12 Greatest One-Off Simpsons Characters
3. Lyle Lanley
Few actors outside of the main cast have contributed as much to The Simpsons as Phil Hartman. The late Hartman was effortlessly funny, and made characters like Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz among the show’s best.
More rarely, he performed as one-off characters, and the best of these is Lyle Lanley. Inspired by the film The Music Man, Lanley is a born performer, breezing into Springfield and convincing them to spend a recent windfall on a faulty monorail with a rousing song and dance number.
Hartman tended to slip an edge of sleazy scheming into his creations, and Lanley is no exception. A confidence trickster in a natty bow tie and boater, he is the catalyst for one of the all time great episodes, “Marge Vs The Monorail”, and demonstrates just how easily the folks of Springfield can be led astray by a dumb idea with slick presentation.
Lanley ultimately gets his comeuppance, inadvertently returning to another town he’d flogged a faulty monorail too, and may even end up killed. He managed to contribute a hell of a lot in his brief time.