One of the greatest joys of Disney+ is that it puts the massive library of The Simpsons at any subscriber’s fingertips. To keep audiences engaged, the platform went on to introduce livestreams of various franchise, which took a lot of the guesswork out of what program to select, which included a stream honoring The Simpsons. Now, Disney+ is about to unleash an all-new take on their Simpsons livestream, as executive producer of The Simpsons Matt Selman has helped select the 200 best episodes honoring the Simpson patriarch, kicking off the “Homer-palooza” event on the platform. The stream of Homer’s best 200 episodes kicks off on Disney+ on July 16th at 1 p.m. ET
Given the wealth of episodes to choose from, Selman wasn’t arbitrary with his selections, giving good reasons for why certain episodes made the cut and why certain episodes weren’t included.
ComicBook caught up with the producer to dive into Homer-palooza, his approach to his choices, and how the series might say goodbye.
ComicBook: You’re picking 200 of the best Homer episodes of The Simpsons for an all-new stream on Disney+. Is picking 200 of the best Homer episodes more difficult or easier than a fan would expect?
Matt Selman: I think every fan’s dream job would be to narrow down the 200 Homer-iest episodes, and as both a Simpsons fan and a Simpsons steward/caretaker, it was an obsessive-compulsive joy to go over the list of basically every episode of the entire series, pick the 200 most Homer-forward stories.
When Disney was talking to you about doing these Homer episodes, is there a single, seminal Homer episode that you think sums everything up, or even a top three, top five?
Oh, I don’t know, everyone has their own opinion. Sometimes when you have to ask your favorite of something, just the thing that you think of first is a more useful answer than the actual reasoned response. And to me, the one that just pops into my head first is “Mr. Plow,” because it just was such a silly show and it was so perfect as a groundbreaking, just Homer, the world’s funniest guy, gets a very funny job and has a crazy adventure type of story telling. So I’m gonna just say “Mr. Plow,” which is … I’m actually looking at the art right now and there’s “Mr. Plow.” It is “Mr. Plow,” isn’t it? Yeah, there it is. I’m looking at the art for the stream, but “Mr. Plow” is there.
What a tease that would be to say, “Matt Selman claims ‘Mr. Plow’ is the all-time best Homer episode. Asterisk — not included in the best 200 episodes stream.”
I don’t know if it’s the best, it’s just the one that I think most people think of when they think of the ultimate Homer episode, more than best. Best is, who knows best, but it’s more, what is the thing that, if you say, “Quick, what’s the Homer-iest Homer episode?” They probably say “Mr. Plow,” without thinking much, the way I did.
When this list was coming together, I know Disney tossed some ideas out there, you contributed your own.
They gave me a longer, rough draft and I noodled with it, I noodled.
From the start of the process to the end of the process, were there any episodes that at first you thought, “Of course I’ve got to include that,” and then by the end, you cut it, or vice versa, were there ones where you thought, “No way is that gonna get in,” and then you ended up coming around on it?
I only had so much time for this labor of love/labor of work, but I’m trying to find the list here. Also, I’m assuming that the list I did is the one they actually executed with no mistakes, so who knows, but I mean, again, the one I bring up is “Flaming Moe,” which is definitely, probably in a lot of people’s favorite Homer episodes, but to me, because it was one of the first episodes to explore the inner life of a side character, I disqualified it from the top 200 for that reason. And so, again, like all lists, the purpose of this is not actually to be the best list, but it is to generate controversy and then traffic, right? So it’s supposed to be … people say every list is just to get people to go to the list website, not to actually be authoritatively, finally the best list
A lot of these are definitely Homer. I just thought 200 also was a good, clean number, so if they didn’t make the top 100, 200 just means that one very biased old Simpsons fan thought that he didn’t, at the moment, it wasn’t … like “Behind the Laughter” is on there, that’s a family episode, but it’s just so funny I had to keep it on there. Maybe if I was gonna redo it, honestly, I would take off “Behind the Laughter” because it’s almost a conceptual episode and not … anyway, too late now.
That brings up a good point, that you had an interesting criteria where it couldn’t be a future episode or a “Treehouse of Horror.” So that adds an interesting wrinkle to the whole thing, that, obviously, it makes sense to just do a “canonical” Homer episode.
As much as anything was canonical, this is canonical.
I think back to being a fan and how one of the biggest, most surprising things was when there was finally a Simpsons movie. Within the last few years, there’s been these various Disney+ shorts, there’s been the Disney+ exclusive holiday special. How does The Simpsons creative team come about ways of expanding the franchise? Because I know people would love for there to be another movie, but is that really a thought that you all have?
I think it’s a thought. I mean, there’s no movie yet, but I would say the thought of another movie is always strong in my heart.
Is it about the idea? Is it about the platform? Is it about the timing that could push it to a very strong thought as opposed to just a strong thought?
It’s a big decision for a big company that has a lot of big movies coming out. It’s something that, really, everyone in a giant hierarchy of a creative corporation has to sign off on. You don’t want to do it and have it be — you don’t want to put all that work in and have it not be a really good movie that you think you’re very proud of. So that, to me, is a big criteria. Like, how do we make this something that is worthy of a cinematic experience and not just a beefed-up episode that could be on TV?
I remember speaking to Al Jean, saying how it’s just a matter of it needs to be an experience that demands being a movie and not just a good episode or a good two-part episode or a streaming special or something like that.
Right. Yes, we’ve done a lot of episodes that are cinematic and are movie-like, and we wanna make sure this thing is completely, completely cinema-worthy. Worthy of the cinema. It’s gonna make people wanna spend their hard-earned money to go watch, in the cinema, something that is on TV at home for free or at least very inexpensive. Like, there was that joke about that in the first movie where we said, one of the first jokes of the first movie is, “Why would anyone watch a movie in the theater they can see at home for free?” Homer asks a great question in that movie, and if another theoretical second movie doesn’t answer that question with an excellent answer, then it shouldn’t exist.
Fans, months after the season ended, they said of this recent season finale, “Oh, this actually could have been a series finale.” Do you think that the show will go out with a bang when the end comes, or do you want it to be a retroactive, “Oh, wow, that was the series finale, not just the season finale,”?
I think it just needs to be a nice … I think the fake series finale blocked us from doing all the lame endings that you don’t need to do, that everyone would want us to do a lame sitcom ending, so I am going to say that our last episode, should it be in four years or in 400 years, should just be a great episode about the whole family.
The Simpsons‘ “Homer-palooza” livestream launches on Disney+ on July 16th at 1 p.m. ET.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or Instagram.
The post The Simpsons’ Matt Selman Shares His Love of Homer in Honor of Disney+’s All-New Stream appeared first on ComicBook.com.
