Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons On Sundays post. So, have you watched the latest episode Night of the Living Wage yet? If you haven’t you have 1 hour to do so, or you will be disrupted. Ha ha, I’m only kidding! I’m just giving you an idea of the over all tone of the episode in how the greed of rich people squashes the little guy or gal with no apologies. Also, when those same people are kept honest about any mistakes, they simply duck, or use someone like Gil Gunderson, as the villain? That made me really sad that he has been made the bad guy in this episode, but at least he isn’t the main antagonist. That dishonour belongs to Finn Bon Idée, voiced by guest star Jason Mantzoukas. I guess for Gil, the writers wanted to involve him and give Dan Castellaneta something else to do, besides voice Homer and give Gil another job, outside of being The Simpson family’s ineffectual public defender, or something else which is more benign. It’s a shame that he is a villain in this episode, because I like him and I hope that some day, Gil and Elizabeth Hoover get a chance to walk down the aisle together. If you don’t know what I am talking about, maybe you should watch Habeus Tortoise from Season 34 and that was the “surprise” I had eluded to, just after the episode had aired. It makes sense because they both have bad backs and Gil needs someone in his life, as does Elizabeth. Right?
On the death front, O. J. Simpson passed away on Wednesday of cancer. Yes, the same O. J. Simpson who was chaced while riding in the Ford Bronco and all because he was too scared to turn himself in, after being charged with the murder of his second wife and her friend Ron Goldman. I’m not going to go into the details, because you can look it up yourself on Wikipedia. Either way, he’s dead like the other two and I wonder if he is going to hell, for those murders alone. By the way, I had read this a few times that O. J. Simpson was supposed to be the panellist on Smartline, in the episode Last Exit to Springfield. Thankfully, Joyce Brothers had taken the guest spot instead, or else The Simpsons would have had to live with the fact that a presumed killer had done a guest starring spot in the series. RIP.
This week I am going to bring up something I had been noticing in the past couple of weeks with the schedule for Season 35 and that is, how few episodes we have up to now. Only 14 episodes have aired and the next one will be Cremains of the Day (episode 15) airing April 21. For here on in, we will have episodes airing on a weekly schedule, with new episodes on May 5th, May 12th and May 19th for the season finale. The thing is, we don’t know which episodes they will be as yet and we may find out, possibly next week, or week by week, closer to the air dates. Could Disney be closing ranks (somewhat) and only allowing The Simpsons writers and producers to release details of following episodes as needed? We have a bunch of titles, but no solid air dates except for maybe one or two episodes as of late and that’s all we have been given. I could comment on the loss of The Springfield Shopper Newsletter, but I can’t, because I don’t know what happened and I believe the last one I had received was on April 18 2023, about promotional images for The Very Hungry Caterpillars. Okay, now I’m asking what’s up with The Springfield Shopper and the emails to all of us who had subscribed? I intend to do a post on the newsletter in January (or maybe even as soon as next week) and I will be talking about the emails and how I used them to help in posts in this blog and my personal blog, before I moved Simpsons posts to here in May 2016.
If you haven’t noticed how few episodes have aired thus far, I suggest doing a search on Season 35 on Wikipedia and of course, any of the Wiki sites dedicated to The Simpsons as fan websites. Take a look at the schedule and the dates and you will realize that something is, or could be up. By the time the middle of May rolls around we will have 18 episodes released and having aired.
I was afraid that we would have new episodes airing throughout the summer outside of the prime months of TV show ratings season. I bring this up because of The Simpsons affiliation with Disney and the fact that everything is coming out slower than usual, such as episode details including scheduled air dates. To me, that could raise red flags, that something could be on the horizon that could be either good, or bad. The potential good is that there could be another Simpsons movie in the works and the reason for the slightly shortened season could have something to do with the actors recording for both the show and the movie at the same time, which must have been exhausting so, less episodes and making time for writing scripts, throwing them out, writing scripts again and recording lines. For the bad, the possible end of the series as we know it. I see that happening only because of the episodes reverting to standalone stories now and less continuity than in the past and you can only do this for so long, before fans start to notice that something has changed and they want something like we had before. Personally, I would like the show to go back to stories which had a continuity to them and the characters and it would be nice if Gil and Elizabeth Hoover get married, Moe and Maya tie the knot and maybe even, Waylon Smithers and Fashion mogul Michael de Graaf getting hitched as probably the first same sex couple for The Simpsons. We as fans have become attached to the characters and wish nothing but the best for our favourites. We also want interesting stories, but not having a message shoved down our throats throughout the episode and with the current episodes as they are, where can you go from here? You can only go so far and really stagnate and become unfunny. That is what I believe the writers do not want to happen and at some point, a discussion will be held as to where to go from here and if the series will continue or not, beyond May 2025. I guess we will find out some time this year, or early next year if and how the series will go forward and let’s enjoy the last 4 episodes of Season 35.
Simpsons on Sundays 