What are some characters whose existence was just suggested and then immediately forgotten about?
See here. The guy on the left was originally supposed to be Ralph's dad since the writers didn't decide to make him into Chief Wiggum's kid until I Love Lisa. Also Martin's dad is in here even though it's Lisa's class probably just because the animators used whatever character models they had laying around, although I guess it could be assumed he has a younger sibling we don't know about.
sneed
we never actually saw chuck on screen
He's already dead.
Krusty telling Sideshow Mel to stay away from his sister whom we've never seen otherwise.
Carl says he can't feed his family with a codpiece, although "family" lends itself to subjective interpretation.
Martin's dad is there for that mysterious younger sister of Sherri and Terri we see in Lisa's class in Lisa the Vegetarian.
Wasn't Smithers implied to have a wife once or was that just a joke?
wasn't it martin's dad who gave him money to invest in onions?
In The Great Wife Hope, he says he's been cucking Mel for years.
They straight-up said he did but the marriage didn't work out because Mr. Burns was his only love.
I think you're mistaken about what his father gave him money for
Draft script of Lisa's Rival. Janey's diorama included a field goal-kicking mule as part of Moby Dick because she was too lazy to do her project properly and asked her brother for help.
in case there's any confusion, this is about Frink's wife.
She's shown in Grampa vs Sexual Inadequacy.
Joke seems ok enough. This omitted for time reasons?
He also had a son who looked exactly like him
Is that really her? She was only shown once.
Most likely. Only thing I'd change is that she says "I'm going to get my brother" which sounds funnier.
Could Principal Kahotek and his little boy count from Bart's Comet? We never see them just hear about them from Skinner. I always thought that was a missed opportunity to have a rival principal and school.
We did see Principal Valiant in The PTA Disbands, whom Skinner obviously dislikes.
Definitely something we saw, with homages to "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" for good measure. Of course who knows if it's still canon, or if it was only ever just a throwaway joke. But we did see it.
Krabappel's husband will either never be seen or will inevitably be used in a future zombie Simpsons plot.
I wish they never came out and made it cannon that Smithers is gay. It was funnier when it was implied. Not to mention the convenient timing of making it explicit just when it went from controversial to an easy virtue signal.
Shelbyville
Welcome to Zombie Simpsons. Enjoy your stay.
Gesundheit
Ok but still, there's no implication that Krusty's sister is also Mel's wife, just that he told him to stay away from his sister.
I guess Uter didn't have a name yet.
He was implied to have parents («Bart After Dark»).
>Lisa's Rival
I cannot understand, why did the authors forget about this character.
is this the same Ned's Beatnik mother from "Hurricane Neddy"?
>HELLO JOE
You'd be surprised at just how much draft scripts differed from the finished episode. For example, I saw a draft script of Lisa's Substitute and man, they changed so much stuff. Lines shortened, entire scenes omitted. For example, Miss Hoover thinks she got lyme disease from kissing a deer. "Well, boys and girls, if you learn nothing else from second grade, learn this: no matter how cute they are, never kiss a wild deer". There's a scene shortly after, where Lisa tells Bart about Miss Hoover, that's entirely cut out in the finished episode. Also Harry Shearer was originally supposed to voice Mr. Bergstrom. And that's just from a couple pages.
They won't ever do that. Edna's dead and they pretty much passed on every possible story (like her breaking up with Skinner) to introduce him to the plot.
Plus, the plan for him wasn't that good either. He was going to be a mean spirited Dean Martin parody, nothing more nothing less.
>I cannot understand, why did the authors forget about this character
They obviously couldn't reuse Allison since she was voiced by a guest star.
No, she's Maude's mom. The episode in question was kind of vague as to who's mother she is and they later classified her as Maude's
They killed her off in one of the more recent flashback episodes, to finally explain away what happened to her.
Oh boy, I'd love to see what some of Mike Scully's draft scripts from Seasons 5-8 looked like. Or are we better off not knowing?
They could have. Winonna Ryder's entire career took a shit and died in the mid-90s and at the very least, they could have worked out a deal similar to Kelsey Grammer where Allison appears every other season.
She's cute
Well, for one thing Lisa's Rival has a whole bunch of changes in it. For example, this scene was deleted.
>INT. HOMER's CAR - A SHORT WHILE LATER
>Homer is up to his shoulders in sugar. Bart struggles to keep his head above the surface.
>HOMER
>(HUMMING AND SINGING) Brown sugar! How come your pants smell good! Yeah... Yeah... Yeah... Whoo hoo!
>They drive by the hitchhiking Moleman, still holding the quarter Homer gave him.
>HOMER
>So long, sucker!!
>An old station wagon pulls over. The side of the car reads: STAN, THE RARE COIN MAN, -- FORMERLY STAN, THE OLYMPIC PIN MAN. Moleman gets in.
