We have taken count of every mention of each Simpsons family member over the combined course of seasons 1, 10, 20, and 30. We’ve found that despite the show being called “The Simpsons,” the most important Simpson and most mentioned family member is Homer, the father followed by Bart, his son and they sit close in overall count at 1764 and 1365. Marge, Homer’s wife, lingers behind at 937 and Lisa, Homer and Marge’s daughter trails at 672. Maggie, Homer and Marge’s baby, and Abe, Homer’s father, sit close at 126 and 83 being mentioned only a few times in comparison to the rest of the main cast.
Similar to our previous chart, we categorized each mention of the Simpsons family over seasons 1, 10, 20, and 30. However, now each family member has how many times they were mentioned within each individual season. There is a marginally high count for Homer and Bart within Season 1. In Season 10, Homer is still the highest count but not by a large lead. Season 20 sees that all of the family, aside from Maggie and Abe, are fairly similar in count. Lastly in Season 30, we found that, for some reason, Marge beats out both Homer and Bart who were in the lead for every season prior. The high number count in Season 1 was most likely caused by the script layout in Season 1, which had a name associated for every line. Therefore, for every one of Homer’s lines, he was counted. This does not occur in the other seasons as the scripts changed as the writing process must have changed.
The Simpsons has had many iconic catchphrases throughout its over 30 year period of being on the air. We gathered the count of many popular catchphrases heard over the course of the show and formed this graph detailing our findings. As you can see, “D’oh” was a clear winner at 119. If you’ve watched the Simpsons then you know why this occurred. Homer’s main catchphrase is “D’oh” and he uses it pretty universally, as well as consistently. Hit on the head: “D’oh”; Made a mistake: “D’oh” It became a staple of his character, so we sort of figured this would occur but not by a long shot. Some possible issues here could be that our count was off due to a technical issue or possibly that other catch phrases were spelled a little differently and we may be missing them.
Based on our last separated graph, we wanted to find exactly what occurred per season, we found something kind of interesting with “D’oh.” Considering that Season 1 of any show is where people meet and learn the characters and potential catchphrases happen but they’re not yet iconic, but as a series continues, certain phrases catch on which displays the lack of real catchphrases within Season 1 but then they later become iconic in following seasons. However, a major issue here is that not ALL catchphrases were found. Some people have certain lines but when we discussed with each other, these were the ones we wanted to see.
This graph here shows the number of stage actions that occurred per season. Stage actions were marked in a distinct way. “(SAMPLE TEXT)” so we captured them accordingly. An issue with this is that Season 1 has every time a person speaks, it’s written as: “(HOMER): I love donuts.” It’s still very interesting knowing that Season 10 still bests it despite not having the speaking parts. This also creates another issue of not being able to mark the 4 seasons of who says what lines overall. That’s only possible in Season 1.
For this graph, this is the count of every stage action of just the person. When a person is referenced a stage action or a stage cue, we found this and had it counted. This goes back to the issue of Season 1 having every speaking line preceded by the person who had said it. Cranking Season 1’s counts way up.
This graph shows the counts excluding the tags that have persons in them. Now we have a winner for the most stage actions; Season 10. An incredibly high number that seems almost suspicious. There either must be a coding issue or Season 10 must have that many stage actions. Season 1 then dropped down to a dismal 946.
Of course, the Simpsons aren't the only characters that contribute to the show's humor and charm. There are a wide assortment of personalities that have appeared throughout the course of the show. Our “Other Persons” SVG graph shows some of the characters that were picked out in our analysis were Krusty the Clown at 660 mentions, Moe with 555 and Principal Skinner at 525 throughout the analyzed seasons.
Springfield. The town where a vast majority of the show takes place. Our graph here displays how many times the iconic location was mentioned throughout each of our selected seasons. In season 1 and especially 10, the area was mentioned a fairly large amount since the series really delved into what goes on in the town of Springfield. However, in seasons 20 and 30, we see that the mentions of the fictional city slowly begin to dwindle. We determined that this may be due to a shift in focus on different locations besides just Springfield within the later seasons.
Besides Springfield, there are a wide array of settings that the show takes place over its seasons. Although the vast majority of counts within the graph are *Springfield+, the relevance of other general areas and events besides the town itself shows interest in expanding out to different locations within the series. As the series has gone on, the show still takes place at Springfield, but the scope of the town seems to have shrunk with stories and episodes having the plot go to different states or even countries. (For clarity, “Springfield +” encompasses every mention of either Springfield or a location within Springfield. For example, mentions of Springfield, Springfield Elementary, Springfield High School, Springfield Retirement Castle, Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, etc. would be considered for this category)
Musical numbers and instances are fairly common within the show. Our Music SVG graph depicts the counts of how often music occurred throughout the analyzed seasons not counting The Simpsons intro song. One problem that occurred was a difference in scripts from season(‘s 10 and?) 30 which tagged each individual line within a song as a song itself returning a much larger number than it should. The graph shows musical instances 65 times in season 1, 282 instances in season 10, 24 in season 20, and 383 times in season 30.