Here’s Why Matt Groening Publicly Tried to Stop This Classic ‘Simpsons’ Episode From Airing
Maybe Matt Groening was saying “boo-urns.”
Back in the 1990s, comedy shows collaborating to make crowd-pleasing crossover episodes was all the rage. Friends and Mad About You connected their comedy universes via Phoebe’s twin sister Ursula. Steve Urkel from Family Matters crashed the Tanner household in a Full House episode. The Jeffersons appeared on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air twice — that’s double the visits of Will’s dad. While these kinds of very special episodes may not have been the most artistically inspired publicity stunts, these marketing department’s delights certainly weren’t anything worthy of shame or derision, let alone a full-scale press tour from either show’s creator as they disowned the project like it’s a nefarious failson who committed treason against the crown. That is, unless you ask Groening.
Leading up to the airing of the iconic Season Six Simpsons episode “A Star Is Burns,” Groening made the mind-boggling decision to lobby his superiors at Fox to pull the episode from the schedule. Failing that, Groening forced the show to strike his name from the credits and subsequently embarked on a press campaign to denounce the episode, publicly trashing it to every publication that would listen to his ranting and raving about his show’s crossover with The Critic.
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Camus can do, but Groening was complaining.
To put the controversy in context, The Critic was a decently reviewed but generally ignored animated satirical sitcom created by once-and-future Simpsons showrunners Al Jean and Mike Reiss and executive produced by the incomparable Simpsons co-creator James L. Brooks. The ABC show featured a callous, elitist film critic named Jay Sherman, voiced by Jon Lovitz, who juggled his personal and professional life amidst many movie references and parodies. After the series failed to build a following on its original network, Jean, Reiss and Brooks cut a deal to move The Critic over to Fox to finish its 23-episode run in the timeslot following new episodes of The Simpsons.
In order to inspire the sizable Simpsons fanbase to keep the channel tuned to Fox even after the Gracie Films “Shh!,” Brooks, who remained on the production staff of The Simpsons, pitched a crossover episode in which Sherman visits Springfield to serve on the jury of a film festival where Mr. Burns premieres his self-aggrandizing passion project. However, Brooks didn’t bother to get permission from the head honcho of The Simpsons before carrying out his little cross-promotion, and Groening was aghast when he learned that Brooks was going to use his precious flagship franchise to inflate the popularity of a failing side project.
Groening attempted to lobby Fox to pull “A Star Is Burns” before airtime, but the suits predictably decided that their biggest animated hit might as well share the wealth with their struggling new acquisition if they ever wanted The Critic to do serious numbers. When complaining to Fox didn’t work, Groening gave the crossover the Alan Smithee treatment, publicly insulting Brooks by removing his name from the episode’s credits. Then, when the press asked him about the removal, Groening claimed that he feared Simpsons fans would “accuse us of making the crossover episode just to advertise The Critic,” calling “A Star Is Burns” a shameless half-hour commercial for Brooks’ other obligation.
“The two reasons I am opposed to this crossover is that I don’t want any credit or blame for The Critic," Groening claimed, noting how newspapers across the country were already falsely listing him as a co-creator of the failing series, “and I feel this violates the Simpsons’ universe. The Critic has nothing to do with the Simpsons’ world.”
“This show employs my cartoon style, my handwriting and my humor,” Groening explained. “The characters are named after my family members, except of course Bart, which is an anagram for Brat. They have occupied most of my waking hours over the last seven years.”
Brooks, however, took umbrage with Groening’s public condemnation of the crossover, shooting back, “I am furious with Matt, he’s been going to everybody who wears a suit at Fox and complaining about this. When he voiced his concerns about how to draw The Critic into the Simpsons’ universe he was right, and we agreed to his changes. Certainly he’s allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far.”
Said Brooks about his old boss, “He is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten.”
“For years, Al and Mike were two guys who worked their hearts out on this show, staying up until four in the morning to get it right,” Brooks said of his collaborators. “The point is, Matt’s name has been on Mike’s and Al’s scripts and he has taken plenty of credit for a lot of their great work. In fact, he is the direct beneficiary of their work. The Critic is their shot, and he should be giving them his support.”
Ultimately, “A Star Is Burns” was the biggest shot Jay Sherman, Jean, Weiss and Brooks ever had at exposing The Critic to a wider audience, and the episode goes down as one of the most oft-quoted and beloved episodes in Simpsons history. And, considering the many more decades’ worth of work that Brooks, Jean and Weiss would put into The Simpsons, the beef between the Critic crew and Groening thankfully didn’t last much longer than The Critic itself.
