Adventures in Baby-Sitting

On 9 February 2001, BBC Two aired the Simpsons episode "My Sister, My Sitter" for the first time, where Lisa is inspired to start baby-sitting by The Baby-Sitter Twins books.

Precisely one week after that, on 16 February 2001, the one hundred and fifth Baby-Sitters Club book, Stacey the Maths Whiz,¹ was published in the UK... and would turn out to be the very last book in the series published over here, a relaunch to coincide with the publication of the 100th book the previous year (along with reissuing the older books as economy-price, 3-in-1 omnibuses) having failed to jump-start interest in the series. Whilst there are many examples of the show's free-to-air broadcaster airing stuff that was well out of date by the time they got the rights (elsewhere in this season, the BBC had to skip "Treehouse of Horror VII" from its initial showing because the "Citizen Kang" segment was so dated), them managing to get something in just before the deadline is perhaps more unusual. (As best I can tell, the Sweet Valley Twins books had stopped being published in the UK several years earlier, although curiously Sweet Valley High was still part of the Children's BBC schedule at this time.)

Anyway, that's a connection only I would think ever to make.

---

1. Titled Stacey the Math Whiz in the US, naturally. ^↩

In the Bushes

This is something that has confused me for quite some time. In a speech given on 27 January 1992, George H. W. Bush gives a speech in which he says "we need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons".

The producers of The Simpsons rush out a response appended to a repeat of "Stark Raving Dad" a few days later, where the family watch the clip on their TV, to which Bart responds "hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the depression, too".

However, an alternative version of the clip exists, which uses footage of Bush at the 1992 Republican National Convention later that year, where he repeated the line (as "...to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons".) This is most notably seen in documentaries such as the "Bush vs. Simpsons" featurette on the Season 3 DVD, but I was not sure of its origin.

33 on E4

As one door closes, another must open. In the great shake-up of late 2024, E4 became the only place to see new-to-linear-TV Simpsons in the UK, following their releases on Disney+ a few months beforehand. Season 36 became the first season to premiere on the channel in this way at the start of this year, but E4 are still playing catch-up with Seasons 33 through 35, which were first seen over here on Sky shortly after their US broadcasts.

One week after their debut of S36 concluded, the first of these seasons entered the fray. Season 33 aired on FOX in the US from 26 September 2021 to 22 May 2022; was first seen in the UK on Sky with "A Made Maggie" as a Christmas special on 24 December 2021, then weekly from 21 January to 5 June 2022; and now it has completed its cycle with its first run on free-to-air TV, which occurred in double-bills from 1 March to 3 May of this year (with one or two little wrinkles we'll come to soon). After E4's premieres of Seasons 32 and 36 were largely untampered with, how did Season 33 match up?

36 on E4

06/03/26 update: If you viewed this post before that date, please check the end of the cuts section for a fairly important addendum!

Cast your mind back, if you will, to December 2024. In one fateful press release, Channel 4 destroyed all we had known about British broadcasts of The Simpsons for the last few decades. Sky would no longer be the home for new episodes of Our Favourite Family, for Season 36 would be the first season to debut exclusively on Disney+; henceforth, Sky would only carry repeats. Channel 4 would move their broadcasts of the show to E4 in January, becoming the only place to see new episodes on linear television.

And so it came to be that on 28 December 2025, Season 36 became the first season to make its linear debut in the UK on E4, a little over nine months after it started being added to Disney+ on a weekly basis (and almost exactly fifteen months since the season started on FOX). Obviously a longer delay between the episodes' premieres in the US and Sky than we were accustomed to, but -- disregarding BBC Two's special dispensation to air "The Trouble With Trillions" on Cuba Night back in 1999 -- a record for an episode making its debut on free-to-air television in the UK.

As with their premiere of Season 32 at the start of last year, E4 ran the episodes in double-bills on Sunday nights at 8pm. In week 4, "Treehouse of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes" and "Convenience Airways" were pushed to 5:30pm by live sports coverage.

As we might have expected, this run did not include the four Disney+-exclusive episodes (the double-length "O C'mon All Ye Faithful", "The Past and the Furious" and "Yellow Planet") -- it seems pretty certain that these, and future Mouse-trapped instalments, will indeed remain exclusive to the platform. With S36 running to just 18 episodes that premiered 'normally', this meant the entire run was over and done with in just nine weeks.

But enough of all this. What about the cuts?

Sweet Potato

I've been looking for this for a while. The fabled repeat of The Simpsons episode "Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish" from 25 June 1992, which switched out the usual blackboard gag in the opening sequence for "'Potato' not 'potatoe'", in reference to Vice President Dan Quayle.

And, thanks to commentor Bax for hooking me up with a copy of that repeat -- for which I am immensely grateful -- we can enjoy a joke unseen for over 33 years.

