The Simpsons Season 36 Finally Explains A Decades-Old Homer Mystery

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While The Simpsons season 36 did finally provide a clear answer to one of the show’s oldest mysteries, it wasn’t one that viewers could have anticipated. The Simpsons' season 37 renewal has not yet been announced and, so far, season 36’s episodes have done all they can to upend the usual status quo of the long-running show. The Simpsons season 36’s premiere “Bart’s Birthday” was a trippy meta episode that presented itself as an in-universe “Series finale,” poking fun at the show in the process. The episode addressed the mystery of the Simpson family never aging.

Bart looks horrified in The Simpsons season 36 episode 1

The Simpsons' Series Finale Explained: Was That Really The Last Episode?

The Simpsons season 36 episode 1 began by revealing that the outing was the long-awaited Simpsons series finale, but was this announcement real?

Since then, The Simpsons season 36’s Lisa-centric episode 3, “Desperately Seeking Lisa,” sidelined the rest of the family for almost its entire runtime. The season’s second episode, a parody of HBO’s satirical murder mystery The White Lotus, killed off a forgotten guest star from decades earlier. Each of these episodes proved the show refuses to rest on its laurels, and season 36, episode 4, “Shoddy Heat,” was no different. A detective story set in the ‘80s, “Shoddy Heat” revealed that Grampa was a private investigator during the decade. Its twisty story revealed the solution to a huge Simpsons mystery.

The Simpsons Season 36 Episode 4 Explained Why Homer Hasn’t Been Fired

Burns Estimated That He Has Screwed Up No Less Than 742 Times

Thanks to “Shoddy Heat,” The Simpsons finally explained why Homer Simpson has never been fired from the power plant. It turned out that Grampa’s private investigator partner vanished in the ‘80s and Grampa came close to finding out the truth about his disappearance, but Mr. Burns offered him an irresistible bribe to forget about the entire incident. Burns told Grampa he would hire Homer and never fire him, regardless of his screw-ups, if Grampa agreed to ignore the disappearance of his former detective partner in exchange for this guarantee. Hilariously, Burns hadn’t even killed Grampa’s partner before making this deal.

While this twist was a fun subversion of the film noir tropes the episode parodied, it didn’t explain one discrepancy with the plot.

While The Simpsons season 36 killed off one character already with Nick the Realtor’s death in episode 2, it turned out that Burns had simply bribed Grampa’s partner before bribing Grampa in turn. He paid for him to move to a faraway island paradise, where he has been enjoying the good life to this day. A bitter Grampa was annoyed to discover this but relived to find out that he hadn’t ignored a murder all those years ago. However, while this twist was a fun subversion of the film noir tropes the episode parodied, it didn’t explain one discrepancy with the plot.

The Simpsons Season 36’s Homer Twist Doesn’t Explain Everything

Homer Has Been Fired Numerous Times In The Simpsons

Despite what he claims in the episode, Mr. Burns has fired Homer numerous times throughout the first 35 seasons of The Simpsons. Burns himself famously fired Homer in season 9, episode 19, “Simpson Tide,” but Homer also lost his job in season 3, episode 11, “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk,” season 15, episode 10, “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife,” and season 20, episode 21, “Coming to Homerica,” As proven by a NoHomers forum post, there are many other examples of this plot twist. As such, it is not clear how Mr. Burns stopped Grampa from reviving his investigations earlier in The Simpsons.

New episodes of The Simpsons airs at 8pm on Sundays on Fox.

Source: NoHomers