The show actually has to look back and surpass the 90s

because unlike nearly any other piece of pop culture,

this is a show that has been on for 30 years,

it's been on for multiple generations.

Hi again, I'm Jack Picone, host of the Simpsons podcast

Worst Episode Ever, and this is part two

of every job Homer has had on the Simpsons.

[quirky music]

We're gonna define these jobs as anything Homer's done,

paid or unpaid, ranging from his main job

at the nuclear power plant to any of the many one-off gags,

offscreen references and whatnot

over the course of 31 seasons and counting.

[car parts crash]

Doh!

This guy in here owes us money.

Leave 'em to me.

Oh, I hurt my fist and my palm.

Season 18 is actually the season

that has the most episodes where Homer gets another job.

When Fat Tony is shot and left in a coma,

Homer takes over as a mob boss.

It was only a matter of time.

Beware the Taco Belly, ooh.

Homer becomes a Mexican wrestler named Taco Belly.

He was a mob boss, might as well be a Mexican wrestler.

We're in season 18, folks.

Fix It Manly Man Handy Man at your service.

Marge starts a carpentry business and uses Homer as a futz

since most people won't hire a woman.

Homer takes all the credit, angering Marge,

who leaves him to rebuild a roller coaster by himself,

which nearly gets him killed.

Now where's my parade?

Homer accidentally signs up for the Army

and almost gets himself killed doing some exercises.

This is very similar to when he did the same thing

in the Navy and in the Reserves.

Season 20 is a very big transitional period

for the Simpsons.

It's when it moved from classic hand-drawn animation

to HD era.

This gave the writers a lot more options

and the show, at first, subtly shifts tonally.

They start taking more chances

and it becomes more avant-garde.

[video game beeping]

[Homer gasping]

They even slow down a bit in certain episodes

and basically, when you tune in week to week,

you don't know what you're gonna get.

Now, season 18, where we are now,

is kinda the end of the first era.

This is now where they're not avant-garde,

they've almost become a parody of themselves

and that's why there's so many Homer gets a job

episodes in this season.

[suspenseful music]

After inadvertently killing an ice cream truck driver,

Homer takes the truck and becomes a driver himself.

This is very similar to when he did the same thing

with a plow truck and with a freighter truck,

and eventually we'll see he does it with a tow truck.

Homer likes trucks.

[All] Shipwreck!

To cheer Marge up, Homer rebuilds the boardwalk

of her childhood vacation town,

and then immediately burns it down by accident.

To repay the town, he becomes a fisherman,

joining a fishing crew.

Manure for sale!

Get your manure!

This is a mock-umentary where we see

Homer at various ages.

When he was younger, he had several jobs,

including his first after-school job, manure salesman.

Additionally, he's an infomercial actor,

where he gets paid to ask questions in infomercials,

and he's a caricature artist for open coffin funerals.

Did he have any hobbies?

[crowd gasping and camera clicking]

I also wreck bar mitzvahs.

After accidentally photographing a celebrity scandal

and making a lot of money,

Homer becomes a tabloid paparazzo.

Homer eventually gives up the gig

in exchange for celebrities treating their fans

with more respect.

This is one of the first times where Homer's job

comes because something went viral.

I'll be a ref.

[Children] Yay!

When Lisa's soccer referee quits, Homer takes the job

because he hears the players actually have to share

their snacks with him.

Dad, where'd you get that outfit?

I got fired from Foot Locker.

Homer gets his referee outfit

from when he was fired at Foot Locker at some point.

I'll take five mattresses.

I don't work here.

You do now, son!

When Homer falls asleep on a store model of a mattress

and actually ends up selling five of them,

he gets hired to become a mattress salesman.

Any moment.

[fire alarm sounds]

What the hell was that?

That's the fire siren!

Homer crashes into a firehouse

and injures the entire fire department,

so he becomes a firefighter while they recover.

He begins stealing from the houses he saves,

before his family guilts him into giving his loot

to the homeless.

This job is in the trend of Homer getting a job

because he accidentally injures or kills

the person who had it before.

[singing in foreign language]

Homer becomes an opera star after Dr Hibbert realizes

that when he lies on his back, his stomach lodges

underneath his diaphragm and gives him a powerful voice.

