best post-season 8 Simpsons recurring character

Duffman

I like the various jobs the writers had Ol' Gil end up at, like Senor Dingdong's Doorbell Fiesta.

Ol' Gill.

voted for Johnny Tightlips cause he's in season 3's company

I don't remember Dr. Velimirovic at all, though looking at his wiki entry I have seen a couple of episodes he appears in

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/1/12/Dr._velimirovic.png/revision/latest?cb=20100727094538

Patches and Poor Violet make me laugh, but I only know their first appearance.

so many classics

i will never not say "he's got a heart as big as my booooobs" in a stupid voice given the slightest window of opportunity

ol' Gil was Jack Lemmon at first right?

Gil is classic, Duffman is thrusting in the direction of total classic

yeah, Gil is basically Lemmon's character in Glengarry Glen Ross

love patches and poor violet but voted for Manjula bc i can't believe she didn't show up until season 9

Gotta be Gil

http://download.lardlad.com/sounds/season15/dohbot18.mp3

yeah, Gil is basically Lemmon's character in Glengarry Glen Ross

lol Youtube fite:

Gil is actually based on Willy Loman from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. In this story Willy (Gil) chases the American dream, but the reality is that the dream is only an illusion; not everyone can obtain the American dream.

REPLY: It's a spoof of jack Lemmon's portrayal of Shelley Levene in the 1992 film adaptation of the play Glengarry Glen Ross

Nope.

REPLY: Yep.

It is very true that this is a spoof of Shelley Levene from "Glengarry Glen Ross", However Glengarry Glen Ross itself was influnced largely by Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. According to the CAMBRIDGE Companion to Literature (A highly reputable academic source for Contemporary literature) Glengarry Ross is like an updated and caustic version of Arthur Miller's Death of a salesman.

According to the "letter to the editor" in the actual BOOK of the play, David Mammet (The author of the play Glengarry Ross), picks up where death of a salesman left off. See, Willy was begnning to realize the american dream was dead; Mammet, just picked up where Milller left off: "The american dream IS dead".

In math, we simply cut out the middleman Glengarry as such:

Gil=Glengarry=Death of a salesman

Therefore, via transitive property, Gil= Death of a salesman.

Duffman can't die, only the actors who play him!

the pretzel franchise episode (one of the weaker in season 8 imo) has jack lemmon playing basically his ggr character, who is not gil, and then the next season the new character gil who is basically that jack lemmon character appears

Pretzel episode has my favorite Fat Tony line ever:

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S08E11/1103885.jpg?b64lines=IFlPVSBIQVZFIDI0IEhPVVJTIFRPIEdJVkUKIFVTIE9VUiBNT05FWS4=

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S08E11/1104085.jpg?b64lines=QU5EIFRPIFNIT1cgWU9VIFdFJ1JFIApTRVJJT1VTLCB5b3UgaGF2ZQoxMiBob3Vycy4=

Merdeyeux otm

Gil, no question.

Of the others, can't really think of any standout bits. The one about Mr. Costington being banned from his own store's ladies department due to "a shoe sniffing problem" is pretty good, though.

I might still think Crazy Cat Lady was funny if she'd only been used the one time.

p sure i saw all of this season, only remember Gil Gunderson

don't think I ever saw this character:

Ling Bouvier - Selma Bouvier's adopted daughter from China

but please someone reassure me this isn't handled as awfully as im imagining it was

Crazy Cat Lady is the absolute worst. All of Tress MacNeille's vocal performances are so overbearing and one-note and self-satisfied. I guess fans have a higher tolerance for her than I do, but her increased role on the show is very heavily linked with its decline in my mind.

cookie kwan is the absolute worst character

Pretzel episode has my favorite Fat Tony line ever:

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S08E11/1103885.jpg?b64lines=IFlPVSBIQVZFIDI0IEhPVVJTIFRPIEdJVkUKIFVTIE9VUiBNT05FWS4=

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S08E11/1104085.jpg?b64lines=QU5EIFRPIFNIT1cgWU9VIFdFJ1JFIApTRVJJT1VTLCB5b3UgaGF2ZQoxMiBob3Vycy4=

yeah I've probably referenced this bit a hundred times

such a great episode

cookie kwan is the absolute worst character

Not coincidentally, she is also voiced by Tress MacNeille. Ditto Agnes Skinner, who went from being a funny very minor character to an insufferable drag. I can't stand the indiscriminate shouting.

I feel like no actor would have really been able to make Cookie Kwan, Crazy Cat Lady, Lindsey Naegle etc work, regardless of how talented they were. (Naegle not an option in the poll b/c she first appeared in season 8)

and I think her Agnes Skinner performance is good, but yes, the character worked much better in small doses

xp I also can't imagine one making them worse though

eh, the problem with cookie kwan is not the choice of voice actor

This is obv Gill but let's at least have a round of applause for the real comptroller

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Nookie_Kwan

Jonathan Frink (speaking on phone with Homer): Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing?
Cookie: This is my cousin, Nookie Kwan.
Nookie: I'm number one on the east side!
Frink: Oh gay-layvin.

possibly should have made this post-season 9 rather than season 8, which would have left us with:

