Moe Szyslak, the proprietor of Homer’s favorite bar and the least confident person in Springfield, is one of the most endearing supporting characters in The Simpsons.
Moe made his name on the show by getting angrier and angrier at Bart’s prank calls to the bar, but this running gag was eventually fazed out of the show and Moe developed into the most absurdly miserable character on the show, with his terrible luck and multiple suicide attempts. Despite Moe’s immense sadness, there’s something about him that we can all relate to. So, here are the 10 Most Painfully Relatable Moe Quotes.
10. “They called me Kid Gorgeous. Later on, it was Kid Presentable. Then Kid Gruesome. And finally, Kid Moe.”
In the season 8 episode “The Homer They Fall,” Moe trains Homer as a boxer when they discover Homer’s inability to get knocked out. He can get hit repeatedly in the head and he’ll never go down. Moe is his chosen trainer, because Moe used to be a boxer himself back in the day. His boxing nickname went through various iterations.
Later in the episode, Homer is challenged by professional boxer Drederick Tatum and Moe is torn between the danger to his friend’s safety and the huge check he’ll earn from the fight. In the end, he does the right thing.
9. “I’d have to move in with Mom, who’s dead and doesn’t have a house.”
The reason why Moe is so miserable is that he’s a man with very limited options. When his bar or his home are threatened, he doesn’t have much to fall back on. If he loses them, his only option is to move in with his mother, although his mother has passed away and she didn’t own any property for him to inherit, so that’s not much of an option at all.
Despite his poorly hidden attraction to Marge and contributions to Homer’s drinking problem, the Simpson family would never leave Moe out in the cold – unless his creditors had come knocking and they wanted to take his thumbs.
8. “These eye clamps are the only way I can tolerate today’s TV.”
The “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have gone downhill in quality – like the show as a whole – since a few terrific installments in the early ‘90s. The main problem is that they’ve run out of horror classics to parody.
However, season 26’s “Treehouse of Horror XXV” has a neat spoof of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange as its middle segment – and middle segments tend to be the least memorable ones – in which Moe is forced into eye clamps like Alex DeLarge and explains that it’s the only way he can tolerate today’s TV landscape of reality competition shows and lazy sitcoms.
7. “I’m gonna die and I’ve never even tasted cantaloupe!”
In the episode “The Mansion Family,” Homer finds himself with access to all of Mr. Burns’ amenities while housesitting for him and he’s disappointed when his time at Burns’ house is coming to an end and he’ll have to return to his regular life. So, he takes all of his Springfieldian pals out on Burns’ yacht for one last blowout.
While they’re out there, the ship gets boarded by pirates and they’re all captured in a giant fishing net. The pirates slowly lower the net into the ocean and Moe laments the fact he’ll die without tasting cantaloupe. The ever-sharp Krusty the Clown assures him, “Honeydew is the money melon.”
6. “You guys cost me my chance with a woman of a certain age!”
As his life has gone on, Moe’s hopes and dreams have slowly dwindled away. Now, all he wants is a date with a woman. There aren’t a lot of great lines in the more recent seasons of The Simpsons, but this one is instantly memorable and it’s from the season 26 episode “My Fare Lady.”
The “woman of a certain age” that Moe is referring to is Laney Fontaine, whose one-woman show he attended while leaving Homer in charge of the bar. Laney was based on Elaine Stritch, and Carl has called her “the brassiest piece of sass in this whole damn town.”
5. “She trashed my bar! Oh, no, wait, she actually cleaned up a little. Good for her.”
The Simpsons has wrung a lot of laughs out of the idea that Moe’s Tavern is the filthiest, most disgusting dive bar that ever existed. It’s infested with rats, all the bottles behind the bar are just painted on, and the color of the floor has developed from the layers of dirt that have accumulated over the original hardwood floor.
Moe never bothers to clean the bar, because his customers don’t expect it to be clean. Homer, Lenny, Carl, and Barney are all perfectly happy to sit on a dusty stool at a grimy bar and drink watered-down beer, so Moe has no need to go the extra mile.
4. “Hey, Homer. I could hear your pathetic rationalizing through the door.”
This is what Moe says to Homer after he heard Homer saying, “And now, because it’s after noon, I can go to Moe’s without having a ‘drinking problem,’” outside the bar. There’s a school of thought that Moe is to blame for Homer’s alcoholism, but at the end of the day, Homer wants to get out of the house and drink all that beer.
Moe just serves it to him. He’s providing a service. He’s not doing anything particularly wrong. Homer has rationalized his way out of having a drinking problem, but despite what he might tell himself, he does have one.
3. “You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society.”
This line is universally applicable in any situation. The breakdown of society can be blamed for pretty much anything, and it’s just vague enough that it doesn’t really have any meaning.
Moe’s job in The Simpsons is often to hand out life lessons to Homer as he knocks back beer after beer on the other side of the bar, but Moe isn’t exactly the wisest guy in the world. Homer could be looking elsewhere for advice, but Moe’s Tavern is his favorite bar. So, he’ll keep getting life lessons and advice from Moe, even though he spouts unusual lines like this.
2. “I’ve been called ugly, pug ugly, fugly, pug fugly, but never ugly ugly.”
In the season 11 episode “Pygmoelian,” Moe gets plastic surgery after having his face censored in a Duff Beer commercial and becomes a beloved soap opera star. Moe’s ugliness had always been a huge part of the character, as it has destroyed his confidence, but this was the first episode to address it at the center of a storyline.
At the episode’s end, his hubris gets the better of him and a set wall falls on his face, changing it back to its old appearance. Why didn’t it disfigure him more? Moe himself ponders that as the end credits roll.
1. “I’m better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt.”
Moe tells Homer, “I’m better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt. I mean, not that fancy store-bought dirt. That stuff’s loaded with nutrients. I can’t compete with that stuff.” It’s been well-established that Moe has low self-esteem. But it’s not totally rock-bottom low, because he doesn’t think dirt is better than him.
However, he does think that certain types of dirt are better than him – the dirt you buy in bulk at a gardening store – so his self-esteem is still pretty low. Frankly, it’s just good to know that he has some self-worth, even if it is only a little.