Tag: The Simpsons

Alright, it’s time to talk about The Simpsons. I’ve had a few Simpsons lists planned for a while now, and I was wondering which one of them would be the best place to start talking about this 30+ year running show that influenced the comedic tastes of myself and so many others throughout its lifetime. In the end, I decided that we should talk about the vessels through which all these jokes can be told – the characters.

However, just ranking the “top 10 characters” would be a bit pointless, as the top half of the list would be full of, the Simpsons family members, the show is named after them, after all. So I decided we’d explore the wide and wonderful world of Springfield via the secondary characters. The characters who aren’t in any way ‘protagonists’ in the show, but play a vital role in the comedy & action nonetheless.

What counts as a secondary character? That’s very simple. The only two conditions are: 1) They can’t be directly related to The Simpsons family 2) They must have appeared in more than one episode. That second point is just to weed out some of the weird one-off characters. As much as I love Hank Scorpio, for example, it doesn’t feel right putting him on this list over characters that have appeared in well over half of the almost 700 episodes this show has produced.

10 – Moe Szyslak

To put it simply, Homer is an alcoholic, so who is he going to be seeing a lot of? The bartender.

In the early series, Moe was quite hard to get a read on. He seemed vaguely friendly to Homer when he was in the bar, but there was always the hint that he was a more cynical character. Moe’s Tavern has always been shown to be a very run-down and horrible bar, and naturally, we as an audience will transfer those uncomfortable feelings onto the owner. Once the writers had a grasp on this idea, they really, really ran with it.

Although we would very rarely see Moe outside of his bar in the early seasons, we still got to see quite a lot of him. As I said, Homer spends a lot of time at the bar. The thing is, even though we went there in a lot of episodes, it was almost always just for a single scene, meaning that the writers never really ran out of material for the place. When every scene is only a couple of minutes long, it’s very easy to throw in a quick joke or two about how run-down the place is and move along without it having to affect anything.

This included ramping up Moe as a much more shady & criminal character. You’d never see him being on the run from the law or anything. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever had any trouble with the law, outside of the occasional health inspection. Yet, we still see him panicking whenever someone even mentions the police, often followed by him telling some random goons to “shut it down” before releasing exotic animals into Springfield.

Later seasons decided to zero in on how discontented Moe is with his own life and draw a lot of dark humour for that. Sure, this did lead to a lot of lazy ‘isn’t suicide funny?’ jokes, but it also gave us stuff like his desperate attempts to change his ways in Bart Sells His Soul, only for it to come crumbling down under the pressure. It’s quite a depressing story, sure, but it’s told in a funny way. Let’s face it, children are assholes, and it’s funny and cathartic to see a character like Moe blowing up at one when they continuously push his buttons.

Modern seasons tried to add more to his character, specifically his relationships with the Simpsons family, but that’s no the kind of thing that makes him such a great character. Moe is a downtrodden & largely grounded character in a world where over-the-top hijinks are the order of the day. His style of humour is one that can be put in stark contrast to most other characters in the show, which only increases the impact it has on us as viewers.

9 – Fat Tony

Fat Tony is a character that’s funnier, the more vague his antics are. It’s why I loved how the early seasons never gave him any kind of spotlight episode. Even when Bart joins the mob, Fat Tony is more there as window dressing for a few jokes than anything else. He works best as a comedic plot device, rather than a person.

This is in huge part to his voice actor (aside from a couple random moments), Joe Mantegna. I don’t know a great deal about the guy other than he had a role in The Godfather 3, but his voice is so ideally suited for your stereotypical American crime boss. The American-Italian accent, the calm demeanour and the small hint of gruffness give you the perfect idea of exactly what this character is all about before you even see him.

When it comes to the comedy scene at large, racial stereotypes aren’t funny. They’re lazy at best and harmful at worst, so what The Simpsons do (or at least, classic Simpsons did) is establish a character based on those stereotypes, then proceed to subvert, criticise and generally rip the piss out of those stereotypes at every available opportunity. A character like Apu only became an offensive racial stereotype in the past few years because the writing lacked the finesse it used to. In classic Simpsons, his jokes served the purpose of intelligent & satirical social commentary, now they’re just vaguely racist jokes that appeal to the lowest common denominator. I’m not going to say any more on that, as lord knows there’s been enough debate surrounding the topic.

