This Simpsons joke is so good people are only just understanding it 30 years later

The Simpsons is known for predicting the future, but fans have been delving back into the past to revisit a classic gag.

Tucked away in the 1994 episode ‘Homer Loves Flanders’ there’s a throwaway joke that people are only fully understanding almost 30 years later.

It sees the usually gruff bar owner Moe Szyslak reading what appears to be the final line of the classic Louisa May Alcott novel Little Women to a group of homeless people.

As pointed out by Twitter user Kevin Magnet, the joke is so subtle that people are only just picking up on it now.

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“‘And then they realized, they were no longer little girls: they were little women.’

“Is one of the best Simpsons jokes of all time because I, and number of other people, are so illiterate that they think the joke is just Moe crying and that’s how little women ends,” he wrote, adding: “I thought this was how little women ended until 2019.”

He wasn’t alone in thinking that that was actually how the novel came to a close when we first saw the episode – and people are reappraising the gag on social media.

“….so I totally thought that’s how this book ends, and I’ve read it several times,” one user commented.

Another added: “Look, I'm not reading an entire book just to understand a Simpsons joke... Again.”

Moe Szyslak - Little Womenwww.youtube.com

One more wrote: “I love imagining what the writers room was like as they wrote this joke: Debating the funniest book that Moe could be reading, picking Little Women, looking for the best to use then the sheer joy the suggestion of ‘let's just make one up’ would bring.”

It just shows the nuance and genius of the show, which was in its heyday back in the mid 90s.

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