The Simpsons boss teases 800th episode, says addressing current politics is 'not our mission stat...

Plus, watch an exclusive clip from the season 37 premiere featuring guest stars Cole Escola and Stephanie Hsu. The Simpsons boss teases 800th episode, says addr

Plus, watch an exclusive clip from the season 37 premiere featuring guest stars Cole Escola and Stephanie Hsu.

The Simpsons boss teases 800th episode, says addressing current politics is 'not our mission statement'

Plus, watch an exclusive clip from the season 37 premiere featuring guest stars Cole Escola and Stephanie Hsu.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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September 28, 2025 9:00 a.m. ET

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Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson in the season 37 premiere of 'The Simpsons'. Credit:

*The Simpsons* is back — and it aims to be just as timely as ever in its 37th season.

The animated juggernaut returns with its season premiere "Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother" on Sunday night.

The episode sees Marge revisit her nostalgia for a *Dawson's Creek*-esque '90s teen drama as Lisa raids her mom's closet for vintage threads with the help of fashion-forward classmates Devin (Cole Escola) and Vidalia (Stephanie Hsu). Meanwhile, Homer gets hooked on the *Reacher*-like series *Clincher*, and the family decides against going to the movies since their desired flick will end up on streaming a few days later.

*Simpsons* co-showrunner Matt Selman discusses season 37 in a conversation with **, revealing new details about upcoming episodes, his thoughts on streaming, the show's approach to politics in 2025, a tease for episode 800, and more.

Marge Simpson and Lisa Simpson in 'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**: What should *Simpsons* fans expect from this upcoming season 37?**

**MATT SELMAN: **Well, *The Simpsons* has been on for a long time. We're closing in on 800 episodes. The trick is to tell stories that feel like they're from a show that is not in its 37th season, right? And also to avoid feeling like we're repeating ourselves, or just doing episodes that don't have a personality, or have nothing to say.

One way to do that is to dig deeper into the town: the silly, soulful, sad, stupid people of Springfield. So the premiere is more of a classic episode in that it has a "Lisa and Marge relationship" A-story and a "Homer and Bart being goofy" B-story. It's a terrific, funny episode. And it goes into that sort of new thing in the world, which is young kids' obsession with thrifting as opposed to just shopping.

The most important thing to like for any show, especially *The Simpsons*, is the state of your characters. The next most important thing is to deliver originality to the viewer. And originality usually comes from real life — the new things that have happened in real life. So like, dad TV is a new thing. Thrifting is sort of a new thing. Nostalgia for the '90s is sort of a new thing. That's our job. And that's why the premiere does that. **

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**In the spirit of staying relevant to the moment that the show is premiering in, how is *The Simpsons* handling the contemporary political climate with so much scrutiny on comedy? We've seen various controversies and hubbubs surround other satirical shows like *South Park* and *Jimmy Kimmel Live* recently.**

Well, when you write a show that doesn't come out until 10 months after you write it, it kind of takes the pressure off, because who knows what the f--- we're gonna be looking at in 10 months. So like *South Park*, they make their show in a week, and even *they* can't stay up to date on things. More crazy s--- goes down faster than even *they* can do it. And you know, Jimmy Kimmel's great, and I'm glad he is back on TV. Censorship sucks. What can I say? Censorship sucks.

But it's not our mission statement to respond to the crisis of the moment. It's more about a town of good-natured dum-dums dealing with a changing world, yet our characters never really change. The world changes around them.

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**That being said, does it feel like there's anything that is off-limits in a way that it wasn't before? Does the team feel any pressure to skew more or less political at this point? **

I think it's about the same. We're not gonna do a big show where the president comes to town. We did do that, but he was George Bush and he'd been out of office for quite some time. And, you know, we just don't do big topical things, 'cause the topical is so chaotic and nuts. So we have to look at the bigger trends.

Ideally, I would like to think that people on both sides of our divided nation can watch *The Simpsons* and feel that, like America, Springfield is a town of people who are good, but easily misled. Whatever your definition of misled is, you can apply that to the show.

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'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**The premiere episode also takes some shots at streaming. Is there any anti-streaming sentiment in the writers' room?**

I don't think it's anti-streaming. I think it's more just like: This is what it is now. We do make fun of it — one of the first points the episode makes is about movie theater movies being available on TV within such a short window after they come out. That has helped degrade this very cool thing from my childhood, which is people going to the movies and having a shared experience without looking at their phones and being captive of a giant story in front of your face instead of half paying attention to a story that's in your peripheral vision, which is how a lot of people experience TV now.

So I guess I'm saying it sucks that the streaming is so desperate for short-term money that they're eroding the value of the movie theater experience like that. But we're not mad at streaming. It just happens, and it's interesting.

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**What can you tell us about the episodes after the premiere?**

Other episodes coming up have a lot more fun with the population of the town. There's an episode where Superintendent Chalmers becomes like a man-o-sphere skincare guru. That's a big, fresh, funny new world of Instagram advertising and this kind of golden age of snake oil that we now live in. And Chalmers is a character that we really like — he's an interesting, kinda arrogant dude, but he's got a soul. What happens when he loses everything? And then how does he build it back? That's fun.

And there's a show also coming up where Bart goes to work for Professor Frink, and that's an interesting pair of characters — you wouldn't think those two would be like peas in a pod, but they have a really interesting friendship journey. And the show has to be satirical. So that episode will make fun [of] billionaire life-extension body-hacking lunatics. Or, I don't know, maybe they're geniuses. Lunatics or geniuses. And it touches on the growth of tech culture and where Professor Frink fits into that, and what it means to be smart or stupid in the modern world.

We also have a big show coming up that is a deep dive into the Quimby family. You have this cartoony mayor, but what if there was a more epic *Godfather II*-style saga behind the Quimbys that led Quimby to becoming a goofy mayor? And what if there was a tragedy behind all that? Not a Chappaquidick-level tragedy, but a small tragedy.

'The Simpsons' season 37 premiere.

**What's in store for this year's Treehouse of Horror?**

There's a segment that's *Jaws* meets *The Blob*. There's a different take on a post apocalyptic universe where the world is made of plastic and not garbage. A post-a-plastic-lyptic universe. And then Krusty makes a deal with the devil. We think Halloweens are better when they're not just parodies, or not just one single parody. But I guess some of these are parodies. People love their parodies.

**What can you tease about the 800th episode? I expect that's gonna be a big one. **

It's in February. *That* I can tease. I probably shouldn't tease anything. I don't think they want me talking about the 800th yet. I'll say this: It involves the dog. That's a big tease. How about this, I'll give you a little more: The dog gets fat.

*The Simpsons* season 37 premieres on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET/PT, on Fox. Watch an exclusive clip from the episode above.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.*

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