Potato Man

On the 15th June 1992, then-Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle, on the campaign trail for that year's presidential election, visits Muñoz Rivera Elementary School and commits one of the most famous political gaffes in history when he "corrects" a 12-year-old pupil's spelling of 'potato' to 'potatoe'.

Ten days later, on the 25th June, Fox airs a repeat of The Simpsons; appropriately enough, the episode is "Two Cars In Every Garage, Three Eyes On Every Fish". The blackboard joke in the opening sequence is usually "I will not xerox my butt", but for this repeat, a new joke is hastily added: "'potato', not 'potatoe'".

This alternate blackboard -- seen on that repeat, and that repeat only -- has become one of the few pieces of Simpsons miscellany completely lost to time. It's frustrating, because the joke was reported in advance in newspapers, and you'd expect someone to have their VCR switched on for it. I've made more than one attempt to track it down in the past, but as of yet things haven't gone anywhere.

One thing I did think to do, though, was check alt.tv.simpsons for any contemporary posts regarding the joke. Multiple posts describe the blackboard as looking very last-minute, saying that the text visibly shimmered or moved around:

Great bit on the Simpson's tonight....
For those of you who don't watch the show, a running joke in the opening credits involves Bart writing something on the blackboard over and over. Past sentences have included "I will not expose the faculty's ignorance.". Well, though tonight's show was actually a repeat, they did change the sentence on the blackboard. Looked like a last minute thing, since the blackboard portion of the shot shimmered badly.
Tonight's slogan: "Potato" not "Potatoe".

Drugs on E4

At the moment E4's Sunday-night Simpsons block, rather than running episodes in order like they do the other six nights of the week, is a theme night, with five episodes connected by something. Thus far they've had a Treehouse of Horror night, a night of Homer episodes for Father's Day, a Lisa Night, next Sunday is based around musical guest stars... it's a cute little touch, especially since each night has a name given to it which shows up in the EPG.

I was quite late to notice this, though, and only spotted yesterday what they'd run on 8th June.

Uh. Did they seriously run a theme night based around drugs? It's hard to see any other line of logic that could connect those five episodes. The Internet Archive to the rescue...

Riiiiiiiight. The theme is "weird and far out episodes". Nothing to do with drugs at all.

Sure.

My Way or the Driveway

Which is the first episode of The Simpsons to use the short version of the opening sequence, the one which goes from the title in the clouds straight to the driveway?

If you watch the episodes in sequence on DVD, or on Disney+, or on any other format you may care to think of, or look at any online reference list, then that will say it was "Lisa's Substitute" from late in the second season, originally broadcast in the US on 25 April 1991.

That episode was certainly the first one that was always intended to feature that intro. It was not, however, the first time it had been seen by those watching the episodes when they first aired.

32 on E4

It has been a weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil time to be a British fan of The Simpsons over the last few months, and I want in. The first clue something was up was when we hit mid-November and there was still no sign of Season 32 making its premiere on Channel 4, but nobody could have guessed the multitude of bombshells that would come our way in December. Disney+ would become the exclusive home for new episode premieres in the UK beginning with Season 36. Sky would be cut out of the picture entirely as far as new episodes were concerned, although they retain repeat rights for now. Channel 4 would move their airings of the show to E4 in the New Year, becoming the only place to see new episodes on linear television, beginning with the long-awaited arrival of the 2020-21 season on free-to-air TV.

Any fears that this would be a sideways move or demotion were quelled when we finally got a look at how the show would be scheduled in its new home: episodes were plentiful, with up to seven a day running between 4pm and 9pm, and the newbies were given a prominent slot not dissimilar to how Sky used to schedule them (and, it must be said, a far more convenient one for me): a double-bill every Sunday at 8pm, starting on the 12th January (with 7pm repeats on Thursday and Friday) and running until the Sunday before this post was published. The show also retains a presence on C4 with the daytime repeat block on weekends.

With the new episodes airing later than usual, you might expect them to be more lenient with regards to censorship (Season 31 having already been significantly less cut on C4 compared to the previous few years). Some things I'd warned about in my preview of the season back in September suddenly seemed like they might not be issues at all. (For effect, try reading back the fourth paragraph of that post with "The Eve of the War" playing in the background.) Was that to be the case?

35 on Sky

Between January 14th and June 2nd of this year, Sky Showcase brought the abbreviated 18-episode Season 35 of The Simpsons to British viewers... with one exception. Yes, for the second year running, the annual Treehouse of Horror -- number XXXIV -- was held back to Halloween, specifically October 27th at 7.30pm. I have to assume the only reason for this is, after they had no problem with airing the first thirty-two Halloween specials out of season, Sky want to make sure they'll be seen on Halloween itself or near enough. Heaven knows how they will cope with Season 36, which has two spooky specials, the usual Treehouse and "Treehouse of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes", a trilogy based around the works of Ray Bradbury.

