Episodes 11, 12, and 13

We've reached the final three episodes of season one, starting with The Crepes of Wrath, which itself starts on the 15th of August, 1990, with Bart getting home from school. After his mess causes Homer to fall down the stairs, Bart has to tidy his room, eading to his finding a long-forgotten cherry bomb. He takes it to school the next day, flushing it down the toilet and causing significant distress to Agnes Skinner, making her first appearance. Principal Skinner goes to the Simpson house and suggests using an exchange program to temporarily "deport" Bart and give everyone a break for a few months. In return, the Simpsons have to take in an Albanian child. Also, Bart has a pet frog in this episode, who seems to exist purely so he can deliver the line "Ah, the life of a frog... That's the life for me!"

There's no indication that more time has passed between scenes, so we'll assume that Bart's plane leaves the very next day, on the 17th. Bart finds himself living as a slave for two sleazy winemakers who sell all his stuff, while his Albanian counterpart Adil seems to be having a nice enough time meeting the Simpsons, and being patronised by Seymour. Best of all, Homer delivers the line "Maybe Adil is right about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers." As Bart continues to suffer under the yoke of servitude in France (literally, they have him carrying buckets on a yoke), Adil puts his plan to steal nuclear secrets into motion. When Cesar and Ugolin tell Bart to sleep on the floor, that appears to be his first night in France, so the next night, as he reads a letter from Marge in his now tattered and torn clothes, I'll assume that's the 18th. What fast international mail they had in the early 90s!

The next day, the crooked viniers (if that is a real word) make Bart test their adulterated wine, before sending him into town. Well, it seems to be the next day, but when Bart starts speaking fluent french, he says he's been there two months, so I guess it's now the 18th of October, 1990? Meanwhile, the US government is on Adil's tail. Cesar and Ugolin go to prison, while Adil is deported a free boy in exchange for the release of a similarly youthful American spy. We'll be generous and assume his homecoming is the next day, ending the episode on the 19th of October. The next episode, Krusty gets Busted starts on what must be the afternoon of the 20th, with Bart and Lisa watching Krusty's show, during which the eponymous clown has a cultlike hold over his audience, both at home and in the studio. Sideshow Bob's first appearance has him getting shot out of an actual cannon, too! No wonder he's so angry.

Homer goes to the Kwik-E-Mart get ice cream to take the edge off of having to sit through Patty and Selma, while Apu is still strangely distant towards him, and someone appearing to be Krusty robs the place! As a witness, Homer is instrumental in getting Krusty arrested, luckily missing out on the slideshows. As the story is relayed on the local news, we learn that, at this time, Kent Brockman and Krusty work for rival stations, with Kent's station having "the Emmy award-winning Hobo Hank" as its children's entertainer. I'm pretty sure that changes (or more likely, gets forgotten) in later episodes. A biography of Krusty, airs the next night, revealing that the surly, unpleasant clown we know came about after a heart attack. Also, as Krusty's taken to court, it's revealed that he doesn't actually have pale skin or a red nose, another point that's contradicted in future seasons. Presumably, the big court case starts day after that, on the 21st, with the town centre Krusty bonfire happening that very night.

On the second day of the case, we learn that Krusty is illiterate, and that it's apparently a crime in America to bet on sporting events? Weird, though I can't say I disapprove of this particular legislative overstep. That night, we also see the first night of Sideshow Bob's pretentious usurpment of Krusty's show. Bart and Lisa go to the scene of the crime and find a multitude of clues pointing to Krusty's innocence. As an aside, there's a lot of talk about Apu recently, and in these early episodes, he stands out as being especially egregious in being an awful stereotype played with vocal brownface. The next day (the 23rd, by my count), Bart and Lisa go to meet Bob and ask him a few questions. I think this, as well as being the first Sideshow Bob episode, is also the first "Bart and Lisa: Mystery Kids" episode.

