10 Worst Simpsons Guest Stars (Who Played Themselves)
Simpsons guest appearances miss a lot more often than they hit these days.
The Simpsons have had many, many guest stars over the years, and increasingly there’s been a lot of criticism aimed at the show’s overuse of them. At their worst, they’re lazy, unfunny and are more concerned with patting themselves on the back for having snagged such big names than they are with actually making a good episode.
Then again, aside from very, very few bright spots (looking at you, Halloween Of Horror), The Simpsons don’t seem all that great at making good episodes at all these days.
The point is, if you’re looking for bad guest stars, The Simpsons has a lot of low decks. Recently, the best of the bunch for a bit of the limelight in the list of best guest stars, but it’s only fair to remember the duds too.
As was the rule previously, only stars who appear as themselves in the show count here. No space for the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen as tour guide Jakob then. When it comes to picking the worst though, you’re definitely not going to be short of options, so some pretty bad appearances might luck out and miss the cut here.
10. U2
U2 appeared in The Simpsons’ 200th episode Trash Of The Titans (they’re on over 650 now, by the way), and was one of the first obnoxiously gratuitous guest roles. Clearly brought on board to celebrate the impressive milestone, the band are woefully misused and overshadow Steve Martin’s Ray Patterson, who’s a much better guest star all around.
Bono gets the starring role of the foursome as per usual, but (again as per usual) he comes off incredibly preachy. His insistence on stopping the show to let Homer talk about garbage management is supposed to be an ironic wink, but comes across as too genuine, and so loses all of its comedy. All his other lines feel too stiff as well.
The other three band members (the Edge, Adam and Larry, though nobody ever remembers the latter two) are a bit better, actually getting some gags and managing to stick the landing. Still, the fuss of getting one of the world’s biggest rock bands only to fumble them so spectacularly is sad to see.
*NSYNC suffer from similar balancing issues in their episode, but to their credit they’re a bit funnier and more natural than U2, so avoid inclusion here.