The Simpsons Season 36 Finally Explains a Decades-Old Homer Mystery

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 4, “Shoddy Heat.”

While The Simpsons season 36 finally provided a clear answer to one of the series’ longest-running mysteries, it wasn’t something viewers could have predicted. The SimpsonsThe Season 37 renewal has yet to be announced, and so far, the Season 36 episodes have done everything they can to upend the long-running series’ usual status quo. The Simpsons The season 36 premiere, “Bart’s Birthday,” was a mind-bending meta episode that presented itself as an “in-universe”Series finale,” mocking the show in the process. The episode tackled the Simpson family mystery that never gets old.

Since then, The Simpsons Season 36’s Lisa-centric Episode 3, “Desperately Seeking Lisa,” sidelined the rest of the family for almost its entire runtime. The second episode of the season, a parody of HBO’s satirical murder mystery The White Lotuskilled off a forgotten guest star from decades before. Each of these episodes proved that the show refuses to rest on its laurels, and season 36, episode 4, “Shoddy Heat,” was no different. A detective story set in the 1980s, “Shoddy Heat” revealed that Grandpa was a private investigator during the decade. Its winding story revealed the solution to a huge Simpsons mystery.

The Simpsons Season 36 Episode 4 Explained Why Homer Wasn’t Fired

Burns estimated that he messed up no less than 742 times

Thanks to “Shoddy Heat”, The Simpsons finally explained why Homer Simpson was never fired from the plant. It turns out that Grandpa’s private investigator partner disappeared in the 80s and Grandpa came close to discovering the truth about his disappearance, but Mr. Burns offered him an irresistible bribe to forget the entire incident. Burns told Grandpa that he would hire Homer and never fire him, regardless of his mistakes, if Grandpa agreed to ignore his former detective partner’s disappearance in exchange for this guarantee. Hilariously, Burns hadn’t even killed Grandpa’s partner before making this deal.

While The Simpsons season 36 killed off a character already with the death of Nick the real estate agent, in episode 2 it turns out that Burns simply bribed Grandpa’s partner before bribing Grandpa. He paid for him to move to a distant island paradise, where he enjoys the good life to this day. An embittered Grandpa was angered to discover this, but revived to discover that he had not ignored a murder all those years ago. However, while this twist was a fun subversion of the film noir tropes that the episode parodied, it did not explain a discrepancy with the plot.

Homer Twist from Simpsons season 36 doesn’t explain everything

Homer was fired several times on The Simpsons

Despite what it states in the episode, Mr. Burns fired Homer numerous times throughout the first 35 seasons of The Simpsons. Burns himself fired Homer in season 9, episode 19, “Simpson Tide,” but Homer also lost his job in season 3, episode 11, “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk,” season 15, episode 10, “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife, ” and season 20, episode 21, “Coming to Homerica,” as proven by a NoHomers forum post, there are many other examples of this plot twist. As such, it is unclear how Mr. Burns prevented Grandpa from reviving his investigations earlier in The Simpsons.

Source: NoHomers