So how does all that apply to Fat Tony? Well, it’s simple. He’s an intimidating mob boss based on the ideas of Mafia organisations…and his attitude towards crime is so incredibly laid back. Unlike most of The Simpsons’ secondary cast, he’s actually reasonably competent at his job, it’s just the crimes he’s committing are so niche and weird. The best example is the thing with rat milk. Yes, it is disgusting, and he should be hauled away for it, but it’s such a weird crime that you can’t help but laugh. He went to all the trouble of setting up this vast room that’s continually milking rats to sell it to local schools as regular milk. I mean, how much money can he really be making from that? Milk isn’t expensive, so you’ve got to imagine he spent more money setting the whole rig up than he ever made from it.

Naturally, his best lines come from interacting with characters like Chief Wiggum. I love how brazen he is about denying his crimes. When Wiggum accuses him of stealing a truck full of cigarettes, he simply replies “What’s a truck?”. He goes so far over the top with ‘playing dumb’, and I just can’t get enough of his antics. It’s even better when the show started to chip away at his tough facade. I can never forget moments like when he’s asked where would be the best place to shoot a man, and he simply replies “follow your heart”.

Fat Tony has such a satirical edge to everything he does that it’s so easy for the writers to come up with funny one-liners for him. Combine that with the excellent voice acting that makes the part what it is, and you’ve got yourself a character that will stick long in the mind of the audience.

8 – Nelson Muntz

The children characters on The Simpsons have always walked a fine line. Their stories have to remain relatively childish and low-stakes, otherwise they seem out of place, and yet, the writers still manage to incorporate more mature elements into them. As much we’re used to it by now, the idea of 8-to-10-year-old kids being as articulate and knowledgable as the ones are Springfield is quite odd, and this goes double for Nelson. While his first handful of appearances stayed centred around the schoolyard bully aspect of his character, he very quickly matured. This went to the point where now, I’d argue he’s more of an adult who acts a bit childish sometimes, as opposed to the other way around.

When it comes to the comedy of the show though, this is perfect. There was plenty of satire to be had when it came to bullying-culture in schools. Not just in terms of someone like Bart getting beaten-up by Nelson, but also in the non-committal ways the adults around the school responded to it. However, it didn’t exactly have enough material to do more than a few plots centred around it. So, what do you do with the ‘bully’ character? Make him an ironic tough-guy who stands up for morals, instead of just beating people up.

By the time Nelson reached his prime as a character, he had done very little in the way of real bullying. He’d still beat people up and threaten them, but instead, it would be for things like “wasting teacher’s valuable time” or “selling out your beliefs”. The writers were careful to chip away at his tough-guy facade in a consistently funny way. He’d sit around in playground talking about the best way to deal with huckleberries that are too tart, only to pretend to be talking about beating a guy up when Principal Skinner is in ear-shot. Even something like being overly excited about going to an Andy Williams is so funny for a character like Nelson that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint why.

He could’ve ended up going the same route as Jimbo, Kerny & Dolph, who are just characters that appear whenever the writers need to make a quick joke about bullying in schools. However, Nelson evolved beyond his original niche to become a genuinely classic Simpsons’ character.

7 – Chief Wiggum

I think it’s more impressive how heartbreakingly relevant much of the police-based satire would become relevant this year…

To put it plainly, Chief Wiggum was the character the writers went to whenever they needed to make police jokes. Thankfully, there are A LOT of police jokes that you can do. Not just around how they’re perceived in American society, but also things like crime dramas. The best jokes around Chief Wiggum are always the quick ones. There’s very little to be gained from him lingering around in the scene, he’s always much funniest when he comes in for a couple one-liners, bounces off the other characters a little bit and then goes away again.

What’s funniest about him is just the brute force of his incompetence. There are so many quotable Wiggum jokes, more so than almost any other character. Lines like “it’s a ghost car!” or “Thank goodness it landed in this smoking crater!” are lines that I wish I had more reasons to quote on a daily basis because honestly, I think about them a lot. Weirdly, I think he’s helped out a lot by having Ralph as a son, it makes him incredibly endearing as a character. It allows us to see a side of him outside of the incompetent police chief. He’s still reasonably incompetent with Ralph, don’t get me wrong, but he’s always portrayed as such a loving father, and honestly, I think his interacts with Ralph are his best; even more so than with someone like Lou.

He’s a character that never needs anything complex to be funny, which makes him a straightforward character to watch. Whenever he shows up, you know that you’re in for some fast and fun laughs.

6 – Principal Skinner

And now, we have the ‘straight man’ of Springfield…sort of.

In a world with such outlandish characters, one character was always going to have to stand as the antithesis to that. The man who’s so down-to-Earth and up-tight it’s laughable. In some ways, that role is filled by Lisa, but in a more meaningful way, it’s filled by Skinner. The subversion of expectations is one of the most straightforward concepts in comedy, but Skinner was always able to use it to significant effect. His atmosphere of being strict and repressed means that he’s always a great character to deliver an absurd punchline, especially when he delivers it as flatly as humanly possible.

