One of The Best Jokes In The Simpsons History Was Secretly Improvised

While it is tough for an animated show to improvise anything, The Simpsons somehow managed this with one of the show’s most iconic episodes. In South Park season 6, episode 7, “Simpsons Already Did It,” the show sardonically claimed the earlier animated comedy series had already explored every conceivable gag, storyline, and character beat under the sun. Since The Simpsons is both the longest-running US scripted prime-time TV series and the longest-running animated comedy of all time, it is easy to see where South Park’s creators were coming from.

Even still, it is still sometimes striking to see just how much The Simpsons has defined pop culture and television comedy in particular, often unintentionally. The best quote from The Simpsons is a throwaway line where Homer subverts the typical sappy, sentimental moralizing of ’80s family sitcoms, and this gag alone went on to shape a lot of the humor found in Family Guy, American Dad, and, in particular, Netflix’s six-season satirical masterpiece BoJack Horseman.

Similarly, season 5, episode 2, “Cape Feare,” included a last-minute gag that was only thrown in because the show’s creators learned that the episode was running short, and this bit has since gone on to become an incredibly influential piece of anti-humor in the decades since. In an ingenious beat-for-beat parody of Martin Scorsese’s 1991 psychological thriller Cape Fear, this episode sees Sideshow Bob plot his violent revenge on Bart after emerging from prison.

Sideshow Bob’s Iconic Rake Gag Was A Last-Second Addition To “Cape Feare”

Although the family relocates to the titular eerily named town, they don’t realize that the nefarious villain has hitched a ride with them by strapping himself to the underside of their car. This concept is lifted straight from Scorsese’s movie, but the revelation that Homer went driving through a cactus patch for the sake of it is unique to The Simpsons episode. Similarly, Bob’s “So dumb it’s genius” fate upon emerging from under the car is an iconic gag, but one that only happened due to network TV’s strict runtimes.

According to executive producer Al Jean, speaking in the episode’s DVD commentary, the bruised, battered Bob was originally meant to stand on a single rake after escaping from under the family’s car. However, the iconic episode of The Simpsons added another eight rakes in rapid succession, all of which Bob reacted to with the same exhausted shudder, when they learned that the episode was 20 seconds short.

The finished episode came in almost half a minute short, resulting in this absurdly repetitive joke where canny viewers can audibly notice that guest star Kelsey Grammer’s trademark shudder is clearly looped. Although the gag might have been an afterthought for the show’s creators at the time, it has since been referenced in dozens of episodes of The Simpsons, most notably as a plot point in season 36, episode 2, ”The Yellow Lotus.”

The Simpsons Influenced Decades Of Comedy Shows With Sideshow Bob’s Rake Gag

Sideshow Bob walking into rake after rake is the sort of “So unfunny it becomes funny again” anti-comedy that was rarely seen on network TV in the ’90s, so the gag’s influence on adult animated comedy in the years since is easy to discern. The joke from The Simpsons’ parody of Cape Fear inspired Family Guy’s history of overly long gags, from Peter scraping his knee and wincing in season 1, episode 12, “Wasted Talent,” to the decades-long Peter Vs. Giant Chicken running gag.

Similarly, American Dad’s Golden Turd saga and Solar Opposites’ The Wall subplot both spun elaborate, dramatic stories out of what were initially one-off throwaway jokes, expanding on the anti-humor of The Simpsons joke to create something entirely fresh and original. The fact that so many shows were inspired to experiment with intentionally drawn-out gags in the decades after “Cape Feare” remains a testament to the oversized influence of The Simpsons.

Release Date

December 17, 1989

Network

FOX

Showrunner

Al Jean

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  Homer Simpson / Abe Simpson / Barney Gumble / Krusty (voice)

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  Marge Simpson / Patty Bouvier / Selma Bouvier (voice)