Warning: Spoilers for The Simpsons season 34, episode 4.
While The Simpsons season 34 has already taken some swipes at the show’s lack of canon, its fourth episode featured another jab at the confusing continuity of the series. The Simpsons, by its own admission, does not have a clear canon. The continuity of The Simpsons changes from episode to episode depending on the story, delighting some viewers and annoying others by changing major details at the drop of a hat.
However, The Simpsons season 34 mocked its reliance on this sort of non-continuity twice in two episodes, proving that the series has a sense of humor when it comes to the show’s inconsistent storytelling. In The Simpsons season 34, episode 4, “The King of Nice,” Marge receives a job offer from a television executive with a familiar face when her contributions to a focus group prove particularly valuable for the network. A card that the character hands Krusty the clown confirms that she is Lindsay Naegle, a recurring Simpsons supporting character who is constantly changing jobs. Her card calls her a “Daytime TV Producer (This Week),” a fourth-wall-breaking joke about the fact that The Simpsons reuses certain background characters in endless new roles.
Why The Simpsons Gives Lindsay Naegle So Many Jobs
Like her fellow Simpsons supporting character Raphael the Sarcastic Clerk, Lindsay Naegle has worked at a wide range of jobs in her many brief appearances on The Simpsons. She has been a public relations consultant, a marketing researcher, a venture capitalist, a cell phone company executive, and a realtor, among other positions. The Simpsons’ “Blame It On Lisa” (season 13, episode 15) explained this when Marge asked why Naegle changed jobs so often, and she blithely admitted that it was because she was a sexual predator. However, that has not stopped the family from buying from her and working with her numerous times since.
How The Simpsons Season 34 Mocked This Trope Before
While The Simpsons season 34 made Marge’s mysterious social life more confusing than ever, the series did at least explain its reusable background characters. “The King of Nice” mocked the fact that The Simpsons recycles supporting stars in different jobs via Lindsay Naegle’s card, but only one episode earlier, season 34 made a similar joke about Raphael the Sarcastic Clerk. In The Simpsons’ “Lisa the Boy Scout” (season 34, episode 3), it was revealed that there is an endless, Lovecraftian supply of Raphael the Sarcastic Clerk clones constantly being born beneath Springfield, thus explaining the character’s ubiquity.
Between these two gags, The Simpsons season 34 has shown that the series can affectionately mock its use of these stock characters, who are often recycled in similar small roles whenever an episode’s plot calls for them. Both Lindsay Naegle and Raphael the Sarcastic Clerk aren’t characters who require fleshed-out backstories but, while The Simpsons season 34’s Chalmers/Homer friendship proved that the show can eke interesting storylines out of old characters, it is also funny to see the series simply acknowledge that these stock characters defy reality in their bizarre, ever-changing existence. Neither Raphael the Sarcastic Clerk nor Lindsay Naegle received much screen time in The Simpsons season 34, but both offered the show a chance to make fun of its storytelling shortcuts with self-effacing gags.
New episodes of The Simpsons air on Fox on Sundays.
