Warning: Spoilers for The Simpsons season 34, episode 12.
While The Simpsons have been around for an incredible 34 seasons, the series still found another new way to break TV rules via sitcom storytelling. While The Simpsons is not as critically acclaimed as the series was at the height of its popularity, the creators of the series are not using the show’s advancing age as an excuse to forego experimental, inventive writing. The plots of The Simpsons season 34 have been surprisingly unusual so far, and the series has shown a commitment to prioritizing clever storytelling tricks to keep the show fresh.
For example, The Simpsons season 34, episode 12, “My Life As A Vlog,” is the show’s first screenlife episode (and one of the first television episodes to use the format). This would not have been possible back in the Golden Age of The Simpsons, and proves that the series can keep up with trends without seeming desperate or gimmicky. Screenlife is the technique of telling a story entirely through computer screens and, while it has been around since 2000, the style was more recently popularized by viral thrillers like Megan Is Missing, Unfriended, Searching, and Host, but remains a rare sight on television.
How The Simpsons Used Screenlife
In “My Life As A Vlog,” The Simpsons used screenlife to tell a story about the meteoric rise (and almost instantaneous fall) of the Simpson family’s vlogging career. In a bizarre twist, this entire adventure was later revealed to be a wiki rabbit hole begun by a procrastinating George RR Martin. While The Simpsons season 34 changed its opening credits numerous times before “My Life As A Vlog,” the fact that there were no opening credits for the episode was an early indication that it was an experimental outing. “My Life As A Vlog” opened with a Simpsons family vlog, only to then get more complicated.
Soon, the unseen clicker was bouncing between a video explaining how the Simpson family rose to fame (a viral video of Homer helping Maggie at a baby ballet recital) to an anonymous vlogger (soon revealed to be Milhouse) exposing their duplicity. This plot took advantage of the unique storytelling style offered by screenlife, a text-driven mystery model where information is revealed gradually via onscreen pop-ups, links, comments, and distractions. The style requires viewers to pay close attention to numerous inputs at once but, since even the oldest episodes of The Simpsons crammed as many gags as possible onto the screen, the show is an ideal fit for the format.
The Simpsons Aren't The First Screenlife Sitcom
While “My Life As A Vlog” was an interesting experiment from The Simpsons season 34, it is not the first television episode to be told through the screen life medium. In fact, The Simpsons is not even the first family sitcom to use screen life for one standalone outing. Modern Family season 6, episode 16, "Connection Lost,” told its entire story through a convoluted Skype call that led, through a series of escalating misunderstandings, to calamity for Claire and Haley. However, The Simpsons is still one of the first shows to successfully utilize this format.
New episodes of The Simpsons air on Fox on Sundays.