Sunday 1 September 2019

The Long and Short of It


That picture there is the blackboard gag used in the opening sequence for the second season Simpsons episode "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish".

It's a perfectly good joke by itself, of course, but I think there's another layer to it. That episode's particular opening sequence was the first time the show did not use the full-length intro (barring two episodes in Season 1 which faded into the start of the episode during the initial pan to Springfield Elementary School; with the re-animation of the opening titles in Season 2, the opportunity to make several different intros of varying length was taken). "One Fish..." debuts a cut-down version of the intro that only features the first appearance of each family member before we get to the driveway.

With that in mind... doesn't it seem quite likely that Bart's blackboard punishment is a metatextual reference to the shortened intro?

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Something else worth noting in relation to this is that when several episodes in the second to fourth seasons were first aired, they had shortened title sequences so FOX could air extra promos or music video premieres with the time saved, with the full-length introduction surfacing when the episodes were repeated. (Summer repeats also used shortened intros where the original broadcast had used a fuller one, although with them being repeats we have much less information about them.) I initially thought this affected the above joke, because the initial airing of "Bart the Daredevil" was cut to make room for the "Do the Bartman" music video, which would have meant that US viewers would have seen a shortened title sequence before "One Fish" aired. However, that is not the case - even the trimmed version of "Daredevil" uses the full-length title sequence. Had they not thought of the idea of shortening the titles at that point, or was there just not time to put one together? If the former, was the idea of the shortened title sequence only thought of because of FOX's need to save time?

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