We’re rapidly approaching a reality in which the company that made The Little Mermaid might also own The Simpsons, a mind-boggling proposition for anyone looking back on the state of animation way back in 1989. But while Disney’s soon-to-be-completed acquisition of 20th Century Fox’s film and TV assets—including the…
It’s one thing to build a real-life Simpsons house as a publicity gimmick. It’s another to figure out what to actually do with it afterwards. Mental Floss published a fantastically detailed history all about the infamous “real-life Simpsons house,” a perfect replica of 742 Evergreen Terrace that was built for a 1997…
The Simpsons will never end, even if a super-intelligent computer has to keep generating episodes long after humanity has been eradicated, but showrunner Al Jean has an ending in mind anyway. Speaking with Geek Tyrant, Jean reiterated an idea he first pitched on Twitter back in 2014, suggesting that the final episode…
Welcome back to Trailer Happy Hour, where not all trailers are created equal. But even if not every promo or teaser—especially for TV—has the clout to make it at Comic-Con’s big Hall H, we still love them all, and pledge to gather them together in one safe place for you to conveniently devour. (That metaphor got away…
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening is taking another shot at addressing the debate around Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. In an interview with The New York Times, Groening says he loves the character, and claims to “politically” agree with critics like comedian Hari Kondabolu, who brought concerns about how Apu’s…
Some would say the internet is not in dire need of new Simpsons content. From the plethora of dank memes to the endless cavalcade of steamed hams, nearly every great Simpsons moment has been chopped and screwed for someone’s entertainment. Plus, the damn show is still on the air. We’ve got enough Simpsons to last us a…
The Simpsons has a storied history of predicting (or at least appearing to predict) various future events over the course of its run. There’s a debate in some circles as to whether this is a “monkeys with typewriters”-type phenomenon or if Matt Groening and crew are truly soothsayers. These “predictions” have become…
Nobody in TV bats a thousand. Well, maybe the British The Office. But, by and large, even the medium’s most vaunted series have a dud episode or two in the mix. Just look at Stranger Things’ second season last year, which paired us up with a bunch of bargain-bin X-Men in one of the most disappointing TV episodes in…
As it’s done with every other cornerstone of family sitcoms, The Simpsons has taken the vacation episode to new heights (and lows). In its 29 seasons—and counting—the animated series has journeyed to France, Australia, China, Iceland, and the town of Bronson, where even the children are stone-cold badasses. Over time,…
As much as the introduction of DVD commentaries promised revelations inside the creative process, plenty of times they offered more insight into the banter of the people involved, as seemingly important scenes sail by unexplained. Longtime Simpsons producer-writer Mike Reiss, a frequent presence on the hours and hours…
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
Hey, remember how the final sequence of Six Feet Under was a unique, sublimely devastating summation of the show’s vision of its characters’ shared human experience? Pretty great stuff. Well, imagine an animated sitcom conservatively a decade-and-a-half past its prime grafting that ending onto its own middling,…
Another season of the The Simpsons has come and gone, breaking another handful of records along the way. At this point in its history, after almost 30 years on the air, the show has become a well-oiled machine, churning out 20-25 episodes a year without hiccup (usually). So how does it all come together? Animatic…
Grampa needs some expensive medical treatment, so the family heads off to a foreign country whose very different economic system allows for inexpensive health care for all. Yes, the Simpsons are heading to Cuba! No, wait, that was last season. Okay, well, once there, the family finds that their new surroundings offer…
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
You know Cyrano de Bergerac even if you don’t know Cyrano De Bergerac. The protagonist of Edmond Rostand’s century-old play—based loosely on the life of an actual French polymath—is a canonical figure, his romantic plight, panache, and prodigious proboscis immortalized in countless stagings, adaptations, and lit-class…
“Left Behind” is about everything and nothing. To be more accurate, this record-setting episode (since every new Simpsons sets a new longevity record now) begins being about more than a half-dozen things, and then never pays off a single one. An oil-in-water quality suffuses episodes like this, the half- (at best)…
The pointed and poignant commentary offered by stand-up comic Hari Kondabolu in his truTV documentary, The Problem With Apu, has elicited varied responses from the makers and one of the stars of The Simpsons. In his film, Kondabolu impaneled other Indian-American actors and comedians to explore the reductive…
“Yeah! I am the champion of this very bad idea!”
Smashing through a record that literally only ever comes up these days in the context of how long The Simpsons has been on the air, the canonically long-running Fox show is finally about to break Gunsmoke’s 635-episode hold on the title for longest-running scripted prime-time series ever. (For context, Gunsmoke was a…
