The Simpsons Season 35 Revived The Show’s Most Embarrassing Bad Habit

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons season 35, episode 17.

Summary The Simpsons falls short of staying current with trends due to its lengthy production process and frequent outdated cultural references.

Season 35, episode 17 references a forgotten meme, "Planet of The Bass," months after its popularity peaked, reflecting the show's struggle to keep up.

The series should return to character-based comedy instead of relying on outdated meme references to stay relevant.

Although The Simpsons season 35 has improved the show’s critical reputation, the long-running sitcom still falls short in one embarrassing area. Since the Simpsons never age, it can be tough for the show to keep up with the times. The series has been on the air for 35 years and, in that time, society and culture have changed immeasurably. While The Simpsons season 36 may change this, for the most part, the show’s attempts to touch on fads have been met with mixed reception. Some new episodes of The Simpsons pull off this tricky challenge well.

Season 35, episode 14, “Night of the Living Wage,” parodied The Bear and addressed the hot topic of ghost kitchens, but its topicality worked in the outing’s favor and earned the show great reviews. In contrast, the jokes about NFTs seen in season 35, episode 5, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV,” were disastrously late. The fad had fallen out of relevance over a year before the episode aired, making the satire feel more quaint than cutting. The same issue recurred when The Simpsons season 35’s Marge focus took a backseat in the Homer-centric episode 17, “The Tipping Point.”

The Simpsons Season 35 Episode 17 Referenced A Forgotten Meme

The Outing Recreated Kyle Gordon’s "Planet of The Bass"

The main storyline of “The Tipping Point” wasn’t particularly strong, relying on Homer’s struggles with the practice of tipping to keep viewers emotionally invested. However, the episode’s biggest issue wasn’t its plot. “The Tipping Point” referenced a viral meme months after its popularity peaked, making The Simpsons feel out of touch and irrelevant. Comedian and musician Kyle Gordon’s Eurodance parody “Planet of the Bass” was huge when the song first came out, but this was nine months before the episode aired. “Planet of the Bass” was popular for roughly a week, almost a year before The Simpsons recreated the song.

Although The Simpsons did enlist Gordon and his collaborators Chrissi Poland and Audrey Trullinger for the episode, this wasn’t enough to justify the extended recreation of the track. “The Tipping Point” turned “Planet of the Bass” into an anthem about Europe’s lack of tipping culture, but these changes weren’t all that inventive and the outdated nature of the meme reference overpowered the song’s strengths. The Simpsons uses musical numbers as padding even when these songs aren’t recreations of viral hits, and this scene was doubly pointless given how threadbare the plot was. This proves the show has a recurring issue.

The Simpsons Production Process Makes Meme References A Bad Idea

It Takes The Series 8 Months To Produce An Episode

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Internet memes are usually funny precisely because they are ephemeral, so their popularity rarely lasts for more than a few weeks.

On average, it takes around eight months for The Simpsons to produce an episode. While this isn’t unusually long in the world of animated comedy, it is long enough to make meme references a bad idea. Internet memes are usually funny precisely because they are ephemeral, so their popularity rarely lasts for more than a few weeks. Post-Golden Age seasons of The Simpsons have repeatedly been criticized for trying too hard to appear relevant, so the last thing that the show needs is references to fads that are guaranteed to be forgotten before an episode airs.

The Simpsons could focus on character-based comedy or broader social and political trends, which tend to change slowly. However, the series instead insists on repeatedly referencing pop culture minutiae despite its brief shelf life. This is how viewers ended up with season 35, episode 16, “The Tell-Tale Pants,” referencing the Barbieheimer hype almost ten months after the event occurred. These tired nods feel less like a reminder of the show’s place in the pop culture landscape and more like a desperate attempt to prove that The Simpsons is still aware of the world outside Springfield.

The Simpsons Repeatedly Made This Mistake Before

Whether it was basing an entire episode around Pokemon Go in April 2017 or 2016’s meme song "Baby Shark" in December 2019, The Simpsons has always been way too slow to reference memes. Traditionally, the news that a mainstream TV show referenced a meme was enough to prove that the inside joke had become passé and was no longer subversive or interesting. This included shows like Saturday Night Live and South Park, which share a turnaround time of only five to seven days. As such, a series with an eight-month production process referencing any meme is guaranteed to kill it.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it means that the show can return to less intensely topical humor. The Golden Age of The Simpsons referenced plenty of pop culture minutiae, but the series rarely devoted entire chunks of screen time to recreating music videos. Instead, the strongest episodes focused on the central characters and weaved nods to other shows, movies, events, real-life figures, and even early Internet phenomena into their stories. The cringe-inducing “Planet of the Bass” homage in The Simpsons season 35 proves the series should return to this approach.

Episode Number Episode Title Air Date 1 "Homer's Crossing" October 1 2 "A Mid-Childhood Night's Dream" October 8 3 "McMansion and Wife" October 22 4 "Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story" October 29 5 "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV" November 5 6 "Iron Marge" November 12 7 "It's A Blunderful Life" November 19 8 "Ae Bonny Romance" December 3 9 "Murder, She Boat" December 17 10 "Do The Wrong Thing" December 24 11 "Frinkenstein's Monster" February 18 12 "Lisa Gets An F1" February 25 13 "Clan of the Cave Mom" March 24 14 "Night of the Living Wage" April 7 15 "Cremains of the Day" April 21 16 "The Tell-Tale Pants" May 5 17 "The Tipping Point" May 12 17 "Bart's Brain" May 19