Hi and welcome to another Simpsons on Sundays post. So, did you watch McMansion & Wife? It wasn’t a bad episode, but what I found interesting is that Hank Azaria and Tress MacNeille are the voices of the villainess couple, who move into Springfield and Hank’s character befriends Homer. Also, the voice Hank uses sounds similar to the stereotypical baseball play by play announcer from the 1970s, which Hank has drawn on for at least one film role and some past recent episodes from the last few years.
This episode is also a call back to Bye, Bye, Nerdie, where Lisa found a way to understand why her and other nerds were being bullied and in the case of the current episode, a way to neutralize a bully, who was bullying her, all be it for a brief moment before the end of the episode. In this case, it was her ex (Nelson Muntz) and he was bullying Bart, Milhouse and even Skinner. In the case of the former, it was Francine who was voiced by comedian Kathy Griffin. You wanna know more? Just watch McMansion & Wife either on iTunes or wait until it becomes available on Disney+, probably a year late. Yes, that’s why I do not even think of using Disney+ because Season 34 became available only recently. As for tonight, the episode is entitled “Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story” and it involves Mr. Burns. Let’s see how this story will go and how at the end of the episode, everything will be alright again.
On the death front, Canadian American actor Matthew Perry passed away yesterday, aged 54. Apparently, he was relaxing in a hot tub and drowned. He guest starred as himself as a part of Treehouse of Horror XII, in the short House of Whacks. I found out as I was browsing Twitter and then I double checked it using Safari and a Wikipedia page, dedicated to deaths of famous people. Sure enough, Matthew Perry’s name popped up. He was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in Ottawa Ontario Canada and spend some time in Toronto as well. He went to school with current Canadian prime Minister Justin Trudeau and one of his parents had connections to the media in Canada. His other significant roll was Chandler Bing on Friends. There is more and you can use our friend Google, or which ever search engine you use to look up information on the Internet. RIP.
In guest star news, a new Beatles song is coming out next week and right now, there is a short video on Youtube and on iTunes, as we will finally get the last ever Beatles song from all 4 of them in the studio, thanks to technology from the 90s. However, thanks to newer technology and possibly AI, John’s vocals and quite possibly piano will make it sound as if they are all together and the track is called Now And Then, as it will be accompanied by a short film. https://youtu.be/XFxwY9UJBAE?si=4SWf4vy-GQrsyum4
On the birthday front, Robert Trujillo of Metallica turned another year older on Monday. He has been their basest for 20 years now and Metallica are currently on tour, with all sorts of support acts and they are still respected in the metal community, like they are in the general rock and metal community over all.
Nancy Cartwright turned 66 on Wednesday and Seth MacFarlane turned 50 on Thursday. Yup, both Seth and myself share the same birth year and look where he is now, compared to me.
Our final mentioned birthday is Dan Castellaneta, who turns 66 years old today. Like his fellow cast member Nancy Cartwright, it’s almost impossible to reconcile the fact that two cast members are the same age and they are still voicing the same character roles that they did, 36 years ago, along with Yeardley Smith who will reach 60 in July 2024 and Julie Kavner, who will turn 74 in September 2024. Wow!
This week I am going to talk about the 10th anniversary of an important death in Simpsons land. Marcia Wallace (who voiced Bart Simpson’s previous 4th Grade teacher Edna Krabappel) passed away 10 years ago on October 25th 2013. Edna was also married to Ned Flanders from Season 23 to Season 25, until her death. Before doing that, let’s go over a brief history of her life and career, as she is known for more than just voicing a cynical fourth grade teacher on The Simpsons. Yes, I know that Edna Krabappel is all we know, but there is more.
The future voice of Edna was born Marcia Karen Wallace on November 1 1942 in Creston Iowa and she had a sister named Sharon and a brother Jim. The three children would often help their father at his general merchandise store called Wallace Sundries. While in high school, she was encouraged to pursue a career in acting after doing well in a school play. After graduating from Creston high school, she went to Parsons College in Fairfield Iowa and it was a private Liberal Arts College. I had probably heard of a secondary school like that, but I never looked into why it was called as such and referred to as liberal arts.
Anyway, Marcia moved to New York and at first she did commercials, typed scripts and she would later become known more for her appearances on situation comedies, such as Full House and The Bob Newhart Show. While in New York, she was a substitute English Teacher, so I guess that it was destiny for her, to later be cast as Edna Krabappel and maybe, some of her style as a teacher may have come back to her, through muscle memory. I don’t know, but now that I learned that about her maybe that was possible and sadly, we will never know for sure because we can’t ask her. Her appearance in the movie The Graduate was kinda reprised (in a sense) in the episode Lisa’s Substitute, when Edna was trying to seduce Mr. Bergstrom and I hadn’t thought about that, until I had written that down here.
She was Carol Kester, Bob and Jerry’s receptionist on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 to 1978 and was Mrs. Carruthers on Full House. Funny how she had landed rolls on sitcoms, including an animated show like The Simpsons and there is nothing wrong with that. Those were her best known character rolls and she also voiced the one-time teacher Ms. Melon, Bart’s teacher at the “Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children” in the Season 1 episode Bart the Genius, which he obviously is not. He may be smart, but he is no wizard. Anyway, I digress.
Marcia was diagnosed in 1985 with breast cancer and she survived it and became a breast cancer activist for the rest of her life. She had written an autobiography called Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way and it was published in 2004. In it she details how she had found out that she had the disease, through early detection and sadly, she was not the only one in her life, to whom cancer would make an unwelcome visit. Her husband Dennis Hawley, a Hotelier whom she had married in 1986 would pass away of pancreatic cancer in 1992. They had adopted an infant son, Michael Wallace “Mikey” Hawley. At one point she had a nervous breakdown and like Yeardley Smith, she also had a history of bulimia.
