Days of Wine and D'oh'ses - Production

Production

"Days of Wine and D'oh'ses", the eighteenth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons (1999–2000), was written by Dan Castellaneta and his wife Deb Lacusta, and directed by Neil Affleck. In the early 1990s, Castellaneta, the voice of Homer, Barney, and many other characters on the show, had conceived the idea to do an episode in which Barney sobers up. He told the idea to Lacusta, who wrote a draft that they then revised together. They presented their script to Al Jean when he and Mike Reiss were show runners on The Simpsons. Though Jean liked the story, he turned it down because the staff was already working on a similar episode where Homer gives up beer—"Duffless" (1993). Castellaneta and Lacusta waited several years and presented their script, which they had updated, to then-showrunner Mike Scully (1997–2000), who liked it but had them make some changes.

Several members of the staff, including The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, has stated that they were against the episode as they felt Barney being sober was not funny. After a long discussion about how the episode should end, the writers decided that they did not want Barney to return to being drunk at the end of the episode. The character's new addiction to coffee was suggested by writer/producer David Mirkin, who had friends that had stopped drinking alcohol and became addicted to coffee. For the episode, the animators gave Barney back-slicked hair to indicate his sobriety, a look which Barney maintained in subsequent episodes until he relapsed in "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" (2003). Castellaneta altered his voice for the sober Barney by no longer slurring.