Homer Simpson is a Millennial (Now) 

This video is a sequel to my Simpsons Past and Present Timeline videos. Except with more existential dread. 😉 I had always wanted to do a follow-up and figured 2023 was a good time to do it, since it lines up weirdly now with Lisa's First Word. There is something deep inside me that cringes a little when Homer and Marge are doing contemporary stuff like having RU-vid channels and stuff like that. Where I kinda miss them just being out-of-touch boomers. So I figured this topic would be a good way to explore how weird things have become after 30+ years of a floating timeline.

In a few years Homer is going to be younger than The Simpsons.

It’s so bizarre that at one point Bart was characterized as a rebel by listening to music that Homer now gets nostalgic for

The fact that Bart was originally born in the 70s but the show is old enough that now he was born after Gangnam Style is existential crisis inducing

Homer can't be a Millennial, he has a job and owns a house.

As a member of Gen Z I can’t wait to see Homer flashback episodes where he plays Club Penguin as a child

the idea of Homer someday being a Zoomer is the scariest thing in the world to me.

The problem is the show still isn't built like a modern millennial life. He's still got the trappings of a boomer, meaning the 4 bedroom two-story house and a wife and kids in a nice suburb on a single income without a college degree. He works at a nuclear plant and spends his evenings in a bar. All the rhythms of the story remain locked in the late 1980s but they keep trying to staple the modern era on top of it, and it ends up just being REALLY incongruous. You can't take a guy like Homer and just say he listened to Smashing Pumpkins in high school and likes video games and boom he's a millennial. This is why the show feels so unnatural. It has the entire structure of its origins as a sendup of old-fashioned sitcoms but they keep trying to awkwardly force modernity into it. Ugh and ugh again.

Becoming Homer is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you'll only become him if you think you'll become him.

Homer Simpson is married, has three kids, owns a two story house with like five bedrooms, owns two cars, has no student debt, and can pay for all of this with a job that requires no qualifications... How can he be a millenial?

If he aged continuously since the Tracey Ullman shorts, Homer would now be 75.

The Simpsons should do an episode where the original characters had aged realistically through the years. An elderly Homer and Marge with their middle-aged kids. Kind of like a peek into an alternate timeline where, in addition to being revolutionary in its own right, the show had also pioneered this Bojack-esque continuity for the characters. No whacky future jokes, no scfi nonsense, just what it would look like if these characters were allowed to grow up and grow old.

Mr Burns is the only character you can keep in a floating timeline as he being born in the 19th century was already pretty far fetched for someone alive in 1989. It's supposed to be silly.

Homer can't be a millenial, he has a two story house, two cars, a wife, 3 kids and a stable job that can actually pay the bills on a single income. I have yet to meet anyone my age living that dream.

When the Simpsons launched I was younger than Bart I am now older than Homer Dear god

I remember thinking it was cool when I reached Bart's age as a kid. I had a very different reaction to reaching Homer's.

It's extremely wierd to think how much of a missed opportunity the Simpsons were in hindsight to create the first generation long serialized media. Imagine what could have been if everyone would have aged up with time, the character development would have accumulated over the years, we would have seen Bart, Lisa and Maggie age through the years to become parents themselves to new characters that would fill the same space as them do now. Sure it's unlikely that show would have maintained itself in the air for so long without pause but if it was it would have been an amazingly unique media impossible to reproduce because every new season and every advancement was a product of it's time in the context of it's story.

As a later millennial, I've got less than a decade until Homer catches up to me. Can't wait for an episode about a young Homer going to see The Phantom Menace in theatres with Abe.

Homer Simpson being a millennial like me but also the show not existing when I was born is all stages of grief at once.

The same thought occurs when you read modern Archie digests that include stories from anytime between now and the 1940s. This teenage boy and his teenage friends have been up to their wacky hijinks for almost 100 years now. And I can even recall stories where Archie talks to his grandfather who tells stories that are *basically the same stories as Young Archie was involved in*. It's nuts.

When the "Homer Creates Grunge" episode came out I joked about how a future episode will re-reboot the timeline so Homer starts My Chemical Romance, look at where we are now

Born late enough to be Bart's age and born early enough to be Homer's age. I'm excited for Grandpa to start talking about Elon Musk like it was the old days.

the idea of homer being a millenial sends chills down my spine. also, seeing this video made me realise that homer's birth year used to be the same as my dad's. huh.