When Marcia died in 2013, the causes of death were: pneumonia and sepsis, with her old nemesis breast cancer being a significant condition on the death certificate. Al Jean said that The Simpsons staff knew about her ill health, but later on he had said that they weren’t aware that she was sick. Marcia was cremated after a private funeral. Oh yes, the Season 25 episode Four Regrettings and a Funeral was dedicated to her and the chalkboard gag from Bart “We’ll really miss you Mrs. K” is something I of course do not hear, but I had heard about from social media and the internet in general, around the time the episode had aired. I believe that it was sincere, as Bart may have been her jousting partner, but deep down I believe the 10-year-old brat liked and respected her and she liked him. After all, why do you think she helped out the Simpsons kids during the episode where Lisa was being bullied by her teacher Ms. Cantwell (voiced by Tina Faye) in the episode Black Eyed, Please? She may have spanked Bart, but that lead to her and Ned falling in love and eventually tying the knot. Besides, she could get Bart out of her hair for a while, as he embarrasses Lisa’s substitute teacher.
Something else that made her death all the more shocking and newsworthy is that The Simpsons had announced the death of a character in a future episode. Obviously, it wouldn’t be Mrs. Krabappel and it wasn’t to be her either, even though the character had quietly passed away, in an episode from Season 25 I will talk about later. There were even hints of Mrs. Krabappel having passed in the episode Holidays of Future Passed. Could Marcia have been dealing with her illness for that long since about 2011? I hope not, but this does make me wonder why Ned Flanders had mentioned Edna’s passing. Besides, the character was supposed to be younger than Ned, who is 60 in the series, while Edna is either in her late 40s or early 50s. So, now I do wonder if this was a prediction that Marcia Wallace would not live to see 2041, or a coincidence by the writers of the episode.
Like the murder of John Lennon, the death of Freddie Mercury, the announcement of the death of Iron Mike Bensson, the September 11th attacks and the announcement of the Covid-19 Pandemic declaration, I remember where I was when I heard that she had died. It was a Saturday morning on October 26 2013. I had just awoken from a nap and had checked my messages on my iPhone, including X, formerly Twitter. That was where I first read that she Had passed away and I was very upset to hear this news.
Over the past few months prier to her death I had been catching up with episodes I had missed and reading up on all the main and supporting cast. Despite the character she voiced on The Simpsons I didn’t think she was cynical at all. In fact, I thought she was as everyone had been tweeting and blogging about her, that she was a very kind, very sweet woman. This was also my first experience with breaking news of someone dying via Twitter, or any social media for that matter. In fact, I think it was the day after her passing that I found a tweet from Bob Newhart saying that she was a good friend, with Harry Shearer saying the same thing about her on the radio, during the new story about her death on an all news radio station in Toronto.
I believe that Marcia was as gentle as she was as a person, because of how Mrs. Krabappel reacted to Bart crying after actually making an honest effort to pass a test in school. This showed me that when Mrs. Krabappel was comforting Bart that it was the real Marcia coming out as a part of the character. When she said “there there” and comforted him that convinced me just who the person behind the voice was.
I think it was the right thing to do, for The Simpsons to retire the character in her memory. It wouldn’t be the same if someone else tried to voice her and it would be like a singer replacing another who had either left the band or passed away. For example: could you really replace Freddie Mercury in Queen? or Paul Rogers in Bad Company? Well, Bad Company tried but it wasn’t the same and so, Paul Rodgers would eventually return and despite recent health issues over the past 7 years, he is still making music. As for Queen, you can’t replace Freddie, but you can bill it as Queen plus and the name of the singer, like Paul Rodgers or currently Adam Lambert.
I also like how Edna was retired, with that last seen in the episode The Man Who Grew Too Much certainly touching the heart. After Nelson laughed he had admitted that he misses her, like Flanders does. After all, Edna had somehow passed away as I had noted earlier. It was great when Edna Krabappel was an active character and now that she is gone, it had basically been a turning point in the series, from 2013 to now. There have been 4 teachers who had replaced Edna so far: Mr. Lassen (voiced by Willem Dafoe) and Miss Berrera (voiced by Colombian American Sofía Vergara) were the first two, only as one time characters. Ned Flanders became Bart’s teacher in the episode Left Behind and in 2022, Edna made a brief return (through archival recordings) in the episode Diary Queen, with Bart going through Edna’s journals and both a previous and a newly heard voice track from Marcia in this episode. I believe that Ned Flanders was chosen, because he was Edna’s wife and like I said before, Harry Shearer and Marsha Wallace were also good friends and similar ages so, why not honour the character, by giving the left-handed Christian a try?
Now, we have Ms. Rayshelle Peyton as Bart’s teacher, who is voiced by American actress Kerry Washington, when she joined the cast and the character is introduced in the Season 33 episode My Octopus and a Teacher. Ms. Peyton is not a one-time character, as she has appeared in a number of episodes, with her most recent being Season 35’s A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream. So, The Simpsons has finally moved on, but Edna and Marcia will never be forgotten by any surviving cast and crew, or fans of the show including myself. Well, that’s about it for this weeks Post. If you want to know about Marcia Wallace here is her Wikipedia page. There are no citations, so this must mean that every word is correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcia_Wallace
Oh yeah, what about the Edna Krabappel timeline? https://youtu.be/6MDNF0_wJO8?si=OmbZlH_w-YCfvf0S
Simpsons on Sundays 