After being stalked by a fan, Homer quits

and discovers his talent for painting while on his back.

The painting is more of a hobby that comes on

as a joke on the tail end of the opera,

so we're not gonna consider it a separate job.

Ah, my first tow.

Homer becomes a tow truck driver

after befriending one in the neighboring town.

When he accidentally tows in their territory,

Homer is locked up in his basement

until Marge breaks him out.

At this point, Homer's driven ambulances, plow trucks,

regular trucks, so we might as well add

tow truck to the mix.

Man, you work as a silhouette model for one day

and it haunts you for the rest of your life.

In this episode, Homer mentions he was once

a silhouette model for mud flaps.

Homer and Marge are rival assassins

in a Treehouse of Horror parody of Mr and Mrs Smith,

and like the previous Treehouse of Horror,

we're counting this one as a job

just because the original base story takes place

in a Springfield that mostly resembles our own,

as opposed to an alternate universe take on Homer.

♪ Pain is brown ♪

♪ Hate is white ♪

Rocker.

In an infamous REDCON that updates Homer

and Marge's early years from the 70s to the 90s,

Homer is now a member, songwriter, front man

for the grunge band Sadgasm.

Homer becomes rich and famous, but the band breaks up

before Bart is born.

This episode, That 90s Show, is probably the episode

that finally made me feel old.

What's interesting about this episode

is the show initially defined the 1990s.

It was the 1990s.

And now that we've moved so far away from that decade,

the show actually has to look back and surpass the 90s,

and it has to update the entire canon of the show

for it to kind of make sense.

The 90s?

Never heard of it.

Homer and Marge started out as Baby Boomers,

and now we're completely REDCON-ing them to be Generation X.

If the show goes on for another 10 years,

Homer and Marge are gonna become Millennials.

The show has actually been on so long

that the very nature of the stories it tells

and the world it takes place in has changed,

quite like the real world has.

I mean, look back 10 seasons

to when Homer had this obscure Internet company.

Hey, what the?

Huh, the Internet King.

I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.

To, at this point, the Simpsons even have smart phoness.

Marinating with you is cool.

Thanks son.

[both chuckling]

Some of that is cow blood.

Homer makes his own homemade beef jerky.

They never really say when this started happening

or where or why, but when it comes to food,

we don't ask questions with Homer.

Stop, in the name of a private citizen

with no connection to the law!

Homer, you could've killed him.

I sure could've.

Homer and Ned become bounty hunters for bail skippers.

And I remember this abandoned greenhouse outside of town.

It used to be a beautiful, thriving greenhouse

'til I was hired to run it.

Homer helps take care of endangered bees

in an abandoned greenhouse for Lisa,

and later mates them with Mo's killer bees

to make a hybrid species that can survive.

This weird phenomenon of bees dying off

really became part of the cultural consciousness

at this point, so the Simpsons had no choice

but to bring it up somehow.

Ireland doesn't like pubs anymore.

This isn't the firs time Homer's been a bartender,

but it is the first time he's been a bartender in Ireland.

He and Grandpa get really drunk in a pub in Ireland

and end up buying the place.

To boost sales, they allow smoking inside.

When the show started in 1989,

smoking in bars was actually very common

and it wasn't until the 90s

that it became more and more illegal,

so this is kind of a commentary on the good ole days

when we could choke on cigarette smoke inside a bar.

[suspenseful music and robot running past]

Homer lands the lead role in a superhero blockbuster film

called Everyman.

He loses, then gains back his weight and the film flops.

Not only isn't this the first time Homer's been an actor,

but he's even been a superhero before.

One thing's for sure, I'm not Everyman.

I'm making you my new executive assistant.

Why can't I keep the job I have now, whatever it is?

When Carl becomes supervisor at the power plant,

he chooses Homer to be his personal assistant.

Not only is this another job Homer has at the plant,

it's not even the first time he's been somebody's assistant

at the power plant.

Let's give the Olympics a miracle.

Homer and Marge compete in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics

as Olympic curlers.

While Homer was a great softball player in the Work League

and has worked with a lot of famous athletes,

this is the first time he himself is actually on the field,

or the ice or whatever they call it,

I'm not a big curler guy.

