A ‘Simpsons’ Writer Just Revealed A Cromulent Lionel Hutz Plotline That Never Made It To Air
Your honour, I move for a bad court thingy.
Few individuals encapsulate the glory days of The Simpsons better than Phil Hartman. The Saturday Night Live star voiced two of the show’s best-loved characters; ubiquitous film, TV and infomercial star Troy McClure and shonky criminal defence attorney Lionel Hutz, aka Miguel Sanchez, aka Dr. Nguyen Van Phuoc. And while it would be overly simplistic to put the show’s decline down to a single factor, there’s no denying that the departure of McClure and Hutz following Hartman’s tragic death in 1998 coincided with the end of the series’ golden era.
Recently, former Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein revealed that one of the show’s most iconic episodes – season seven’s Pulp Fiction riff ’22 Short Films About Springfield’ – nearly had a segment dedicated to television’s most incompetent lawyer, agent, body guard, unauthorised biographer and drug-dealer keeper away-er.
The short scene, tweeted by Weinstein, features Hutz schmoozing a group of Springfield residents, only for it to be revealed that they’re jury members in a case he’s defending. Needless to say, Judge Schneider is none too pleased with Hutz’s behaviour. After all, he’s had it in for Hutz ever since the attorney kinda ran over his dog. Well, replace the word “kinda” with “repeatedly” and the word “dog” with “son”.
“22 Short Films About Springfield” never had 22 stories but the second draft did have 20! Here’s the Lionel Hutz story that was cut. pic.twitter.com/U2mawadFjv
— Josh Weinstein (@Joshstrangehill) October 8, 2017