Whenever a TV show reaches double-digit seasons, it’s understandable that the writers will begin to struggle to come up with episode ideas. The time has long since passed that the writing staff of The Simpsons started scraping the bottom of the barrel for story ideas. In season 23, there was a whole episode about Moe’s bar rag’s origin as a medieval tapestry.
But at least most of The Simpsons’ most egregious installments leave the classics of the golden age untouched. “Lisa Goes Gaga” might have been panned as possibly the show’s worst episode, but it doesn’t take away from the greatness of “Lisa’s Rival,” “Lisa’s Substitute,” “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy,” or “Lisa the Beauty Queen.”
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Unfortunately, one time, that wasn’t the case. “That ‘90s Show” (season 19, episode 11) isn’t just a bad episode in its own right; it rewrites the history of the Simpson family and retcons one of the show’s greatest episodes. Season 2’s “The Way We Was” (season 2, episode 12) had already given Homer and Marge’s relationship the perfect origin story, as Homer’s attempts to woo Marge fail miserably and she becomes endeared to him anyway across an engaging arc with real emotional beats.
This episode, paired with season 3’s “I Married Marge,” rounded out Homer and Marge’s history: they met in high school, fell in love, struggled financially for a few years, and got married before having Bart. “That ‘90s Show” flagrantly undoes all the beautiful, emotionally charged storytelling of “The Way We Was” and “I Married Marge” by revealing that Homer and Marge were both somehow in college in the wrong decade, and broke up long enough for Marge to date a professor and Homer to become a grunge rock star.
Spoofing grunge in 2008, around a decade after the genre’s heyday, was certainly a strange choice. Homer’s band Sadgasm is an obvious parody of Nirvana, whose surviving members had joined new bands long before the episode aired, so it was far too late. If the jokes had been sharp enough, this could’ve been forgivable, but the whole storyline is weak and one-note. Plus, the plot of Homer starting a band that becomes unexpectedly successful was a re-tread of another classic Simpsons episode, the season 5 premiere “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet,” swapping out barbershop for a different musical genre. Even the Weird Al cameo was a rehash of an earlier Simpsons episode.
In “The Way We Was,” Homer meets Marge in detention – he’s there for smoking in the bathroom, while she’s there for burning a bra at a feminist rally – and instantly falls for her. He pretends to need help with a class he isn’t even taking so she’ll spend time with him. She ends up giving Homer a chance when her own prom date Artie Ziff proves to be a sleazebag. The success of The Simpsons has always been that the Simpsons feel like a real family. Meeting in detention and falling in love after a disastrous prom is much more relatable than making it as a rock star and becoming disillusioned with fame.
When The Simpsons does a flashback episode, the purpose should be to fill in gaps in the family’s history. There can be jokes about the historical and cultural context of the era in which the flashbacks are set, but these should be peppered throughout an emotionally engaging arc focused on the Simpsons themselves as opposed to taking center stage. “That ‘90s Show” wasn’t made because the writers had anything substantial or significant to say about Homer and Marge’s relationship; it was just an excuse to make fun of ‘90s culture – which the show had already had ample opportunities to do, given that it was on the air between 1990 and 1999.
The only solid gag in “That ‘90s Show” is the Back to the Future reference in which Kurt Cobain’s cousin “Marvin Cobain” calls him up to recommend using Sadgasm’s sound in his own musical endeavors. But one fun movie reference isn’t enough to make up for the episode’s brazen disregard for Simpsons continuity.
This isn’t The Simpsons’ first case of self-retconning. The wildly controversial Principal Skinner identity twist was quickly swept under the rug, and ever since the plot of “Lisa’s Wedding” was recounted to Lisa by a fortune teller, The Simpsons’ flash-forward episodes have traditionally been considered non-canonical and speculative (except for maybe “Holidays of Future Passed”). But the flashback episodes are different. The future is uncertain, but the past is what it is. Homer and Marge only get one backstory.
Rewriting the Simpson family history after two decades on the air is an insult to long-time fans who have grown up with the Simpsons and hold the golden-age episodes close to their heart, especially since the writers already nailed it the first time. On binge-watches of the series, “The Way We Was” is still a must-see gem, while “That ‘90s Show” is a must-skip dud.
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