The Simpsons
Friends and Family
TV Flash files “Friends and Family” as hour 598 of 802 in the TV Flash guide — The Simpsons (1989–present) on Fox, season 28, episode 2, aired 2016-10-02, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S28E02: listed hour 598 of 802 in the The Simpsons guide, hour 2 of 22 in season 28. It aired 2016-10-02 (30 min). The listed hour before it is “Monty Burns' Fleeing Circus” (S28E01). Next is “The Town” (S28E03). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Mr. Burns hires the Simpsons to play his live-in virtual reality family, but excludes Homer so that he may play dad. Now alone, Homer finds a new best friend in girl-next-door Julia, who eats, drinks and thinks like him. Blackboard: 'I will stop losing 50% of my NFL lead-in'.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Friends and Family sit in the The Simpsons guide?
S28E02 is listed hour 598 of 802 — hour 2 of 22 in season 28, season 28 episode 2.
When did The Simpsons S28E02 air?
Friends and Family aired 2016-10-02 and is listed at 30 minutes.
Where should I start if I am not watching all 800 episodes?
Start with the 1989 Christmas premiere, then a handful of golden-age hours from seasons four through eight. Treat the rest as a library, not a novel.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Watch it as a living joke encyclopedia, not a series you owe from pilot to present. The early years still teach how American satire learned to reset weekly; the later catalog is optional weather. You already speak Springfield. This is how the grammar got written.
The first image is a couch, and then it is not. The Simpsons treats the opening gag as a weekly contract: we will reset the living room, and we will still find a new joke about the country that owns it. Fox put a yellow family on Sunday nights in 1989 after the Tracey Ullman shorts, and the half-hour that followed did not merely popularize adult animation. It installed a shared vocabulary. People who stopped watching still speak Springfield.
Filed against
- Dan Castellaneta as Homer Simpson
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- Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson
Julie Kavner’s Marge Simpson is the blue-hair patience of Fox’s yellow family — a reference language still adding pages while the country litigates whether the golden age is over. Not a sitcom you finish. On TV Flash she is the…
- Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson
Nancy Cartwright’s Bart Simpson is Springfield’s weekly reset in a kid’s voice — the prank as American satire’s engine since Fox put a yellow family on Sunday nights in 1989. The Simpsons is a joke encyclopedia still adding pages; she is…
- Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson
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- Hank Azaria as Moe / Chief Wiggum
Hank Azaria voices Moe and Chief Wiggum on The Simpsons — Springfield as a living joke encyclopedia, bar and badge as two dialects in Fox's yellow reference language. TV Flash files him as the show's vocal furniture: the early years still…
- Harry Shearer as Mr. Burns / Ned Flanders
Harry Shearer is Springfield in stereo: Mr. Burns’s death-rattle capital and Ned Flanders’s neighborly hymn, often in the same half-hour. The Simpsons installed a shared vocabulary for American satire; his voices are two of its most…