Original airdate: May 18, 2025
The premise: Horrified to find Itchy & Scratchy is now being merchandized to toddlers, Bart and Lisa swear off watching the cartoon together, severing their only sibling bonding time. Thirty-five years later, the two have grown apart, until a successful Lisa returns to Springfield only to find Bart running a retirement home out of their old family house.
The reaction: I’ve lost count at this point how many future episodes they’ve done. We’ve got to be over a dozen, right? But I’m all for returning to this storytelling well as long as there’s an interesting story to tell. As we’ve seen with the fourth wall breaking episodes, any time the writers get away from the status quo of the series, at the very least, the episodes have a greater chance of being interesting, rather than Homer and Abe start a new sport that no one could possibly care about. This episode is technically only two acts of a future show, as we start out seeing through the past and present how a young Bart and Lisa found common ground in their mutual love of the ultra-violent Itchy & Scratchy, but when Marge proudly shows off Maggie’s new I&S onesie and other baby products, the kids immediately reject the cartoon entirely. Marge laments repeatedly about her kids growing apart and wanting them to always be there for each other, and as we’ve hit this point like four or five times, we jump to the future, where Lisa, now head of the WNBA (now renamed NBA), comes back home to Springfield to give a speech at her old school. Marge has since passed away, and Homer is living at the Retirement Castle… or rather, he should be, as Lisa discovers her father and other fellow oldies living at 742 Evergreen Terrace under Bart’s “supervision.” As I mentioned before, there are definitely interesting story possibilities in seeing these characters grown up, dealing with what their lives are, mistakes they’ve made and how they can fix them. The modern “classic” “Holidays of Future Passed” presented a somewhat compelling narrative of Bart’s conflicted feelings over Homer being a much greater grandfather to his kids than he ever was a father to him. But most of the rest of the future shows don’t really deal with anything new. Lisa is furious with Bart’s irresponsibility, but then warms up to him after seeing how he actually is caring for his elderly residents in his own way by letting them have fun. Lisa realizing Bart has a greater capacity for compassion or his own individual intelligence is a premise they could just have easily done in the present day (and they basically have in a few episodes.) The episode ends with Bart and Lisa teaming up to save Homer from being shipped off to America’s waiting room Florida and they all bond over the latest Itchy & Scratchy reboot. It’d be nice if they fully took advantage of these writing opportunities, which at times they do, even if I don’t find them particularly successful (like “Barthood” or the aforementioned “Holidays,”) but this one felt pretty anemic.
Three items of note:
– The present day section ends with a “parody” of the song “When Somebody Loved Me” from Toy Story 2, actually performed her by Sarah McLachlan, as the Itchy & Scratchy toys Bart and Lisa discarded look upon their former owners with sadness. But, as what happens a lot with this show, the song is just repeating all of the information we already just saw. Bart and Lisa are drifting apart because Itchy & Scratchy is for babies now, and Marge is sad about it. All of that already clearly unfolded, but for some reason, we’re going to take over a minute to recap it in song. In Toy Story 2, Jesse finally opens up about her before-unmentioned owner as we go into the song montage and we learn visually about what she went through. She didn’t spend three minutes talking about Emily in detail earlier in the movie before we got to this point, the montage sequence is emotionally potent because it’s communicating all this information at once. After the montage, we have Marge talking to Homer about how worried she is about Bart and Lisa, and then the next day she tells her kids directly, and then later in the third act, adult Lisa finds Marge’s video “emotional will” and she repeats it again and it’s like okay we get it I understand what’s going on here thank you.
– Why is it that in “Lisa’s Wedding,” Nancy Cartwright performed adult Bart with a lower “man’s” voice, but in every single other future episode, it’s just her doing ten-year-old Bart unaltered? He’s supposed to be 45 here, but he still sounds like a little kid. What happened? Did Cartwright and/or the producers make a conscious decision with “Bart to the Future” that they just wouldn’t bother adjusting the voice anymore? Why won’t they?
– Homer makes an involved reference to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and later we see him play the game sitting on the couch in his underwear. The show’s floating timeline has become a source of horror for me as I’ve now entered the latter half of my 30s. San Andreas released in 2004, so with Homer being 40, that means he played this PS2 game straight out of high school, which my brain cannot even begin to comprehend. Homer is already a millennial like myself, but now with the recent confirmation the show will go on at least through 2029, the series will officially be running long enough that, despite having been born the same year the show premiered, I will be older than Homer by the time it ends.
