10 Exact Moments The Simpsons Stopped Trying

8. Kill Gil, Volumes I & II

Simpsons Kill the Alligator and Run
Fox

One of the greatest things about The Simpsons is the incredible, seemingly never ending list of characters that has been established since 1989. The list can be broken up into something of a tiered hierarchy, from the top level titular family themselves, to the secondary characters like Flanders, Skinner, and Mr. Burns, and more.

Further down the line are the more one dimensional, background characters that show up once every now and then for a quick laugh before moving on. Typically, these aren't the kind of characters to build an episode around, but after the writers ran out of ideas for their stronger characters, they began to dip into this pool of characters.

In season 18, The Simpsons stooped to basing an entire episode around one such Springfield citizen, Gil. After helping Lisa get the Malibu Stacey toy she wanted for Christmas, Gil ends up spending the better part of a year living at 742 Evergreen Terrace.

No one needed or wanted a whole episode on Gil, the guy who's only funny because he is a terrible salesman. That is all the show needed him to be, nothing more. It feels almost like the writers did this simply to tick a name off a sheet, just to say they'd done it, without even thinking if it would make for a good episode or not.

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