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The Simpsons is nothing short of a cultural institution. The animated series has been entertaining people, contributing to the cultural lexicon, and accidentally predicting the future for decades. Hell, the current season of Fortnite illustrates just how much lore can be found in Springfield.
And yet, you don’t have to look far to find valid criticisms of the show and its more recent seasons. With members of the voice cast retiring or passing away, and certain pop culture references being a bit too on the nose, some fans have argued that the show is well past its heyday. That argument just made its way, in a goofy and fitting way, onto the third season of Smiling Friends.
The most recent episode of the Adult Swim series, titled “Squim Returns”, opens with a glimpse at the company’s break room TV. It shows a radioactive green cartoon family, crudely-drawn but still clearly meant to look like The Simpsons, crowded around a maroon couch. As fake Lisa stands silently while holding an anti-fascism protest sign, fake Marge asks her son “Blart” what he’s doing on his “confounded computer tablet device.” Blart then responds with “Hawk tuah, man!”, before fake Homer clips into frame and eats him whole. Smiling Friends‘ Pim watches on, chuckling to himself that “after 487 seasons, they’ve still got it.”
The entire sequence is barely fifteen seconds long, but it manages to say so much about The Simpsons in such a short span of time. The character designs are just different enough to work as parody… and, honestly, look akin to the family’s original designs when they appeared on The Tracy Ullman Show in the 1980s. (If you look closely, you can also spot Smiling Friends co-creator Michael Cusack’s initials hidden in fake Homer’s ears, not unlike how real Homer has Matt Groenig’s initials.) And the “jokes”, down to clunkily modernizing Bart’s “don’t have a cow, man” catchphrase, feel like an escalation of how some people feel about the show’s current brand of humor.
Ay, carumba!
In between crafting its own bizarre tapestry of lore and referencing cult-classic Internet lore, Smiling Friends is no stranger to the occasional pop culture parody. There are countless background gags — fake movie posters, knockoff Funko pops, and character names — that poke fun at things. Hell, a puppet version of Jesse Ventura just played a pivotal role in an episode from a few weeks ago.
But Smiling Friends‘ references to The Simpsons have always hit different. In addition to this opening parody, the show briefly introduced its own character named Marge Simpson, and also portrayed a rambunctious kid earlier this season as very Bart-shaped. It doesn’t help that The Simpsons also parodied Smiling Friends earlier this year, having Bart shift away from The Itchy & Scratchy Show in favor of a new cartoon called Screaming Friends.
In an interview with USA Today earlier this year, Cusack and co-creator Zach Handel said it was “surreal” to be referenced by The Simpsons, especially given the impact it had on both of their comedic sensibilities. So, it’s safe to assume that this opening to “Squim Returns” might not be the start of an all-out war between the two shows… but it still is a pretty accurate parody of how The Simpsons has evolved lately.
(featured image: FOX)
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Jenna Anderson
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