Fans call out big ‘Simpsons’ error, but producer has genius clapback
“The Simpsons” may be able to predict the future — but it appears to have a problem with the past.
A producer for “The Simpsons” has shot down nitpicky viewers after they pointed out a glaring “continuity error” in a recent episode of the Matt Groening-created comedy series.
In Episode 15 of Season 32, titled “Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars?,” a flashback sequence depicts a 14-year-old Homer as an aspiring DJ in the 1990s. This ran in contrast to the cartoon’s prior episodes, which portray the Simpson family patriarch as a teenager in 1974.
Needless to say, ever-observant “The Simpsons” fans were quick to point out that the paradoxical plot point threw the show’s entire timeline off kilter.
“Homer was now a teenager in the late 90s, meaning his hypothetical birthday is later than Bart’s was at the start of the show,” observed one astute critic in a tweet with over 22,000 likes. “Homer is now younger than Bart. HOW LONG CAN THEY KEEP IT UP THO.”
Another “Simpsons” stalwart wrote that rewinding Homer’s age two decades means that his father, Abe Simpson, would’ve been a Vietnam veteran and not a World War II vet as previously depicted.
One jokester quipped in mock horror, “Wait that means Homer is now a millennial!”
The tweet chain found itself in the cross hairs of Matt Selman, executive producer of “The Simpsons,” who dismissed the hysteria over the presumed butterfly effect.
“Continuity Alert: Sunday’s @TheSimpsons playfully re-interprets the show’s timeline to allow Homer to be a teenager in the early ’90s,” he snarked of the so-called canonical catastrophe. ” ‘The Simpsons’ is a 32-year-old series where the characters do not age, so the ‘canon’ must be elastic / contradictory / silly.”
The Emmy winner continued in a subsequent tweet, “This does not mean other beloved classic @TheSimpsons flashback shows didn’t happen. None of this happened. It’s all made up. Every episode is its own Groundhog Day that only has [to] make sense for that story (if that).”
In fact, he smartly noted that “if all these crazy things really happened to one family the characters would be in a mental hospital.”
Selman concluded the thread fittingly, by poking fun at the animated show’s pliable plotlines: “If you love, hate or are completely indifferent to our Silly Putty paradoxical continuity, thank you so much for watching / caring about @TheSimpsons at any point in its 100000 years of existence.”