Homer Simpson: everything about Springfield's patriarch

THE REFERENCE GUIDE

Homer Simpson: everything about Springfield's patriarch

A donut in one hand, a can of Duff in the other and thirty-seven seasons behind him: the complete file on the worst safety inspector in television history.

1987

First appearance, on 19 April, in the short "Good Night"

7-G

The sector of the plant he is supposed to monitor

188+

Jobs held over the first 400 episodes

2001

The year "D'oh!" entered the Oxford English Dictionary

Homer Jay Simpson should never have existed. In 1987, Matt Groening had to deliver short films to James L. Brooks. Sitting in the lobby before the meeting, he realised that animating his comic strip Life in Hell would force him to give up the rights to it: he scribbled a replacement yellow family. The father was given his own father's name, Homer. Thirty-seven seasons later, that doodle is one of the best-known characters on the planet.

On paper, he ticks every box of the loser: an official IQ of 55, a doughnut instead of breakfast, a job as safety inspector at a nuclear plant he never inspects. Except that Homer is never reducible to that. He sells his soul for a pastry, goes into orbit, comes back, and weeps in front of his daughter. It is that split that makes him immortal.

This page gathers everything: his creation, sector 7-G, his family, his obsessions, his catchphrases, his one hundred and eighty-eight jobs, his landmark episodes and his legacy — dictionary included. Dates, seasons and titles have been checked one by one, because a guide that gets things wrong is no use to anyone. Settle into the sofa, we are taking off.

📋 Contents

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Homer and the five characters who define him ☢️ The nuclear plant and the famous sector 7-G 🍩 Donuts, Duff, lobster: the inventory of obsessions 💬 "D'oh!", "T'oh!" and the rest of the vocabulary 🧰 The one hundred and eighty-eight jobs of Homer Simpson 📺 Nine episodes to understand Homer 🏆 The legacy: dictionary, star, Emmy and French version

THE INNER CIRCLE

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Homer and the five characters who define him

Six detailed profiles, built on exactly the same reading grid.

The complete Simpson family, around Homer

You cannot understand Homer by looking at him alone. He exists only through friction: Marge who endures him, Bart who provokes him, Lisa who outstrips him, Abraham who failed him, Burns who never remembers his name. Here are six profiles built on the same grid — origins, distinguishing features, landmark episodes, legacy and French voice.

Homer Simpson, safety inspector for sector 7-G

THE INSPECTOR WHO INSPECTS NOTHING

Homer Jay Simpson

safety inspector, sector 7-G

1st appearance19 April 1987

French voicePhilippe Peythieu

Official IQ55

The "J" is a nod to the heroes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, whose initial already saluted their creator Jay Ward. Husband of Marge, father of Bart, Lisa and Maggie, safety inspector in sector 7-G since the third episode. An official IQ of 55 and, more than eight hundred episodes later, still the engine of the programme.

Origins & creation

Matt Groening drew the family in 1987 in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office: adapting Life in Hell would have forced him to give up the rights to it. He named the father after his own, Homer Groening. First appearance on 19 April 1987 in the short "Good Night". He hid his initials in the drawing: the hair forms an M, the ear a G.

Distinguishing features

Three engines: greed, laziness and a family love that always overflows at the worst possible moment. Homer sells his soul for a donut, then works nights at the Kwik-E-Mart to give his daughter a pony. His IQ of 55 is not an insult from the writers, it is a device: the dumber he is, the harder his bursts of tenderness land.

Landmark episodes

"Homer's Odyssey" (season 1) tells how he lands the job of safety inspector. "Last Exit to Springfield" (season 4) turns him into a union leader out of love for Lisa's braces. "Deep Space Homer" (season 5) sends him into orbit with a packet of crisps. "Homer's Enemy" (season 8) asks what an ordinary man would make of him.

Legacy & French voice

"Doh!" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001, as an expression of frustration at a stupid thing one has just done. In France, Philippe Peythieu has voiced Homer since 1990; he says he read the script's "D'oh!" out loud pronouncing it with a T, and that "T'oh!" stayed on air. He also voices Abraham and Otto.