Skinner is at his best when he has someone else to bounce off of, which makes a school the perfect place for him to be. That is a setting that gives him just about every kind of character to interact with in some way. Bart, Lisa, Chalmers, Edna, Willie, all the other school kids and even Homer & Marge from time to time, his dynamic with each of these characters is very different, and yet the writers know how to get the greatest potential out of all of them. There’s a deep irony to his character that’s almost tragic. When he’s interacting with the kids, he’s overbearing, harsh & manipulative, and yet, he comes into contact with his mother or Chalmers, and suddenly he becomes a total toadie, with no control over the situation.

Skinner never got stuck in a rut as a character, the huge variety of roles he could play when in contact with other characters meant that he always had a smorgasbord of jokes in his arsenal.

5 – Milhouse Van Houten

The case of Milhouse is an interesting one. As much as his primary purpose in the show is to be Bart’s best friend, I actually think he’s funnier without Bart hanging over him.

The dynamic surrounding him is weird. He’s a total loser, who seems to always get crapped on by the worlds, and yet, most of his best jokes are when he’s the one being proactive in a situation, or taking centre stage for himself. His funniest interactions with Bart are definitely the ones where he’s biting back against Bart’s bullying. It’s episodes like Bart Sells His Soul, where he’s the dominant one that brings out the best in his character.

He’s excellent at taking a more mature & intelligent joke and telling it in a very childish way. Something like how he breaks down Bart’s story about his goldfish, pushing the point of “why did I have the bowl?” is so funny because it’s a very serious thing, told in a very childish way. Even his musings on reverse vampires conspiring with their parents are weirdly intelligent for him. On top of that, so many of his lines are pure iconic. I use “Everything’s coming up Milhouse” more often than I should, and even the less well-known ones give me many chuckles on rewatches.

I’m not sure the writers ever had the intention for Milhouse to become such a tour de force of a personality on his own, but once they realised what they had on their hands, they ran with it as far as they could. He became a character that broke free of the role he was initially intended to play and became a much better character for it.

4 – Ned Flanders

Who’s Homers greatest character foil? Why, it’s the most delightful human on Earth, of course!

Ned is a bit like the opposite of Milhouse’s progression in a way. Where Milhouse expanded to fill a much more significant role than was ever intended for him, Flanders has stayed more or less in his lane. Admittedly, it was a huge lane, but the thing is, it’s rare that you see Ned without Homer being involved in the story in some way. The only time Ned really shakes him is when it’s an episode about his faith, and even then, Homer usually finds a way to worm himself in there.

This honestly surprised me when I was looking back on Flanders’ best moments for this list because he feels like this colossal character that’s involved in everything, but the truth is, he’s tied as heavily to Homer as you can possibly imagine. I guess that’s mostly down to the fact that Homer is inarguably the main focus of the show, so we get plenty of Flanders to get jokes out of him.

Flanders’ jokes tend to come in two flavours: Fanatically religious, or a reaction to a situation most people would consider out of the norm. On the fantastically religious front, the jokes are pretty standard, if you’ve ever heard any religious comedy before, then you know what you’re getting. That’s not to say it isn’t funny, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff. The reactionary jokes though are what makes Flanders as great of a character as he is. There’s something inherently funny about him responding with a cheery “okily-dokily” after having someone tell him very rudely to leave, or how he doesn’t feel right putting ‘cash-register ink’ down as a business expense because he likes the smell.

He’s the kind of person that’s so overly nice that we can all have a good laugh at his expense, without ever having any ill-will for the guy. Even when an episode tries to play with his darker side, Flanders is a character that it’s just impossible to hate.

3 – Lionel Hutz/Troy McClure

So these are technically two separate characters, but if we’re being real here, what makes them great is exactly the same thing: Phil Hartman.

Arguably one of the best comedy voice actors ever, Hartman was able to inject a surreal over-the-top aura to his characters that made just about every line they ever came out with hilarious. What’s great is that they’re characters used very sparingly too. It would be easy for their schtick to get tiring if it was in every episode, but it’s not, it’s like a rare treat when one of these characters appears on screen.

Troy McClure is probably the more iconic of the two, purely because his lines are so memorable. “Hi, I’m Troy McClure, you may remember me from…” is perhaps the single most quotable line The Simpsons has ever come out with. On top of that, the punchline is always funny, even with how frequently it’s used. Troy’s character is the perfect satirisation of the more seedy side of the entertainment industry. Where a character like Krusty is used to show the personal drama behind the performance, Troy is used to rip the piss out of the land of cheesy American TV. As a Brit, I can honestly say that the comic ridiculousness of some of the advertisement segments Troy appears in are genuinely how I view all US adverts. Meanwhile, the shady educational videos are a hilarious take-down of the ‘talking down to you’ tone those videos always use, despite often talking total bollocks.

