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The Most Violent Early Episode Of The Simpsons Was A "Fuck You" To Congress
It's easy to forget how shocking The Simpsons was when the show first debuted roughly 900 years ago, to the point where even the president referred to it as a corrupting influence on the culture. Bratty children? Mild cursing? A dysfunctional family that loves each other no matter what?! Get this unrealistic crap off our TVs!
The network and even members of Congress got involved and asked the writers to tone it down. The Simpsons' response:
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This confirms our long-held theory that the Simpsons don't have hair, just oddly shaped heads.
Yep, if you ever wondered why the hell the classic "Treehouse Of Horror V" ends with the whole family getting turned inside-out and performing a musical number in their own guts, there's your answer. In fact, the entire episode was meant as a giant, bloody middle finger to the show's pearl-clutching critics.
According to former showrunner David Mirkin in the Season 6 DVD commentary, back in 1994, The Simpsons was getting a lot of pressure to become less ... Simpsons-like. First, Fox straight-up told Mirkin to stop using Itchy and Scratchy on the show because they were too violent, to which he reacted by devoting an entire episode to the cat and mouse duo ("Itchy And Scratchy Land," a Westworld parody).
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As in Westworld the movie, not the show, hence the lack of genitalia on the robots.
Then, according to Mirkin, a group of concerned parents managed to get some members of Congress to condemn the show's violence. Displaying a remarkable lack of self-preservation instincts, Mirkin decided to go all-out and create the most blood-filled, organ-crunching, stomach-churning, blood-splattering episode in the entire series to that point. The show opens with Marge announcing that this year's Halloween special has been cancelled by Congress, only to move on to various atrocities, such as Milhouse being thrown into a giant blender, the children being chopped up by the school faculty and eaten, and Groundskeeper Willie being ax-murdered not once ...
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