Mimi Pond And The Ironic Outrage Against “The Simpsons” For Being A “Boys Club” In The Writer’s Room

And why outlets like Slashfilm have no fucking clue what they are talking about.

Mimi Pond last week caused quite a kerfuffle as she has been making the press rounds on the back of her upcoming new book The Customer Is Always Wrong. In interviews, the writer is best known for being the credited scribe on The Simpsons series premiere entitled “Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire” has made claims that the departed Sam Simon wanted an all-guys writers room, so she attributes that to her never getting an invite to be a writer on the show.

Let’s clear a few things up shall we?

1)Over the course of The Simpsons’ 29 seasons, the show has almost 50 writers credited as episodes written by. Normally, when scripts for The Simpsons go through, the person who comes up with the episode pitch gets the credit and then a dozen of the writers go through the script and punch it up for jokes and gags and whatnot, largely uncredited. For comparison’s sake, The Simpsons are rocking about 13% of all their episodes having been credited having been written by women versus say Breaking Bad which is under 5% of episodes credited to women or even worse Game of Thrones with over 67 episodes aired has about four episodes credited to women (editor’s note: I’m including teleplays and co-writes as full episodes written in all of my equations). So anyone saying The Simpsons is strictly a boys club and that the franchise has had any sort of “glass ceiling” would be mistaken. Is it perfectly 50/50 right down the middle? No! But, The Simpsons is doing a WAY better job at writers’ diversity over an extended period of time than some of the biggest television franchises of all-time.

2) Mimi Pond is coming out with a new book, and if it’s one thing I know about books, it’s that controversy creates cash. You see, in the book business, when you the writer team up with a publisher to put your book in stores you have to make sure you sell as many as you can. Because if you DON’T sell all your books, some publishers will ask you to buy back any unsold copies with that hefty advance they gave you. So, remember, when book authors come out of the wood work and start yelling about social inequalities or instances of rape, make sure you measure these with a grain of salt as not could these stories be embellished quite a bit for the purposes of making money, they could be untrue. I’m not saying Mimi is a liar, but note that this is how the book business works. Also, let’s keep in mind, the lack of factual evidence substantiating any of Mimi’s claims against the producers of The Simpsons. Without the burden of proof of specifically why Mimi never got invited back to write on The Simpsons while other women did many, many times, is not there, and is as such, hearsay. In any legal case in America, hearsay is not admissible in court and as such should be treated as such when claims such as Mimi’s against Sam Simon’s writer’s room staffing practices should be treated as such.

3) The irony in any outrage about The Simpsons being a boys club during Sam Simon’s era as the showrunner is that this is usually the same era of The Simpsons that most television fans today note as the “high point” of the franchise, constantly noting that today’s episodes of the longest running animated franchise pale in comparison to the show’s older catalog. Hell, there’s even a whole website dedicated to hosting forums featuring fans that do nothing but talk about how crappy The Simpsons is today and how the show should just end (sorry to break it to you guys, but it won’t anytime soon) though claim that the show’s initial few seasons were the franchise’s best. The question you have to ask yourself when listening to Mimi’s statements about The Simpsons writers room being a boys club in the early nineties is, would those episodes deemed “perfect” by today’s “throwback” fans be the same episodes had the room not been constructed the way it was?

The irony is, Hollywood producers and actors pay millions of dollars to help politicians get in the White House that usually preaches equal rights, but when push comes to shove, the city has just as much work to do as any other industry to put its money where its mouth is when it concerns equal rights. For those claiming The Simpsons writers room is a “boys club” should do their research first, and then maybe don’t help vote in a maniacal psychopath into the White House.