Go look at the past few seasons worth of synopses, 1/4-1/2 the episodes are crazy, surprised no one has done some dumb medium article on it.
it disturbs me that you assume i have ever deliberately watched either of these shows
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Feeling the temptation to pop open excel and a wikipedia tab of episode synopses and take on a futile, impossible task.
Oh buddy, you don’t get how involved it actually is.
There are a minority of seasonal or holiday episodes, sure. But what you really have to do is watch each episode with an eye for clues: references to previous episodes or character dynamics that only make sense if another episode happened before it–stuff like the Smithers/Millhouse example above. You have to not only watch every episode but watch them with a pretty strong knowledge of the events of other episodes.
Personally, I think if I ever tackle this, I will only apply it to the first 10 seasons. Firstly because they start to double up Christmas day after a while, but also because I simply don’t want to watch every terrible Simpsons episode to fit them into a chronology they’re constantly be breaking. Also, there are now more episodes than days in a year, and there are plenty of episodes that span multiple weeks and such. So obviously if you include the new seasons, that means we’re actually watching multiple Simpsons families in multiple dimensions. (You’d probably want to distinguish them them by the Christmas day they had.)
One thing we know for sure: Simpsons Roasting On An Open fire begins the year, since Santa’s Little Helper is in all subsequent episodes. And you could maybe allow for a second Christmas and say that we’re getting into the next year, as long as Bart never mentions his age, since I don’t think there’s a Bart birthday episode.
Actually, I guess some of the frst season episodes that were supposed to air before the Christmas episode might not have Santa’s Little Helper, so maybe those could be placed before the first Christmas.
For episodes that span multiple weeks wouldn’t that just mean there were concurrent stories and events happening at the same time? So as long you didn’t end up in a situation where a character would have to be in two different places doing different things on the same day or at precisely the same time then you could still make it work. Every week is so incredibly weird and chaotic in the Simpson household this way (or Springfield in general, really). There would be zero boring days where nothing really happened.
Really it seems like a lot of the work would just be having creative enough explanations for the inconsistencies, like your explanation for the multiple Christmas episodes. It would be an incredibly entertaining chronology though if you could somehow keep it all confined to one universe, and just find good enough reasons to say that there are really only two “real” Christmas episodes (the one’s book-ending the year) and the other ones are either somehow dreams or imaginary or whatever.
I can’t believe they’re at 29 seasons now. 1-10 are definitely in my mind canonically “The Simpsons” and every time I see one from one of the other 19 seasons it’s like my tv tuned into a broadcast from an alternate reality where the rules of humor and what makes things funny are completely alien.
edit-We could do this without having to actually watch all the bad episodes but rather just speed-read through the scripts.
I mean…that sounds horrible. I’d definitely make seasons 1-10 work first, and then possibly expand with bad seasons. Fans only care about the good seasons anyway.
I would never make anything a dream or imaginary, though. That’s a total cop out to me!
I thought I recalled Season 10 being like, the last season I enjoyed, but going over the episode list, the only gag I can even recall is “Max Power”, and that’s because I told my DARE teacher that that was my name and she believed me for the rest of the school year. I thought Season 10 had the X-Files episode and the chili pepper vision quest episode, but I guess that was probably 8 or 9.
I think Season 11 is the cut-off point in quality for me. I just remember not really liking any of the episodes, and being kind of pissed off that I wasted 30 minutes not playing Harvest Moon 64 or something. The was the last season I watched, disregarding the movie (which I didn’t enjoy either – but to be fair, I never enjoy any TV Cartoon: The Movie).
I remember ordering this during one of those Schoolastic book fair things they’d have every year at school. I read this thing almost every day after lunch during “reading” time, alternating between the same issue of Tips n Tricks and eXpert Gamer. I wish I still had this!
(Realizing they didn’t proofread this thing very well).
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I had that book too! Actually, I might still have it in my closet somewhere. That and Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life were my prize Simpson’s merch when I was 12.
I also had a couple issues of the official Simpson’s magazine in the early 90s. One of them came with a fold out poster that was the complete scene that whizzes by during the intro credits during Marge’s drive home from the store complete with notes at the bottom describing what all the characters were doing in the scene.
That I definitely do not have anymore but I wish I still did.
The binding on mine fell apart and I spilt soda on it… probably more than a few times (the fate of most of my things), but apparently, you can still buy these new, and there’s a few new on Amazon for like, $5. I might buy one, it might be cool to look through during my breaks. I didn’t even know there was a Simpsons magazine…
Does anyone remember Simpsons juice? I think this was what I had (the Bart ones, never saw the Lisa one)…
I hope modern Simpsons merchandise still uses blue shirt Bart.
there’s also multiple additional volumes of that episode guide book. it’s probably the best episode guide for any tv show i’ve ever seen, too.
unfortunately, it was also the first, so every other one i’ve seen since seems so lackluster.
did america get the same themed 4-episode simpsons vhs releases as the uk?
it seemed like there were tons of them, that i’d frequently rent
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The only VHS release I remember is the Christmas episode, which my family got shortly after the show debuted in a rare moment of coolness, likely instigated by my older brother being an insistent brat.
I think of this one often:
Imo, it’s out of character, since Seymour is a staunch military man, but it does perfectly channel how the rope test feels in elementary school.
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It just occurred to me, given the sliding timeline do they still make references to Skinner being in Vietnam? Or has he been shifted like how Iron Man’s origin went from 'Nam to Afghanistan?
I vaguely remember the Vietnam thing coming up in a fairly recent episode.
(Still watches the Simpsons)
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Skinner wasn’t really much of a soldier when he was in 'Nam anyway.