Even more tiny moments that changed the course of Springfield history.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 The Simpsons is a show so massive in every conceivable way that you could make an entire
00:04 list based on the tiny, seemingly insignificant details that helped shape its progress.
00:10 In fact, we already did just that, but one wasn't enough. So we've channelled our inner
00:14 Springfielder to once again get down to the nitty gritty of Matt Groening's most famous creations,
00:19 to look at the show's most unassuming but important moments. I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:24 and this is The Simpsons - 10 More Moments More Important Than You Realised.
00:29 Homer Owns The Denver Broncos
00:32 In our previous list on the topic, we discussed the idea that Homer is able to fund his family's
00:36 eccentric lifestyle through royalty checks from his days in the B-sharps. It's a fanciful theory
00:41 for sure, but if that crazy idea doesn't suit you, then how about this one involving an NFL
00:46 franchise? In the much-praised Season 8 episode "You Only Move Twice", Homer receives a gift from
00:51 his former boss, the megalomaniacal supervillain Hank Scorpio. After Homer inadvertently assisted
00:56 Scorpio in his quest for world domination, the mega-rich nutjob decided to splash some cash and
01:01 buy his former employee the Denver Broncos. This comes after a conversation where Homer revealed
01:06 to Scorpio that his dream was to one day own the Dallas Cowboys. Well, you've gotta start somewhere.
01:11 Many Simpsons fans online have suggested that this might be yet another source of income for
01:16 the family. Owning a football team would rake in some serious coin, and the Broncos have only
01:20 gotten better since "You Only Move Twice" was released. Or at least, so I'm told.
01:24 So yeah, it kinda turns out Hank was a nice guy after all. Well, if you discount all the people
01:28 that he murdered in cold blood, but who's counting?
01:31 In Season 2's "Blood Feud", Bart saves Mr. Burns' life when it's discovered that the two
01:38 share the same rare blood type. To thank the boy and his family for keeping him alive,
01:42 Burns sends them the generous gift of a "thank you" card. There wasn't even a check inside!
01:47 This escalates to the point where the billionaire's about to fire Homer when he realises the error of
01:52 his ways. To make up for a rubbish first present, he sends the Simpson family a very unique offering.
01:57 In fact, he bestows upon them a colossal Olmec head, a large carving of a human head in the
02:02 style of the Olmec people of ancient Mesoamerica. Whilst the family are initially baffled by the
02:07 head, they do eventually accept it when Bart decides he likes it. Although, to be fair,
02:11 he was happy with the crowbar used to open the crate in the first place. While you might've
02:15 thought this was just a one and done affair, the head has appeared in the background of
02:18 dozens of episodes over the show, most often in the family basement. And seeing it in newer
02:23 episodes is a nice reminder of the show's humble beginnings, even if the head itself doesn't do
02:27 anything. This episode of The Simpsons is kinda all over the place. Thankfully, it's called Apocalypse
02:35 Cow, which is a name so great that it kinda makes up for all of its other shortcomings. In said
02:39 episode, Bart ends up raising a baby cow, going mad in a field, then rescuing it from slaughter.
02:44 He does this with the help of Mary Spookler, the most intelligent offspring of Cletus and Brandine.
02:48 Although that's damning with faint praise of the highest order. There's a plot where Mary and Bart
02:53 almost get married as well, but the episode remains mostly about the cow. This all changes
02:57 though when Mary comes back into Bart's life 5 seasons later. In Moonshine River, another great
03:03 title, Bart tries to convince Mary to be in a relationship with him after he figures he's only
03:07 got so many chances left at love. But wait, isn't Bart like 10? If he's got no chance at love,
03:12 then I guess the rest of us are just screwed. Well, Mary herself turns up a few more times
03:16 across the show, most notably in the episode "Love is a Many-Splintered Thing". Few could've
03:21 expected though that Mary would appear in multiple episodes of the show when she first arrived, but
03:25 hey, that's young love for you I guess. The second and final appearance of Homer's
03:31 half-brother Herb, so far anyway, comes in an episode called "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?".
03:36 While this story ends with Herb patenting a baby translator in an attempt to rebuild his fortune,
03:41 it starts with Homer getting some rather bad news about his swimmers. See, a medical examination
03:45 reveals that years of working in close proximity to nuclear radiation has left Homer sterile. Now,
03:51 Homer and Marge didn't plan to have any more kids anyway. Well, that was the case for 21 seasons,
03:56 until the episode "Adventures in Baby-Getting" came along. In this one, Marge reveals her hidden
04:01 desire to have another child, only for Homer's sterility to be re-revealed. And we're not sure
04:06 why, I mean considering she'd known about it for over two decades.
04:12 When the Simpsons first did an episode set in the future, it was fine. It was cool to see
04:16 older versions of our favourite characters and what the world of tomorrow looked like.
04:20 Now though, they've done this trope all the flaming time and it gets really, really boring,
04:25 because nobody cares about Bart's stupid kids. But the episode where we first get a glimpse of
04:29 things to come is Lisa's wedding from season 6, when the middle Simpson kid comes across a fortune
04:34 teller in the woods. Set in the long distant future of 2010, we follow a grown-up Lisa and
04:39 her ill-fated engagement to snobby Englishman Hugh Parkfield. Guests at the doomed wedding
04:44 include a wheelchair-bound Christy, a recently defrosted Mr Burns, Ned and Maud Flanders and…
04:49 wait a second, Maud Flanders? The same Maud Flanders that would be killed off in episode
04:53 first broadcast in the year 2000? How the hell can this be? Well, Maud's appearance in this
04:58 episode proves that the fortune teller is talking a load of BS and has no idea what she's on about.
