Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons Season 36 special, “O C'Mon All Ye Faithful.”
While The Simpsons The Season 36 holiday special finds two Springfield residents finally joining forces for a shared mission. This storyline will make viewers wonder how the show has never featured the duo until now. The Simpsons The 37th season renewal has yet to be announced, but viewers who want to see the show expand its horizons don't have to wait to tune in. Vulture to YouTube Creator SuperEyePatchWolf, critics across the Internet spent 2023 and 2024 drawing attention to the long-running show's creative renaissance. As surprising as it may seem, The Simpsons It's good again.
While The Simpsons never gets old, the show's style and tone have changed over the years. From its darkest and most cynical early seasons, to its incomparable Golden Age, to the show's arrogantly wacky final years, The Simpsons went through several distinct stages. Although the show is now nowhere near as grounded as The Simpsons' first holiday episodes, season 36 Christmas special “O C'Mon All Ye Faithful” proves The Simpsons is firing on all cylinders creatively. This ambitious double-sized holiday outing centers on British mentalist Derren Brown's attempts to spread Christmas cheer among the stern populace of Springfield.
How The Simpsons Brings Homer and Ralph Together for Their New Holiday Special
Ralph is an elf who helps Homer in his job as Santa Claus of Springfield.
Through complicated plot mechanics, Brown ends up accidentally convincing Homer that he is secretly Santa Claus when he tries to prove that Homer is not a desperate gift giver. Homer's adventures as Santa Claus have him teaming up with Ralph Wiggumwho tells him that he felt a calling to become Homer's elf sidekick. In retrospect, it's hard to believe that previous episodes of The Simpsons I didn't trust this duo more often. Ralph and Homer prove they are a perfect couple, while Chief Wiggum's impressionable son follows Homer's stupid but well-intentioned attempts to save Springfield Christmas.
Homer's stupidity seems downright ingenious compared to Ralph's unhappiness, but both characters are so cute that it's hard not to root for them.
While there are plenty of callbacks to the show's previous Christmas episodes in The Simpsons Season 36's holiday special, the dynamic of this pairing proves to be one of the best things about “O C'Mon All Ye Faithful.” Homer's stupidity seems downright ingenious compared to Ralph's unhappiness, but both characters are so cute that it's hard not to root for them to succeed. Homer and Ralph really want to rekindle the town's love for Christmas, although their attempts lead them to crash a sleigh full of presents into Moe's Tavern and get Homer arrested for breaking into Rainier Wolfcastle's house.
Homer and Ralph are a perfect match (one that The Simpsons rarely use)
Homer and Ralph's shared dark intelligence makes them a dynamic duo
The two complement each other perfectly, with Homer finally getting to play the smart straight man to someone else's stupid funny man instead of vice versa. This makes the relative lack of team-ups over the years all the more surprising, as seeing Homer act as a comedic foil is always appealing. The Simpsons Season 36's big changes to the series' status quo mean this shouldn't come as a complete surprise, but it's a fun reinvention of the series' antihero and one that forces him to act as an authority for the first time.
Instead of Homer taking action and Marge controlling him, viewers see Homer try to restrain Ralph's crazy actions, while his own plans prove little less foolish. Ralph stealing Homer's car to escape the police and breaking Homer out of prison by sticking his head through the bars are the kind of silly, cartoonish scrapes that The Simpsons rarely gives in. Ralph and Homer's partnership allows The Simpsons to focus on pure slapstick silliness during its subplotwhich contrasts perfectly with the special's subdued and surprisingly emotional main plot about Ned Flander's crisis of faith.
How Ralph Disappeared From The Simpsons Spotlight
Ralph's role on The Simpsons declined after his first leading roles
More than anything, the lack of a significant Ralph/Homer team-up before this could be argued to be a result of Ralph's relative lack of importance in the later seasons of The Simpsons. Ralph headlined a few episodes of his own in the show's Golden Age, from Season 4, Episode 15, “I Love Lisa,” through Season 9, Episode 18, “This Little Wiggy.” These outings never changed Ralph's troubling obscurity, but they treated him as a well-rounded character with unique emotions and motivations.
The worst episodes of The Simpsons proved that the series stopped focusing so much on the character and started prioritizing pure nonsense.
Unfortunately, the series sidelined Ralph over the decades, and he became more of a joke as the series entered its teen season. Some of the worst episodes of The Simpsons proved that the series stopped focusing so much on the character and started prioritizing pure madness over emotion. This could explain how Ralph ended up drinking so much water that he exploded in Season 30 Episode 17, “E My Sports,” just because The Simpsons to never address this incident again. Happily, The Simpsons season 36 toned down this nonsense and, as a result, improved Ralph's role.
Sources: Vulture
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