The Simpsons’ Playdate With Destiny Short Was A Product Of Serendipity
As one of the longest-running American sitcoms, there is no corner of the entertainment industry where “The Simpsons” hasn’t entrenched its mark. Even during the series’ early years, you would have a better chance of escaping a grizzly bear on its home turf than someone wearing an “eat my shorts” or “don’t have a cow, man” T-shirt. The dysfunctional animated family is an exemplary fixture of adult animation that has endured for well over three decades and 33 seasons of television.
On top of everything else, “The Simpsons” is endlessly quotable. You could remember your favorites and still only chip away a sliver of the iceberg. You’ll never run out, whether it comes out of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, or any other outlandish resident of Springfield. But the creative team behind this long-running series also knows how to revel in the quieter, and sometimes silent moments. Enter Maggie, the Simpsons’ youngest child, who has always been a stealth vehicle for minimalist gags and some of the series’ most emotional moments. I can delineate the differences between human beings and soulless monsters based on their response to the “do it for her” reveal. The Simpsons may have made their big screen debut in 2007 with “The Simpsons Movie,” but it’s the sprout who continued coming back.
On top of everything else, “The Simpsons” is endlessly quotable. You could remember your favorites and still only chip away a sliver of the iceberg. You’ll never run out, whether it comes out of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, or any other outlandish resident of Springfield. But the creative team behind this long-running series also knows how to revel in the quieter, and sometimes silent moments.
Enter Maggie, the Simpsons’ youngest child, who has always been a stealth vehicle for minimalist gags and some of the series’ most emotional moments. I can delineate the differences between human beings and soulless monsters based on their response to the “do it for her” reveal. The Simpsons may have made their big screen debut in 2007 with “The Simpsons Movie,” but it’s the sprout who continued coming back.
The adventures of Maggie Simpson hits the big screen
The appeal of “The Longest Daycare” is that it doesn’t feature a single line of dialogue, focusing instead on Maggie’s silent attachment to a blue butterfly that a unibrowed baby wants to squash. Even when there’s no spoken banter for these characters, the subtle inflections on Maggie’s face coupled with the rapid-paced background gags prove how adept this team is at getting a laugh. The short was even nominated for an Oscar, but lost to Disney’s “Paperman.”
Maggie would return to the big screen nearly a decade later with another silent short entitled “Playdate With Destiny,” which featured the youngest Simpson finding herself in a meet-cute romance with a boy at the park named Hudson. According to an interview with The AV Club, executive producer Al Jean claims the short had been in development for years. It was likely for another episode in the series’ 31st season (“The Incredible Lightness of Being a Baby”).
But there was an exciting development for the team behind the short when they learned where it would ultimately end up.
The Simpsons crew got to (briefly) open for a Pixar release
“Jim sent it to Bob Iger and the folks at Disney, and they loved it. And we just said, ‘Can we please, please go in front of a Pixar movie?’ And despite the fact that it was only out for a couple weeks — which I really feel bad about, because I think ‘Onward’ is a great film — both are now on Disney+. I was really thrilled that we were in the theater and you could see a Pixar movie following us.”
I would love to see the “Simpsons” folks continue to produce more shorts in the vein of “The Longest Daycare” and “Playdate with Destiny,” and less stuff like " The Good, the Bart, and the Loki," which mostly resembles an uninspired advertisement for Disney+.
Seasons 1-32 of “The Simpsons,” in addition to both shorts, are currently streaming on Disney+.