What, this guy?

[papers falling and shredder shredding]

Hey, ho!

Homer is arrested for bribing a city official

to clear up multiple fines.

To avoid prison, he becomes an FBI informant,

going undercover in prison to investigate Fat Tony.

They actually bond and become friends,

and when Fat Tony finds out Homer's a rat,

he has a heart attack and dies.

The Fat Tony we see from here on out

is actually his identical cousin Fit Tony,

who then gained a bunch of weight and became Fat Tony.

Your memory's not deceiving you, this is not the first time

Homer got in trouble

and then became an informant for the FBI.

Doh, doh!

Homer is the voice over actor for Angry Dad

in Bart's Oscar nominated short film.

This isn't the firs time we've seen Homer as an actor

and it's not even the first time we see him

as a voice over actor.

If you remember, he was Poochie.

♪ The name's Poochie D and I rock the telly ♪

♪ I'm half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli ♪

My time being wasted was not wasted!

Just two episodes later,

Homer gets even more acting experience,

replacing Tommy Chong on stage as part of a new comedy duo,

Cheech and Chunk.

I bet you didn't think when you saw this list

that Chong would be one of the jobs.

Now how could someone as young as you

know about 20 years ago?

After cutting Selma's hair with garden shears,

Homer becomes the most popular hairdresser in town,

until hearing the constant gossip of his women customers

forces him to quit.

Hairdressing's kind of another way

Homer has expressed himself artistically

throughout the run of the show.

[security alarm ringing]

[guys groan]

Homer once again becomes a superhero in an non-canonical

Diving Bell on the Butterfly parody.

After being bitten by a spider and completely paralyzed,

Homer has to communicate through farting.

Then he gets bit by a second spider,

this one's radioactive.

He shoots webs from his butt and becomes a superhero.

If repeatedly rebooting Homer as a superhero

isn't an example of the Simpsons as a funhouse mirror

to society, I don't know what is.

I want a list of 100 ways to make your job worse

by close of business today.

Can one of the hundred be making the list?

No.

Homer gets an assistant at work, just like he did

in season two, except instead of Harvey Fierstein,

I am nature's greatest miracle!

I'll need three weeks vacation and moving expenses.

You got it buddy.

Now we have Jane Lynch.

This assistant actually becomes Homer's boss

when she rats him out to Mr Burns,

and Homer becomes her assistant.

When Homer and Lisa find out

that most young adult fantasy novels

are ghost written by a committee,

he decides to get rich quick

by putting together his own writer's group

and penning the The Troll Twins of Underbridge Academy.

Our book will about an orphan who goes to a magical school

where he discovers he's a vampire.

This book eventually becomes a success,

but all the credit is stolen by author Neil Gaiman.

[Lisa gasping]

Gaiman!

[suspenseful music]

The higher they rise, the further they fall.

You know, you're kind of a downer.

Mr Burns makes Homer an account executive

after a video of them karaoke-ing together goes viral.

With the new corporate position,

Homer becomes colder and more distant from his family.

This entire plot is heavily influenced by Mad Men,

which was very much at the forefront

of pop culture at the time.

Welcome to Gut Check With Homer Simpson,

where the truth is served with a side of in your face.

After a YouTube video of Homer ranting goes viral,

Homer is given his own political cable show.

He admits to being full of crap after choosing Ted Nguyen

to be the Republican Presidential candidate.

So not only is this another job Homer gets from going viral,

but again, it plays on this evolution of how the show

treats politics.

Where once Homer was kind of an apolitical everyman,

this is definitely more about the actual polarization

of politics in the country, red versus blue,

Republican versus Democrat.

Homer specifically here is a conservative pundit.

Republicans are the ones that choose Homer as their face.

Woo hoo, I'm your Jesus, me!

So Homer isn't actually Jesus Christ here,

he's playing him in a passion play

and he actually blows the audience away

with an amazing performance,

until his weight crushes the cross and he collapses.

Out of my way, it's too much!

Speaking of Jesus, Homer becomes a deacon for the church

for a new, young, hip reverend played by Edward Norton,

who wins Homer over using a lot of pop culture references.

What Jesus is saying really can be explained

by an episode of Californication.