There were two scheduled repeats: Wednesday 30th at 10pm, and Halloween itself at 7.30pm. I would be 99.9% sure that late-night repeat on the 30th reinstated all of the material cut from the earlier screenings, but in testament to my professionalism I forgot to make a recording of that one. Because, yes, there were cuts, all of which were to the second segment, "Ei8ht":

• When Nelson and Lisa enter the slaughterhouse, Nelson is killed by the unseen murderer right after his line "Hey, meat hooks, hook meat much? Haw-haw!"; in the uncut version a meat hook then bursts through the back of his head and out through his mouth, but Sky cut away just as the impact is beginning, so we see a tiny bit of blood but no more
• When Lisa plays this back on the security footage about half a minute later, a similar edit happens, so the viewer gets the gist but there is no actual impact.
• When Lisa gets thrown into Sideshow Bob's cell about a minute later, there's a montage of all the other murders she committed; Martin's death seems to be trimmed, and the Spuckler kid and Sherri's removed entirely.

Whilst these edits certainly reduce the amount of violence, this is an incredibly graphic segment and a huge amount of blood, gore and lingering shots of corpses were left in, with only the actual killings getting censored! This was the only episode of Season 35 Sky cut at all, with even the dreaded word "bastard" being left in on multiple occasions in other episodes that premiered at 6.30pm. Whilst Sky dealt with this specific episode pretty well, I find their red lines and approach to scheduling more than a little baffling.

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.

Top Dad Homer

On 19 November 1999, it is announced that Tony Blair is to be a father again. Amongst the coverage of this on BBC News is this piece, which links it to recent comments from Charlie Lewis, a professor of psychology at Lancaster University, on how Homer Simpson is one of the best examples of modern fatherhood. One quote leapt out at me: "He has recently started going to parenting classes, so at least Homer is trying to be a good parent in his old age." Which recent event, precisely, did Professor Lewis have in mind when he made these comments?

Whilst the BBC News piece doesn't state the origin of the comments, a quick Google of "charlie lewis lancaster university homer simpson" brings up this Guardian piece, indicating they were made the previous day at the first national conference on fatherhood. At this time, the most recent episode was "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", which had aired in the US four days earlier, on 14 November. And that episode does indeed have a plot where Homer tries to bond with Maggie, and in its final minutes he goes to a daddy-daughter swimming class with her. This episode would not air in the UK until the following month, but it's the only recent episode that seems to fit the bill. Even if Professor Lewis had been watching at BBC Two pace (and it seems more likely he would have looked up the most recent episodes for any developments he could cite), they were showing seasons five and six at the time, and there's nothing there that would seem to be an example unless you really stretch the definition.

That Letter, That Letter, and That Letter

In the Red Dwarf episode "Bodyswap", originally broadcast on BBC Two on 5 December 1989, Lister (who has temporarily swapped bodies with Rimmer) and Cat are playing a game of Scrabble:

CAT: Hey-hey-hey! I've got you now, buddy! [He holds up his letter rack.] J-O-Z-X-Y-Q-K.

LISTER: That's not a word!

CAT: It's a Cat word!

LISTER: "Jozxyqk"?

CAT: That's not how you pronounce it!

LISTER: What's it mean?

CAT: It's the sound you make when you get your sexual organs trapped in something. "Jozxyqk!"

LISTER: Is it in the dictionary?

CAT: Well, it could be. If you were reading in the nude and you closed the book too quick. [He mimes this.] "Jozxyqk!"

Schedule of Horror

In November 1996, the BBC took ownership of the first four seasons of The Simpsons, including the first three Treehouses of Horror. Even back in the 90s, broadcasters didn't always make a special effort for Halloween... but now the Beeb have three Halloween specials it would take minimal effort to schedule around that time of the year, didn't they? Well, the show started its terrestrial airings too late for Halloween 1996, so what do we find if we jump forward to 1997?

31 on 4 2

"All the latest from Channel 4 News at 7 tonight, after Homer discovers an outlet for the sound of his own voice. Add Bart, and it's an algorithm for a viral sensation. Season 31 of The Simpsons starts now on Channel 4!"

-- Continuity announcement into "The Winter of Our Monetized Content"

* * *

The start of November seems to be the established time for Channel 4 to run their new-to-terrestrial season of The Simpsons, give or take a week, and Season 31 kicked off on Monday 6th November; avoiding all of that starting-on-Tuesday nonsense from last year, and also becoming the first season the station has debuted in Our Favourite Family's new timeslot of 6:30pm (and I have to say, I do find something preferable to the show leading into the news rather than Hollyoaks; between that and no longer clashing with House of Games, it just seems a nicer bit of scheduling, somehow). So, with the run having wrapped up earlier this week, just how much of it escaped C4's scissors, and how does that match up to my predictions from back in September?