Anyway, Bart gets on Bob's show during and agony uncle segment, where he spells out the case for Krusty's innocence live on TV, during which he also comes to the realisation that Bob was the real culprit all along! Bob and Krusty trade places that night, and Bart goes to bed in his Krusty-decorated room. So the final episode of season one, One Enchanted Evening, starts on the 24th of October, 1990. First point of interest is that Marge calls the radio station to talk to Dr. Marvin Monroe, and gives her age as 34. That actually matches up what we learned back in Life on the Fast Lane, so well done! As Homer drowns his sorrows in Moe's Tavern, Barney is creepily over-animated as he talks to Homer. Also, Moe gives Homer some marital advice, conflicting with his later character of being a completely irredeemible disgusting loser. That's right, it's another marriage trouble episode, but other people have done much more in-depth work looking at how unhealthy Marge and Homer's relationship has been over the years, so I'll say no more on the subject for now.

Anyway, this all leads to a date at Le Chez Paris and a night at the Offramp Inn, so obviously, a babysitter is needed. The highlight of them getting ready for their big night is the first of Homer's instantly regenerating facial stubble. For some reason, as soon as the babysitter arrives and Homer and Marge leave, the quality of animation at home takes a sudden nosedive, though things at the restaurant look fine. Bart gets bored watching the Happy Little Elves (which Lisa seems to love despite already being established at this point as a cultured intellectual), and switches over to America's Most Armed and Dangerous, which features the case of the Babysitter Bandit, who coincidentally, is Lucille Butsokowski, their babysitter, who immediately arrives, rope in hand, ready to tie them up and clean the house out. Bart unsuccessfully tries to kill Lucille by dropping a bowling ball on her head, but ultimately the kids all get tied up and left to finish watching the Happy Little Elves. Also, it's apparently, not Homer and Marge's first night at the Offramp Inn, as they reminisce about going there one time eleven years ago (which was, of course, 1979, though I'll assume this isn't coincidentally the exact anniversary).

Bart does actually manage to inflict sports equipment-based violence after Maggie unties him and Lisa and he manages to knock Lucille out with a baseball bat. They tie her up and go to find a payphone to grass her up. Unfortunately, Homer and Marge come home early, ignorantly untie her and let her loose jsut before the cops and the TV cameras turn up. Anyway, this entire episode takes place on one day, the 24th of October, 1990. So late that night is where the episode, and the first season, ends. And in case you were wondering, this episode originally aired in the US on the 13th of May that same year.

Episodes 8, 9, and 10

It's the 31st of January, 1990 as The Telltale Head starts. Well, it would be, if we weren't starting in media res, at a later point in the story, with Bart and Homer chased by an angry mob in the middle of town, before Bart tells the mob how they came into possession of the haed of Jeremiah Springfield. His story starts on "Sunday morning", so I guess if this is the earliest point, this is the actual 31st of January? We'll have to keep counting to see on what day the start of the episode takes place. The Simpsons are going to church and Sunday school, and there's a nice little bit where Homer's listening to the radio, which syncs up perfectly with everything that's going on around him. Marge admonishes Homer for gambling in the car back home. No wonder he throws it in her face when she becomes a gambling addict later on!

I'm pretty sure this is the first appearance of Dolph, Kearny and Jimbo, appearing sans Nelson. They sneak into the cinema, steal stuff from Apu, throw stones at Jeremiah, and look up at the clouds. Weirdly, the cloud that looks like "a guy with a switchblade in his back" looks exactly like Hans Moleman. Is that his first appearance? I can't remember, but that'd be extra strange if it was. Anyway, they laugh at Bart for defending Jeremiah's honour, leading him down the path towards decapitation. Bart went out straight after church, so all this (and the crime itself) has happened on the 31st. One of those endless childhood afternoons, how nice! The news breaks on the morning of the 1st of February, and the entire town, including Dolph, Kearny and Jimbo, are all inexplicably distraught at the petty vandalism. Even Krusty calls the act an atrocity and encourages the kids at home to grass on the suspect if they know who it is!

