‘The Simpsons’ Just Brought Back a Forgotten Character for the First Time Since Season Nine
Even in its 36th season, The Simpsons is still somehow able to surprise us. Last week’s season premiere turned heads with its faux series finale concept, and this week’s White Lotus parody is getting attention from fans for bringing back an obscure, decades-old character that most of us probably forgot about.
Despite the fact that it was riffing on a prestige TV show that hasn’t been on the air for nearly two years at this point, “The Yellow Lotus” had a lot going for it, from the return of Sideshow Bob, who’s now absurdly wealthy after inventing a rake with a collapsible handle (for obvious reasons), to guest star Chloe Fineman, who gets to show off her pitch perfect Jennifer Coolidge impression. The episode also found a way to reference Homer’s much-memed hedge absorbency powers.
The episode begins with the Simpson family journeying to a luxury resort, hoping to finally enjoy the timeshare they purchased over a decade ago. But the whole thing turns out to have been a scam, orchestrated by a shady salesman who looks vaguely familiar.
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The final moments of the show confirm that the salesman in question was, in fact, Nick Callahan!
Who’s Nick Callahan? Well he first showed up in Season Nine’s “Realty Bites,” the episode in which Lionel Hutz recruits Marge to become a real estate agent. Marge briefly joins the Red Blazer Realty team, which also includes Gil Gunderson, Cookie Kwan and the slick Callahan, who wows Marge with his headset telephone.
While Gil and Cookie continued to show up periodically in future episodes, “Realty Bites” was the last time that we saw Nick Callahan until this past Sunday’s episode. That’s a 27-year hiatus.
In “The Yellow Lotus,” there’s a flashback showing how Homer and a pregnant Marge were duped into buying the sketchy timeshare, which obviously predates the events of “Realty Bites.” So why did Marge recognize Nick when she runs into him again at the resort, but didn’t seem to know who he was while they were working side by side at Red Blazer Realty? Clearly this was due to the actions of an unseen wizard.
According to longtime Simpsons producer Al Jean, the idea to bring Nick Callahan back from the brink of obscurity came from the episode’s writer Loni Steele Sosthand.
While devoted Simpsons viewers may have been excited to see the return of the fan favorite character guy they vaguely recognized, don’t expect Nick Callahan to become a recurring fixture in the world of Springfield. At the end of the episode (spoiler alert for “The White Lotus”), Nick is viciously killed by an over-medicated otter.
Maybe he’ll come back as a zombie in a future Treehouse of Horror episode.
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