While The Simpson family may not have aged over the show’s 750+ episodes, that doesn’t mean they are incapable of change. In a recent episode of Fox’s ongoing animated series, Homer Simpson said he will no longer strangle his son, Bart. It has been a running joke for Homer to reprimand Bart by squeezing his neck tightly, to the point where his eyes bulge and his tongue sticks out.
This gag has frequently been criticized for its brutality over the past three decades. And it seems that “The Simpsons” is finally, officially, doing away with it altogether.
In the third episode of season 35, “McMansion & Wife,” Homer outright addresses the change. While meeting their new neighbor Thayer, the men shake hands and Thayer remarks that Homer has a firm grip. “See, Marge, strangling the boy paid off,” he declares, before adding: “Just kidding, I don’t do that anymore. Times have changed.”
Even though the episode aired on October 22nd, the clip has recently been making the rounds with fans having mixed reactions. But the strange part is, “The Simpsons” already quietly made this change several years ago. Considering, the last time Homer was shown strangling Bart was in season 31, which ran from 2019-2020. They are just finally acknowledging it.
But the show has done fakeouts about this topic before. In season 22, the episode “Love is a Many Strangled Thing”, Homer attends a fathering enrichment class. During this class, he is shown the error of his ways by a towering basketball player (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) who strangles him, and invites others to do the same. Seemingly, finally, understanding what it’s like “to be young, small, and terrified,” he cannot bring himself to strangle Bart later in the episode.
By season 24’s episode “Love is a Many-Splintered Thing”, Homer is back to his old ways and shown choking Bart in front of Milhouse. Now that the change has been directly addressed, many are hoping this will be the death of the gag.
It’s not like this is the first time “The Simpsons” shed a problematic element. In 2018, they phased out the long-standing character of Apu. While the Kwik-E-Mart owner is of Indian descent, he was voiced by white actor Hank Azaria. The voice and character were often criticized for being a caricature of Indian culture.
In 2018, producer Adi Shankar requested Apu be written out of the series completely, or for him to be developed into more than a stereotype. This request was in no way endorsed by Fox or the creators of “The Simpsons,” but that’s not to say no one involved didn’t agree with Shankar.
Azaria expressed he no longer wanted to do the character in 2023. He’d previously apologized, more than once, for the character. “Through my role in Apu and what I created in Hollywood messaging – which is a big deal in this country and around the world – I helped to create a pretty marginalising, dehumanising stereotype,” Azaria said.
We hope that Homer no longer strangling Bart is another commitment to change from “The Simpsons.” While some fans are spewing the old “you can’t tell jokes anymore” or “go woke go broke” rhetoric. The overwhelming response has been positive.