As someone on the oldest end of gen z, I can safely say I have a few years until Homer catches up to me, but I've always found it odd looking at myself compared to Lisa with this floating timeline. I first got into The Simpsons when I was around 7-8 years old, relating to Lisa, and the peak of my childhood fandom was in the year 2010. This also happened to be the far-off future year Lisa's Wedding is set in. Around middle school I gradually lost interest in modern Simpsons, before returning to the show around 2019, and I suddenly realized Lisa would not have been born yet in 2010. In terms of continuity, I oddly enough think one of the characters most impacted by this timeline shift is Todd Flanders. Todd has gradually been made younger throughout the show (one being described as Bart's age, welcoming the Simpsons to the neighborhood before Lisa is born, then in a recent flashback being born after Lisa with the help of Homer and a RU-vid tutorial). This would make Todd one of the youngest characters with defined memories, and the one who is by definition retconned most often by the natural progression of time. I never noticed this until the recent episode where he has a dream and forgets what Maude looked like, leading him to question his faith. We never spend any time hearing Todd's inner world, but this detail made me immediately empathize with him. Maude was killed over two decades ago, but Todd is only seven years old. He's never able to grow past this grief, and that quietly makes him one of the most tragic Simpsons characters, or at least one of the ones most screwed over by the selective continuity.

At this point, I think Krusty might be the only actual boomer on the show. He is consistently portrayed, even now in the 2020's, as having been been an adult in the 1960's/70's (his show celebrating it's 50'th anniversay in an episode a few years back, marking Krusty as being in at least his 70's). I kinda love that about him; he is this super old hack from a bygone era that was fresh and with it half a lifetime ago, but has since just been doing the exact same thing for decades upon decades without any ambition or creativity. Reminds me of some 60's/70's rock bands to be honest. Mr Burns is another character that is kind of allowed to remain in his original generation, since he STILL seem to recall things from either the late 1800's or the earliest 1900's. Of course most of his known history dates back to around WWII, which actually makes sense even if we consider him to be one of the characters with a "Fixed" age who changes generation as time moves forward; this being since his canonical age was set all the way back in the 1990's to be as high as 104, meaning that unlike Grampa and other elderly coots, he even from this fixed age point of view belongs to the generation that were adults during WWII. Burns may or may not belong to the lost generation anymore, but he at even his very youngest still belongs to the greatest generation. Flanders is another interesting case, perhapes the most convoluted one of all. In the early seasons we asumed him to be around 35-40 year of age, and he was shown as a boomer having been a child in the 60's. Then in season 10 he was revealed to be 60 years old, which didnt make sense with his fralhbacks at the time sine him being 60 in 1999 would mean he was born all the way back in the 1930's. But then as the show kept going, him being 60 actually ended up SAVING his backstory as having grown up in the 1960's; by virtue of being stated to be 60 he could remain a boomer while Homer became a gen X-er. However, now in 2023, Flanders being 60 has finally pushed him out of the boomer generation and into being a gen X-er, born in 1963. He can still keep part of his childhood in the 1960's however... for now. It's amazing how before Flander was revelaed to be 60 his 1960's childhood made sense, then when he was first revealed to be 60 this made him too old for his established backstory, then it made him just old enough for that backstory once AGAIN, and now it will soon make him too young for that backstory. Holy shit.

Only 10-20 more years and Homer and Marge will be old enough, to have fond memories of watching the same cartoons, I enjoyed watching in the 2000s and 2010s

With how long Simpsons will clearly be dragged on for, Homer becoming a Zoomer is inevitable. At least seeing him playing Minecraft will be pretty funny

Captain America has pretty much the ideal approach to a floating timeline - with his backstory staying in the same historical moment forever, so that the only thing that needs to be retconned is how long he was frozen. Actually, even the Simpsons itself sorta follows that approach with Grandpa Simpson, I guess because they don't mind making him extremely old but do mind it for Marge and Homer.