34 on Sky

Between 24 December 2022 and 4 June 2023, Sky Showcase (as the channel formerly known as Sky One has recently rebranded as) brought Season 34 of The Simpsons to the UK, at least on pay TV: "Top Goon" aired as a festive special on Christmas Eve (in spite of this particular episode's questionable links to the festive season, this has become a tradition for Sky dating back to Season 30's "'Tis the 30th Season"), and the rest of the season followed on a weekly basis from 15 January. With one exception: the annual trilogy of terror, "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII", was not aired as part of this season, and we were left waiting until the Sunday just gone, the 22nd October, for its Sky debut... which it made at 4:45pm.

31 on 4

Between 29 September 2019 and 17 May 2020, Donald Trump was impeached for the first time, the United Kingdom held a general election to decide who out of the two worst people eligible for the position would become Prime Minister, then went on to leave the European Union, the primaries for the 2020 US election got underway, that actress from Casualty referred to Greta Thunberg as "Sharon" on Celebrity Mastermind, and then the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of the planet.

With all that going on, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that between those two dates Fox aired the 22 episodes that make up Season 31 of The Simpsons, which began airing in the UK on Sky One on 24 December 2019, and then weekly from 17 January to 29 May 2020... although there are a few little footnotes on those broadcasts we'll get onto in due course. At some point this autumn, Channel 4 will bring those episodes (or at least nearly all of them) to free-to-air television; the twentieth season of the show they've premiered, and almost certainly the sixteenth consecutive one to debut in the tried and trusted early evening slot on weekdays -- but that looks like it might be changing just a bit, as the scrapping of the terrestrial broadcasts of Hollyoaks means that from Monday 25th September, Our Favourite Family moves back half an hour to 6.30pm. Time will tell if this is a permanent change, I suppose.

For the fifth year running, then, I present my guide to possible cuts, censorship and outright cancellations to watch out for; as ever, I advise you to keep an eye on Wesley Mead's UK Scheduling Information page at The Simpsons Archive for news of when exactly these episodes will arrive on C4, and I'll be back with a full list of edits and whatnot after they do.

Black and Grey

Here's something that really does live up to this blog's name. I was looking through the archives of the newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons -- an amazing history of contemporary fan opinion on the show, stretching back to 1990! -- when I came across this post by Matt Garvey, regarding a 2012 repeat of "Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire" on Fox:

At around 12 minutes, when Homer asks when he gets paid, the Santa school instructor barks "not a dime till Christmas Eve!" In the version just broadcast tonight, there's a funny cloudy coloring over that line (see some of the original takes for 7G01), and the right arm is noticeably lighter, with the suit close to black. The entire suit snaps to the lighter gray in the same shot as he gathers himself and continues. On the DVD, it looks like a retake, perhaps from a later (1989-90-91-93-94, though I'd suspect 89 or 90) repeat... it seems unlikely to have been done at the DVD stage. The only other copy of the episode I have is from a tape of unknown origin (full-length, possibly an airing or the retail VHS), and it does have the glitchy take. I don't know about syndication.

I am able to go one better than Matt's description, and provide visual comparison of the two. This is from the DVD version of the episode:

And this is the erroneous version, taken from the old The Simpsons Collection UK VHS from 1992 (the one with "Bart Gets an 'F'" on the same tape):

A Brief Thought About an Obscure Simpsons Clip

On 30 April 1992, the Simpsons episode "Three Men and a Comic Book" was aired for the third time on Fox, up against the last ever episode of The Cosby Show -- and hence, presumably, it might be an overstatement to say that practically no-one watched it (the Cosby finale drawing an audience of 44.4m viewers), but surely it would've attracted a significantly smaller audience than usual, especially since it started halfway into its hour-long opposition. However, the repeat featured a new scene paying tribute to Our Favourite Family's rival (the decision to shift The Simpsons into direct competition with Cosby for its second season in 1990 generating great controversy) at the end (between the executive producer screen and the rest of the credits).

It seemed lucky enough to me that one copy of this scene survived... but it seemed amazing to me to find a second, clearly different off-air of it. As I thought about it, though, it seemed less unlikely -- it's quite possible, if not probable, that the addition of the Cosby tribute would've been trailed in advance. And even back then fans would've known to hold on to something unique like that (even if not every rarity from the show's early years is so fortunate).

30 on 4 2

Channel 4's terrestrial premiere of Season 30 of The Simpsons in the UK began on Tuesday 1st November. A Tuesday. I ask you.

Anyway, it wrapped up earlier this week; back in September, I predicted which episodes might be cut, dropped altogether or otherwise moved around for the fourth year in a row, and here we see how the battle of expectations versus reality panned out.