9. The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
1997
Season Eight
The Simpsons tackle that classic television series trope where a successful series has begun dwindling in the ratings, and adds a new character. As we’ve seen with “Diff’rent Strokes,” and most famously, “The Brady Bunch,” the results are almost always disastrous. This time around the Simpsons not only comment on the desperate grasp for ratings the stunt always is, but they’re also never afraid to get meta. Homer is set to play a hip new character being shoe horned in to the Itchy and Scratchy show in an effort to improve the ratings. Meanwhile the Simpsons have a hip new house guest named Roy, who is a walking nineties cliché with a Fonzi attitude.
One of my favorite voice actresses alive, Tress MacNeille, gets center stage for the episode as the voice of Itchy and Scratchy. After studio head Roger Meyer demands a new hip proactive character with an edge, the animators basically have to kowtow to demand, and create Poochie the talking dog. Homer is of course drawn in to the potential fame involved in the role, and becomes Poochie! After he tells Roger Meyer to “cram it with walnuts, ugly,” of course. “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” takes a clever jab at the entire “extreme” movement in the nineties and how everything had to be increased “to the max.” Every single company in America spent the decade trying to appeal to the extreme edgy audience, and “The Simpsons” approaches such a trend, and then snuffs it out, quickly.
There’s also some very funny pokes at the dangers of hype, and how Homer’s role as Poochie is extremely hyped up, and becomes an event, only for the debut to be nothing more than a vapid stunt so patronizing even kids felt their intelligence were blatantly being insulted. Of course, as is the typical corporate mind set, Homer wants to give Poochie another chance and refine him to be less pandering, and the studios kill off the character in what is now a classic and hysterical moment in the series. Poochie is an alien and dies on the way to his home planet. Cue the animation cel awkwardly appearing in his final episode as he flies away from Itchy and Scratchy. “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” really isn’t afraid to knock the lame appeal to Generation X, and manages to be an almost laugh a minute installment featuring one of Homer’s many short lived professions. Don’t forget: always recycle… to the extreme!