I actually think its fascinating to see a show go on for so long that it begins to cannibalize itself in order to stay relevant and on the air. This couldnt have happened on purpose and that makes it interesting in my opinion

The Year is 2024, the Simpsons releases an episode where Homer remembers when he was 8years old watching his favorite adult animated sitcom in the mid 1990s & lements on how long it's been going on & it's decline in quality

"I used to be with it. Then they changed what 'it' was, and what I was with wasn't it, and what is it seems weird and scary. It'll happen to you." - Grandpa Simpson

The characters of Scooby Doo gained life in 1969. They were based on school-kid archetypes from the 50s, that the writers would likely have been familiar with. As the years and decades passed, that part of their context inevitably ceased to be, and the characters became their own context. Similarly, I think it's worth looking at the Simpsons in that light, as characters that have existed for so long that they become their own context. Things happen when characters endure. Weird things, sometimes. Not necessarily bad things, though.

That whole 'Homer is coming for all of us' monologue towards the end was 10/10.

Homer Simpson being my age kinda makes me wanna die. Like holy shit, Frank Grimes had it made with his apartment between two bowling alleys.

As I’ve grown closer in age to Home my existential dread has also grown. He’s done so much more than I have in my 32 years.

"AND IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!!!" -Abraham Simpson

I guarantee if we had a Grandpa Homer at this point people would be so much more in love with the show. Imagine if the Simpsons actually aged with us it would be a true cultural reflection

It always blows my mind that I'm now closer to Homer's age than Bart's and seeing the shift in the show to reflect that is alienating yet amazing. I fell out from watching the show years ago (I still catch the occasional Tree House of Horror eps) but seeing this show go on shows how much staying power and relatability these characters have. Imagine Homer explaining punk emo to the kids in the back seat would be amazing.

At this point, i wouldn't mind the show just outright throwing continuity out of the window and instead just doing "what if" scenarios from now on. Those examples have been most of the strongest episodes of the past decade imo.

This is one of your best videos so far. Genuinely took me a minute to comprehend that, with enough time, Homer could be reminiscing on stuff during my childhood... Insane.

I love that The Simpsons and The Punisher share the exact same plot contrievance - though for a while, The Punisher had two running comics, one where he's his original Vietnam War veteran and actually ages, and one where the floating timeline made him an implied veteran of one of the US' many middle-eastern wars.

I think the floating timeline has its issues, but when you remember that it's a shifting and changing writer's room, it makes more sense to do it that way. Writers who grew up in the 90s are going to find it more difficult to joke about stuff from the past like Vietnam because it's a distant event to them. Sure, some of them probably have some idea of what the Vietnam war was about from other media, or the internet, but they have less of a connection to it so it's more difficult to make a good joke out of that.

This got me curious.. so I posted a poll asking if people prefer when cartoon sitcom characters age or not 😄 So far, it's actually pretty close to 50/50 results.

No way, man. We're gonna be younger than Homer forever! Forever! Forever.... forever... forever...

Honestly, I wish the Simpsons writers would take the opportunity and make an episode that is centered around the entire timeline. Maybe showing there's different universes in which the Simpsons always appear during each era of human history, including caveman times and the middle ages and whatnot. That'd be genuinely fascinating to see, and it wouldn't devalue any of these stories either.

Imagine the Simpsons goes long enough and he becomes a gen z

Oh, god. When this show started I was Maggie's age, now I'm almost Homer's age. And when I'm Grampa's age, it will still be here.

Good Lord, this makes me feel old. Superb job on the video though, this was absolutely fascinating especially for someone who doesn't watch modern-day Simpsons - I had no idea the timeline had floated this far forward.

In 20 years, fans who related to bart in the 90s will relate to grandpa simpson

Just wait till a decade or so from now when they portray Homer as a zoomer.

For a show that's been on so long (and is still going), and is status quo style, there really is no other option than this floating timeline.

As a 38 year old, this video really hits hard, because it's spot on. When I was a kid, growing up during the classic era, I related to all of the kids and their likes, dislikes, etc, and my parents were in the same timeline as Boomer Homer and Marge, graduating high school in the 70s, so they related to them so well... Now in the present day, I find myself relating more to Homer and Marge's view on the world, since I'm just about Homer's age now, and can't relate at all to Bart and Lisa's view on the world. It's such a wild, wacky feeling that only this show can make you feel!

WELP. Pack it in folks, we had a good run. I felt my bones turning to dust as I watched this video.

If this pattern of time skips continues, then we'll probably get a Gen Alpha Homer in like 10 years.