On the 2nd, the Simpsons are watching a very cheap-looking documentary on TV when Bart confesses his crime to them, leading he and Homer to attempt to take the head back to its rightful place, and also leading back to the opening scene so I guess that answers that question! Bart replaces the head, is forgiven by the townspeople, Smithers expresses his affection towards Mr. Burns for the first time, and the episode ends. I should also mention that throughout the Telltale Head, Homer was looking through a bowling ball catalogue, which is an interesting bit of foreshadowing and rare piece of inter-episode continuity leading into the next episode, Life on the Fast Lane, which naturally starts on the 3rd of February, which I guess is Marge's birthday, too! Bart's got her a huge $4 bottle of "french perfume", while Lisa has made an incredibly ornate piece of dried pasta art. Homer, of course, has nothing, and hastily has to go out and get something: a fancy bowling ball! (See, foreshadowing!)

There's a shop in the Springfield Mall that sells nothing but jerky and sausages. That sounds amazing! Less amazing is The Singing Sirloin, the restaurant where Patty and Selma take the family, whose waiters are constantly singing, though they do reveal that it's Marge's 34th, so at this point in time, she was born on the 3rd of February, 1956. I'm sure that'll change later on at some point, though. Homer's present, not just a bowling ball, but one engraved with his name, goes down like a turd in a salad, predictably. On the 4th, Marge goes bowling, attracting the attention of housewife's favourite, bowling expert and cad, Jacques. While Marge is out getting wood, Homer and the kids eat pizza in awkward silence at home. The next night, as Jacques drives Marge home and invites her to brunch, the moon looks like a bowling ball, which is a nice touch.

Paradoxically, the 6th is a Wednesday, despite the 31st of January being a Sunday. But if we were going to let logic get in our way, we wouldn't be trying to apply a consistent timeline to The Simpsons, would we? At brunch, we meet Helen Lovejoy for the first time (I think. I should do a better job at remembering these first appearances, shouldn't I?), and Marge has fantasies of luxury and decadence when Jacques invites her to another date at his apartment at Fiesta Terrace. Homer is genuinely depressed at the apparent falling apart of his marriage, which Lisa (and eventually Bart) also starts to notice. On the drive to Fiesta Terrace, Marge just happens to go past many, many loving couples, changes her mind, and goes to see Homer instead, and the episode ends with them going to have sex in the back of the car. How romantic! That's during the afternoon of the 7th of February, starting the next episode, Homer's Night Out on the 8th.

Homer's already joking about women at work finding him attractive! That session in the power plant carpark must have been something special to get them so thoroughly back on track so quickly. Anyway, Bart orders a spy camera from a mail order catalogue and there's a "six months later" onscreen caption. So now it's the 8th of August 1990! Amazing! This Friday, Homer's going to the stag party of his former assistant/current supervisor, Eugene Fisk. Also, Bart's camera finally arrives, and he instantly takes embarassing photos of Homer and Marge, plus some roadkill and his own bum. I guess it's now Friday, too? We'll bend the rules and say that Homer announcing his attendance of the stag party was yesterday, and it's now the 9th. The rest of the family are having their tea in the pirate-themed family restaurant next door. Faced with the prospect of eating tentacles, Bart wanders off, finds the stag party, and photographs Homer dancing with the stripper, Princess Kashmir. The line "I'm sorry, I don't usually laugh like this" reveals some kind of deep underlying ennui in Homer's life, at the same time. Maybe.

On what I assume must be Monday the 12th, Bart develops his photos at school, and the photo of Homer and the Princess starts getting copied and passed around by every boy in the place, and eventually their dads and all the other men in town. I guess pictures of pretty girls were hard to come by in 1990 middle America? Also, Apu acts like he's never met Homer, which doesn't really make sense, unless all the characters just came into existence fully formed at the start of the series. At this point (which by my reckoning is the very next day), everyone in town's seen the picture and Homer's a celebrity. Also, Marge is up on her high horse about Homer dancing at a party, so I guess her memory of her own actions doesn't stretch back as far as the previous episode, even though it was six whole months ago, and Homer has to go and stay with Barney. At work the next day, Mr. Burns asks Homer for the secret to sexual attractiveness, and that night Homer goes home to make peace.

