“I’m going to cancel.” – Patty Bouvier
“No, you’re not.” – Selma Bouvier
“We already have plans for tomorrow night.” – Patty Bouvier
“Patty, your first date in twenty-five years is a little more important than playing hearts with mother.” – Selma Bouvier
Dead Homer Society 
15 responses to “Quote of the Day”
I don’t get it.
It just occurred to me how weird it is that Marge’s relationship with her mother appears way more distant/neglectful than Homer’s relationship with his father, but the nobody in the show ever mentions this.
very true – there could have been a lot of potential here.
However, consider that most women characters on TV don’t really have much of a social life other than with their husbands and kids and possibly the wives of their husband’s friends.
We know who surrounds Homer and Bart and all the males, socially; not so much when it comes to the females. Are there any solid female relationships in the Simpsons? Other than sisters, Selma and Patty, and Sherri and Terri, not really.
You can say that Marge and Lisa aren’t wired to sustain platonic relationships – a number of episodes describe Marge’s and Lisa’s struggle to make and keep friends – but it’s hard to imagine that none of the women of Springfield have their own friends.
This is not just the Simpsons, but also in many shows – probably because the majority of writers are males, and it doesn’t occur to them to consider women other than being accessories, if they’re not the central focus of an episode or the show itself.
How many shows can you think of where a woman who was not necessarily the central character of a show have her own friends? Right now I can only think of Full House where one of the daughters had this really annoying friend.
I haven’t watched this many TV shows, but there’s that Canadian police drama “19-2” where you had two male characters with their own lives, and then you had a bunch of female support characters trying to juggle between their friends and their job. The problem is, none of these characters were shown as having any personal life, except for one, maybe. There were all just one big girl gang, but yes, they all had their own big storyline going on.
Which also made me laugh a lot because it seemed like female police officers were unable to build families, while the male ones had no usual trouble with it (wife, kids, mistress, etc.)
They’re not really great at showing us Bart’s social life, either. How much have we learned about his friendship with Richard or Lewis in the past 25 years?
While I certainly agree with what you had said, Frank, I also sort of got the impression that Jackie liked Marge less than Patty and Selma for whatever reason (and not one necessarily related to Jackie being displeased with Marge for marrying Homer, either). I guess it never phased me much considering that my mother pretty much has that same sort of thing going on with her own mother, and I don’t blame Mom for not wanting to spend time with Grandma.
As sick as it may sound, I actually always liked how “The Simpsons” depicted grandparents considering that I certainly was able to relate to it more than the warm, fuzzy depictions on many other shows.
You could have a point – maybe Marge doesn’t want to have anything to do with her mother, but she was concerned about her dating Mr Burns many seasons ago. Maybe they had a falling out after that.
The Simpsons is a riff on the nuclear family, bro. Marge is SUPPOSED to be a shut-in housewife too busy keeping her family from eating frozen pie crusts and wearing potato sacks to have a social life. That’s been mined for comedy and plot points since season 1.
Homer’s social life is pretty much work and Moe’s Tavern. And his co-workers and fellow barflies don’t really care much. His closest friend might be… Barney?
Bart’s only friend is Milhouse.
Lisa’s an outcast brainiac with tenuous on-again-off-again friendships with the normal girls.
The whole family’s social scene is grim as hell. And do the secondary characters have it any better? I mean, damn, the only real friends we ever see are Lenny and Carl, Burns and Smithers, and, uh… Krusty and Mel? It’s implied the staff at Springfield Elementary are kind of friends with each other… Err…
Well, look who it is. I will take you on, anytime, anywhere.
Cheap =)
Wow. Never really saw the show like that before.
Well, time to give up on this and watch something more life-affirming, like the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan,” that Family Guy episode where Brian gets hit by a car after Stewie destroys his time machine, that “Futurama” episode with Seymour the fossilized dog (you know, the one that lost to The Simpsons episode where Homer stays with two gay guys), or that “Fairly Oddparents” episode where Jorgen von Strangle shows Timmy what life would be like if he was never born.
I guess my point is not so much whether the relationship is wholesome or not, it’s the fact that all the relationships that are depicted are male relationships.
Your point is good and meaningful. He’s just a shitface liking to argue.
I liked how Selma wore S-shaped earrings at one point. I guess they were a pain-in-a-butt to animate, though.
Frank’s comment divided by zero.