This past weekend on The Simpsons, Homer made a rather surprising transformation (especially for a non-Halloween episode). While he’s always been a bit overweight, the episode saw him change into an actual hippopotamus, but it all made sense within the context of the episode.
Written by Dan Vebber, the season 38 season premiere of The Simpsons is titled, “The Children’s Book Job,” and it’s about reclusive children’s book author Constance Clavinger (Emma Thompson) coming to Springfield Elementary to debut her new book. Homer is tasked with picking her up from the airport, which is when he finds out that she plans to kill off her iconic character, The Plucky Little Goat. So Homer desperately tries to stop her, which results in a car crash and a severely concussed Homer, who imagines himself as a Peppa Pig-like hippopotamus as he ventures through a variety of children’s-book-inspired settings. While this sequence lasts less than a minute, it manages to pack in references to several celebrated children’s book authors, including Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and Richard Scarry (the Busytown series).
The Simpsons co-producer Mike Price sat down with Polygon to share some details on how that sequence came about, as well as what to expect from the rest of season 38.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 38 premiere of The Simpsons.
Polygon: To get started, can we talk about the season premiere?
Mike Price: Dan Vebber wrote the script. He had the idea for it and then I was put together with him to co-run it. I remember, as we worked out the story, we always knew it was going to be this story where Homer has to pick her up and she goes crazy, like a little bit of a replay of that movie Get Him to the Greek. Matthew Nastuk did an amazing job directing it. In a way, the whole genesis of the show centered around that sequence where Homer’s in all the various children’s books. We built the whole episode leading up to that moment. We knew we wanted that from the very beginning.
Dan is a huge fan of illustrators and children’s books. There were certain ones that I remember reading to my son when he was little, and we all love Richard Scarry and Eric Carle. Dan was instrumental in getting in some of the ones that I wasn’t really familiar with, like Iggy Peck, Architect, Make Way for Duckings, and Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. That sequence was going to be longer, but we’ve got so many stories going on, so we did that sequence where we shouted out a bunch of them, with Moe as the Stinky Cheese Man and Skinner as Captain Underpants.
Getting into the rest of the season, is there anything you can share about the upcoming “Treehouse of Horror”?
Oh yes, it’s very exciting. There’s a little bit of a Nightmare Before Christmas element in it. For the opening sequence, we got the Stoopid Buddy people to do a stop-motion recreation of our characters like the Nightmare Before Christmas characters. The three stories are all different, all fun, some really gory stuff, some really scary stuff.
Is there anything to say about the season overall? Were there any goals or anything for the season?
We never really go into a season thinking, “What are we going to do this season?” Every episode is its own unique thing. Showrunner Matt Selman, I can’t say enough great things about him, he’s so encouraging of us to take the big swings, to do stories that we call “format breakers.” There’s a lot of those coming up. There’s a lot of just great, regular good-time Simpsons episodes, too.
Writer Cesar Mazariegos has one dealing with Moe undergoing a sleep study and it turns out that his dreams infuse everybody else’s dreams in town. It’s a little bit like that Nicolas Cage movie Dream Scenario, with a little bit of a homage to Sleepless in Seattle and Harry Met Sally kind of Nora Ephron movies of the ‘80s. I can’t quite explain it without giving the whole thing away, but it’s really fun. Meg Ryan is guest-starring in that.
The second episode has to do with a chimpanzee that the Simpsons adopt from a place where old showbiz animals get adopted. Homer gets very worried because he learns that chimpanzees have a tendency to rip peoples’ faces off and attack peoples’ crotches.
Brian Kelley has a great Krusty one that deals with a disastrous thing that happens at Krustyland.
Are there any deep-cut Simpsons characters that get a spotlight this season?
There’s a big Fat Tony episode coming up where Fat Tony has a new scam, which is to be a production consultant on a Godfather-type movie being made. Owen Wilson is the guest star on that one and Joe Mantegna is just wonderful as Fat Tony. He’s really, really funny in this.