It turns out that the actual reason Marge was upset was that Homer was setting a bad example for Bart, objectifying women. Which is actually reasonable, and he takes Bart on an accidental tour of the town's many strip clubs, so they can meet Princess Kashmir and show that she's a real person and not just a sex object. Her real name's Jana Tifften, it turns out! Of course, this all ends up with Homer dangling from a cage as Jana is acting as part of the scenery for the lounge singer Gulliver Dark's stage show. As Homer enjoys being a part of the show, he comes to realise the bad example he's setting, and stops the show to deliver a speech on respecting women. Also, Mr. Burns and Smithers are in attendance with two identical women, which is an interesting arrangement. Homer's speech makes all the men in the club realise the error of their ways, and the episode ends there, on the night of the 14th of August, 1990! Homer's Night Out aired on the 25th of March that year, so we're technically now in the future!

Episodes 6 and 7

So, we start today's post with Moaning Lisa, and the morning of the 17th of January 1990. The Simpson house has a lounge, a den and a "rumpus room", and Evergreen Terrace is in such a nice neighbourhood that Homer can leave his keys in the front door overnight without the family being the victims of burglary or car theft. What luxury! Obviously, the comfortable blandness (or maybe the bland comfort) of suburban life is a contributing factor to Lisa's depression, which shows itself for the first time in this episode. There's also a scene in which Homer and Bart play a boxing videogame, on a console that doesn't have any obvious real-life analogue, just being a vague lump of technology on top of the TV, though I think this is probably preferable to a vapid referential anti-joke like the "Funtendo Zii" that appears in Season 21. During the match, Bart also delivers the line "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, they can't prove anything!", which was on a T-shirt I had as a kid.

More important though, is Homer and Marge's inability to deal with Lisa's ennui, something typical of baby boomer parents faced with the emergent problems of a generation growing up in a world without the culturally-enforced emotional repression they had forced upon them. Though Homer also has nightmares about the idea that Bart will one day be a better man than he (if it hasn't happened already), while Marge's dreams see her reliving the days in her childhood when her mother advised to to keep everything bottled up inside, to keep up appearances, advice she passes onto Lisa, though to Marge's credit, she does realise the error in this.

Lisa's interactions with Bleeding Gums Murphy are interesting: like he says, she has "no real problems", compared to his life of poverty and dental neglect. But her pain, whether it's caused by the pointlessness she sees in her lifestyle, or a chemical imbalance is still real, and Bleeding Gums doesn't try to discount or belittle it. Their first meeting takes place on the night of the 17th, by the way. I've written so much on this episode, and a day hasn't even passed yet! On the eighteenth, Homer goes to the arcade to learn how to video-box, which is treated as a dirty shame for an adult. How absurd, we all know that arcade games are probably the highest form of art! Meanwhile, driving Lisa to band practice, Marge passes on her awful hand-me-down advice, and instantly regrets it as she sees Lisa becoming a doormat before her very eyes, smiling to please boys and passively obeying the idiotic music teacher Mr. Largo. The episode ends on the night of the 18th, with the Simpsons going to see Bleeding Gums at a jazz club. Nice.

Taking us into the 19th is Call of the Simpsons, an episode I don't really have fond memories of. Don't worry, there's no related trauma or anything, I just don't think it's very good. Season one is a little rough all-round, but this episode is one of the weakest of the bunch. Though only a minute into it, and we've got the first instance of Homer referring to the Flanders family collectively as "The Flandererses", which is hilarious. There's also Ned's big fancy RV, which, as far as I can remember, isn't mentioned again until season six's Lemon of Troy. Odd how Bob, the RV salesman, who quickly alternates between insincere sycophancy and blunt honesty, never became a recurring character.

