As a long time fan of The Simpsons, there have been some things that they have done that have been annoying in some ways. I have even given up the show at times, but not for too long. While some think that they have run out of good ideas, that’s not the whole story about what’s going on. I get far more annoyed when they don’t have enough material for an episode and just put random bullshit there at the end. It hasn’t happened too much, but I was annoyed by it. Still, that’s not what this post is about.
You see, there are the occasional flashback episodes of the show even today. They have been part of the show for a while now. But there are issues with them and the floating timeline of the show. Even if there aren’t flashbacks regarding the episode’s plot, they mess with the timeline of other events that had happened on the show, something known as retcon.
Retcon, short for retroactive continuity, was created by author Sir Arthur Conner Doyle when he got a bunch of hate mail over killing off Sherlock Holmes, including from this own mother. He made a new book which revealed that Sherlock wasn’t dead after all, a clear change in what happened.
How are these episodes that The Simpsons did retcon in my mind? Well, there was a flashback episode at one point that started this occasional annoyance with me that largely had the earlier relationship of Homer and Marge changed. It didn’t help that it was taking place in the 90s, something that should have been true of episodes that had already happened. Since the people in The Simpsons never age, it is paradoxically always set in the present with past events taking place at younger ages including times that the show was already on the air. That episode, whatever name it had, was a retcon of what some other episodes had already covered and included, especially the existing 90s episodes that were all set in the present that are all now in this conflicting timeline of the current episode.
Why is this a problem? Well, even if The Simpsons doesn’t have that much continuity between episodes, they are doing a disservice to many people by saying that what had happened doesn’t always matter. They are doing a disservice to new fans by offering conflicting elements to existing shows that may not line up with what they would see or catch in reruns. They are also doing a disservice to existing fans by doing episodes that contradict existing cannon for simply creating new content.
It was more than just the 90s flashback episode that was annoying to me. A different episode had a young Marge doing a musical on Y2K despite the fact that this was covered in an episode that already exists that featured the present characters. One that seemed recent seemed to change nearly all of the existing story regarding Homer’s mother. This happened for no good reason.
This shouldn’t happen. They shouldn’t change what already exists by doing episodes that contradict any existing episode that has already been covered. It doesn’t make any sense to do this. And that’s why I’m doing this post in hopes that someone involved with the show will understand what I mean by this and make different episodes as a result.
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