Production
The episode originally aired on April Fools' Day, 1993 on the Fox network. It was directed by Carlos Baeza, and written by Jon Vitti with contributions from Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen, Wallace Wolodarsky, John Swartzwelder, Jeff Martin, George Meyer, and Nell Scovell. The idea for the 32 "D'oh!"s in a row footage was from David Silverman's montage that he had assembled for his traveling college show.
"So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show" was The Simpsons' first clip show, created to relieve the long hours put in by all of the show's overworked staff. There was intense pressure on producers of the show to create extra episodes in each season and the plan was to make four clip shows per season to meet that limit. However, writers and producers felt that this many clip shows would alienate fans of the series. The Fox network's reasoning was that clip shows cost half of what a normal episode cost to produce, but they could sell syndication rights at full price. Despite the nature of the clip show, the episode still contained an act and a half of new animation, including the extra scene from "Bart the Daredevil" in which Homer falls down Springfield Gorge a second time after the ambulance crashes into a tree.
The network censors initially refused to let the phrase "beer causes rectal cancer" into the show. The censors eventually relented when they found a medical textbook which stated the link between beer and cancer, but still asked them to "go easy" on beer in the future.
As the family reminisces together about the past events, Bart raises a seeming non sequitur. Marge asks "Why did you bring that up?" to which Bart replies "It was an amusing episode," half looking at the camera, before quickly adding "of our... lives." Bart knows he is on a television show and knows the kinds of tricks his own writers use to fill up airtime. Such self-consciousness allows The Simpsons to serve as a lesson in modern media discontinuity.
Read more about this topic: So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show
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