Homer Simpson is LITERALLY 1984 🤯😱

bro, in 26 years, homer will be gen alpha. 💀💀💀

If we respect the original timelines, the animated dads' generations are: Baby boomer - Homer Simpson Gen X - Bob Belcher Bandit - Millennial

You can't get away from the dreaded Simpsons Timeline eh? 😂

You are the GOAT youtuber Jims, youre laid back but thorough style is so easy yet engaging to watch. Keep on killing it G.

My personal explanation for the Age Mystery is that both Homer and Marge are actually in their late 60s (67 if they were born in 1956 and were seniors in high school together since taking Marge to prom was part of The Way We Was) but since they're well into their Middle Age Crisis, they claim that they're "almost 40" or flat out 40 if asked. All the other adults their age know that's not true, but we know Homer can be really stubborn as well as imaginative, so if pressed by his kids, he concocts wild stories of his youth in the 1980s and 1990s that totally happened, no really stop laughing. My maternal grandmother did this all the time so it's not a new concept to me. (She never went so far as to make up stories about her childhood, but she did have a habit of claiming to be 40 for ten years before bumping up the age when she no longer felt she could convincingly pull off 40-- hell, the day she passed, no one knew for sure how old she really was or what year she was born because she hid it so well!) This of course doesn't explain why we never see Bart, Lisa, and Maggie age... unless they decide that when they finally end the show, they'll reveal in the last episode that the entire series was just a bunch of stories Adult Bart made up to entertain his kids, and everything exciting just so happened to occur while he was "10" except for flashback episodes about Grandpa Homer, Grandma Marge and Great-Grandpa Abe and Great-Grandma Mona or "flash-forward" episodes which would just be things happening at the current time-- unless they do a slightly different twist and have "flash-forward" episodes be flashbacks that Grandpa Bart is recounting to his grandkids.

You know what's even weirder if bart and lisa were born in the 80's, they would be in their 40's💀💀💀 Feeling old yet

I think there was a *bit* of a change of strategy. As you pointed out Homer did very slowly age initially but froze about season 10/11. I really think there was a conscious choice to do the shifting timeline in a more absurd way once it became a problem that only became glaringly apparent around that time. While I can't exactly blame them for that choice I do love to envision them using another element of the early logic of the show which also seemed to toy with super slowly aging up the characters. If around season 10 they made the choice to age them up a year every 3 or 4 years let's say, the differences would be less extreme and glaring. It would minimize how often they had to consider redesigning the characters while still allowing to fuzz over the time shift more easily. It allows to keep their episodic, not super canon worrying attitude while not outright shocking their original fanbase. If this had been followed Bart would be 16-18 now with hundreds of jr high and high school stories having been or being lived by him and Lisa and they'd have a new Bart/Lisa previous age character in Maggie who they could've slowly developed a personality for, as well as creating some new characters her own age to breathe some fresh air into the show. Homer would be in his mid-late 40's and it would've barely changed his or Marge's characters at all. This allows some dynamism while preserving some status quo. This would've greatly increased also the detachment a lot of older viewers feel with the show IMO as they'd more easily process that they're watching a different show. Just overall I really think this would've given them a lot to work with but hindsight is 20/20 and also I doubt they wanted to rock the cash cows boat. Of course that's not what they did. But can they recover from it? If I was put in charge of the Simpsons now but also not allowed to bring it to a graceful end over the course of a season, I'd advocate a time skip and suggest we keep time skipping every few years until we get current or the show ends. Basically a more shocking version of the previous strategy. If I was in charge of the whole franchise I'd gracefully end The Simpsons but try to simultaneously develop a sequel show. I personally would like an "alternate timeline" one that pretends they started aging after season 11 so a modern whole series written by younger people with Bart being a millennial stuck in a dead end job etc, and probably Lisa and her kids being the family its centered around, though making it a more ensemble cast that also focuses on the aging Homer/Marge and the struggling Uncle Bart. I know probably some people hate that but we gotta be honest with The Simpsons having already gone well past its useful cultural statement which was made to gen x and millennials. It can still continue making a modern statement to them and more recent generations but it'd have to be adjusted IMO to acknowledge the shows history and stop just rehashing the same exact things. I have long felt that a portion of the "Simpsons is terrible now" is that people see this uncanny lack of change in the characters juxtaposed with the difference in style and pop culture reference.

