Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons season 35, episode 13
Although Marge’s relationship with Bart has been something of a mystery for decades, The Simpsons season 35 is doing a good job of illustrating their surprising similarities. On paper, the Simpson family seem to follow pretty straightforward, disappointingly retrograde gender roles. Homer is a calamitous, dimwitted goofball, while Marge is a loyal wife who cleans up his many messes. Bart is a rebellious underachiever who loves pranks and chaos, while his sister Lisa is a thoughtful, sensitive, and academic child. However, even though the Simpsons never age, the characters have grown and changed enough to problematize these simplistic categorizations.
One of Bart’s most moving stories saw him salvage a nest of eggs after inadvertently killing the bird who cared for them. Meanwhile, Lisa has been known to partake in some seriously dubious schemes when she knows she won’t get caught. While The Simpsons season 36 might take a step back into more predictable terrain, two episodes in season 35 have highlighted Marge’s under-seen dark side. Although season 35 episode 13 didn’t ditch Marge in the wilderness, it did illustrate a wilder, more animalistic side of her character and solved a longstanding series mystery in the process.
For years, viewers could reasonably have wondered how someone as cautious as Marge raised a son as wild as Bart, since the pair have diametrically opposed personalities. The obvious answer is that Homer’s antics undo Marge’s positive influence on her son, but this doesn’t cut it for a show that has spent over 750 episodes in the company of this family. Both season 35, episode 2, “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream,” and episode 13, “Clan of the Cave Mom,” explained the discrepancy with a surprisingly believable and poignant justification. It turns out the pair aren’t as different as they seemed.
The reason The Simpsons constantly mocks Disney is that the long-running series rails against the schmaltzy sentimentality of family entertainment. To this end, The Simpsons rarely wraps up episodes with sweet moments of understanding between parents and children when a more cynical twist is available. However, “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream” and “Clan of the Cave Mom” both proved that Bart was more anxious and aware of his social status than he lets on, while Marge is more adventurous and unhinged than she seems. In the process, the two episodes saw these very different characters grow to understand each other.
Although their storylines were similar, the two episodes kept viewers invested in their stories with different stylistic approaches. “Clan of the Cave Mom” includes segments set in the Stone Age that illustrate Marge’s primal brain functions, while “A Mid-Childhood’s Night Dream” features trippy sequences that use Michel Gondry-esque imagery to move through Marge’s subconscious. While the Golden Age of The Simpsons featured similarly ambitious outings like season 8, episode 9, “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer),” and season 7, episode 4, “Bart Sells His Soul,” these mostly focused on the internal worlds of Bart and Homer.
In contrast, both of season 35’s episodes privileged Marge’s perspective, using these unexpectedly experimental approaches to bring her subconscious world to life. In the process, the show shone a light on her and Bart’s shared similarities. In “Clan of the Cave Mom,” Marge’s insistence that Bart needed to one-up Milhouse was more mean-spirited than Bart’s pranks. Meanwhile, in “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream,” Marge’s determination to document Bart’s Bounce-A-Thon was mirrored in Bart’s stress over the pressure of outdoing the preceding year’s photo prank. Despite their differences, Marge and Bart’s motivations were largely the same as both sought safety in acceptance.
While season 35’s Marge-centric episodes are a fun surprise, they have been a long time coming. In recent years, fan works like the webcomic Marge Simpson Anime and Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Twitter thread about Marge’s non-existent social life have called for more character growth from the show’s heroine. As YouTuber Super Eyepatch Wolf noted, Marge’s comparative lack of character development has been called into question by fans and critics of the series as the show has endured over the decades. The longer The Simpsons is on the air, the more noticeable the show’s limited focus on Marge becomes.
As a result, in season 35, Marge is finally getting the spotlight in episodes that flesh out her internal world. Rather than trying to rewrite her character completely, outings like these prove that her work as a mother gives shape to a rich personal life to which viewers aren’t always privy. In particular, “Clan of the Cave Mom” reimagines Marge’s daily life as a life-or-death struggle, allowing the show to draw attention to the work she puts in to raising her children. That she occasionally takes things too far is a flaw that makes her no worse than Homer or Bart.
Even more than the superficially similar season 33, episode 20, “Marge the Meanie,” these outings reveal something new about the heroine and her son after over 750 episodes. The Simpsons has retconned many storylines and character details over the decades, but revealing that Marge was an unstoppable prankster in her youth is the sort of misguided twist that draws an unsustainable link between her and Bart. It doesn’t feel true to her character, so, while it might result in a fun one-off outing, the episode’s storyline doesn’t make Bart and Marge’s relationship feel any more believable in the long run.
In contrast, season 35’s Marge and Bart plots highlight the real similarities between the pair. For all his bravado, Bart yearns for social acceptance. Despite her apparent meekness, Marge has a ruthless edge that exposes the source of Bart’s rebellious energy and his fearless streak. These developments feel organic and earned thanks to both episodes using strange, risky stylized storytelling strategies that render Marge’s internal world deeper and more real. Thus, The Simpsons has managed to show viewers a new side of a character who has been around for over 35 years, and illustrated her connection with her troubled son in the process.