John Frink - Further Career

Further Career

Frink and Payne joined the writing staff of the animated sitcom The Simpsons in 2000 with the season twelve episode "Insane Clown Poppy", which they co-wrote. "Treehouse of Horror XI", another 2000 episode they wrote, was broadcast earlier than "Insane Clown Poppy", but was produced after. Payne said in an interview with TV Squad in 2006 that "My partner and I were actually working on one of a long string of failed sitcoms (and most sitcoms are failed sitcoms!) On the day a show is officially cancelled, it's kind of a tradition for the writing staff to go out to a restaurant, eat a nice meal, and drown their sorrows. On the way there, a writer named Jace Richdale (who had also worked on The Simpsons) told my partner and me that The Simpsons was looking for some writers. He wanted to know if we'd be interested in it, because he would recommend us. My jaw literally dropped. So he contacted the show-runner, a guy named Mike Scully, who read our spec script and met with us, then hired us on."

After a few years of working on The Simpsons together, Frink and Payne's writing partnership ended. They both continued to work on the show, though, and Payne has described their split-up as amicable. The first episode Frink wrote on his own was season fifteen's "Bart-Mangled Banner" (2004). Since the twenty-first season of The Simpsons (2009–2010), he has been credited as an executive producer.

The Simpsons character Professor Frink, a The Nutty Professor-esque scientist, was named after Frink, although the character was introduced before he was hired as a writer on the show.