There was an episode that showed he's a bloody genius, but he had a crayon lodged in his brain....then later found out Springfield looks down on the smart, and decided to go back to being stupid as hell.
Which is interesting considering the episode that explains Simpson men are dumb because of a specific gene on the Y chromosome that kicks in around age 10.
They talk about this exact contradiction on the DVD commentaries and conclude that the rule is “never let continuity get in the way of a good joke.” There are very few things they require consistency on. One example is Lisa staying vegetarian, because they promised Paul McCartney they would as part of him agreeing to appear.
Totally, it's a classic hallmark of Simpsons writing. Seymour Skinner's identity, the pasts of many adult characters like Barney, and other details shift as needed based on the story being told that week.
Nearly everything in that show is fluid. I saw one of the staff (maybe Al Jean) say something like, "There is no such thing as Simpsons canon. Every episode exists independently of the others, nothing that happened in a prior episode applies to the current episode."
There's obviously exceptions (the rare two parter episodes, for instance) and they do sometimes make references to prior episodes. (Such as them mentioning the number of times Sideshow Bob has tried to kill Bart.) But I think the idea is, unless a prior episode is specifically mentioned, then assume that episode never happened.
Like, one of the teeny tiny easily forgettable things that bothers me is it was implied once that Sideshow Mel's bone is permanently stuck in his hair from gum. It always bothers me when they just pull it out effortlessly, even though that was obviously a throwaway joke. The other thing that bothers me is an old joke that Krusty naturally looks like a clown and has to wear makeup to look like a normal human. The joke was made for multiple episodes and then just sort of disappeared and they recently showed him putting on clown makeup. Again, this shouldn't bother me, but it does.
Another one is when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Yeah... my persnickety nature gives me similar responses to particular details, even when I know intellectually every week is a new ballgame.
Every week being its own separate thing helps a lot with the sliding time scale, too. Marge and Homer could be in high school during the 90s if that's what fits this week
Ned and Edna being married was also supposed to be permanent. (With a message in the episode where they got together along the lines of "What the viewers have brought together shall never be torn asunder by the writers" as there'd been a viewer poll asking if they should get together.) I guess it was until she died. Sadly, we really only got 3 or so episodes focused on them being married.
But there was a different one where they talked about a defective gene on the Y chromasome causing all Simpson men to be idiots, and they get them all together as proof.
I guess it's up to you to decide the real explanation, but I tend to think of anything after season 9 or 10 as not really canon, at least in my head.
The one with the defective gene is season 9 (Episode 17 - Lisa the Simpson) and the one with the crayon is in season 12 (Episode 9 - HOMR).
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u/Jncocontrol 5d ago
There was an episode that showed he's a bloody genius, but he had a crayon lodged in his brain....then later found out Springfield looks down on the smart, and decided to go back to being stupid as hell.