My personal preference of these two goes to Lionel Hutz however. I don’t know how much experience the writing team had in regards to the legal system but feels like they had a lot because they LOVED doing court-scenes that were a laugh-a-second. He’s just the right amount of stupid to be funny, without getting frustrating, plus, the show makes it very clear that he is a ‘budget’ lawyer that may not even have a licence, so it’s not like he’s supposed to be competent. I’d go on, but honestly, all I can think of to get my point across here is just list a bunch of great Lionel Hutz jokes, so I’ll move on.

The fact is, neither of these characters would be anywhere close to as great as they are without the man voicing them. Phil Hartman always brought so much to these roles, and it felt like he had so much fun performing them. I’m sad that his untimely death meant these characters were lost to Simpsons history, but I’m also glad the showrunners didn’t try to replace Hartman because it would never have worked. These characters were lightning in a bottle, and while they were around, they gave us some of the funniest Simpsons moments of all time.

2 – Sideshow Bob

Sideshow Bob is a character that’s only ever had a singular role over his time in the show, and yet he’s never boring. Seriously, I cannot think of a single time where I’ve not been happy to see Sideshow Bob show up in a Simpsons episode. He’s one of those characters that, even when the episode is bad, the role he takes as a character is still wildly entertaining.

His dignified aura allows the writers to take all kinds of angles with his comedy. Straight-up humiliating the guy is always a pretty great way to go; the rake gag will always be funny for this very reason. Where I think he’s at his best though is when he’s forced to respond to the stupid and whacky world of Springfield. How he carries himself means that watching him bounce off of over-the-top characters like Bart, Wiggum & Krusty is incredibly funny. It’s a very simple ‘straight man’ dynamic, but something about Bob’s characterisation makes it so much funnier than when other characters do it.

This is where I have to give all the props in the world to Bob’s voice actor, Kelsey Grammer. For one thing, he’s an actor who GETS comedy, even though he’s just in a booth speaking into a microphone, I always get the impression that he performs his lines to the max, which is perfect for an animated show like this. He makes Bob’s vicious side so very real-feeling with how he adds the hint of gruffness to the tone. Not to mention, he might have the best evil laugh I’ve ever heard. So many of the jokes in an episode like Cape Fear simply wouldn’t have worked with a more overtly villainous voice for Bob.

Bob is a character that makes for the best plot-based episodes of The Simpsons. When Bob is around trying to murder Bart, you don’t have to worry about giving any serious or heartfelt character moments, you can just let the insanity of Bob’s plan carry everything. It makes his episodes extremely easy to watch, you just have to sit back and let the jokes wash over you.

1 – Mr Burns

Burns is the best secondary Simpsons character because he’s the funniest. It really is that simple.

The way his character was put together means that he can slot into almost any narrative situation and have him steal the show. He’s Homer boss, sure, but he’s also an old-man dependant on others, he’s an unfathomably rich man, and to top it all off, he’s a complete and total bastard. He’s the closest thing The Simpsons has to a real antagonist, a role which he takes to perfectly. What’s great is that writers never tied him down to reality. This means he can take the role of an authentic villain when he blackmails Homer so he can keep his job. However, he can also become a cartoonish supervillain who steals puppies to turn them into shoes.

All of these situations give him ample opportunities to come out with plenty of the funniest lines in the show’s history. Whether he’s singing about how evil he is; showing his lack of physical prowess; or exemplifying a rich, old white guy’s naivete of how the real world works, Mr Burns is a character that never fails to bring the funny. What’s great is that the writers no this, and as such, Mr Burns is the most prominent secondary character in the show’s history. They captured lightning in a bottle with this character and have spent the past 30 years getting all the use out of it as they possibly can. I know pretty much all of Burns’ best moments are in the early seasons (like most characters), but I think he’s one of the few characters that has retained the magic he had back in the mid-90s.

The Simpsons is a show that lives and dies on the satiric potential of its characters, and Burns is a character based on a stereotype that has never (and probably will never) cease to be relevant. He’s an embodiment of what many perceive to be the core problems of modern western society, which means that you can channel just about every joke you can think of about society through Burns.

I’ve tried to express it in as intelligent away as I can. Still, the basic fact of the matter is, Mr Burns is a hilarious character and has remained funny throughout the entire history of The Simpsons.

So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article. Please, let me know what you think of The Simpsons’ secondary characters, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure you come back here this time on Wednesday, where I’ll be releasing the penultimate instalment in my 100 Favourite Games series!