It’s the 30-Year Anniversary of the First Canonical Character Death on ‘The Simpsons’
Three decades ago today, Lisa Simpson learned a valuable lesson about life, death and jazz.
In the floating timeline of The Simpsons, nearly no piece of the canon is permanent. Even the backstory of Homer and Marge’s marriage, the backbone of the series itself, is constantly changing any time a new batch of writers want to put their stamp on The Simpsons and shoehorn in a shitty Nirvana parody. No matter what insanity or calamity takes place in any given week on The Simpsons, the town of Springfield always manages to reset to factory settings, and viewers should never take any piece of character development in an episode plot line too seriously, so long as the character in question doesn’t end up six feet under by the credits.
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Over the course of the last 36 seasons of The Simpsons, a select few recurring characters have taken their last exit out of Springfield, never to return, except in a flashback or a Treehouse of Horror cold-open. On April 30, 1995, one special Jazz Man testified for the final time, thus making history as the first recurring Simpsons character to bite the dust — hopefully it didn’t get in his gums.
Compared to other high-profile passings in the Simpsons canon, the death of Bleeding Gums Murphy in the Season Six episode “'Round Springfield” was rare for the fact that his exit from the show was for entirely in-universe purposes, rather than to narratively justify the exit of a voice actor. For instance, in the other most shocking canonical (and cannonical) death in Simpsons history, the show killed off poor Maude Flanders with a T-shirt cannon just because Fox didn’t want to pay for Maggie Roswell’s flights to the recording studio
On the other hand, “'Round Springfield” is a load-bearing episode in Lisa Simpson’s characterization, as it combines Lisa’s precocious nature, her courage, her love of music and her deep, devastating loneliness in a single plot line. Without traumatic experiences like the death of her beloved mentor to anchor her complicated psyche, many Simpsons fans would probably just write Lisa off as a moody know-it-all — well, more than they already do, that is.
I’d argue that, in terms of its artistic value, Bleeding Gums’ death wasn’t just the first time The Simpsons killed off a recurring character. It was also the best time they ever did it. After all, how many other characters whom The Simpsons has killed off had a significant impact on the fandom that rivals the fact that, three decades after his passing, Bleeding Gums is still tricking people into thinking that Fabergé Eggs are a drug thing?
