Fox Originally Tried to Make Matt Groening Do Constant ‘Simpsons’ Clip Shows

Here’s a fun trivia question: Which popular category of unconventional Simpsons episodes nearly had constant iterations multiple times per season? If you said “clip shows,” you are wrong — they were never popular.

Nowadays, young TV comedy fans may have no idea that, back before the age of the internet, streaming and shrinking season orders, many sitcom showrunners had to pad out 20-plus episode seasons with what little budget they had on hand and an archive full of old footage. The lesser-loved but plenty-watched clip show was a staple of the sitcom genre for decades, as networks loved having the ability to fill time slots with pennies on the dollar, and fans, as much as they complained, still turned the channel to Fox whenever a new episode came on, clip show or not.

As such, Fox attempted to set the expectation for Matt Groening that the clip show would be a staple for The Simpsons, and not just an opportunity for some meta humor every three or four years. While Groening managed to stave off the network’s demands and produce just three worthwhile, format-bucking clip shows through the first seven seasons, and as he revealed on the DVD commentary for the second such entry “Another Simpsons Clip Show,” it could have been a lot worse.

“We were kind of forced into doing clip shows in those days,” Simpsons executive producer and showrunner David Mirkin began in the commentary track. “It was something that, uh, saved money, uh, and… mainly saved money.” 

Seeing as clip shows are, as the title suggests, extended mash-ups of past Simpsons content, no episode is cheaper than the one you already animated.

Groening then elaborated, “The idea was that Fox wanted as many episodes as they could get on the air, and there was a feeling that clip shows would do the job.” Addressing his colleagues, Groening said, “If you’ll recall, there was originally an idea of doing, like, lots of clip shows.”

“Yes, and we fought against that,” Mirkin remembered. “But we were still forced to do these. And, you know, the interstitial stuff is still nice, written by our good friend Penny Wise (writer Jon Vitti’s pseudonym during the clip show episodes). But, you know, it’s something that, given our druthers, I don’t know that we would have done.” Mirkin then said definitively, “We wouldn’t have.”

Still, Groening pointed out of “Another Simpsons Clip Show,” “Actually, it’s a really funny episode. You know, people complain about the clip shows and stuff, but the fact is, they like the shows that they’re clipped from. So, hey, what’s your problem dude?”

In other words, don’t have a cow, man?