One of The Simpsons' first recurring gags was Bart Simpson making prank phone calls to Moe's Tavern, but eventually the prank calls stopped. When a show has been on the air as long as The Simpsons has, it's unsurprising that elements of its formula have been changed or dropped as the seasons have racked up. A big part of being a long-lasting pop culture franchise is to know when change is necessary, whether to get with the current times or simply just to liven things up.
While The Simpsons by and large still sports the same core cast of characters as it did in 1989, it's fair to say that those characters have been altered in a myriad of ways, as has their trademark behavior. Homer is much dumber now than he was at the beginning, Ned Flanders is significantly more religious, Lisa has become much more of a pretentious know-it-all, and Bart went from a general rebel and prankster to someone who sometimes takes outright joy in causing misfortune to others. Those changes haven't necessarily made the show less funny, but they're very noticeable when looking back at the early days.
Compared to some of the schemes he's pulled off in more recent years, it almost seems quaint that one of Bart's favorite activities was once annoying Moe the Bartender with prank calls. While Moe would react angrily, the prank's themselves were generally harmless. Here's why they stopped.
The Simpsons: Why Bart Stopped Prank Calling Moe
During the earlier seasons of The Simpsons, it was very common for episodes to contain a scene where Bart prank calls Moe's Tavern, asks for a person with some kind of ridiculous name, then waits for Moe to yell out for that person, leading to laughter from those at the bar. That was of course followed by increasingly violent threats of what Moe would do when he finally caught his tormentor. Some of the classic names included Al Coholic, I.P. Freely, Homer Sexual, Amanda Hugginkiss, and Bea O'Problem. Juvenile humor to be sure, but who doesn't love a good lowbrow joke every now and then?
While Bart's prank calls to Moe became an iconic gag, the reason they've almost entirely vanished from the show - one still does happen every few seasons - is that, according to Simpsons producer and former writer Mike Reiss, the jokes involved just got harder and harder to write. Each sequence essentially required four separate jokes, and making them all funny got to be a chore. Additionally, Reiss says the prank call scenes never made anyone laugh when the cast would gather to do each episode's table read, which are often used by comedies to gauge just how funny something will be, and whether or not certain jokes are worth retaining. Thankfully, Simpsons fans do still occasionally get a new prank call, such as the one that backfired against Bart during season 30 when Moe readily recognized Ima Buttface as a fake name.