THE BACKBONE OF THE HOUSEHOLD

Marge Simpson

née Marjorie Bouvier, Homer's wife

1st appearance19 April 1987

French voiceVéronique Augereau

Meets Homer1974, at high school

Marjorie Bouvier by her maiden name: blue beehive, husky voice, geological patience. She is the only one who sees in Homer something other than dead weight, and the only one able to get him back on his feet at the end of every episode. Without her, the house on Evergreen Terrace would have burned down long ago.

Origins & creation

Marge appears in the very first short film of 19 April 1987, alongside Homer and the three children. Groening named the family after his own: his father Homer, his mother Margaret known as Marge, his sisters Lisa and Maggie. Only Bart is invented, in place of Matt himself.

Distinguishing features

A superhuman tolerance, doubled with a warning growl that signals the line has just been crossed. Marge is no ornament: the show has had her work several jobs and has given her many whole episodes. But her structural role lies elsewhere: she is the one who decides, at the end, to forgive. Without that forgiveness, the show stops dead.

Landmark episodes

"The Way We Was" (season 2) recounts their first meeting in 1974: shared detention at high school, him for skipping class to smoke in the toilets, her for burning a bra at a feminist rally. "The Last Temptation of Homer" (season 5) puts his faithfulness to the test against Mindy Simmons, voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer.

Legacy & French voice

Véronique Augereau has voiced Marge in the French version since the beginning, as well as her sisters Patty and Selma and her mother Jacqueline Bouvier. The story is too good to be invented: she met Philippe Peythieu, the voice of Homer, on the show's dubbing set, and they married in 2001.

THE BRAT WHO BECAME AN ANAGRAM

Bart Simpson

alias Bartholomew JoJo Simpson

1st appearance19 April 1987

Current French voiceNathalie Bienaimé

Age10 years old

Bartholomew JoJo Simpson: ten years old for ever, slingshot in his pocket and a blackboard to fill. During the early seasons he is the star of the programme, to the point where his T-shirts flood the playgrounds. Then the centre of gravity slides towards his father. What remains between them is the most violent and the most tender relationship in the show.

Origins & creation

It is the only first name Groening did not take from his own family: Bart occupies the place the cartoonist should have held, and his name is an anagram of brat. Present from the first short of 1987, he becomes so popular that in the early 1990s some American schools ban his T-shirts.

Distinguishing features

The slingshot, the skateboard, the blackboard punishment in the credits — rewritten for every episode — and a principled insolence. Facing Homer, he triggers the programme's most famous gesture: the strangling, preceded by the famous "Why you little!". A gag inherited from the classic cartoon, which the writers eventually turned against themselves.

Landmark episodes

In "Homer's Odyssey" (season 1), it is Bart who distracts his father during the school visit to the plant: Homer rams his electric cart into a cooling duct and gets fired. In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" (season 5), Bart and Lisa dig up the record of their father's band at a garage sale.

Legacy & French voice

In France, Bart has had two voices: Joëlle Guigui from the first season to season 22, then Nathalie Bienaimé, who replaces her permanently from season 23. As in the original version, where Nancy Cartwright has held the role from the start, it is a woman who lends her voice to a ten-year-old boy.

THE SAXOPHONE AGAINST THE DONUT

Lisa Simpson

eight years old, saxophonist and vegetarian

1st appearance19 April 1987

French voiceAurélia Bruno

Instrumentsaxophone

Eight years old, vegetarian, saxophonist, extraordinary intelligence and permanent indignation. Lisa is the exact opposite of her father, and that is precisely why she is his best mirror. The Homer-Lisa episodes form a sub-genre: they are the ones critics cite when they want to prove the show has a heart.

Origins & creation

Named after one of Matt Groening's sisters, she is present from the first short film of 1987. At the start she is a boisterous little girl, in the same register as Bart. Her mutation into the family's intellectual happens gradually, as the writers discover the comic potential of the head-on clash with Homer.

Distinguishing features

The saxophone, the pearl necklace, the moral conscience of Springfield. Lisa is right nearly all the time, and the town proves her wrong nearly all the time: that is the engine of her episodes. Facing Homer, she is the only one whose judgement really counts in his eyes, and therefore the only one able to hurt him.

