Somehow It’s Been 25 Years Since ‘The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show’

When The Simpsons aired on the evening of February 9, 1997, the FOX animated comedy was marking a significant milestone in not just its own history but in the history of television. With this episode, its 167th, The Simpsons passed The Flintstones to become the longest-running primetime animated program in TV history. Let that sink in for a second: The Simpsons became the longest-running primetime animated program in history twenty-five years ago, and has been padding that lead ever since. What's most fascinating about looking back at this moment in Simpsons history, however, is how much the episode that aired that night — "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" — was preoccupied with the concerns about a long-running show staying relevant as it got on in years. The Simpsons was in its 8th season then; it's in its 33rd season now, with no plans to close up shop. And while so much of "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" and its commentary on the way TV shows and fans interact with one another has become embedded into popular culture for years ("Worst. Episode. Ever." originated here), it's unmooring to think that in the grand scheme of things, The Simpsons was still just beginning.

To get a sense of where The Simpsons was as a TV show when "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" aired, one look no further than where it sits in the episode list. Immediately before it was the cumbersomely titled "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious," a thinly plotted spoof on Mary Poppins that felt like the show was scraping for ideas; immediately after it came "Homer's Phobia," an incredibly creative and memorable episode guest starring John Waters and tackling homophobia in a way that allowed The Simpsons to flex its cultural muscles. So where was The Simpsons: on the precipice of creative bankruptcy or as vital and funny as it had ever been?

"The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" grappled with exactly that uncertainty in the way that The Simpsons always dealt with existential issues: via its show-within-a-show "Itchy & Scratchy." ("The Itchy & Scratchy Show" is actually a show within a show within a show, since it airs as part of "The Krusty the Clown Show," but let's not get bogged down.) In the episode, "Itchy & Scratchy" is starting to get stale and lose viewers, so at the mandate of both Krusty and producer Roger Meyers, the show's writers and animators are tasked with adding a new character: Poochie the dog. Written by veteran Simpsons scribe David X. Cohen, the episode takes every opportunity it gets to skewer a corporate culture determined to focus-group creativity to death, with the "Itchy & Scratchy" brain trust throwing around buzzwords like "edgy" and "proactive" in their demands for Poochie to be cool. This is, of course, a deeply '90s concern, as advertisers and corporate media were busy jumping onto any skateboard/hip-hop/grunge trend that might ensnare young consumers and in the process creating a pervasive yet deeply phony culture of neon colors and guitar riffs as they branded everything from soda to corn chips to yogurt as edgy.

A lot of this was The Simpsons taking jabs at other TV shows for desperately trying to prop up flagging ratings in their later years. The purposefully nonsensical addition of slacker teen Roy to the Simpsons household — never explained, never heard from again — was meant to mock shows like Growing Pains and The Cosby Show for adding cool younger characters to their casts in later seasons. But a lot was also directed inward, or at least at anxieties the show was feeling about its own popularity. When Homer is cast as the voice of Poochie, he gets to experience the onslaught of fan culture, depicted here as a bunch of nitpicking, impossible-to-please nerds who would turn on the show in a second if it exhibited a dip in quality. After Poochie's debut episode airs to universal disappointment, Comic Book Guy unleashes his legendary assessment that what he witnessed was indeed the worst (period) episode (period) ever (period), in a scene where Bart takes on the active voice of the show's creatives as he punches back at the idea that a TV show owes its fans anything. "They've given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free," Bart soapboxes, "if anything, you owe them." That seemed like an awfully defensive stance for an incredibly successful TV show to take back then, but it's deeply fascinating now when you realize that this episode aired in the thick of what's now widely accepted as the show's "golden age."

It's wild to think that an episode that felt so anxious about whether The Simpsons was losing its edge produced some of the most enduring Simpsons jokes, from "Worst. Episode. Ever." to Milhouse losing his patience wondering when Itchy & Scratchy are gonna get to the fireworks factory. Even its less-remembered jokes are gold; the tossed-off simplicity of the Itchy & Scratchy voice actor (a woman, in a nod to the fact that Nancy Cartwright has been voicing Bart all these years) responding to Homer's question about whether they'll record the episode live — "Very few cartoons are broadcast live, it's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists" — is a masterpiece.

We couldn't have known back in 1997 that The Simpsons would still be airing new episodes in 2022, and neither did the creatives behind The Simpsons, who gave Lisa — ever the voice of reason — the final word on the subject, as she wisely noted that after so many years (eight!), you couldn't expect a TV show to have the same impact it once did. But here we are, and "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" stands not as a monument to an aging show that was preparing to step away but as a show that didn't know it was still in the prime of its youth. One that didn't need an edgy, proactive dog to make its mark.

"The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" is available to stream on Disney+.

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Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.