‘Simpsons’ Writer Reveals the Joke That Required a Shocking Amount of Research
“TV comedy writer” isn’t a job that people typically associate with a lot of intensive research. After all, it’s not like anyone’s burning the midnight oil at the 24-hour college library in order to churn out a script for the latest Tim Allen sitcom. But writing for The Simpsons, on the other hand, has occasionally required a more studious approach.
Legendary Simpsons writer and producer Josh Weinstein recently pointed out that one 28-year-old joke took a surprising amount of effort. In Season Eight’s Frasier-coded episode “Brother From Another Series,” Sideshow Bob is reunited with his snobbish brother Cecil (played by guest star David Hyde Pierce). As the two catch up over dinner, Cecil brags that he’s now “Springfield’s chief hydrological and hydrodynamical engineer,” years after a failed audition to become Krusty the Clown’s sidekick.
While Bob inadvertently stole his brother’s dream job, Cecil admits that he ended up finding his “true calling” as a result, which Bob takes issue with. “No civilization in history has ever considered chief hydrological engineer a calling,” Bob argues.
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When Cecil pointedly clears his throat, Bob reluctantly offers a clarification: “Yes, yes the Cappadocians, fine.”
Weinstein noted that in the “pre-internet” days of 1997, the writers had to do some actual research in order to “find delightfully obscure sounding civilization that in some way prized hydro engineering.” They ultimately settled on the Cappadocians, even though it isn’t 100 percent certain that they would have prized hydrological engineering.
“The Cappadocians who lived in ancient Turkey, they’re famous for underground cities and giant stone structures, and there was a great salt lake near Cappadocia,” Weinstein explained in the episode’s DVD commentary. Even though the reference may not be totally accurate, it sure was a lot of work to put into a joke that lasted for maybe three seconds.
When a fan inquired as to whether or not the writers ever considered namechecking the ancient Nabataeans, who were “masters of hydraulic engineering,” instead, Weinstein explained that they still had to conduct research using “encyclopedias, history books, news clippings, reference and trivia books etc.”
Weinstein also invited fans to share some of the more obtuse references from the show that caused them to go down “rabbit holes.” These included nods to the history of the Supreme Court, the Flannery O’Connor short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Mr. Burns’ unusual telephone greeting.
As we’ve mentioned before, “Ahoy-hoy” was how Alexander Graham Bell originally thought people should answer the phone. Weinstein revealed that he and fellow Simpsons writer Bill Oakley first stumbled on this particular piece of historical trivia while writing for the comedic game show Clash! in the early ‘90s.
It’s too bad that none of the show’s questions were about the hydrological achievements of the Nabataeans.
