On tonight’s Simpsons, Barney was sober, hair combed, not belching, and drinking coffee (!) in Moe’s bar.
When did Barney go AA?
And why wasn’t I informed?
[impatient foot tapping]
Back near the end of the 11th season, Barney quit drinking in order to save enough money to take helicopter lessons. At the end, he was seen drinking coffee with Homer. I don’t know if this counts, though, considering the lack of continuity in the show.
There is some continuity in the Simpsonverse. Several characters have died (Bleeding Gums Murphy, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Maude Flanders, and an undisclosed number of Snowballs) permanently removing them from the show. And Barney got sober in the aformentioned helicopter episode. I think he’s been consistently dry since.
Yes- I was wondering the same thing!! And when I realized it was the coffee (you do actually see him with a cup earlier on), I was kind of peeved. You don’t just change Barney’s drunkenness…that’s…just wrong. He’s supposed to be an alcoholic, damnit. I stopped watching halfway through. Not in protest or anything. It’s kind of a shock. Some things just aren’t supposed to change.
Maybe I’m a freak, but this rocked my world. And not in a good way.
I wondered about this myself. Actually, I kept thinking that Barney’s sobriety would tie itself into the plot somehow (he prefers the new “M” club maybe and starts drinking cosmopolitans perhaps), but no.
I suppose Mr. Blue Sky’s explanation is the best we’ve got, but I’m not exactly sure if I like the “new” Barney. After all, what’s a Barney scene without one of Barney’s beer belches?
Barney swore off alcohol forever in the helicopter episode. Homer even drank a whole sixpack to keep Barney from drinking, and that gave Barney the inspiration to fly the helicopter up to save Bart and Lisa from a forest fire. At the end Barney is becomming addicted to coffee (provided by a sinister Moe who says that no one escapes him).
I like the random patches of consistency, especially contrasted with the things like Monty Burns ever changing age/history.
The real reason Barney became sober is that the voice actor who plays Barney was tired of him being a drunk all the time and insisted that Barney be sober or he’d quit the show. The actor (and I don’t remember which one it is who plays him) said he was the only happy with that decision, but for moral reasons, yadda, yadda, yadda, he just couldn’t continue to play Barney as an alcoholic.
Personally, I think somebody needs to hook Barney up with an I.V. of Duffs finest, that’ll take care of his soberity, but good!
Interesting. The IMDB lists Dan Castellaneta (voice of Barney and Homer, among others) as being a non-drinker. Yet he has no problem with Homer’s drinking. Hmmm…
I don’t vouch for the accuracy of what Dan says. Just what I heard in an interview with him on NPR one time and that’s what he said. Maybe even Dan’s bright enough to realize that a non-drinking Homer would be no fun at all.
Well, there is a significant difference between occasionally-drinking Homer and constantly-besotted Barney. Maybe Castellaneta isn’t so much opposed to drinking overall, but to the idea of playing Barney the Always Drunk for an indefinite amount of time.
And remember, Barney wasn’t always Duff Beer’s finest customer. He was a mild-mannered, well-behaved straight-A student once…then Homer introduced him to the Demon Ethanol…
jayjay
Sort of like how the Rev. Jim got introduced to pot on Taxi IIRC.
On a vein off of Barney’s sobriety, was anyone else slightly disturbed by the amount of blood in the recent Simpsons episodes? There was the badger in the doghouse ripping Homer open, the thumb getting cut off (which did actually make a decent plot line), the dragging of Homer through the bases then the hug at the end, and now the slicing of an artery. Is there any reason for this?
What kind of calendar are you using?
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the entire episode, had to go work on a project.
I was pretty pissed off about having to watch end of the Deadskins and Broncos game and missing Kin of the Hill. I love that joke in the commercial where Bobby is holding a cheerleading uniform and Hank says, “There better be a naked cheerleader under your bed!”
Oh well, maybe next week.
Yeah, Barney’s been hitting the java hard ever since the helicopter ep.
I was thinking to myself in Comic Book Guy voice, “Moe’s bar has ALREADY been converted to a different establishment in another episode” until I regained my sanity and just watched the darn thing. Did anyone else have that reaction? Overall I thought it was pretty funny, but it was a bunch of funny setpieces and didn’t really do much for me overall.
FWIW, I gots to say that Flaming Mo’s was an order of magnitude better than “M.”
Flaming Mo’s had Aerosmith, after all.
Actually, I was thinking of Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag. But you’re right, of course; perhaps this Moe’s bar thing has been done to death even more than I thought!
He he he, nitpicking the new episode; since when does Moe know anything about drink mixing or went to an actual university? In the flaming Moe’s episode, he had to polish off the old recipe chart when he was out of beer for Homer - “gin and… tonic? Do they mix?”.
Ok, that’s my only comment.
I think I just realized a pattern to Simpsons continuity. Things that happen on screen in the show tend to stick (Lisa becomming a vegitarian, Barney becomming sober, Maud dying). However the backstory of characters is in nearly constant flux. This includes references to off screen incidents that have occured in the time period which the show covers. I’m going to have to hunt through episode guides, reruns and the like to see if this theory is correct. Dopers I call upon you to help test my idea.
The only one you can really count here is Maude Flanders. Dr. Monroe died in like the first or second season, before the show really snowballed into what it is today. And speaking of Snowballs, I believe Snowball II is the one and only Snowball they have had in their televised lifetimes. If Snowball I was ever shown, it must’ve been on the Tracy Ullman Show but I don’t think so. And Bleeding Gums Murphy was in one episode (the one he died in), IIRC.
Dignan - Most other countries put the day infront of the month.
I also noticed something else, maybe a mini-trend.
Last episode the female juddge says, “You remind me of myself when I was a little boy.”
This episode the female Russian model says something like Russia was so cold that “her” penis froze off.
I wonder if another blatant TG-ish joke will appear in next weeks episode.