Don’t Worry, ‘The Simpsons’ Isn’t Done with Itchy & Scratchy, Says the Writer of Last Night’s Season Finale

Last night, The Simpsons delivered an episode, “Estranger Things,” that tugged at viewers’ heartstrings with the unlikeliest of characters: the violent, psychopathic cat-and-mouse act known as Itchy & Scratchy. While the murderous duo are hardly equipped to bring emotional depth on their own, they’re at the center of one of the sweetest, most enduring images in the show — that of Bart and Lisa together in front of the TV, laughing hysterically at their violent antics.

Given how different Bart and Lisa are, they often find themselves on opposite sides of many situations, yet watching The Itchy & Scratchy Show is something they’ve always come together for. It’s also a chance, particularly for Lisa, for them to just be carefree kids. Which is why, when Bart and Lisa decided they were too old for Itchy & Scratchy in last night’s episode, it was downright emotional. 

Insightfully, the episode framed Itchy & Scratchy as the centerpiece for their whole relationship, and once that’s gone, they grow apart even further. Then, when the episode flashes to 30 years in the future, they’re basically estranged. Although the episode underlines how important Itchy & Scratchy are to their sibling bond, it might also scare some fans into thinking the show is done with the animated assassins. 

But that’s definitely not the case, says Tim Long, the Simpsons writer behind the season finale who ed me via phone to talk about how the episode came together and if we’ll ever hear the sweet sounds of Bart and Lisa laughing together at a decapitated cartoon cat ever again. 

Where did the idea for “Estranger Things” come from?

It kind of came from two directions. One was that, ever since I saw Toy Story 2, I’ve been fascinated by that moment where Sarah McLachlan sings the song “When She Loved Me.” It was one of the few times I’ve been in a theater full of people who are crying at a thing that’s happening in a movie. The power of that always struck me as incredible, and I thought it’d be a fun, sort of perverse twist to do the same thing with Itchy & Scratchy — to have Bart and Lisa outgrow Itchy & Scratchy. And of course, given the power of The Simpsons, we were able to get the original singer, Sarah McLachlan, to do it — and she brought it so hard. She brought every little bit of her Sarah McLachlan-ness to it. I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

I always wanted to build an episode around that. And over the course of my adult life, I’ve always felt like my mom wished my sister and I were closer. Over the last few years, as my parents have gotten a little older, we actually have gotten closer, but during those previous years, we had very different lives. She was working in Toronto, and I was here. She was raising a family, and I was doing this. We didn’t speak as much as I wanted to and certainly not as much as my mom wanted us to.

How did this end up as the season finale?

A lot of that is just happenstance — the production schedule happens as it happens. That said, I think there’s a feeling that maybe we want something a little event-y to happen for the finale. I mean, the show has a lot of things going for it. It has a big song. It has some great, splashy animation sequences. It also has pretty meaty parts for all four of the family, and I know that showrunner Matt Selman, in his tenure, has really focused on emotional stuff. And this episode has some real gut-punch moments that are sort of the Simpsons’ trademark.

Before going into the future portion, this episode has a flashback to the first time Bart and Lisa watch Itchy & Scratchy, what went into that scene?

It was the first time we’d ever established Itchy and Scratchy as an emotional touchstone of their family, so it felt like, “Well, what was the first time? What did that mean to them and how did it grow over the years?” Also, how they changed, but the one thing that they had together didn’t change and how they lose that. They are going to lose it. There is a point when you’re like, “Oh, that thing I liked when I was a kid, now I think it’s stupid.” So, now, what do they have left? Turns out they don’t have anything left.

I’m not a parent, but a lot of people in the writers’ room are. I can’t who suggested it, but they said that the thing that will turn any cultural artifact into kryptonite for children is if you say, “It’s now for babies.” So, the idea that their baby sister is now into Itchy & Scratchy makes it, “We can’t have anything to do with this anymore.”