>STAN
>Hey, fella, I couldn't help but notice that rare Liberty head quarter you're holding. Would you take ten thousand dollars for it?
>MOLEMAN
>Yes, I would.
The sugar subplot was also trimmed down quite a bit, for example there's a bunch of scenes with Homer trying to sell the sugar to various people.
Jesus fucking Christ... another potentially great Simpsons thread ruined by you underaged cocksuckers. Seriously, how is uttering the same one or two phrases, or some variant of "Formerly X" funny? How is ruining any potential discussion of the greatest sitcom ever made enjoyable? I didn't have much growing up... in fact I was a latchkey kid. I didn't have many role models, but I did have The Simpsons growing up. Every week I would watch The Simpsons, recording each episode on my parents' VHS machine, then rewatch every episode during the summer. Eventually I enlisted in the Marine Corps and got sent to Iraq. Again, all I had was The Simpsons, seeing as how I had nothing waiting for me back home. My motivation to see the end of my tour alive was knowing that when I got back to the States I could look forward to seeing what kind of hijinks Homer and his family would be up to next. And I loved discussing this show on Yea Forums, one of the coolest places on the internet. Well, no more. I can't take this obnoxious spam for a second longer, I'm gone.
>(HUMMING AND SINGING) Brown sugar! How come your pants smell good! Yeah... Yeah... Yeah... Whoo hoo!
I get the feeling Mike Scully is something of a classic/dadrock enthusiast because he wanted NRBQ to guest star on the show and he wrote How I Spent My Strummer Vacation.
Better yet, someone ought to get some Season 10-12 scripts and find out if they started out better before the writers butchered them or if they were just shit to begin with.
Ebay's got quite a few of them. I have a table draft of The Way We Was dated July 5, 1990 and it also had a lot of differences from the finished script.
Some funny jokes in here, but it was probably a good idea to cut the B-plot down. The main story was fine and needed to occupy most of the episode's run time.
The writers just couldn't get past their "Lisa is a friendly aspie" meme even though I could think of a ton of great stories you could do with her and Allison or something anyway.
Al Jean was asked about this and he said there's never been an episode that retained more than about 40% of the original draft. He said Homer the Heretic and Lisa's Sax retained better than 80% of the draft script.
Bill Oakley was kind enough to upload draft scripts for $pringfield and Bart vs Australia and even with all the changes, the core storyline of the episodes and the jokes weren't significantly different. Mostly a bunch of stuff cut out for time constraints like a Walter Mondale joke and a gag about Planet Hollywood. Now obviously there were sizable changes, the whole pub scene in "Bart vs. Australia" was totally different and most of the third act is compressed with the whole siege part gone and replaced with the phone negotiations. But still, in both, certainly "$pringfield", I'd say way more than 40% was left.
Oh and Mike Reiss mentioned that Conan script with Prince as one of three completed scripts they never made into an episode.
What were the others?
Episode where Homer befriends yuppies or something and the other was Bart being sent to military school (obviously that ended up becoming The Secret War of Lisa Simpson).
That script shitting on Scientology. Oakley said it was perfect but they could never use it because "we had several CoS members on our staff."
I recall seeing a spec script written by Jamie Tatham and Chuck Tatham who eventually became Full House writers. It was titled "A Tonsillectomy For Lisa" and was dated February 14, 1991.
Also saw table drafts for Bart the Daredevil (May 5, 1990) and Krusty Gets Busted (September 14, 1989). They do have some interesting stuff such as Sideshow Bob trying to kill Bart after he suspects he knows too much about the frame-up.
>I recall seeing a spec script written by Jamie Tatham and Chuck Tatham who eventually became Full House writers. It was titled "A Tonsillectomy For Lisa" and was dated February 14, 1991.
This doesn't seem like a very engaging idea for a Simpsons episode and it's way too sitcomy. Honestly this would have fit Full House better. Although I guess Last Exit To Springfield kind of did a similar plot.
There was another spec script from 93 written by Lawrence Meyers, who was never part of the Simpsons staff, but was a certified WGA member. He was probably looking for work at the time. After reading it, I wasn't impressed.
>Homer's car is totaled when he parks it in a restricted parking area while hurrying to get to work. Coincindentally, the show "Family Brawl" (a parody of Family Feud) is offering a brand new sports car to contestants who win. The family goes on the show, playing against the Flanderses. They come so close, but end up one point away from winning the car. They do however, win enough money to fix the old car, so all is well in the end.