Landmark episodes

"Lisa's Pony" (season 3): Homer goes into debt to give her a mount, then works nights on the till at the Kwik-E-Mart — Dan Castellaneta won an Emmy for that episode. "Last Exit to Springfield" (season 4) sees him take the head of the union because his daughter needs braces. "HOMR" (season 12) gives them a conversation as equals.

Legacy & French voice

Aurélia Bruno voices Lisa in the French version — and, in the same show, Maggie and Milhouse Van Houten. That is the principle of the French dub of The Simpsons: a tight team of eight main actors, four men and four women, shares out most of Springfield's residents.

Abraham Simpson, Homer's father, resident of the retirement home

THE FATHER LEFT IN THE HOME

Abraham "Grampa" Simpson

alias Grampa, Homer's father

1st appearanceSeason 1

French voicePhilippe Peythieu

Residenceretirement home

A veteran, a rambler, a resident of the Springfield retirement home. Abraham is Homer's bad conscience: the permanent reminder that a son can abandon his father, and that this son is him. Their relationship is one of the rare genuinely serious through-lines in a programme that never takes itself seriously for long.

Origins & creation

Abraham arrives in the first season as a supporting character, then gains substance when the writers realise that Homer's mediocrity benefits from having an origin. In the original version, Dan Castellaneta voices him as well as Homer himself: the same actor therefore plays father and son in the same scene.

Distinguishing features

The letters of complaint, the war stories that never end, the systematic "in my day". Grampa piles up every tic of the old man nobody listens to any more, but the show offers him a way out: he knows things nobody else knows, starting with what happened to Homer's mother.

Landmark episodes

"Mother Simpson" (season 7) reveals that Abraham let his son believe for twenty-six years that Mona was dead. "Homer the Great" (season 6) gets Homer into the Stonecutters thanks to his father's membership of the lodge. Abraham holds half of his son's secrets.

Legacy & French voice

In France, Philippe Peythieu voices Abraham as well as Homer. From one line to the next, the actor therefore goes from son to father: the same voice, pushed into the low and quavering range. It is the classic example of what the French dub of The Simpsons asks of its actors — a catalogue of timbres rather than a single role.

Mr. Burns, the owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant

THE BOSS WHO NEVER REMEMBERS HIS NAME

Charles Montgomery Burns

owner of the nuclear power plant

1st appearanceSeason 1

Current French voiceXavier Fagnon

AssistantWaylon Smithers

Owner of the nuclear power plant, a nearly hundred-year-old billionaire, capable of the worst financial manoeuvres but not of opening a bottle of water. Burns has been Homer's employer since the third episode, and the gag comes down to one sentence: after more than eight hundred episodes, he still does not know what his safety inspector is called.

Origins & creation

Burns is born with the plant, in the early seasons, as a figure of predatory capitalism. His running gag — "Smithers, who is that man?" — settles in very early. He is also the one who, in the flashback of "I Married Marge" (season 3), hires Homer on a single argument: total, unfailing servility.

Distinguishing features

The steepled fingers, the "Excellent" hissed through his teeth, his assistant Waylon Smithers in permanent devotion, the teddy bear Bobo, and an age that varies according to the needs of the script. Burns is the only character the show presents as genuinely evil: the rest of Springfield is stupid, he is wicked.

Landmark episodes

"Last Exit to Springfield" (season 4) sets him against Homer turned union boss, in a negotiation that becomes a classic showdown. "Homer's Enemy" (season 8) shows the extent to which his plant runs in defiance of all industrial logic. And the riddle "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" kept America in suspense between seasons 6 and 7.

Legacy & French voice

Three actors have succeeded one another on Burns in the French version: Michel Modo from seasons 1 to 18, then Gérard Rinaldi until season 22, then Xavier Fagnon from season 23. Fagnon inherited a good part of the male cast — Krusty, Skinner, Wiggum, Kent Brockman.

AT THE OFFICE

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The nuclear plant and the famous sector 7-G

The most badly filled workstation in the history of fiction.

