The Simpsons Creators Decided To Change Homer And Marge's Backstory So That They Were Millennials Who Grew Up During The 90s
Stephen Shugerman. Getty Images.
EW- The Simpsons is not trying to build a rigid canon. The season 37 premiere of the long-running animated series, "Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother," features Marge recalling her youth — which seems to have occurred in the 1990s, as she fondly recalls watching a Dawson's Creek–esque teen drama as a teen. That version of events makes Marge — and, by extension, Homer and the rest of their peers — a millennial, despite the fact that all of the adult characters on the show have remained the same age since it premiered in 1989. Matt Selman, who has worked on the show since 1997 and now serves as one of the series' showrunners, is unconcerned with shifting character origins because it allows the show to remain contemporary.
"My creative process is: I don't give an eff," Selman tells Entertainment Weekly. "The options are: we don't do flashback shows ever and we don't mention the past ever, which creatively handcuffs us, or we are playful and silly, which is the DNA of the show, and we have fun with whatever generation the show is airing in." Selman explains why forcing the characters to maintain consistent backstories — at least in terms of their historical context — would drastically inhibit the writers' creativity. "If the show only took place in the present with a kind of vague 1970s-high-school Homer-and-Marge backstory that seems increasingly impossible — that would be much worse for telling good stories," he explains.
As someone that considers the first 10 or so seasons of The Simpsons as the greatest entertainment created in human history and hates changes to any show or movie he grew up loving, I admit a story like this used to make me hold my breath, stomp my feet, and promise not to give the company responsible another eyeball or view until my dying day.
But the truth of the matter is I can't even get a little upset about The Simpsons changing Homer and Marge from Boomers to Millennials because I haven't watched or even cared about the show in so damn long. Yes, there is something comforting in knowing The Simpsons still exists just like there is something depressing in knowing I haven't tuned in for decades. However at the end of the day, this change only impacts the people who actually watch The Simpsons, which hasn't been me in forever. In my old man brain, Homer and Marge met in the 70s, got married in the 80s, and raised their family in the 90s and beyond. Bart has been 10 forever (even though I think I read something about how he had a birthday somewhat recently) and Grandpa Simpson remains still alive all these years from the best I can tell.
If flashing back to Homer and Marge being high schoolers in the 90s helps resonate with their cirrent audience, that's fine with me. In fact, I support it since countless millennials like myself are acting like Homer in real life since I have personally pulled this move no less than 1,000 times in the last month alone.
Meanwhile, the Boomers who Homer and Marge once shared an age bracket with are now much older and starting to do things that have us worrying about how much they've lost off their fastball (while also admitted our fastballs aren't touching where it was in our 30s let alone our 20s).
So best of luck to Matt Selman and the rest of the people at Fox for what I'm sure will be a small wave of outrage about a change to fictional characters that probably makes sense in the long run. Luckily for them, most of the outrage police in this case all have busy lives from the kids, jobs, and lives that suck all their energy dry to worry about a show they haven't watched in eons, even though we will probably see the movie sequel when it comes out (given we have time and money from all the aforementioned bullshit life has thrown us).