It is my head-canon that every season is an alternate universe and that certain events happened in all of them, just at different times.

Watching The Simpsons nowadays really fills you with existential dread. Ironically, by them ignoring (or playing fast and loose) with the passage of time it's inevitably hits you like a ton of bricks.

The prom being a nexus point can easily be explained as a 70's themed prom instead of the prom taking place in the 70's.

Homer will always be a child of the 60's and or 70's. I refuse to accept any other reality

Oh man, seeing the Bojack mention has me wanting to hear some of TheRealJims's opinions on that show.

15:27 you should be extremely proud of this moment, this is a really really good video. I wish they would let you write an episode you really comprehend shit in a way the new writers don’t.

The point about Not It bringing it back to Gen X is interesting. Makes me think about the divide between the old guard Al Jean helmed episodes and the more "current" Matt Selman helmed ones, almost as if they're two different floating timelines.

I think eventually Grandpa and Moanas timeline has to break if the Simpsons keeps floating. Abe served in the western front in the 40s, got married in the 50s and fathered Homer/lost Moana in the 60s. It’s cool that the Simpsons has maintained a continuity for 30 years, but This is fundamentally incompatible with the modern 90s flashbacks with Homer as a teen. Homers childhood under abe is clearly floating through the 90s getting close to the 2000s whilst Abe raising homer stays static in the 60s. Something has to give

I like your choice of the "Bart by the barrelful" shot to indicate how you've been shifting focus to the kids.

It is strange to see a show slowly morphing into a different timeline. It's like you said, normally a show airs, gets canceled, and then rebooted in 10 years. It feels more natural for that reboot to reference present things. You can separate the two shows. But in this case, it's like the ship paradox. Replacing pieces of a ship for years until you've replaced every single part of the ship. Is it the same ship? Or is it a new ship? If it's a new ship, when did it become a different ship? It still looks the same, but with new pieces.

One day Homer will be Generation Alpha

The moving time line makes him one. I still wont get over the episode when homer was in the 90s and invented grudge

I love how this went in a more positive direction. I USED to be negative on the floating timeline thing, but now i’m much better with it, and completely agree with what you said.

I think you got me into the Simpsons, I've been binging your videos and I think I've spent more time with them than the actual show

Honestly, I'd love an entire season where each episode takes place in sequential years starting from 1989 and having the characters age and change during that time. Thinking about it though, there wouldn't be enough episodes in a season to bring it up to the current day. And I doubt they'd want to rock the boat to that degree either.

What an horrific thought. And just before Halloween too

I might be wrong, but I feel like The Simpsons is the only TV show to achieve comic book levels of reconning.

Homer went from a boomer, to a Gen X and now to a millennial I am sort of excited to see Homer becoming a Zoomer and probably becoming hopeless or hate almost every single modern media lol

I have always viewed the Simpsons as a multiverse. Where each season (ish) or even episode represents a seperate universe. The Simpsons characters are just parallel versions of each other with slightly different back stories etc. The floating timeline is really just a representation of which universe (s) we are peering into.

Homer becoming a newgrounds meme in the Angry Dad episode is my personal timeline anchor to when the show takes place, not before or after, so I think these instances exist to resonate with the ever changing audience

Mutant Mayhem was really good and I liked it too! It was a fun new Ninja Turtles story and I liked how it combined old ideas with some new ideas. It also had a few 80s throwbacks! Great movie! Some reboots are better than others. Simpsons is an amazing show and I really like your videos too and I appreciate how you addressed this topic in a friendly way and gave some examples of how you think that the show is doing something that is good for the modern fans. Great work on this video. I watched the 80s chipmunks and the 2010s version on Nickelodeon and both were fun for me. I’m probably one of the rare people who can say that. I have seen both versions of Ducktales too and more than a few different Versions of Ninja Turtles in my lifetime. I like that these franchises still continue on today. Good job once again and I highly enjoy your videos!

Your use of Final Fantasy music is weirdly fitting! haha Great vid 😀

Simpsons question/mystery- Who has done the most crimes in the show? Snake, Homer, Bart, Mr. Burns, Moe, Side Show Bob, Krusty the Clown, one of the bullies,The Mafia, or someone else I didn't think of. Who is Springfield's most wanted character?