State Comptroller Atkins - State comptroller
Boobarella - Host of late night TV monster movies
Ling Bouvier - Selma Bouvier's adopted daughter from China
Shauna Chalmers - Jimbo's ex Superintendent's daughter
Declan Desmond - Documentary filmmaker (played by Eric Idle)
Francesca - Sideshow Bob's Italian wife
Frankie the Squealer - Informant for Fat Tony
Ginger Flanders - Ned Flanders's "Vegas wife
Gino - Sideshow Bob's toddler son
Gloria - Snake's pregnant girlfriend (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
Judge Constance Harm - Springfield judge (Jane Kaczmarek)
Rachel Jordan - Lead singer of the Christian Rock band Kovenant (Shawn Colvin)
Coach Lugash - Gymnastics instructor
Amber Simpson - Homer Simpson's deceased "Vegas wife."
Johnny Tightlips - One of Fat Tony's henchmen.
Dr. Velimirovic - Plastic surgeon
Yes Guy - Service industry

I guess either Homer or Flanders' Vegas wife would be the pick from those? also, I just remembered that Cletus had a daughter who appeared in several episodes (and was apparently voiced by Zooey Deschanel?), she doesn't appear on that wiki list for some reason. I doubt anyone would vote for her anyway.

re: the "Yes Guy": I have never seen a TV show where Frank Nelson appears and only know about him via modern day references in stuff like the Simpsons - would I find the Yes Guy funny if I had seen some of Nelson's work? or would he still be rubbish?

plz watch some Frank Nelson AND LET US KNOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7cML2elJIY

Cookie Kwan is terrible and racist but so is Apu

Duffman ("This brown patch could use a little H2-OH YEAH!"), but Manjula and Coach Lugash have their moments. (And my fondness for the Gravity's Rainbow episode probably explains why I like Lugash.)

Apu is a racist caricature that the show had the good sense (in its peak years, at least) to develop into a real character.

I've watched some Frank Nelson now, and have come to the conclusion that Nelson was funny but the "Yes Guy" is still unfunny.

And I heart Agnes Skinner, though I see, at best, one new episode of the show per season at this point.

the Frank Nelson thing reminds me how many of the voices on the show are basically impressions of old actors or comedians (or started out that way at least, before evolving into something different e.g. Homer's voice starting out as a Walter Matthau imitation). I remember hearing Bob & Ray for the first time and realising that the voice of the man who shows Bart's class around the box factory is essentially Castellaneta doing Wally Ballou

https://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bart-gets-famous14.png

Old Gil in a landslide. Yes Guy is the worst Simpsons character and the embodiment of the show's decline.

I might still think Crazy Cat Lady was funny if she'd only been used the one time.

Yeah, agree with this. She's a sight gag, not a character.

I would bet there's a whole episode centred around CCL in a latter days season.

would actually be into that if it involved her opening a cat cafe and eventually shaming the whole town over mental health negative stigmatisation

When she was eight, Eleanor Abernathy was a smart and ambitious young girl who wanted to be both a lawyer and a doctor "because a woman can do anything". She was studying for law school at 16, and by 24, she had earned an MD from Harvard Medical School and a JD from Yale Law School. However, by 32, suffering from burnout, she had turned to alcohol, became obsessed with her pet cat, and would randomly take to cutting pieces of her own hair. By the time she was 40, she had assumed her present state as a drunken, raving lunatic.[1] She once shared a cat with Moe.[2]

i did like ccl's first appearance, mostly for how she throws not just a single cat, but an armful of cats all at once

I admire Duffman's appearance in "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" - "I was just giving it to your wife." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpkVhyj_xpE

However I voted Ginger for asking Ned to Irish up her coffee.

Trivia Edit
The Crazy Cat Lady has a Mayan ancestor who throws chameleons instead of cats.

"How far can we stretch this joke???"

one of the things about having a static set of characters and other such fixed points over a long period of time is that it increasingly feels less like 'the simpsons' and more like simpsons fanfic done by people who don't have a great understanding of the show

This poll really hits home what an aberration Gil is. All of these other late-addition characters are dire.

The Grumple from that Gil-centric Christmas episode was pretty great too. (Jesus that episode is already 10 years old!)

Gil just over Duffman, but both are essentially one-joke characters that just happen to survive having their joke repeated a bit more than Crazy Cat Lady (who is a scream as a one-time, unexpected throwaway oddity). To be honest I'm amazed Cat Lady and Gil showed up this late, and that Disco Stu debuted in 7. The rest of these I either cringe or draw a blank, or both.

The Crazy Cat Lady has a Mayan ancestor who throws chameleons instead of cats.

Okay, I actually chuckled at this idea. I've never seen it, but this was evidently just a quick gag in a Treehouse of Horror ep, for which I give a lot more leeway than creating a backstory for her alcoholism.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

This really hits the nail on the head with what makes new Simpsons bad. The same tired joke done over and over, rarely improved. I think Duffman may have gone the way of crazy cat lady. At least I still get a kick out of the Yes Guy.

don't think I ever saw this character:

Ling Bouvier - Selma Bouvier's adopted daughter from China
but please someone reassure me this isn't handled as awfully as im imagining it was

I voted Boobarella. Good old Gil is fine as far as he goes, but he doesn't go very far.

I find it astonishing that Gil, Duffman and Yes Guy are from after season 8!?

Most all of these are pretty one note, even if its a funny note, like Johnny Tightlips or Coach Lugash. I will go for Duffman I guess.

Did Manjula ever get any good lines?

I will go for Duffman I guess.

DUFFMAN, WILL DEFINITELY, GOFORYOU!

OH YEAH.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I forgot about Mr. Costington, he was pretty funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmlhr9-Jb2w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5vnUFRvz04