I'm not one for taking new jobs on a whim,

but as we say in the snow plow business,

I'm your astronaut.

Bart and Flanders team up to get reverend Lovejoy back,

because Bart actually misses the time

Homer would spend at home.

Now let's play human foosball!

[whistle blowing]

Lisa gives a speech on her dad that mentions the time

he was a soccer ref and it goes viral,

so he's actually invited to Brazil

to be a ref at the World Cup.

This is another job that Homer gets because he goes viral.

And you might have noticed now that we're seeing

a dramatic decrease in how many Homer works per season,

and that's because the show is really found its footing

in this new HD era where we're several seasons in

and the storytelling and the types of episodes we're seeing

are more outside the box, more avant-garde.

From week to week, just complete different tonal changes

and they don't need to rely as much

on the Homer gets a job trope.

We're seeing them focus on characters

we really haven't explored before.

We're seeing them do formats and types of shows

we've never really seen before.

At this point, in season 24, 25, 26,

the poetic license of the show is expanded so much

that it doesn't need to rely on tropes anymore.

Each week, the Simpsons kinda can do whatever it wants

and still be the Simpsons.

♪ Focus like a laser beam ♪

♪ I'll keep fighting til I want something real ♪

After buying a bass guitar, Homer forms a cover band

with Kirk Van Houten, reverend Lovejoy, Dr Hibbert and Apu.

When Apu breaks out on his own, Homer becomes jealous

and the band breaks up.

This is yet another episode that Homer finds success

as part of a band, whether it's the B Sharps, Sadgasm

or Archie Bell and the Drells.

Night gathers, now might Duff watch begin.

[Jack] After Duffman requires hip surgery,

Homer wins a reality show contest

to become the next Duffman.

Ow!

The job requires Homer to stay sober,

and when he realizes the detrimental effects of alcohol,

he actually starts advocating people to drink less,

which quickly gets him fired.

And this job is actually a dream job for Homer,

it's the personification of partying and drinking beer.

So it's very ironic that once Homer gets it,

he realizes just how bad alcohol is for you.

This is one of those times where his heart

kinda prevails and he turns on his job

and he turns on his employers for the greater good.

[quirky music]

Dirty, clean.

Dirty, clean.

When Lisa starts an app developing company at home,

Homer freaks out at the burgeoning digital age

and relives simpler times by taking his old job

as a dishwasher at a Greek diner.

Unfortunately, the job pays essentially nothing.

This story might seem familiar

because Homer actually did the same thing

over a dozen years ago.

But even though it's the same story on paper,

they're in very different worlds

with very different things to say.

So when Homer started his internet company from home,

he was kind of looking forward to this brand new horizon,

whereas now, anybody can kind of develop an app from home

and Homer has taken the role of the reactivation.

He's afraid of new modern times and this is why

he regresses and goes back to an old job as a dishwasher.

And reflecting the world and reflecting society,

the show's idea of the Internet has completely changed

from when Homer did it.

When Homer did it, it was this radical new way

to make money, this kind of futuristic technology,

and now, coding and developing apps is a day to day job.

It's very normal, and so that's why Lisa,

an eight year old, can even do it.

It's the package.

What package?

The package you're delivering.

Ooh.

At this point, we've seen Homer smuggle sugar, alcohol,

fruits and vegetables, so why not an exotic snake?

Oh dear, I can't afford it!

Now Homer's been an entertainer before,

as either a musician or an actor or a voice over actor,

so it really made sense for him to become an improv comic

because improv comedy was really at its height around now.

We've been talking about how the show has evolved

in the way it tells stories and the stories it tells,

but we really haven't talked about how it's evolved

in animation technology,

and this might be the pinnacle of it.

This episode's very fascinating

because at the very end of the show,

Homer's voice actor, Dan Castellaneta,

actually improvises the final minutes of the show.

He improvises his own scene,

even taking phones calls from viewers, which is crazy!

Hello?

Homer, how are you doing?

I'm doing all right, is that your question?

I was wondering what kind of car do you drive?

Oh, I drive a hybrid,

which is a combination of old and terrible.

For both the East Coast and the West Coast,

he performs twice, using kind of a pre-rendered Homer

but with his mouth actually matching

Dan Castellaneta's mouth.

