Why Only One Episode of ‘The Simpsons’ Was Slapped With a ‘Mature’ Rating
When the TV content rating system was first introduced back in 1997, The Simpsons marked the occasion by having the new rating box brutally stab a cartoon Fox censor to death at the beginning of “Treehouse of Horror VIII,” which didn’t go over too well with the real Fox censors. As a result of the bloody carnage, the show ends up getting a rare “TV-666” rating (but not really).
In reality, the show is typically rated TV-PG, although some episodes have been given a TV-14 due to violence and/or gratuitous nudity. And in the case of one episode, frank depictions of the erotic cake-baking industry.
But one episode of The Simpsons actually received a TV-MA rating, which stands for “Mature Audience Only” and is “specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17.” That’s the same rating given to shows like South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and even the gore and nipple-fest that was Game of Thrones.
What could a decades-old cartoon possibly do to earn the same content warning as the show that gave us the notoriously ultra-violent Red Wedding? As a fan recently pointed out on social media, Season 26’s “The Wreck of the Relationship” was branded with a TV-MA because there’s a brief scene in which someone (gasp) raises their middle finger.
At the beginning of the episode, Bart lies about his age in order to stream a red-band trailer for a new teen sex comedy called Project: After Party, claiming that he was born in the year 1900. The R-rated movie features a whole lot of mature content, including a machine gun-toting chimpanzee, a swimming pool-sized bong, a trio of young women being doused with lycra-eating “bikini acid” and a dominatrix/senior citizen who flips the bird at the camera.
As Comic Book Resources pointed out, the offending finger is blurred out on the version currently available on Disney+, and only the uncut edit, featuring the scandalously unblurred digit, was rated TV-MA. As some fans have noted, this is extra-strange considering that The Simpsons Movie contains a scene in which Homer repeatedly flips off his fellow Springfieldians. But it was rated PG-13, meaning that it’s A-okay for 13-year-olds to watch. Not to mention the fact that Bart exposes himself in the movie, which seems a little more extreme than a two-second shot of an elderly woman giving a one-fingered salute.
Also, giving the show a more extreme rating might just make it more appealing to younger audiences, like that R-rated smut-fest Barton Fink.