Wow, another season’s over, huh? What a lot of fun we’ve had this season. What is it, 46? 47? I’ll be completely honest, at this point, this is a blog I’m operating purely driven by my desire to see this series through to its end, if that ever happens. We just got the four-season renewal, which will get this show up to season 40, and while part of me feels like that would be a perfect time to call the show quits, the other part of me knows it’s an absolute fool’s errand to predict when the show will finally end. Even my long-held belief that a death in the main cast will be the unavoidable end feels less of a certainty, as the show has gotten through a handful of recastings with minimal issue in recent years. The series has definitely changed in recent years in ways I never expected, but at this point, I feel similarly to how I did when I was blazing through the 2010s era of the series, that the show has kind of settled into a formula that I’m not really connecting with, but rather than the 2010s Al Jean era of never-ending stagnation and horribleness, now we’re in the mostly Matt Selman era of emotion plumbing character stories that, to me, come off as too treacly and now particularly interesting. You have your meta episodes sprinkled in here and there which if nothing else are novel changes of pace (like this year’s premiere “Bart’s Birthday,”) but looking over this season’s stable of episodes, it all reads like completely disposable efforts to be tossed on the ever-growing Simpsons pile at this point. I have no doubt in my hear that there’s so many people on the show who care a lot and work so hard to keep things fresh and interesting after so many decades, and there are clearly many fans who are positively responding to their efforts. That’s incredibly commendable, undeniably so. But I’ve long since accepted that the show just isn’t for me anymore, and while it may seem pointless to continue on after reaching that conclusion, I am a goddamn completionist at heart, especially after having spent over a decade myself writing this stupid blog, so what am I gonna do, stop here at season 36? Hell no. For those who have continued reading, I thank you so much, and I hope that I’ve managed to make some interesting points and observations in my ramblings through recent years. I will return in September for season 37, a number that I am absolutely baffled typing out. Season thirty-fucking-seven. What a world we live in.
Me Blog Write Good 
Few items of note here:
I wanted to wait to hear Kelly’s kid Milhouse voice next season before commenting on it, but from her brief line as adult Milhouse, it seems like she’ll be a pretty good match.
The episode is set in the far future but Old Jewish Man is still around, not a day older. And they’re still doing one of my least favorite jokes where Kearney is not only stuck in elementary school as a grown ass man but so are his son and grandson.
I do agree that the future stuff reeked of dumb writing we expect from modern episodes (obvious references are obvious), and also felt half hearted in commitment. Bart is meant to be a bad person because he spends the money from being a caregiver on stupid things instead of keeping the old family house in good shape or to accommodate the elderly he has living there, and yet he’s shown to understand how to handle senility and does keep them happy, while Lisa bolted from the jerkwater burg the first chance she could and she’s meant to be the good one.
It does make me glad that the show will have fewer episodes. If they refuse to obey continuity, maybe do more episodes that are in their own universe.
So this is an episode where Bart and Lisa are brought together by the never-ending reboot of a dystopian junk food cartoon? Closing out a season than opened by effectively proclaiming The Simpsons should never have to die?
I can’t be the only one who thinks that seems defensive.
Congratulations Mike for surviving another season. You seem a bit more pessimistic this time around, though I can’t say I blame you at all.
For a time I thought a cast member dying was a death sentence for the show, but knowing FOX is a greedy corporate powerhouse, I really wouldn’t put it past then to just replace them or, dare I say it, resort to the low of AI. Nothing much surprises me at this point.
At least the workload will be easier on you going forward with only 15 episodes per season.
See you in September, and I hope you enjoy a long ZS-free summer. I salute your commitment.
Congrats on completing Season 36! I seriously commend your dignity and motivation to continue on because I personally would just give up, call it quits, and pretend the show ended in 2025. Sadly, I am not surprised the show would be renewed in our bleak 2025 but the fact that it’s four seasons and fifteen per production shocked me, like maybe there’s a sign. Hank Azaria predicted the show would end after Season 40 and at this point, I have no choice but to agree with him.