The Springfield nuclear power plant, Homer's employer

Homer has occupied the same desk since the third episode. Job title: safety inspector, sector 7-G, Springfield nuclear power plant. Actual mission: sleeping, eating and causing leaks. The joke has worked for thirty-seven years because it is structural — the worst imaginable employee occupies precisely the post where incompetence costs the most. Let's take the tour.

The control room of the Springfield nuclear power plant

Sector 7-G

THE PROFESSIONAL ADDRESS OF A DISASTER

A console covered in unidentified buttons, a swivel chair and a doughnut sitting on the desk. Sector 7-G has never been given the slightest serious technical definition, and that is deliberate: the vaguer the function stays, the more Homer's incompetence can spread out without limit.

Mr. Burns contemplates Springfield, in the episode where Homer becomes safety inspector

The post of safety inspector

A JOB TITLE, NO SKILLS

In "Homer's Odyssey" (season 1), Homer is fired after ramming an electric cart into a cooling duct. He then becomes a safety campaigner, and goes after the plant itself. Mr. Burns buys social peace by giving him the inspector's job, pay rise included.

Homer and Marge in the episode that recounts his hiring at the plant

The very first day

SERVILITY AS A COVER LETTER

"I Married Marge" (season 3) recounts how Homer landed his very first job at the plant, long before the inspector's post. Marge is pregnant with Bart, he has not a penny: he forces his way into Burns' office and promises him unfailing obedience. Hired on the spot.

Waylon Smithers

THE FILTER BETWEEN HOMER AND THE BOSS

Assistant, confidant and lovesick admirer of Mr. Burns, Smithers is the one who has to remind his boss, episode after episode, of the identity of the employee in sector 7-G. His mental file on Homer is one of the programme's most effective running gags: he has classified them all.

Marge and the children in the episode where Homer returns to the plant for Maggie

The "Do It For Her" plaque

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SHOT IN THE SHOW

In "And Maggie Makes Three" (season 6), Burns has a humiliating plaque installed above Homer's workstation reminding him that he is here for ever. The camera pulls back in the final shot: Homer has covered it with photos of Maggie, and the message that remains legible becomes "Do It For Her".

Frank Grimes

THE MAN WHO DARED LOOK HOMER IN THE FACE

Hired in season 8, Frank Grimes is a hard worker who won everything by the sweat of his brow, and who discovers, appalled, that Homer has a house, a family and a job without ever having done anything. His revolt ends in an electrocution.

Homer facing Mr. Burns during the plant strike

The strike

HOMER, UNION LEADER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

When management scraps the dental cover, Homer realises that Lisa's braces will be at his expense. He takes the head of the union, confronts Burns and gets his way without ever understanding a single word of the file. "Last Exit to Springfield" (season 4) is regularly cited as the show's best episode.

THE USER MANUAL

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Donuts, Duff, lobster: the inventory of obsessions

Six objects of desire that are enough, on their own, to write an episode.

Lard Lad Donuts, Springfield's doughnut shop

There is in Homer a very simple economy of immediate pleasure: what can be eaten, what can be drunk, and what you adopt before eating it anyway. The writers use it like a deck of cards. Put a doughnut in a shot and you have a gag; put two doughnuts and you have a plot. An inventory.

Homer and his pink iced doughnut covered in sprinkles

The doughnut

MMM… DONUTS

The absolute totem object: pink, iced, studded with sprinkles. It triggers the "Mmm…" which is, along with the "D'oh!", the character's other signature sound. The show pushes the gag to its logical conclusion in a Halloween segment: Homer sells his soul for a single doughnut, and hell inflicts a punishment on him in the shape of a pastry.

Duff beer

THE CAUSE AND THE SOLUTION

Duff is Springfield's official brand, served at Moe's and drunk by the litre at home. Homer owes it a good part of his catastrophic decisions, which he sums up in a formula that has become proverbial: alcohol is at once the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems.

Moe's Tavern

THE SECOND LIVING ROOM

A dark bar, warm beer, an embittered owner. Homer spends most of his free time there with Lenny, Carl and Barney. It is the place of bad ideas, stupid bets and drunken confidences, and the only place where he really talks. Moe Szyslak, for his part, takes it all without forgiving anything.