Also, Homer being 39 also brings up weird continuity that has nothing to do with the current year. Homer and Marge supposedly had Bart shortly after graduating high school. If Bart is 10, that would've made him 29 when he had Bart. Unless Homer repeated grades a lot...

That's actually a really fresh and nice outlook on the whole series

you're one of the most important scholars working in the simpsons studies today, thank you therealjims

Really cool channel, most of Simpson's themed channel i see around go on about crazy theories or have long form video with no structure: You do decently long videos but that make sense, are really informed and also stick to information that is cool and hidden not because "the Simpson's are a metaphor for the 7 deadly sins" or whatever, but because they are so spread out and you do this awesome job of stitching together stores that aren't really understandable for the average simpson enjoyer (me) who doesn't like to watch much Simpson's past what came out during my childhood

Somehow, this is because of the toaster.

Jims, this was a very good, thought-provoking video. I'm honestly surprised by that. Thanks for posting it. Gave me something to think about for a while.

always nice to watch a new video from you, its calming! keep it going

it's always funny how you seem to bring up points the moment I start to think of them. At any rate, the way I would describe the general age/generation of Homer and marge is that they are the age to be the parents of their children.

The characters intrinsically work better in the earlier timelines. The problem with the floating timeline is you can shift the characters forward but not necessarily their values or characterizations. Homer and Marge, for example, are archetypal reflections of mid century American values. The humor comes from the juxtaposition of these figures in the ruder and unpolished age of the 1990’s. You can’t just push Marge and Homer into the 2020’s because their views and beliefs do not align with people in their “age group”. Yes, millennial housewives are a thing, but they don’t contextualize their life at home to be their “part” in a functioning society the way Marge does. Millennials don’t gauge their self worth based on their ability to be the “provider” for a wife and children the way Homer does. Its part of why the Simpsons talking about iphones or social media has this “how do you do, fellow kids?” vibe to it. It doesn’t feel like satire, it feels like the show is chasing/co-opting trends.

God, i always love how even keeled and wholesome ur vids are. Awesome stuff :)

Im scared for when homer starts having plotlines about getting his old ps2 back or being nostalgic for late 00s internet

I am completely fine with the sliding timeline approach. Especially as someone who's on the relatively younger side of the simpsons fans. I love seeing how the characters acted in different eras in time and doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. In fact, I LOVE the 90s show episode. I get why people hate that, but I think this is much more fun than sticking to what it was before.

Honestly, the section on reboots and properties being retooled through the generations just makes it more apparent to me that The Simpsons could really heavily benefit from just doing a formal reboot. The writing of the series has, in my mind at least, managed to improve since the Disney acquisition and it seems like the current production team is genuinely interested in exploring new ground with the existing cast, but I think is still being held back by the weight of what has come before in this series. Maude Flanders is a good example of this: As was touched on in earlier videos about her, it really feels like the writers have long viewed her death as a misstep and we've seen episodes over the past couple of seasons that focus on the Simpsons/Flanders dynamic that are specifically set-up as flashbacks seemingly so they can include Maude in them. The production team has also been increasingly grappling with the reality of having to write around members of the original cast dying off: We've already lost a handful of secondary characters due to voice actor deaths and it's an inevitability that the voice actors for members of The Simpsons family are eventually going to pass. I think doing a formalized reboot of the series would end up solving a lot of problems: The floating timeline is reset to square one, we're explicitly starting things over so the writers are free to reimagine existing characters in a way that can bring them more in-line with the modern day without having to worry about the audience feeling disconnected with what came before and it opens the doors to recast the entire show with new talent, no longer having to worry about continuing after an important voice actor dying.

I listened to and paid attention hard to this entire video and I plan to do the same thing again. Cause that was one of the most beautiful analysis videos I’ve ever heard. Let us celebrate and admire the Simpsons for how they can evolve and change, but remain the same people we know and love as they progress through the years. 🌟The Simpsons Forever🌟

Such a good video, made me appreciate that maybe the backstories having to change actually makes a point about the universitality of the characters rather than weakening them. Like how they can be inserted into any story for a history/ movie parody episode, the characters are so defined in their own personalities that when inserted into any context as long as the writing is strong the characters feel true to it.