Anyway, Season 36 is definitely the most forgettable of the four Selman seasons so far but it’s still miles better than the pre-Selman HD seasons. I’d say the “best” episodes were “Bart’s Birthday” and “O C’mon All Ye Faithful” but the former could’ve been executed a lot better and the latter could’ve been a lot funnier. As for the worst of the worst, I’d have to go with “Shoddy Heat,” “The Man Who Flew Too Much,” “The Last Man Expanding,” “Yellow Planet” and “Full Heart, Empty Pool”. But that’s just my opinion, if anyone here actually likes any of those episodes, good on them.
Oh, I guess I have to talk about this finale episode, huh? Uhhhhhhhhh… I forgot what I was going to say. It wouldn’t have even mattered though. I”M FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!
This blog is one of my comfort reads, so I’m glad you’ll be keeping it going. Obviously no pressure, but I wonder if you’d consider doing another brief cartoon review (or reviews?) over the summer. Or maybe take a look back at the Simpsons video games? Hit & Run remains a surprisingly well-regarded title.
He’s definitely not going back to Futurama.
Why not? I thought Mike loved Futurama?
Not the 2023 revival.
Another thought: why do all these future episodes assume Lisa will have more money than Bart? Sure, Lisa is more academically gifted than her brother, but Bart is better at schmoozing. It’s entirely possible that Lisa will end up with a job that’s prestigious but not very high-paying (again, maybe something academic), whereas Bart will end up an executive thanks to his ability to charm and socialize.
The writers identify more with Lisa and expect Bart’s flaws will catch up to him in the “real world”. Seems like a very Frank Grimes sort of attitude to me.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here because I haven’t watched the show at all in the last few years, not even the THOHs. The last one I watched was the Death Note one, which I liked a lot. I can’t remember if that was 33 or 32.
I do still love reading your season finale summaries because it helps me know if I should eventually give it the season a shot in the future. I started the show over with the plan to only watch the first 9-12 seasons, but I know part of me is going to want to watch the seasons I haven’t done yet afterwards.
Anyway, this episode is getting a lot of buzz on social media because clickbaiters are making it sound like Marge was killed off permenantly when it was during the time jump, which is obviously not canon to the show. I do agree about Bart’s voice as they need to understand he wouldn’t sound the same at all by that point.
As for your comment about the voice actors being replaced, I have heard that the principle cast has signed an agreement that will allow them to be replaced with AI should Disney choose to go that route.
Thanks for all of the hard work you put into this blog even if I’m not as frequent as I used to be. Life has gotten a bit more complicated after covid and I often find myself spending less time on the internet than I used to, which is probably because YouTube has become my full time job.
The Death Note parody was in the season 34 Treehouse of Horror.
“I often find myself spending less time on the internet than I used to, which is probably because YouTube has become my full time job.”
Wait…. if YouTube is your full time job, then you’re spending MORE time on the internet, not less.
I don’t think this was a bad idea to do an end of itchy and scratchy / Bart and Lisa grow distant as adults story. The execution was really sloppy though. Still prefer it over the jenda futures (not a high bar to clear admittedly.)
At least Bart seems happy and it’s nice that Homer, Lenny, Carl, and CBG stayed friends in their old age. Bart really did care about helping them and keeping their spirits up.
With how many Future episodes the writers have put out since Holidays of Future Past I’m wondering: Do the writers wanna age up the characters permanently? Do they secretly resent the fact that the characters haven’t been allowed to age for 36 years? I mean, I’d feel that way too if I were in their position, so why don’t they just make the characters older at this point?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Hell no.
This show likes to dabble in the What If but they are scared to death in permanently altering the status quo as that would mean having to tackle things like mortality, change, and the concept of being a lumbering dinosaur in an era where fellow shows are willing to depict long term consequences. It wasn’t from a lack of trying; several of the show runners did try tweaking some of the characters but when Al Jean came back, he himself admitted to reversing everything that was changed after Season 4 for the sake of maintaining that bland daily comic strip vibe of “nothing changes”. And Matt Selman prides on the show having zero continuity.
So when your two leaders explicitly don’t want change, what are you going to do?
Yeah, you’re probably right.
@GindyDraws I have always wondered what your avatar is from. It reminds me of Barry (the rival from Pokemon diamond, pearly and platinum.)
It’s from Team Galaxy, a 2006 “French Anime” which was a thing back then.