The Simpsons is the longest-running American animated show, longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running scripted American TV series on primetime, both in terms of seasons and number of episodes. While much of this longevity can be attributed to the show’s quality and popularity (especially early on), the fact that the show is animated has had an undeniable impact on its ability to remain essentially unchanged for decades.
One of the underlying premises of the American network sitcom has always been that things don’t change. The characters have adventures over the course of an episode, only to return to the status quo by its conclusion. The Simpsons itself has even mocked this reality on more than one occasion. Bart and Lisa, children in the 1980s, remain children well into the 21st century, just as their parents remain in their 30s, all of them still played by the same actors. This is something that is (for now at least) only possible with animation. This ability to remain unchanged for years and decades on end makes The Simpsons a kind of platonic ideal of a sitcom.
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As the show moves through its third decade on the air, this unchanging nature has created some problems. Flashbacks and the series’ general timeline have had to be retconned, changed, or ignored over the years to account for, for example, Homer’s boyhood memories of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. For the most part, though, the deeper implications of the timelessness of Springfield, USA, has been largely ignored.
That is, until animator Don Hertzfeldt was given the reins to the opening credits’ couch gag for the first episode of season 26, Clown in the Dumps.
Who Is Don Hertzfeldt?
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Hertzfeldt is an animator and director best known for his experimental short films, like 2000’s Oscar-nominated Rejected and strange, gorgeous feature-length science-fiction films It’s Such a Beautiful Day and The World of Tomorrow. It’s Such a Beautiful Day ends with its protagonist Bill becoming immortal, and The World of Tomorrow is a serialized film with numerous clones and back-up clones, each possessing the memories of a certain individual.
In these and other projects, Hertzfeldt explores the nature of selfhood. Who are we? Can we be separated from our memories of ourselves? Would two people with the same memories be the same person on some level? If not, why not? At the center of these questions about memory, of course, is the role of time. What connects us with our past and future, and what happens if one or both of those things begins to seem interminable?
Hertzfeldt and the Simpsons
It’s easy to see, then, why something like The Simpsons might appeal to Hertzfeldt. These are characters that exist seemingly outside of time. They remain the same age for decades, seem to have little or no memory of most of the events that have made up the three-decades-plus of their eternal present, and show no signs of ever eventually aging naturally or dying.
So, when Hertzfeldt has a chance to experiment with these iconic characters, he almost immediately sends them deep into a horrifying future. After a brief stop in 1987 and his earliest incarnation, Homer is thrust forward to “Septembar 36.4, 10,535.” By this distant date, the Simpsons have devolved into crude, mutated versions of themselves. Homer is a floating head atop three wavering tentacles and Marge is an ill-defined mound of hair, while Lisa has become a one-eyed monstrosity with a periscopic mouth that repeats the mantra, “I am Simpson” (a heartbreaking variation on the famous season two affirmation, “You are Lisa Simpson”). Meanwhile, baby Maggie is a floating blob that occasionally demands the audience, “Make purchase of the merchandise,” while Bart is a four-armed, fanged blob struggling to deliver his own catchphrase: “Don’t … don’t have cow … man.”
The characters seem to have gone through a protracted period of “Flanderization.” Named after The Simpsons character Ned Flanders, Flanderization is the process by which, over time, sitcom characters tend to become increasingly simplified, defined by one or two traits that make the character unique. In Hertzfeldt’s couch gag, after more than 8,000 years and tens of thousands of episodes, the Simpson family has been reduced to mangled catchphrases and naked consumerism.
And yet, there are tender moments of real poignancy tucked within these grotesque expressions and the allusions to a strange, dystopian hellscape around them (epitomized by the segment’s phrase, “ALL HAIL THE DARK LORD OF THE TWIN MOONS").
Flanderization and Feelings
In the couch gag, Homer at one point declaims, “I have memories,” and we are shown a scene of him and Marge as disembodied heads on stilts. She reaches awkwardly toward him, slapping his face a few times before managing to stroke his face and say, sweetly, “Still love you, Ho-mar.” The simplicity of the statement amidst all the chaos, distortion, and ugliness of this future iteration of the series is deeply touching, almost elemental in its beauty.
It is a simplification of the character of Marge, yes, but one that feels true, not only to the character, but to reality. To be trapped within millennia of increasingly atomized moments with someone, and still to love them, and to say you love them, is at once terrifying, absurd, and genuinely, heartbreakingly sweet. The more you meditate upon this couch gag, the more it becomes a certified tearjerker.
These words could describe much of Hertzfeldt’s work, but the fact that he could accomplish so much in just two minutes of screen time before the episode even properly begins is a testament to him as an artist. The timelessness of The Simpsons becomes not just a curse or a great boon to Fox merchandising, but a chance to seek out the most fundamental aspects of ourselves and our relationships, with humor, horror, and heartbreak all rolled into one.
