Fox Was About to Kill a Classic ‘Simpsons’ Episode Until All the Censors Were Fired

Like any network TV show, The Simpsons has butted heads with standards and practices on more than one occasion. For example, Fox’s censors apparently weren’t thrilled about the episode that began with a Fox censor being brutally stabbed to death.

But in 1997, the censors objected to the entire premise of a show for the most regressive of reasons. 

Season Eight’s “Homer’s Phobia” found Homer befriending an antique dealer voiced by the legendary John Waters. But Homer freaks out when he realizes that his new pal is gay. He eventually learns to accept John, but only after being saved from a pack of bloodthirsty reindeer by John’s robotic Santa Claus.

While it may be considered a classic episode today, “Homer’s Phobia” came shockingly close to never airing because the network censors “tried to kill it.” As legendary Simpsons producer and showrunner Bill Oakley revealed on the episode’s DVD commentary, the standard process for the show was to fax the script to standard and practices, who would then fax back a list of edits, although they were usually minor and predictable.  

But their response to the “Homer’s Phobia” script was “two solid pages of typewritten notes, about almost every single line in the show.” Specifically, the censors “didn’t like the whole idea that there was any mention of the word ‘gay’; or the concept of homosexuality in the episode at all. So it cited every single instance of it.” 

Even worse, the end of the document contained “basically a large paragraph saying ‘the topic and substance of this episode are unacceptable for broadcast.’” And keep in mind, this was coming from the same network that gave us COPS and The Chevy Chase Show.

According to Oakley, the Simpsons writers’ typical response to censor notes was to just ignore them. “We would just literally throw them in the trash and worry about them when the show came back in color,” he admitted. But while previous censor complaints were often resolved as episodes were rewritten, throughout the process of making “Homer’s Phobia” standards and practices became “more and more and more alarmed.”

Luckily, when the episode came back from the animators in Korea, it was saved by a corporate deus ex machina. “By that time the network president had been fired and replaced with a new president and a new censor,” Oakley recalled. “And the censor sent a one line thing that said, ‘Acceptable for broadcast.’ And that was the end.”

So the episode aired, meaning that John Waters is now beloved, not just by degenerate movie lovers, but also by kids who love The Simpsons, which he says makes him “nervous” because he looks “like a child molester.”