The 19th was a pretty eventful day! Homer gets jealous of Ned's RV, goes out and buys (a much worse) one of his own, packs it up and takes the family away in it. It's certainly paced like each scene directly follows from the last, so I'm going to have to go along with it, I guess! The RV quickly gets destroyed, stranding the Simpsons in the woods, Maggie wanders off and befriends some bears, Bart's lucky red hat is referred to for the first time, and my memories of this episode's low quality are all being proven right. I'm twelve minutes in and it feels like it's been hours of unfunny, boring rubbish. I don't like being this negative, but this episode doesn't leave me much else to do. It's simultaneously less funny and less dramatically interesting than Moaning Lisa, by a long long way. On the 20th of January, Homer is mistaken for Bigfoot, with people somehow mistaking the brown mud in which he's covered for brown fur.

We see three different front pages, all of the same paper, covering the Bigfoot story, so I guess we're on the 23rd now? Bart, Homer and Maggie have all been lost in the woods all that time without dying, amazing! And Maggie being an unsupervised baby, too! According to the news on TV, a week passes with the captured Homer being studied in a lab. Dr. Marvin Monroe, who has met Homer before, is unsure of his humanity. Marge and Homer were watching the news on TV in bed, on the night of the 30th of January 1990, and since that stinker of an episode has drained the life out of me, that's also where this post ends. Next time, we'll start on the 31st of January, 1990, with The Telltale Head!

Episodes 3 to 5

Let's get right into the third episode of season one, Homer's Odyssey, which starts on the 30th of December, 1989. I used to always get this title mixed up with the season eight episode El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer, which was annoying, because I like that episode a lot more, and I'd see Homer's Odyssey in TV listings and get my hopes up. Right from the start, there's some season one weirdness: the Springfield Tire Fire is still just the plain old Springfield Tire Yard, then the kids get to their field trip at the nuclear plant and we see the first (and only?) appearance of the infamous Black Smithers! There's also a shot of a three-eyed fish in the river outside, a throwaway joke that becomes a big episode plot point later on. That's nice.

If we follow the rules strictly (and we do), then this is a pretty depressing new year's eve: Homer gets rejected by a bunch of jobs, breaks open Bart's piggy bank, then attempts suicide. In contrast though, the way he runs to save his family with a boulder tied to him is a display of superhuman strength and agility, so it's ups and downs I guess. I'll assume that the town council meeting takes place the next day, ringing in 1990. Happy new year! Then, there's a quick montage of five Springfield Shopper frontpages featuring Homer's safety crusade, all with consectuive days on them (but no dates), taking us all the way to the 6th of January! On the seventh, Homer addresses a crowd in front of the Power Plant, and they all look like bizarre mutants, a nice little laugh that's only possible thanks to the rougher visual style of the early seasons. The episode ends shortly after that, which means that the next, There's No Disgrace Like Home, naturally starts on the eighth.

First day with Homer back on the job, and the Simpsons are already going to the company picnic, on this amazingly balmy January afternoon. I did say that we were following the rules even if they didn't entirely make sense, didn't I? For the record, Smithers is now white, too. Would it be giving too much credit to the writers of later seasons to suggest that Marge getting daytime drunk at the picnic is an early sign of her addictive personality that crops up a couple of times in later years? Probably. The next night, Homer insists they eat their gross-looking trays of multicoloured goo at the dining room table. Everyone else seems almost oblivious to his familial dysfunction-fueled angst, which is really strange considering later versions of Homer, who only gets more and more oafish and inconsiderate. He also mentions his mother calling him a big disappointment, which conflicts with what we later learn about his past. I know this kind of nerdy nitpicking is frowned upon, but this is a blog about pointlessly figuring out exactly when each episode takes place, so it's unavoidable, really.

It's the tenth when we get the first appearance of Dr. Marvin Monroe, in the form of a TV advert, and the next night has the first appearance of Itchy and Scratchy! Homer pawns the TV and cashes in the kids' college funds and they go straight to meet Dr. Monroe in person. So that leaves us with this post's last episode, Bart the General, starting on the Twelfth. Over the course of the day, we see Bart's daydreams about getting murdered by Nelson, including the funeral where he has Xes for eyes, used in so many "DEAD BART LOST EPISODE" hoaxes, then in real life, we get another one of my earliest Simpson memories: Bart in the bin, rolling down the hill, then sitting despondant in the bath when he gets home. The next day, there's more first appearances from the old bearded man, Jasper, and the gun/war memorabilia shop owner, Herman. The big training montage seems to take place on the fourteenth and fifteenth, and the actual battle on the sixteenth, judging by the number of sunsets we see during the montage (two of them).