Pinchy

THE LOBSTER HE RAISED THEN ATE

In "Lisa Gets an 'A'" (season 10), Homer buys a tiny lobster to fatten it up, grows attached to it, gives it a name, bathes it and takes it for walks. The animal ends up accidentally boiled in its hot bath, and Homer eats it in tears while finding it delicious. The character captured in a single gag.

The Guatemalan insanity peppers

THE INNER JOURNEY

At the Springfield chilli cook-off, Homer swallows Chief Wiggum's Guatemalan peppers, so strong that he has to coat his mouth with wax. The show then tips into a hallucinated sequence in which a spirit-guide coyote, voiced by Johnny Cash, orders him to go and find his soulmate. Season 8, the programme's visual high point.

Bowling

THE ONLY DISCIPLINE HE EXCELS AT

Homer left the plant to work at a bowling alley, and he was genuinely happy there. It is also the only sport in which the show makes him truly gifted: in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (season 11), he bowls a perfect game, a proper 300, and becomes a local celebrity for the length of a news bulletin.

THE SOUNDTRACK

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"D'oh!", "T'oh!" and the rest of the vocabulary

Seven catchphrases and verbal tics, with their documented origin.

Homer speaks little and badly, but each of his tics has entered everyday language — literally, dictionary in hand. The French peculiarity is that we do not have the same ones: a script read-through at the casting gave France its version of the most famous cry on television. A short glossary, to complement the cult lines of The Simpsons.

"D'oh!"

THE IRRITATED GRUNT

In the scripts, the line is never written out. The writers simply type "(annoyed grunt)" and let Dan Castellaneta improvise. The actor took his inspiration from the Scottish actor Jimmy Finlayson, Laurel and Hardy's foil, who drew out a "d'ooooh" to avoid swearing on screen. Groening then asked him to shorten it.

Homer at the plant controls, in the episode where his name enters everyday language

Entry into the dictionary

AN OFFICIALLY APPROVED INTERJECTION

"Doh!" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001, after a first appearance in the New Oxford Dictionary of English in 1998. The official definition describes frustration at a situation that has gone wrong, or at a stupid thing one has just said or done. It would be hard to be more faithful to the character.

The Simpsons opening credits in a version dubbed abroad

"T'oh!"

THE ACCIDENT THAT BECAME THE FRENCH STANDARD

Philippe Peythieu says he discovered the "D'oh!" written in black and white in the script and pronounced it with a T. The version went down well and stuck. Ever since, millions of French-speaking viewers have associated Homer with a sound the original version never produced — and the actor has held the role without interruption since 1990.

"Woo-hoo!"

THE CRY OF VICTORY

The exact opposite of the "D'oh!": raw joy, often triggered by good news Homer has misunderstood. The cry has become inseparable from the character, to the point of punctuating all his scenes of triumph — triumphs which, nine times out of ten, turn against him within thirty seconds.

Homer strangling Bart, the gag that follows the famous line

"Why you little!"

THE FORMULA BEFORE THE STRANGLING

The phrase that precedes the gesture: Homer throws himself at Bart and strangles him. The gag is a direct inheritance from the cartoons of previous decades, but the show eventually turned it against itself by showing it for what it is — a conditioned, absurd reflex that Bart sometimes provokes on purpose.

"Oh pinaise!"

THE SWEAR WORD THAT ISN'T ONE

Another trademark of the French version: a polite exclamation of exasperation, halfway to a swallowed swear word. It belongs so completely to Homer in France that it serves as Philippe Peythieu's calling card whenever a media outlet invites him on. An adaptation that creates heritage rather than simply translating.

The TV Land accolade

SIXTH BEST LINE ON TELEVISION

In 2006, the American channel TV Land published a ranking of the hundred greatest catchphrases in television history. "D'oh!" appears there in sixth place — for a word that is not really one, and that has never been written as such in a single script.

THE LONGEST CV IN SPRINGFIELD

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The one hundred and eighty-eight jobs of Homer Simpson

Ten notable career changes, from snow plough to beer baron.

The nuclear plant, the starting point of all Homer's career changes

Across the first four hundred episodes, Homer has held more than one hundred and eighty-eight different jobs. The programme's unwritten rule is that he finds his chair in sector 7-G again at the end of every episode, without the slightest explanation. It is called the reset to the initial state. Here are ten career changes chosen from among Homer Simpson's jobs.

