a sense of belonging. Instead, he craves to feel like he’s doing the right thing in his world, his purpose, his life.
This dual, redemptive nature of Homer helped contribute to the beating heart behind The Simpsons that was applied to more than just the laugh riots orchestrated by Groening and company (including Conan O’Brien, Greg Daniels, and many other members of the 1927 New York Yankees). “Selma’s Choice” is a shimmering example of this balance. Selma’s loneliness and mortality is given a jumping off point when she brings Bart and Lisa to Duff Gardens, the Springfieldian equivalent of Disney World. This results in plenty of hilarious moments, including Bart’s height missing the roller coaster’s lap bar (“That ain’t good”) and Lisa drinking the water from the It’s a Small World equivalent. (Between moments like these, Bort license plates, Mickey Mouse bras, and monorails coming from the 1964 World’s Fair, The Simpsons was always excellent at making fun of Disney, making it even more tragic that they’re now owned by them and forced to buy into the idea of Disney magic.)
However, the episode is also anchored in the heart of Selma, who wants companionship, but doesn’t want the responsibility of raising children. After all, it’s not something that everyone is cut out for. Considering how Bart acts sometimes, it hardly seems like Homer was prepared for it. Instead, Selma adopts an iguana and softly sings, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” to the creature. She didn’t need a kid to complete her insecurities. All she needed was something to care for besides herself.
This heart also percolated throughout Homer and his aforementioned desire to be a good father to his kids, in the face of his belief that Abe and Mona were hardly there for him. Yes, Homer can be extremely narcissistic and obsessed with food (“This is a cupholder where I can put my beverage or, if you will, cupcake,” “When did beer ever hurt anyone?!”) and heartless (he only advocates for the union because he doesn’t want to pay for Lisa’s braces out of pocket, not for any socially-minded causes or for the sake that they’re needed for Lisa’s health) — and I don’t mean to excuse this behavior — but it does stem a lot from his own stupidity and less-than-guidance-filled upbringing. The moments where Homer strives to be better than what the show dictates him to be (especially when he genuinely doesn’t know how) are his most redeemable.
In this sense, The Simpsons was somewhere between the wholesome Bob’s Burgers and the caustic Family Guy (the crossover with the latter allowed the Simpsons’ core staff to flex on animated comedy writers (“I’m a The Simpsons” has never slipped from my brain)). In “Mother Simpson,” Homer reconciles the ideas he once had about his mother, whom he believed was dead. (“I thought I dreamed that kiss,” he remarks when she tells him the story of her goodbye to him.) At first, Homer believes Mona left because he was a horrible son, but soon, he learns that she was radicalized by protest movements to the point where she had to go on the lam from Mr. Burns (yet another thing he cruelly takes away from Homer, positing him as an infuriating villain, moreso than a comedic one). “It’s not your fault,” she tells him, just like it’s not his fault that a pelican landed on his head and spit a fish into his pants, ruining the heartfelt reunion between his long-estranged maternal figure.
Ultimately, the episode ends with Mona leaving again and a surprisingly melancholy moment when Homer stares into the night sky atop his car, the credits rolling and the music cascading sweetly and sadly over a man who only got to spend a few brief moments with his mother, even when he thought she’d stay for the rest of his life. It shows Homer at his most pensive, perhaps internalizing the ideas of what he can do to be better for his children and be there for them in ways his own parents were. His relationship with Bart comprises the heart of The Simpsons Movie, after all. On his desk, a collage of Maggie photos are used to produce the phrase on the frame, “Do it for her.” And in season twelve’s, “HOMЯ,” when we learn Homer is stupid because he has a crayon lodged in his brain, he leaves a letter behind for Lisa, apologizing for the loss of their newfound bond over academia, but acknowledging that he will be better at appreciating her for who she is, knowing now what it means to be just like her.
It’s moments like these that make Homer Simpson one of the greatest characters in television history (named number one by many publications). (Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz also proclaimed The Simpsons to be the greatest American television show of all-time in TV (The Book).) To be honest, I understand it now. At first, Homer seemed too stupid, perhaps even too obvious, to be considered among the greatest. But now I see the myriad nuances and shades of humor and heart that exist within Homer (and have existed ever since 1989) as a symbol for the average American well-meaning buffoon. I understand elements of The Simpsons I never did when I was a kid (when I was mostly obsessed with turning ten years old because that was Bart’s age). Even beyond the rocking of cop cars at a union protest, the Seven Dwarfs transposed as adjectives related to beer-based inebriation, and references to Joe Piscopo and pornography stores, I see what The Simpsons means to television in a way I couldn’t fathom in my youth.
The series’ first clip show, “So It’s Come to This,” embodies this sentiment. In the episode title, The Simpsons mocks itself for daring to air a clip show in the fourth season of the show. When I experienced the ingenuity of shows like Community (subverting clip shows in “Paradigms of Human Memory”) and Arrested Development (maintaining background continuity through blue hand prints), I thought they were showcasing a new era of television that was bringing comedy on the small screen to places it’d never been before. But now, I realize that The Simpsons was doing this for years, setting a template for what the form (both animated and comedic) could be.
Because on The Simpsons, that could be anything. It could be Ned opening his home as a doomsday shelter. It could be Sideshow Bob’s (Kelsey Grammer) bloodlust for Bart in an homage to Cape Fear that many consider better than the actual Scorsese film itself. It could be Bart sobbing when he realizes he won’t be able to pass a math class, no matter how hard he studies. It could be two green aliens occupying such a recurring presence that they warrant their own theme park attraction. It could be Homer as an astronaut, a computer-generated figure, a plow truck driver, a baseball player alongside Darryl Strawberry, a heretic. The Simpsons could be all things because it was unlike anything that came before it and unmatched by anything that came after it.
By now, The Simpsons is an institution that we expect to go on forever, like the Today show and Sesame Street and The Walking Dead, apparently. Could The Simpsons have a solid finale, in the same vein of heartfulness that “Mother Simpson” concluded with? Perhaps. But now, I reckon about half its audience has only known a world that included new episodes of The Simpsons. I’m certainly among such a group, as I find it impossible it was to imagine what it was like to witness all-time, pantheon-level American genius unfold in real time. For thirty-two years and counting, The Simpsons has boasted upper echelon comedy, surprising heart, and a proclivity for making its critics say, “Well, it was ahead of its time.” Such an idea is too reductive, though. The Simpsons was more than ahead of its time. It defined its own time. It defined television and how we perceive comedy today. Even if we can now witness some of its greatest moments in a sweltering queue for a motion simulation attraction in Orlando, we mustn’t forget that the series earned its cultural staple spot alongside attractions for Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss. We won’t ever get to be boy wizards or cats who wear hats. But we can be Homer and Lisa, Marge and Bart. We all belong to Springfield. What choice do we have?