I'll assume Bart's fourth wall-breaking anti-war message at the end is non-canon, so the episode and this post end on the 16th of January, 1990, and the next post, we'll be starting with Moaning Lisa, on the 17th!

Episodes 1 and 2, plus THE RULES

Time and space are famously nebulous concepts in the world of The Simpsons, even moreso than our own, and though there isn't much that can be done to assess the spatial dimensions of their universe, the temporal are far easier. By which I mean we can, with a whole load of episode rewatching and note-taking, figure out exactly when each episode takes place. Of course, I don't expect it'll take much more than two seasons before things start to contradict each other, and everything falls apart, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

So, that's what this blog is: an attempt to put every episode of The Simpsons on a timeline, including flashbacks and flashforwards. There's a few rules I'm going to be sticking to, to make things a little easier to follow, too:

1 - Unless explicitly stated otherwise, an episode starts on the day after the previous episode ends, even if this contradicts real world events and/or customs.
2 - Rule 1 still applies betweeen seasons, for two reasons. The first is that the characters don't age between seasons, so there's no reason to assume that a year has passed, and the other is the 2-part cliffhanger Who Shot Mr. Burns?, which takes place at the end and beginning of the fifth and sixth seasons, respectively.
3 - In episodes set in the present day, Bart and Lisa are always ten and eight years old, and their birthdays are always their tenth and eighth birthdays (unless there's evidence that says otherwise).
4 - Treehouse of Horror episodes, similar episodes such as Simpsons Tall Tales and Simpsons Bible Stories, and clip show episodes generally aren't considered part of the timeline, unless they have framing stories, which will be tackled on a case-by-case basis.

I think that's everything, so let's get started with the first few episodes of season one! The first episode is The Simpsons Christmas Special, or Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire, which is helpful, as it gives us a firm starting point: Homer's side job as a mall Santa pays on Christmas Eve, then he immediately goes to the dog track, befire eventually returning home with Santa's Little Helper at the end of the episode. So, the first episode ends on the night of the 24th of December, 1989. Before watching it for this blog, I hadn't seen this episode in many years, and it's really different.

I know the difference between old and new Simpsons is well-explored territory on the internet, but there's still a few things I'd like to say on the matter. Firstly, there's a lot of affection in this episode, with the love between Homer and Bart feeling especially sincere. There's also a nice moment later one, with Lisa sat on Grandpa's lap watching TV. Generally, this humble start also doesn't feel like a billion dollar media franchise, either: I'd compare it more to those animated specials they used make of characters from newspaper comic strips in the 1970s and 80s. I'll be a little reasonable with the rules, and assume that no-one's going to work or school on Christmas Day, so, we'll start counting the dates in the second episode, Bart The Genius, from the 26th.

So, Bart's class has the aptitude test on the 26th, he starts attending the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children on the 27th, and after a couple of unhappy days, blows up the lab and dyes himself green on the 29th, with the episode ending on that night. Bart turning green is actually my earliest memory of The Simpsons, from when the show first aired in the UK in 1990, when I would have been 4 years old! Anyway, what I took from watching this episode again today is that Bart was the only person at the Learning Center to display any real intelligence, when he comes up with the "going undercover" plan to get back to Springfield Elementary. The kids there are all just reciting memorised tricks rather than showing any actual intelligence, and the adults are simply obseesed with the stereotypical trappings of intelligence, like shunning popular culture or deifying intellectuals of the past. Anyway, back on topic, Bart is green, naked and reading a comic, and it's the night of the 29th of December, 1989. This post is already pretty long, since it started with an explanation of this whole endeavor, so I'll end it here, though the next post onwards will detail three episodes a pop. Hopefully you'll keep reading!