The Simpsons

Don't Steal Our Ideas For The Simpsons Couch Gag Contest

Tara Ariano
 

In last night's Season 24 premiere of The Simpsons, the couch gag involved the five members of the titular family turning from larvae into butterflies. Fun! Cute! Straightforward! Brief! I thought! Then it turned into a multi-minute fantasia in which the Simpson butterflies were menaced by Maggie's nemesis, the one-eyebrowed baby, because late-era Simpsons episodes apparently must feature elaborate couch gags that go on too long and leave the viewer -- or, at least, this viewer -- feeling dispirited and annoyed by the writers' self-indulgence before any kind of story has even begun.

Maybe if the actually professional writers who are paid to write The Simpsons weren't spending so much time, energy, and passion coming up with couch gags that qualify as minisodes unto themselves, the show wouldn't need to solicit ideas from fans in the form of a contest. Announced at the end of last night's episode, the contest invites viewers to contribute concepts for future couch gags, with the promise that one may be animated and used on the show's Season 24 finale. Since it's likely that the winner will be a new-style epic, as opposed to a zippy throwback to the era when the average American -- and not just the nostalgic, increasingly exhausted completist (hi) -- watched the show, here are a few couch gag concepts the show has yet to use, but that fit the new couch gag ethos.

  • SNL opening credits parody introducing not just the Simpsons but the rest of the show's recurring cast up to and including Captain McAllister and Bumblebee Man
  • London Olympics spoof featuring cuts of every televised event, with show cast competing
  • Overhead shots of all Simpsons house rooms, ending with the Simpsons entering the rec room and sitting on the couch, with Futura heds, in the style of Wes Anderson
  • The Simpsons enter the rec room to see the Obamas sitting there; then the Bushes, then the Clintons, then the other Bushes, and all the way through all American First Families dating back to George Washington, with décor changing accordingly
  • Shot-for-shot remake of the Downton Abbey credits, but as though shot around the Simpson house
  • Before getting to sit on the couch, the family must audition in front of it for, and receive critiques from, the judges of The X Factor, So You Think You Can Dance, and American Idol
  • Cast lip-sync to "Sexy And I Know It"!
Tara Ariano