Mr. Plow

THE ENTREPRENEUR OF A SINGLE WINTER

Season 4. Homer buys a snow plough, shoots a local advert on a derisory budget and becomes a neighbourhood hero thanks to an unbeatable jingle. Then Barney sets up the rival company Plow King, the commercial war degenerates, and a heatwave melts all the snow — and with it both businesses.

Homer weightless at the end of his tether, for NASA

Astronaut

A BAG OF CRISPS IN ZERO GRAVITY

Season 5. NASA is trying to lift its ratings by sending an ordinary man into space. Homer smuggles a packet of crisps aboard, opens it in orbit, and the sequence unfolds to the Blue Danube waltz. Buzz Aldrin and James Taylor play themselves; a broken ant farm does the rest.

The salesman selling his monorail to the people of Springfield

Monorail driver

AN EXPRESS TRAINING COURSE, A DISASTER

Season 4. A travelling salesman sells Springfield a monorail nobody needs, then names Homer as the driver at the end of a lightning training course. The train runs out of control on the inaugural journey. Leonard Nimoy attends the opening as himself, and the episode is written by Conan O'Brien, then a writer on the show.

Boxer

UNBEATABLE BECAUSE INSENSIBLE

Season 8, "The Homer They Fall". A diagnosis reveals that the fluid surrounding Homer's brain is abnormally thick: he takes punches without ever falling. Moe dreams of being a manager, lines up easy fights, then sends him to face champion Drederick Tatum. His only sporting quality is his inability to pass out.

Homer as manager of the country singer Lurleen Lumpkin

Country manager

THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED LURLEEN

Season 3, "Colonel Homer". Homer hears a devastating singer in a country bar, decides to manage her career and propels her to the top. Lurleen Lumpkin, voiced by Beverly D'Angelo, falls in love with her manager. Homer sells her contract and goes home: his faithfulness wins out without his having to think about it.

Barbershop singer

THE BE SHARPS

Season 5. Homer, Skinner, Barney and Apu form an a cappella quartet, land a hit with "Baby on Board" and a Grammy in an improbable category, before imploding exactly like the Beatles. George Harrison and David Crosby appear as themselves: the group's trajectory follows that of the Fab Four.

Homer and his barrels, at the time of prohibition in Springfield

Beer baron

THE SPRINGFIELD BOOTLEGGER

Season 8. After a St Patrick's Day on which Bart ends up drunk, Springfield digs up a two-century-old prohibition law and bans alcohol. Homer immediately organises a clandestine trade and becomes the mysterious beer baron, hunted by federal agent Rex Banner. Nobody suspects him: nobody believes him capable of organising anything at all.

The Simpson family in front of their house in Cypress Creek, the Globex company town

Motivator at Globex

THE BEST JOB OF HIS LIFE

Season 8. Hank Scorpio, a charismatic boss voiced by Albert Brooks, recruits Homer as head motivator of Globex's nuclear division, in a brand-new company town. Homer excels. He simply does not notice that his employer is a supervillain. As a leaving gift, Scorpio gives him the Denver Broncos.

Homer carried in triumph by the secret society of the Stonecutters

Grand master of the Stonecutters

THE CHOSEN ONE IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

Season 6. Homer joins a secret society thanks to his father, gets thrown out after destroying the sacred parchment, then discovers a birthmark that makes him the chosen one of the prophecy. Patrick Stewart voices the head of the lodge. The song "We Do", suggested by Matt Groening during writing, earned an Emmy nomination.

Barney's bowling alley, the job Homer had to give up

Bowling alley employee

THE ONE HE HAD TO GIVE UP

Between two stints at the plant, Homer held the job he really dreamed of: a post at the bowling alley run by Barney's uncle. Total happiness, tiny salary. Unable to triple the takings to earn his pay rise, and soon to be the father of a third child, he has to give it up.

THE SELECTION

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Nine episodes to understand Homer

From pure comedy to full-blown melodrama, the starting list.

