Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons season 35, episode 10.
While The Simpsons season 35, episode 10 was not flawless, the outing did manage to solve a problem that plagued recent seasons of the long-running animated series. As a satirical TV comedy, The Simpsons has always poked fun at relevant news stories. However, the show’s lengthy production process and family-friendly tone mean that The Simpsons focuses less on timely political satire than its competitors, like South Park. It can take between six and nine months to produce an episode of The Simpsons, while most South Park outings are created in only five days, giving the R-rated series a better opportunity to satirize stories as they unfold.
The Simpsons season 36 may return to topical satire, but season 35 has wisely moved away from this focus. Some of the weakest gags in The Simpsons seasons 30 to 33, like a bizarrely misjudged cutaway about “Bernie Babies” that went viral due to its outdated humor, which relied heavily on news stories that were forgotten by the time their respective episodes were released. By contrast, The Simpsons season 34 gained critical acclaim for largely avoiding these highly specific, topical jokes. Although season 35, episode 10, “Do the Wrong Thing,” did incorporate some timely satire, these gags were subtle enough to succeed.
The Simpsons Season 35 Pulled Off Topical Gags
In “Do the Wrong Thing,” Lisa was horrified to discover that Marge PhotoShopped Lisa’s head into pictures of Olympic rowers to guarantee her daughter a place in a prestigious summer camp. However, the dean of the camp’s college waxed lyrical about the merits of cheating, telling Lisa that the institution had a storied tradition of celebrating scammers and grifters. As he said this, Dean Belichick offered Homer a role as a professor while gesturing toward a model of the college’s Sam Bankman-Fried Hall. Although season 35’s weakest episodes leaned too hard on pop culture references designed to make the series feel more relevant, this gag worked.
The joke was seemingly edited in after the rest of the episode was completed, but it was an unobtrusive minor gag instead of a major sequence. It is usually cringeworthy when The Simpsons comments on news stories years after they happen, but this moment was small enough to succeed. The joke didn’t break the rhythm of the episode’s storytelling, and while it could easily be missed on first viewing, it was a clever nod to the disgraced FTX founder that was a good fit for the outing’s plot. “Do the Wrong Thing” also spoofed USC, Lance Armstrong, and Bill Belichick, so the topical gag didn’t feel particularly out of place.
Why This Timely Satire Worked But Earlier Gags Fell Flat
Earlier attempts to inject topical satire into recent seasons of The Simpsons fell flat because they weren’t linked to the storylines of the episodes. In season 34, Homer read from a list of terrible people and awkwardly mumbled about how there were many Russian generals included, a tasteless last-minute reference to the Ukraine invasion that added nothing to the outing. Much like The Simpsons season 35’s worst celebrity cameos felt forced and unnecessary, the show’s weaker satire felt like a bid for relevance rather than an organic part of the plot. By contrast, episode 10’s gag proved The Simpsons can slickly incorporate timely jokes into its stories.
