[Urban Cragou]

There’s a thread about this on Reddit but I think it fits here just as well, especially on the 36th anniversary of Roasting on an Open Fire (the episode that made debut-transmission). We know Homer Simpson was a much darker character in the beginning, even without the Duff or whatever the Springfield-equivalent of Stella Artois (stereotypically a wife-beaters’ drink, for better or worse); its anger that’s sober, just like the overall tone of season 1. That eeriness and unsettling exaggerations of certain traits across the Ullman-shorts and season 1 compared to the Simpsons we know today is one thing, taking into account the time-context (and The Simpsons’ early seasons/pre.-canonical forms do hinge a lot on context, temporal and otherwise), but how many of you would go as far as to say that some of that early characterisation was supposed to be a predictive portrait? Do you think Homer Simpson was originally intended to totally be that guy who’d lay a finger on Marge or are we trippin. here?