Now we've talked about how the show has evolved

in terms of storytelling and writing

and the world it exists in, but this episode is fascinating

because it shows just how far the show has come

in terms of animation technology.

This would've been impossible 20 years ago,

because it would be a terrible strain

on the animator's wrist.

Homer, what are you doing here?

I'm here to do whatever it takes to get you to leave.

When Marge is arrested for child negligence,

Homer actually becomes a guard at the prison

to help her escape.

Now, on its surface, this might seem like one of Homer's

law enforcement adjacent jobs, but it's actually more

in tune with his illegal smuggling jobs

because he is trying to break somebody out of prison.

So the Simpsons actually move to Boston,

basically because Homer falls in love

with candle pin bowling.

He gets a similar job there as safety inspector,

but at the New England Candy Factory

and the Simpson start to make a new life in Boston,

at least until Homer finds out

that their football team cheats.

This is yet another job Homer takes on

because of his impulsiveness,

basically because he likes the way the pins are in Boston.

Homer, next week we finally take our revolutionary

teeth whitening strips to market.

In another REDCON of Homer and Marge's early years,

this is when they're living in Capital City

and kind of working cool, young, hip jobs,

and this is one of them for Homer that he loses

sometime after Bart is born.

I have a question for you.

On Bones, did you ever have any bones

with meat left on them, and if so, where are those bones?

Homer and Flanders make a movie

for the Christian film market

that earns over 100 million dollars at the box office,

although Homer doesn't end the episode as a millionaire,

he ends up giving it away to charity.

This one should kick us out.

The car is driving by itself, I'm a genius!

After Homer crashes into Mr Burns' office and is fired,

he kinda gets the perfect job,

a tester for self driving vehicles.

All he has to do is sit there and let them drive themselves.

What's funny about this plot is when they did

the self driving truck storyline in season 10,

two decades ago, it was a completely far-fetched

science fiction idea.

Now there really are start-ups for self driving vehicles,

so it kinda makes sense that Homer would end up

working for them again.

[crowd cheers]

Go team, go.

Go team, go.

So at this start-up,

Homer and Marge show these overworked employees

how to have fun and end up getting hired

to be the employee fun managers.

This is kind of a take on start-up culture

and how employees are driven to just work very long hours

and not have any fun.

I was on board until the Shawarma screamed,

very disappointing.

Lisa gives her TV recapping job to Homer

because he watches a lot of TV

and he has a lot of fun with it

until Krusty tries to run him off the road

for giving him a bad review.

You wanna see something really humor?

[cars crashing]

TV recapper is one of those jobs that didn't really exist

in season 10, so we're not seeing it until season 30.

In an extended flashback sequence, young Homer and Marge

actually work on a film starring Krusty

and Homer works as a PA, a production assistant.

[crowd cheering]

eSports coach.

Homer coaches Bart and other Conflict of Enemies players

in a World Championship held in Seoul, Korea.

This is a job and an industry that, again,

did not exist 20 years ago.

eSports was not a thing.

Now it's extremely popular, so it would be remiss

if the Simpsons didn't cover it at some point.

You could literally play football without any feet!

Now we're in the most recent season of the Simpson,

so we're kinda seeing, again, the same tropes

but in a different light.

This has Homer's quick rise and fall,

as well as Homer going viral,

Homer having a knack for being a solid entertainer,

a good front man, and then it kinda all comes together here

when Homer becomes a successful host

on a YouTube type platform.

Listen up millenniums, I'm Homer Simpson,

your new supervisor.

Homer is devoted to this position and I've lost count

of how many different positions he's had

at the power plant at this point.

He's basically had them all, besides janitor,

which we'll probably see in season 32's

Homer the Janitor or something.

Homer sells weed legally to clientele

who kinda miss the old way of doing things,

the illegal dirt bag experience.

So he starts selling it from the back of Mo's.

Lenny is on the floor playing video games in a hoodie.

He kinda recreates the old way of selling drugs

to make more money.

[upbeat music]

And that's it!

That's each and every job Homer has had on the Simpsons

in the first 31 seasons.

So the next 31 seasons, we'll get back to you.

I have to go now, my planet needs me.