The couch gag, the opening ritual of every episode

It is impossible to choose between eight hundred episodes, but some come back in every ranking and tell the character better than a long analysis. We have picked nine, all checked with their season, their original air date and their French title. If you only watch one, start with "Last Exit to Springfield".

"Last Exit to Springfield" (season 4)

THE ABSOLUTE PEAK

Broadcast on 11 March 1993. The removal of dental cover pushes Homer to take the head of the union to pay for Lisa's braces. Entertainment Weekly named it the show's best episode in January 2003, and Rolling Stone ranked it the second-best television episode of any programme in 2024.

Homer as an astronaut, floating at the end of his tether in

"Deep Space Homer" (season 5)

NASA CALLS AN IDIOT

Broadcast on 24 February 1994. Homer and Barney are recruited for a manned flight intended to lift the space agency's ratings. The packet of crisps in zero gravity, the Strauss waltz, the broken ant farm and Kent Brockman's comment about our new insect overlords: the episode strings cult sequences together.

"Homer's Enemy" (season 8)

THE CHARACTER ON TRIAL

Broadcast on 4 May 1997. Frank Grimes, voiced by Hank Azaria taking his cue from William H. Macy's acting, turns up at the plant and refuses to accept that Homer gets away with it. The producers wanted to show that being Homer Simpson, in real life, would quite simply be dangerous. The episode remains the show's most debated.

The X-ray of Homer's brain and his crayon, in

"HOMR" (season 12)

A CRAYON IN THE FRONTAL LOBE

Broadcast on 7 January 2001. A crayon lodged in his brain since childhood explains everything: once removed, it takes Homer's IQ from 55 to 105. He finally becomes the conversation partner Lisa was waiting for, then gives it up. The episode won the Emmy for outstanding animated programme of less than one hour.

Mona Simpson, Homer's mother, found again after twenty-six years

"Mother Simpson" (season 7)

TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF LIES

Broadcast on 19 November 1995. Homer fakes his death to skip work and by chance finds his mother Mona again, whom he believed dead. She had been living in hiding since a raid carried out in 1969 against Mr. Burns' biological weapons laboratory. Glenn Close lends her voice. The final shot, Homer alone on the bonnet facing the stars, is one of the saddest in the programme.

Homer and Marge as teenagers, in detention at Springfield High

"The Way We Was" (season 2)

THE DETENTION OF 1974

Broadcast on 31 January 1991. The story of the meeting: Homer in detention for skipping class to smoke in the toilets, Marge in detention for burning a bra at a feminist rally. He invents an urgent need for French lessons in order to see her again. She goes to the prom with Artie Ziff, realises her mistake, and comes back.

"The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" (season 8)

JOHNNY CASH'S COYOTE

Broadcast on 5 January 1997. The Guatemalan insanity peppers from the chilli cook-off send Homer into a hallucinated sequence in saturated colours. A spirit-guide coyote, voiced by Johnny Cash, whispers to him to go and find his soulmate, which throws his marriage into crisis for the whole rest of the episode.

"And Maggie Makes Three" (season 6)

DO IT FOR HER

Broadcast on 22 January 1995. Homer recounts how he had to leave the bowling alley to come back to the plant, and why there is no photo of Maggie in the living room. The final reveal, hidden behind Mr. Burns' humiliating plaque, is the most effective twist ever written for the character.

The Simpson family settled in Cypress Creek in

"You Only Move Twice" (season 8)

THE IDEAL BOSS IS A SUPERVILLAIN

Broadcast on 3 November 1996. Homer finally finds an employer who respects him, in an ideal company town — except that this boss is preparing to conquer the world. The family stifles, Homer chooses to go home. Albert Brooks delivers, as Hank Scorpio, one of the most quoted guest performances in the show.

BEYOND THE SCREEN

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The legacy: dictionary, star, Emmy and French version

Seven marks left by a cartoon character in the real world.

A fictional character who enters the dictionary, lands a star on Hollywood Boulevard and brings in half a billion dollars at the cinema is no longer quite a fictional character. Homer crossed that border a long time ago. Here is what he has left behind, in measurable facts.

