Tag: The Crepes of Wrath

Wednesday was the 30th Anniversary of “The Crepes of Wrath”. So I busted out my Season 1 DVDs and spent some quarantime listening to Wes Archer and George Meyer’s commentary. Wikipedia says these DVDs were released in September 2001, so the commentaries were probably recorded in early 2001 or so. From early 2001, this episode was 11 years old. Today it is 30 years old, so the time between the commentary recording and now is roughly double that between the episode and the recording. This gives an interesting flavor some of what’s said. By the time this was recorded, Archer was already done with the show. His last directing credit is “Homerpalooza” from the end of Season 7. He’s since gone one to do stuff like Bob’s Burgers, Futurama, Disenchantment, and Rick & Morty. Meyer was still there but had one foot out the door. His last writing credit is “The Parent Wrap”, which was the second episode of Season 13 but produced at the end of the Season 12 production run, i.e. right about when they were recording this. So while he has some producer credits for a couple more years, George Meyer never actually wrote another one after he recorded this commentary. This is him looking back on work that he still does but is already preparing to quit. —– Meyer opens things up by joking about how they originally found writing the chalkboard gags delightful and now it’s a tedious chore and always falls to the newest writers on the staff. So Bart writing on the chalkboard was a great idea that was kind of tired by *Season 12*. Even these two couldn’t imagine the bland, mushy, paint-by-number thing would keep going for twenty more years (and counting). Meyer mentions that the idea was inspired by the French movie Manon of the Spring. He then quips, “Which I have not seen”. Heh. Meyer talking about how he got on the show: had been working on a movie for David Letterman in Colorado and agreed to come out and work on the series in October of ’89, working on the show fulltime after that because he liked it so much. I’ve said this a lot of times, but it is a legit thermodynamic miracle that The Simpsons ever happened. Every cog, part, and gear of the entertainment industry is intended to prevent things like The Simpsons. As Homer lies on the floor, crippled by Bart, Archer notes that, “Low angle on Homer’s face was always difficult to animate because the mouth animation was different from the regular mouth charts”. Here’s the shot: The next shot is Bart’s messy room, which Archer notes is “filled with props”. Meyer immediately chimes in about how the writers would torment the animators by never thinking about how much stuff is in a scene. Archer notes that the design for Milhouse was taken from a Groening sketch. Meyer notes that the cherrybomb bathroom scene was where he began to realize what you could get away with in…