32 on 4

In the autumn of 2020, television production crews all over the world were beginning to cope with a new normal. Whilst non-scripted series were starting to return to our screens with socially distanced sets, reality show contestants in social bubbles and Perspex barriers in place, fiction was another matter, and production on prestige series including Better Call Saul, Stranger Things and Succession was only just starting to spin up again.

Animated shows, however, were a third kettle of fish. Many cast members of The Simpsons had already been recording their lines remotely for some time before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and animators were able to continue working on the show from their homes. If anything, production got a little ahead of schedule, and the 22 episodes that made up Our Favourite Family's thirty-second season -- including the landmark 700th episode -- hit US screens as normal between 27 September 2020 and 23 May 2021, with British viewers treated to a similarly familiar schedule by Sky One: the festive episode "A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas" was aired as an, er, Christmas special on 24 December, with the remainder of the run following on a weekly basis from the 15th January.

One major change this season, however, was made in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests: In June 2020, it was announced that white actors would no longer voice non-white characters, with several new recurring voice artists brought in as a result. The most prominent of these is Alex Désert, who has gone on to appear in the majority of episodes since then as Carl Carlson, Lou and other miscellaneous roles, but other new voices in this season include Eric Lopez as Bumblebee Man, Kimberly Brooks as Lewis (and other parts including Janey Powell in later seasons), Tony Rodriguez as Julio and Jenny Yokobori as Kumiko, whilst Kevin Michael Richardson, already a semi-regular, took over as the voice of Dr. Hibbert, and occasional guest star Dawnn Lewis took a more prominent role as his wife Bernice.

At some point this autumn, Channel 4 will bring these episodes to free-to-air TV: the twenty-first season of the show they've premiered, and almost certainly the seventeenth consecutive one to do so in the tried-and-true weekday early evening slot. Last year our world was rocked as the scrapping of the terrestrial broadcasts of Hollyoaks meant The Simpsons moved back half an hour in C4's schedule to 6.30pm, and more recent developments make you wonder how much longer the model to which the show's UK broadcasts have adhered to for so long will last. But for now, it's business as usual, including this, my sixth annual forecast of what might not be seen on C4 when these episodes reach it; as ever, keep an eye on Wesley Mead's scheduling page at the Simpsons Archive to know exactly when that happens.

Dedication Discourse

The following US episode premieres featured dedications, all of which I believe were also seen on Sky's premieres, but were removed for repeat broadcasts and streaming (and, on past precedent, should all be absent on C4's copies) -- I am greatly appreciative to the Simpsons Archive contributor Matt Garvey for his notes on this matter:

ZABF22 Podcast News (dedicated to the memory of Alex Trebek)
QABF06 Wad Goals (dedicated to the memory of Marc Wilmore) (NOTE: This dedication was dropped as usual for the first US repeat two months after the February premiere, but was reinstated for a subsequent repeat in September 2021)

QABF08 Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars? (dedicated to the memory of David Richardson, producer on season 5 and writer of "Homer Loves Flanders")

QABF12 Panic on the Streets of Springfield (dedicated to the memory of animator Edwin E. Aguilar)

QABF14 Mother and Child Reunion (dedicated to the memory of Olympia Dukakis)

An August 2021 US repeat of ZABF22 dropped the Trebek dedication, but gained one for Jackie Mason, the voice of Rabbi Krustofski. Similarly, QABF03 A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas had no dedication in its original broadcast, was dedicated to Cloris Leachman for its first repeat, and to Stephen Sondheim for its second. Those repeats are the only time those dedications were seen -- would it not have been better to, for instance, wait another month or so for the Season 33 premiere and dedicate that to Mason?

(A further digression on production codes: IABF, OABF, QABF and UABF were all initially skipped because the letters can be too easily confused with numbers or other letters, but after the Season 31 production line finished off the alphabet, QABF, UABF and OABF were used for Seasons 32 through 34. Season 35 then switched to 35ABF, which begs the question -- why not just do that in the first place?

Look, it's my blog and this is the sort of thing I'm interested in, okay?)

ZABF18 I, Carumbus

This is an episode reimagining the show's regular characters in Ancient Roman times; think "Tales From the Public Domain" or "Margical History Tour", but with one story taking up the whole episode. It also has a fair bit of bloody violence, which is something C4 have noticeably lightened up about in recent years, but perhaps not in this quantity; expect this episode to make the 6.30pm slot with some edits, possibly for that but also repeated usage of the word 'sexicus' and lewd pottery.

ZABF21 Now Museum, Now You Don't

Unbelievably, right after "I, Carumbus" comes another trilogy episode casting the regulars as historical domain characters. The "Lisanardo da Vinci" segment also contains bloody violence but should be OK, maybe with some cuts.

ZABF17 Treehouse of Horror XXXI

And that brings us on to what is, despite being an annual tradition, the second 'three shorts' episode in a row in broadcast order, and the third non-canonical episode in a row.