Homer at the plant console, in the episode where his name becomes a word

Entry into the dictionary

A CHARACTER WHO SHAPES THE LANGUAGE

The Oxford English Dictionary took in "Doh!" in 2001, three years after the New Oxford Dictionary of English. It is extremely rare for an interjection created for a cartoon to reach that status, all the more so since it was never written in a single script: the writers simply noted "annoyed grunt" in brackets.

Hollywood Boulevard, where the Simpson family has its star

The Walk of Fame star

7021 HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

The Simpsons received their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2000, at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. It is the whole family that is honoured, not Homer alone — but in the collective imagination, the distinction never held. Very few animated characters appear on that pavement.

The Simpsons and their Emmy Award statuette

Dan Castellaneta's Emmys

FOUR STATUETTES FOR ONE VOICE

The American actor has won four Emmy Awards for outstanding voice-over performance on the show: in 1992 for "Lisa's Pony", in 1993 for "Mr. Plow", then in 2004 and in 2009. Along the way he voices Abraham Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Barney Gumble and a good part of Springfield.

Homer Simpson, voted best character of the last twenty years

The Entertainment Weekly ranking

BEST CHARACTER OF TWENTY YEARS

In 2010, Entertainment Weekly placed Homer at the top of its hundred best characters of the last twenty years. The magazine had already ranked him ninth in its fifty greatest TV icons in 2007. TV Guide, for its part, placed him in 2002 as the second-best cartoon character of all time, behind Bugs Bunny.

The poster for The Simpsons Movie, released in 2007

The film and its sequel

HALF A BILLION AT THE BOX OFFICE

The Simpsons Movie came out in July 2007 and took around $536 million worldwide on a budget of $75 million: Homer pollutes the lake, the town ends up under a dome, he has to put it right. A sequel was officially announced at the end of September 2025, for a release planned in 2027.

Springfield in wide shot: a whole town voiced by eight actors

The French version

EIGHT ACTORS FOR A WHOLE TOWN

The French dub of The Simpsons rests on a tight team of eight main actors — four men, four women — who share out most of Springfield's residents. Philippe Peythieu handles Homer, Abraham and Otto; Véronique Augereau takes Marge, Patty and Selma; Xavier Fagnon absorbs a good part of the male supporting cast, from Burns to Kent Brockman.

The counter still ticking

MORE THAN EIGHT HUNDRED EPISODES

The 800th episode of The Simpsons, "Irrational Treasure", was broadcast on 15 February 2026 in the United States, closing season 37. The show has been renewed through a fortieth season, that is, to the 2028-2029 television season. Homer has not finished closing his eyes in sector 7-G.

Frequently asked questions

We answer your questions

Where does Homer Simpson work?

Homer is a safety inspector in sector 7-G of the Springfield nuclear power plant, under the orders of the fabulously rich owner of the place, Charles Montgomery Burns. A post he fills with a very… relative sense of duty, and one that has fed dozens of plots, from the plant strike to catastrophic inspections.

When did Homer first appear?

On 19 April 1987, in the short film "Good Night" broadcast during the Tracey Ullman Show. It took 48 of those shorts and two and a half years for the series to really start, on 17 December 1989, with the Christmas episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".

Why does Homer say "D'oh!"?

The script simply said "annoyed grunt". Dan Castellaneta took his inspiration from James Finlayson, an actor in the Laurel and Hardy films, and Matt Groening asked him to shorten the sound. The interjection entered the New Oxford Dictionary of English in 1998, then the OED in 2001.

Who voices Homer Simpson in French?

Philippe Peythieu, chosen in 1990 and still in post. He is the one who invented the famous "T'oh!": at the casting, he read a T where the text had a D, and the mistake stuck. He also voices Abraham Simpson and Otto, and he is married to Véronique Augereau, the voice of Marge.

What are the initials hidden in Homer's face?

Matt Groening deliberately slipped his initials into the drawing: the hairline forms an M and the ear a G. The line of the ear has since been retouched, but the cartoonist still draws it as a G when he signs sketches for fans.

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Our other complete guides to Springfield and its residents.

The characters Guide to Springfield Season chronology French voices Treehouse of Horror Simpsons predictions Merchandise guide

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Homer Simpson: everything about Springfield's patriarch