Was going into the future always a part of this story?

We always had a flash forward. I think it was Matt who came up with the idea that it would flash forward that far. I had an idea that they’re teenagers, but Matt, one of his skills is to heighten what we’re trying to do. He was like, “What if 30 years ed? And what if Marge had issued this warning and that she never got to see them come back together?”

We’ve seen successful Future Lisa before, but this Bart was new. How did you decide on this version of Future Bart, where he’s taking care of Homer, Carl, Lenny and Comic Book Guy like a mini old-folks home in the Simpson house?

It was probably something we developed in the room, but I like that it’s sort of ambiguous. That, on the one hand, initially the audience thinks Bart has done something horrible: He’s lying to Lisa, pocketing the money and it’s just all a massive scam. But then you realize that he’s actually doing something good. He’s putting the time in. Like Lisa says, it’s “good, but somewhat problematic.” For a show that’s been on for almost 800 episodes, you’re always trying to find a fresh take on the same character and this felt like a fresh take.

Homer, of course, had to be there, but how did you decide on Lenny, Carl and Comic Book Guy as the ones Bart was caring for?

Lenny and Carl felt obvious, and we liked the idea that Lenny was the most addled of the four. Comic Book Guy felt like an interesting person to throw in the mix because he doesn’t hang out at the bar. The obvious thing would’ve been Lenny, Carl, Homer and Moe, and I can’t say off the top of my head why we didn’t do Moe other than we thought it was really funny to see Moe’s tombstone and that he had his head in an oven.

I would have thought Barney, maybe.

Barney’s a little hard to write for because he doesn’t have that much depth. And also, I think we all know Barney’s going to die of cirrhosis.

I’m guessing, though, that the plan was always to have Bart and Lisa come back together through Itchy & Scratchy?

That was the hope, and it was a little tricky. Not only did we have to come up with Itchy & Scratchys, but we had to come up with one that was called back later to somehow be a part of their plan to get Homer back.

Just generally, how much fun is it to come up with Itchy & Scratchy gags?

Like a lot of Simpsons things, it’s fun, but it’s a lot of pressure. I watched a super cut of all of them a couple weeks ago and I was stunned by how many funny ones there are, but there haven’t been as many in the last 10 or 15 years. And those have trended toward specific parodies of current movies; they haven’t been that sort of pure Itchy & Scratchy stuff. You might think that’s the easiest thing in the world to come up with, but just to make a clean joke about a cat and a mouse is hard. I really have all the respect in the world for the Tom and Jerry people because it’s not as easy as it looks.

Since we saw them outgrow it in this episode, will we ever see Lisa and Bart watching Itchy & Scratchy again? I think some fans, especially those who worry about the canon or continuity, may worry that we won’t after seeing this episode.

I respect the people who care about the continuity, but I always feel like you don’t know what order these events happened. Maybe this all happened after all the other episodes where they watch Itchy & Scratchy. Also, while I don’t want to use the multiverse example, this is a self-generating entity. I’m very sympathetic to the people who complain about retconning, but I’d also ask them to produce a show that lasts 37 years and not be a little flexible on this issue. 

Some viewers who take this issue very seriously think that we’re just flipping the bird at them. We’re like, “Fuck you! You can’t depend on anything on this show! We’ll change things and change them back! We don’t care!” But we really do care. We do know that this world exists in people’s minds, and it means something that it follows some sort of logic.

So, we definitely keep that in mind, but at the same time, it’s okay to play with things a little bit. Roy didn’t really come to live with the Simpsons in the Poochie episode, that was just a little silly thing. There’s a cheesy 1970s song called, “Hold on Loosely, But Don't Let Go,” and that’s my attitude toward continuity. The show isn’t an ironclad piece of linear logic. It’s a playful cartoon that we try to make people laugh with.

So, it’s fair to say that we will see Bart and Lisa watching Itchy & Scratchy together again?

Of course. We’d never lose that.