0048 - Santa’s Little Helper

By my own rules, this one is a little tenuous, but it felt wrong to finish the first episode of The Simpsons without honouring their beloved pooch. He doesn't "speak", per se, and I won't be covering every animal that crosses paths with the Simpsons, but SLH seems too important not to have here. Welcome to the family, you dumb mutt.

We'll make an exception for SLH because he does eventually get lines:

That "chewy" one is one of those images I can hear.

It's funny, having had a dog and a toddler, I can say that 90% of the Simpsons' lives should revolve around taking care of SLH and Maggie in some way. Do you think every time the family travels to some far off place for an episode they are properly taking care of SLH, getting him comfortably settles at a friend's or in a kennel?

I get it. it's a cartoon, we keep bumping into this. If every episode had a subplot where the family had to deal with the responsibilities of owning a dog, we'd get tired very quickly. But the low-income dysfunctional family presented early in the show should probably not have a pet, never mind two (and one time some fish.)

But anyhoo, that's bleak, let's talk about something else. For example, how SLH is used as a stand-in for Bart's perception about himself. Bart is a dummy who often tries his best but struggles to do the right thing, and he often sees these qualities reflected in SLH. This is most prominent in the season 2 episode "Bart's Dog Gets an F", a near sequel to "Bart Gets an F", in which Bart tries to make his dog behave better. Bart sees himself in his canine friend to an extent and proof that SLH can improve in some way represents how Bart can be a better kid. This is an area that I feel could be explored more, as most SLH plots feature Bart heavily, and their relationship is one of the more pure, sentimental friendships in the show. As a dog lover myself, this speaks to me.

I'll try and find some way to do a post about Snowball II at some point, although they are even less featured than SLH. The only plot I can think of that revolves around Snowball II is season 15's "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot", so we may be waiting a while.

And with SLH, we are done with episode 1 of The Simpsons! It only took us around three months. Come back later this week and we'll start episode 2!

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.