0008 - Abe Simpson
Added 2021-08-11 08:01:01 +0000 UTCIt felt a little wrong going through the main family without covering Abe! But thankfully he arrives pretty early on, more or less fully formed.
There's a joke in "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" that none of the characters in the shorts look how they're supposed to look, but honestly Abe is largely unchanged. He comes across as a little more aware of things that we're used to in "Grandpa and the Kids" but he's basically the Grandpa we know and love.
Abe is obviously used most often as the show's opportunity to comment on the elderly. In many ways he informed my opinions of what that entire generation was at an impressionable young age, which is obviously quite ageist and completely unfair. I'm sure the writers weren't thinking about how their work might leave this kind of lasting impression, but I've been thinking a lot about how formulative a lot of what the show says was to me. Sometimes, it was good (for example, politicians are generally corrupt and ineffective), but sometimes I find myself challenging what I learned from characters like Abe. Namely, the elderly aren't useless sponges.
But still, Abe himself is a lovable scamp, and I'm glad we have him. He's very quotable, and most of his memorable quotes are infinitely useful in day-to-day life, in that they didn't make sense in their original context, so don't need to anywhere else. And how could I not love a man who permanently wears slippers everywhere? A man after my own heart.
It's going to be a while before we see anyone else with the surname "Simpson", I think. Glad we were able to complete the set for now.
This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.
