The best episodes of The Simpsons transcend the pop culture moment in which they were made to deliver something evergreen. The high points -- particularly from earlier seasons -- stand out all the more because they might have been made yesterday. It's helped the series endure beyond the passing foibles it so often mocks and maintain a bright future.
Season 7, Episode 24, "Homerpalooza" is the ideal example. It premiered on May 19, 1996 and took direct aim at the burgeoning culture of a then-youthful Generation X. Many of its jokes were specific to that time and place, which would have badly dated it in other circumstances. The episode escaped that trap with a brilliant bit of plotting: filtering everything through Homer's sudden midlife crisis and subsequent career change. What could have been an instantly disposable satire felt timeless as a result.
Homerpalooza Turned Homer Into a Rock Star
The episode started with Homer driving the kids to school and subjecting them to what Bart describes as "your stupid dinosaur bands" on the radio. His heyday came 20 years earlier in the equally dated mid-1970s and he was horrified to realize that pop culture had moved on. In an effort to reclaim his lost youth, Homer joined a rock festival called Hullabalooza. He was soon stopping cannonballs with his gut in between sets from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins and Cyprus Hill.
There was no shortage of easy targets for the episode among the music scene. That included "Homerpalooza" taking a number of hefty swipes at Gen-X's perceived surliness and detachment, as well as the corporate greed behind the real-life music festivals that Hullabalooza imitated. Had the script contented itself with low-hanging fruit, it likely wouldn't stand up 25 years later. But it didn't; instead, it kept the focus on Homer and his latest struggle. By putting Homer at its center, "Homerpalooza" provided context that helped it transcend its more disposable gags.
Homerpalooza's Central Joke Bridged the Generation Gap
"Homerpalooza" periodically returned to his teenage years -- making fun of 1970s absurdities along the way -- and mined a good deal of humor from the contrast between past and present. "I used to be 'with it,'" the younger version of Grampa Simpson complained. "But then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it,' and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me." As he warned Homer and Barney Gumble, "It'll happen to you."
The truth in Grandpa's words centered "Homerpalooza" around the generation gap, rather than one particular generation. That let it have its cake and eat it too as its pokes at the youth of the mid-1990s evolved into a more thoughtful analysis on the realities of growing older. With Gen X currently experiencing more or less exactly what Homer goes through in the episode, the sting lies less in the specific foibles of two decades ago than in suddenly feeling like yesterday's news.
Insight like that is what helped The Simpsons not only rise above other works of satire, but become a cultural force itself. "Homerpalooza" took the extra step to find something universal in its message, helping an episode mired in the moment prove just as insightful a quarter-century later. Like Grandpa says, it's a fact of life: Homer's dilemma is something everyone can identify with sooner or later.
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