A Lost Simpsons Joke Gets Discovered After 30 Years, See The Video
The Simpsons is a bottomless well of perfectly cromulent jokes and gags that still make fans crack up with laughter after 34 years on TV. Some of the bits are so layered that fans are still discovering new jokes from decades-old episodes. One such joke was unearthed by @ewzzy on Twitter recently. The joke in question is a Marge rant originally obscured by a loud ringing sound meant to signify Homer’s hearing loss from years of attending loud rock shows.
The surface layer of the joke is a simple Simpsons premise. Spinal Tap (a band from one of the funniest movies ever) is playing in Springfield, and Homer is trying to convince Marge to let him take Bart and Lisa to see them. Marge brings up the concern that “The Spinal Taps” might play too loud, setting Homer up to assuage her fears by mentioning that he’s been to thousands of heavy metal shows with no repercussions whatsoever.
Cue the punchline in the form of Homer’s ears ringing so loud that he can’t hear the rest of Marge’s concerns. It’s a great joke as it is, and any other show would be content to let Homer’s tinnitus be the beginning and the end of it. Not The Simpsons.
Where any other series would have Marge babble a bunch of nonsense under Homer’s ringing ears–after all, who’s going to hear it?–The Simpsons instead has her telling Homer to make sure the kids don’t adopt the band’s attitude towards women…or liquor…or religion…or politics…or anything else. It’s a testament to the writer’s commitment to the joke that they bothered to write something funny for Marge to say even though they knew it was going to get buried so low in the sound mix that no one would be able to hear it without some sort of audio trickery.
Which is exactly what @ewzzy used to uncover the lost Simpsons joke. According to a different tweet, @ewzzy used Adobe Audition to remove the ringing tone and boost Marge’s voice.
The joke is from the 1992 episode The Otto Show (thanks Wikipedia!), meaning that it’s been hidden for over 30 years. Judging the gag in the context of today’s pop culture landscape, it’s tempting to assume the joke was an easter egg put there for devoted fans to find. Knowing the writers on The Simpsons, however, there’s probably a much simpler explanation.
In comedy, there are those that cater a joke to the audience’s taste, and then there are those that do whatever they find funny and hope that the audience shares their sense of humor. The Simpsons writers of that era definitely fall into the second category. Simply put, the joke was most likely put there for no other reason than the writers thought it was funny to hide a good joke where no one could find it.
Throughout The Simpsons’ record-breaking run, the series has often dictated what audiences find funny rather than the other way around. Think about it, when most Simpsons fans hear “I was saying boo-urns,” they knowingly chuckle, but who in their right mind would ever laugh at the very same phrase out of context?
It’s no exaggeration to say that The Simpsons completely shaped a whole generation’s (probably two generations, if we’re being honest) sense of humor.