Anyway, what C4 has done with the Treehouse has been patchy over the last few years, variously heavily censoring it in the early-evening slot, showing it during the run but in a late-night slot, showing it late-night almost a year later, or, in the case of Season 30's offering, just not showing it all. In spite of this, last year they took us all by surprise by showing THOH XXX almost entirely uncut in the 6.30pm slot, and I think there's definitely some gruesome stuff in the opening sequence, Toy Story homage "Toy Gory" and Russian Doll homage "Be Nine, Rewind" that will have to go, but I am hopeful that this might make it there as well.

QABF02 Three Dreams Denied

C4 may have loosened up on drugs references as well, but this is probably still too much (from the scene where Lisa meets her new rival Blake):

MR LARGO: Great. Now keep playing. I have a very important meeting in the instrument closet. [Which he enters.] CBD gummies, take me away! Mmm, mmm, mmm.

ZABF20 The Road to Cincinnati

When Skinner finds out Chalmers was planning to fire him:

SKINNER: Fire me? You bald-pated son of a bitch!

(C4 have previous for just editing the offending word to try and make it look like the character stops themselves from saying it at the last moment; that would probably work here, even if it would greatly dilute the impact of the line, and it's an important scene.)

QABF01 Sorry Not Sorry

I'm not certain whether or not the following line was actually in the Sky premiere -- at the time they were still airing episode premieres in an 8pm slot which generally meant the show was left alone except for this word, but on the other hand it wasn't (and indeed isn't) unheard of for someone to be asleep at the switch:

RAPHAEL: All right, how about school supplies? I got a Scottish supply who sells 'em to me every week. [Who is, of course...]

LISA; Hi, Willie.

GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE: Uh, uh, yo no hablo English... Ach, the English. How I hate those wankers.

QABF04 The Dad-Feelings Limited

A possible cut right at the top of the show, when the Simpsons arrive at the Android's Dungeon only to find it closed:

MARGE: They can't be closed! We're booked solid with birthday parties today, and we have no presents!

HOMER: Don't worry, I got this.

[He walks over to a row of magazine dispensers, one of which contains the very much non-child-friendly publication Adult Escort Express, and starts taking magazines from them.]

HOMER: Auto Trader for the girls, Adult Escort Express for the boys. Kids are adults, right?

MARGE: Fine, fine, whatever, let's just go!

[COMIC BOOK GUY and KUMIKO walk out of the Android's Dungeon.]

There's also a single line referring to CBG and Kumiko's sex life, but given the plot is about them conceiving a child I'm guessing that's OK given the context. We'll see.

QABF07 Yokel Hero

An almost certain cut:

CLETUS: Showbusiness has screwed up a lot of country folk, from Elvis to Britney. And Mr. Ed. Did you know that he was a heroin addict?

HOMER: A horse on horse?

CLETUS: Of course, of course!

HOMER: Look, I'll do the dirty work.

QABF08 Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars?

This is a tricky one. Near the start of the episode, during the flashback, the pizza parlour 14-year-old Homer is working at is shut down when it is revealed Gil is using the titular robots to smuggle cocaine, which is visible onscreen and named as such. Later on there are references only to "drugs", so the episode might be OK -- if a little choppy -- with one big cut to that scene specifically (say if it cuts from "this business is a front for drug trafficking" to the FBI removing the robots).

QABF12 Panic on the Streets of Springfield

When Lisa sees the real Quilloughby on stage (again, these may well have been cut from Sky's original broadcast):

QUILLOUGHBY: Shut your gobs, you wankers!

[The crowd gasps.]

GUY IN CROWD: Woo-hoo! Wankers!

QUILLOUGHBY: Can't you see this show is just a cash-grab?

And a short while later, when Lisa says goodbye to her imaginary Quilloughby:

LISA: Thanks, Quilloughby. You're the best imaginary friend a complicated eight-year-old could ever ask for. But I think we both know it's time for you to go. I'm going to miss you, you bloody wanker.

QABF14 Mother and Child Reunion

When Bart visits President Lisa in the flashforward:

LISA: Bart! Oh, I almost hugged you.

BART: Well, I almost wish you had.

LISA: Oh. I think I will.

BART: I hope you do!

[They hug.]

BART: I know what you need. Some President's Choice High Carumba. [Which he produces a box of; LISA moves to shut the door.]

LISA: Why did you bring that here?

BART: A, it's legal, B, somehow still cool, and C, you really need to chill out.

In the next scene, there are two joints in an ashtray in shot at multiple points, plus the following line:

BART: Now that we're both grown and successful -- you, president, me, pot CEO and owner of three NBA teams... I feel different. I really, really don't hate you.

This is an absolutely crucial scene to the episode, and the only way I can think of to deal with it is editing Bart's line (maybe just to remove the word "pot") and some careful cropping of the screen, or digitally painting out the ashtray, in the offending shots.

Season 31 saw a far more liberal C4, with almost half the episodes airing uncensored, so hopefully I've not missed too much here that ends up getting cut; as ever, we shall meet back here in probably December to find out.