While the plot is original (well, I guess until Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo was done), it wasn't a very interesting or funny script. The characterization was way off in most scenes, and there were quite a few typos. It seems this guy wasn't really trying too hard to get a writing job at The Simpsons or whatever show he was submitting this to. I'll admit though, there were a few good lines. I also noticed something interesting. There's a scene in a season five episode (can't remember which) where Homer is down in a basement of the power plant being whipped, turning the mechanism that makes the food plate spin in the cafeteria. Well this script had something very similar, with some guy hidden behind the stage pulling some huge lever that flips over the words on the big game show board. And this script is dated before season five even aired. I also noticed a few gory moments (for instance, Wiggum's arm is bit off by Hannibal Lecter) that are way ahead of their time for a Simpsons episode. Anyway, the ending with losing the car on the game show was way too cliche and sitcomish. There was also a short last scene that took a shot at the Waltons for no reason.
After listening to all the Season 1-9 DVD commentaries, I never tire of Julie Kavner's brilliant "insights" such as "Wow, you guys sure did some great angles here" and "Marge only stays with Homer because he has a huge dick."
It can't be worse than Yeardley Smith talking about how she barely remembers the episode and "You can sure feel Lisa's pain in this scene."
Ralph Wiggum's famous "I bent my wookies" line originally went "I crushed my wookies."
In "The Way We Was":
The line "English! Who needs that? I'm never going to England." was originally "English! I'm never gonna use that in the real world.".
And the scene with Marge and her friend Kim:
- Kim: There are no women astronauts, no women on the Supreme Court...
- Marge: That doesn't seem fair.
- Kim: Even our language is biased against us: policeman, mailman, mankind, manhole, man-eating-shark...
- Marge: Well, men are reasonable. Maybe if we point this out to them, they'll change it.
- Kim: Oh, Marge. You really ought to read this [gives the "Ms. Magazine" to Marge].
Deleted phrase by Kim: "We've got to stop wearing bras! That'll show men what we're made of!"
When Marge asks coach Flanagan about Homer:
- Marge: But would you want your daughter to go out with him?
- Coach: (Angry) Do you know something I don't?
Anyway, a lot of the stuff in the TWWW draft was pretty unfunny, too silly for Season 2-era Simpsons, or missed the mark entirely. Like mentioned before, a script takes a lot of reworking because the run time of an episode is 22 minutes and assuming a ratio of one joke per minute, that's 132 jokes per episode, all of which need to both fit the characters and further the plot. Also the writer himself may find a joke funny but the rest of the writing room doesn't.
Like mentioned before, Saddlesore Galactica or Homer vs Dignity could have been Season 3 level before the writing room got their hands on them. Ok probably not, but my point is we don't really know what the script looked like in the beginning.
Given that the draft script of Lisa's Rival originally included stuff like Homer throwing sugar in a diabetic's face, I think it pretty much tells us who Mike Scully really was all along.
Yeah from reading enough draft scripts, I do start to notice that most of the material they cut out was cut out for a reason. It doesn't look like there were any brilliant jokes we missed out on here.
Remember that numerous rewrites are done before even the table read, so it's really impossible to tell who wrote which lines.
In Trash of the Titans, I forgot to mention is that in the scene where Homer wants to register to run for sanitation commissioner, but finds out he is in the line for sex offenders. Originally, Wiseguy's part was of the pimple-faced teen, and Moe's part was by some guy named Rusty (anybody heard of him?). He enters with someone named Eugene. I know it is not a spelling mistake of Krusty because they have his name twice as Rusty, and I doubt they would mess up twice.
Eugene and Rusty were originally from Bart After Dark ("I'm afraid this goes far beyond Eugene and Rusty"). I guess they were planning originally to have them as recurring characters or at least make a callback to then, but then decided not to.
But holy god, some of that deleted material from Lisa's Rival was bad. To be fair I thought the thing about Marge buying Lisa a lamp bulb was funny and really a shame it didn't make it into the final script, but the cut subplot stuff had a lot of problems. Homer throwing sugar in a diabetic's face? Yuck.
Also remember that the main plot was Conan's idea shortly before he left the show and that the sugar subplot was Mike Scully's main contribution, so it says a lot about how Homer is written there. Not all of the jokes are necessarily bad, but man is Homer characterized poorly. The bit with Moe holding a gun to Homer is also a little much and something they didn't actually attempt until The Parent Rap (Hank Azaria was really upset with that episode because he always said that's one thing Moe is never supposed to do).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Hank's objection to that scene was more like Moe deciding to randomly rob Homer of his pants at gunpoint, hence the ad-libbed "Yeah, I steal now." line.
he doesn't bear much of a resemblance to Seymour Skinner
From Krusty Gets Busted:
When Marge walks in on Bart and Lisa watching Itchy and Scratchy, instead of the "Prime Time" discussion, we get this:
Marge
Now you kids know the rules. You aren't allowed to watch senseless violence until you've done your homework.
Lisa
We've done our homework.
Marge
Well, okay. Enjoy.
>Deleted phrase by Kim: "We've got to stop wearing bras! That'll show men what we're made of!"
This is terrible but I love it.
That alien