In a season 8 episode, The Simpsons mocked its censor notes via one of the show’s least intelligent characters. Ever since the series began, The Simpsons has had a troubled relationship with authority. When sitting US president George HW Bush famously said families ought to be “more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons,” the series wasted no time in having Bart famously respond that, just like The Waltons, the Simpsons were also waiting for an end to the Depression.
As a result of the show’s anti-establishment humor, The Simpsons often ran afoul of censors early on in its run. What was once considered shocking on the show would now mostly be seen as quaint, since many of the later adult animated comedies influenced by The Simpsons took things far further than the Fox hit was ever able to. However, The Simpsons still irked censors and network executives early in its run as the show paved the way for more risqué humor in prime-time animated shows.
One example of The Simpsons running afoul of network censors came during the production of the classic episode “In El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)” (season 8, episode 9). During this episode, Homer spends most of the plot experiencing an extended psychedelic trip after ingesting spicy chili, and Fox’s censors were worried about children copying Homer’s risky behavior. However, it was not eating excessively hot chili that the executives feared kids would engage in. Homer’s gambit of coating his mouth with hot wax to avoid being burned by chili prompted a note that told the creators “please have him scream in pain so kids will understand that doing this would actually burn their mouths.” Instead, The Simpsons had Ralph Wiggum (famously one of the least intelligent characters on the series) note that Homer’s decision is a bad one.
Putting the words in the mouth of one of the only Simpsons characters even less bright than Homer was an indirect, if effective, way for the creators to mock the overly antsy network’s fears. The censors were likely worried that viewers would replicate blatantly dangerous, cartoony behavior because of recent controversies about shows such as Beavis and Butthead, which was blamed for numerous dangerous stunts that resulted in serious injuries. However, The Simpsons (like Beavis and Butthead) was never intended to be watched by small children, meaning the creators of the show were understandably annoyed by the demand that they alter the content of their series to accommodate worried censors.
This was not the only instance of The Simpsons going toe-to-toe with censors via meta-jokes, though. One Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween special saw the series gruesomely kill off a network censor while they were busy counting the inappropriate moments in the episode in an even more brazen refutation of the network’s authority over the show’s content. Since these earlier, more rebellious outings, The Simpsons has not featured as many blatant jokes at the expense of the people policing their creative choices, but early on, the series was quick to mock them both implicitly and explicitly.