05:04 But of course, we'd only know that once Maud actually did bite the dust.
05:07 5. Marge's Gambling Problem
05:10 Every so often in The Simpsons, something will happen to a character that permanently affects
05:14 their personality. This happens to Marge in Springfield, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying,
05:18 and Love Legalised Gambling. Aside from having one of the longest episode names in the history
05:22 of the show, it also shows Marge developing a gambling habit by spending too much time
05:26 playing the slots. The ending of this episode is actually quite dark as well, as Marge's issues
05:31 don't get resolved and she just has to live with them, a startlingly realistic approach to portraying
05:36 addiction. Despite the bleakness of this ending though, many fans just assumed that we would never
05:40 hear about Marge's problems ever again, but oh boy do we. Her issues with gambling come up time and
05:46 time again, more often than not for comic effect. There's a joke about throwing vodka in Maggie's
05:50 face after a game of Candyland that would be funny if it weren't so alarming, and Marge even goes full
05:55 Danny Ocean and joins a team of card counters to help fix the church in season 26.
05:59 4. Principal Skinner's Prison Number
06:03 Now this one is actually kinda really clever. It's a well-known joke that Principal Skinner's
06:07 old Vietnam Prisoner helmet, as shown in the episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", displays
06:11 the number 24601. And of course, this is the same number that Jean Valjean is branded with
06:16 in the musical Les Miserables. And yeah, we know it was a book first, but honestly,
06:20 who has time to read all of that? Whilst this might just seem like the writers nodding to
06:24 their favourite stage show, or I guess book, but I don't believe it, the comparisons between Skinner
06:28 and Valjean run much deeper than just a number. For instance, after being released from prison,
06:33 Valjean must assume a new identity in order to advance in society, and under his new name,
06:38 he eventually becomes the respected mayor of a large town. Now think about Seymour Skinner,
06:43 real name Armin Tamzarian. He too took on a new name and used it to achieve a position of influence
06:48 in the community, and like his literary counterpart, his world also crumbles when
06:52 his secret is found out. Clues about Skinner's deception were there all along, and we just never
06:57 saw them. Ralph Wiggum, Hugh Parkfield, Daniel Radcliffe's Edward Cullen parody, freaking
07:04 Milhouse. When it comes to guys, Lisa Simpson is fresh out of luck. And all of this is without
07:09 mentioning Nelson Muntz, with whom Lisa had a brief attraction to in the episode Lisa's Date
07:14 With Destiny. Well, as it turns out, this romance was far from brief, as it has cropped up a bunch
07:19 of different times over the show's subsequent episodes. In fact, Nelson is often shown
07:23 displaying favouritism towards Lisa, leaving her out of his bullish actions, and he even goes to
07:28 some pretty extreme lengths for him anyway to impress her, including reading some books.
07:32 The idea of the pair ending up together actually came full circle in the Season 34 episode,
07:37 When Nelson Met Lisa, which imagines the life of the two if they got together in adulthood.
07:41 And this came a whole 26 years after she and Nelson first became an item. This love story
07:47 has been one of the most enduring and surprising in the show's entire history. Maybe they'll
07:51 pay it off fully one day, or maybe Nelson will leave Lisa at the altar to throw coleslaw at
07:55 Skinner's house again, I dunno.
07:57 2. Homer in a Coma
07:59 Now this one is purely speculative, but the theory really does hold some water. In an episode titled
08:04 "So It's Come to This" of Simpson's Clip Show, Bart decides to prank his old man by seriously
08:08 shaking up a can of beer. However, Bart did such a good job that when Homer opened the can,
08:13 it exploded with the force of a neutron bomb. This left Homer in a vegetative state for seven
08:17 weeks and caused him to lose 5% of his brain. But did the coma do even more damage to our beloved
08:22 patriarch than we thought? Well, a popular fan theory is that Homer never woke up at all,
08:27 and that every episode after this one takes place in his head. And before you call everyone crazy,
08:32 there is some serious evidence to back this up. Not only would this explain why the plots of the
08:36 show get more outlandish over the years and why the timelines don't match up, but in the episode
08:40 "Homer the Heretic", God actually tells Homer that he'll die in six months. And the clip show
08:46 aired almost exactly six months after "Homer the Heretic". So, are we reading too much into it?
08:51 Probably. Is it compelling anyway? You bet your arse it is.
08:54 Homer's signature expression "doll" became so popular that it even entered the Oxford English
09:01 Dictionary in 2001. Whilst the phrase did exist long before The Simpsons came along,
09:05 "doll" was definitely popularised by Homer's voice actor. His delivery of the word is iconic,
09:10 which makes it all the more impressive that he actually came up with it all on his own.
09:14 As is now folklore, whilst recording for The Simpsons when it was just a short
09:17 on the Tracey Ullman show, it was one innocent line marked "annoyed grunt" that eventually
09:22 became the iconic doll that we know and love today. Little did anyone know at the time that
09:27 a piece of television had just been made by this weird improvisation, but the saying and the show
09:31 are now so synonymous with each other that you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't
09:35 immediately associate the sound with Springfield's most famous resident.
09:39 So, that's our list. Let us know what you guys think down in the comments below. Did you ever
09:42 think more about these important Simpsons moments, and are there any other unassuming ones that had
09:46 huge effects that I missed off here? Let me know and while you're down there, if you could, please
09:50 give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like
09:53 this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching,