The Simpsons has found a way to redeem one of the animated series’ worst retcons 17 years after it was first introduced, but not in the way many fans have might have expected to see. The Simpsons is now in the midst of Season 37 of the animated series, and is kicking off a whole new era with only Matt Selman serving as the showrunner following Al Jean’s step down from the role after 20 plus years. The first episode of this new era finds a way to make an unexpected pairing between characters, and even helps ease the major timeline shift that’s happened after all these years too.
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The Simpsons first released Season 19’s highly controversial episode, “That 90s Show,” back in 2008, and with it introduced an entirely new timeline where Homer and Marge were actually young, college aged adults in the 1990s. It was where Homer happened to invent Grunge music, and had a highly successful band named “Sadgasm.” Now that band has made a surprise appearance in Season 37’s newest episode through a flashback that actually adds a whole new layer to Professor Jonathan Frink.
The Simpsons Just Made Sadgasm Easier to Accept
The Simpsons has been running for such a long time that there have already been a number of timeline changes introduced with episodes over the years. Episodes that revealed Homer and Marge actually first met as kids, recent episodes revealing that Bart was six years old in 2021, and many more examples of this kind. It’s not a concrete timeline considering that no one has aged even after all these seasons, but there are certain points in the timeline that fans have considered sacred even with all of the fluctuations and additions that have been made in later episodes.
But “That 90s Show” was the first major example of a dramatic retcon of The Simpsons family timeline. Before this episode, Homer and Marge were depicted as young adults raising a young family in the 1990s before finding their present day home. But this was a huge retcon that revealed a supposedly hidden part of everyone’s past, and that Homer and Marge were still living pre-Bart in the 1990s. It’s still a divisive episode considering that it really hasn’t been referenced after all this time. In Season 37’s “Bart’N’Frink” however, the Sadgasm timeline has been redeemed with a new look into Frink’s past in the same window.
How The Simpsons Moves on From Sadgasm
The episode reveals a new look into Frink’s past in college where a former friend ended up stealing one of his inventions and became a billionaire off of it. In Frink’s dorm is a Sadgasm poster, and this confirms that Frink’s past also takes place within this new 1990s window. It’s something that makes that former retcon all the easier to take as while the initial shock of shifting to the 1990s for this new take on Homer and Marge’s past was hard to stomach, it’s clear that there’s more room to explore.
By expanding on The Simpsons‘ timeline even more and playing more with the 1990s window that had been previously depicted as being much later in Homer and Marge’s lives in earlier seasons, The Simpsons is allowed to maintain Homer and Marge’s “proper” age even all these years later. This shift means they can stay in their late 30s window despite how many actual years have gone by. Now that this has been further cemented thanks to this new flashback into the past, hopefully it means that fans might get to see more glimpses into this previously hated retcon with future updates.
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