0293 - Unhinged-Jaw Reporter
Added 2024-01-01 09:00:01 +0000 UTCHappy new year! Let's bring this episode in for a landing with one of the cartooniest moments we've seen so far.
Yes, he has a "line", if you count a gutteral shocked noise as a line. It's recognisable enough to be identified as Dan Castellaneta, and we've given characters numbers for less, so he's IN.
Besides, why wouldn't I want to highlight this weird moment? This is not the sort of thing The Simpsons does, especially not in this era. Yes, it's a cartoon, but it's not "cartoony" - for example, Santa's Little Helper acts like an actual dog, not some kind of double-taking mystery-solving friend. To grotesquely distort a human jaw for the sake of a silly reaction shot is so against the show's mission statement at this time that I find it fascinating, and have always noticed every time I watch this sequence. One might assume that it's an embellishment by an overseas animation team, less rigid about the "rules" of the show, but the fact that it is voiced shows that someone on the main staff thought it was worthy of the audience's attention.
I hope he someday recovers from learning that a woman served a man a fish.
This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.
