If you've been on the air for 400 episodes and you're still a huge success — generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year — there's not much of anything that can scare you.
Not even the (gasp) Parents Television Council, which "The Simpsons" is brave enough to take on in its 400th episode.
"We deal with the issues of what you can and can't say on television in a show that will be seen by a lot of people," executive producer Al Jean told TV critics. "It's a tricky thing, because we're trying to show something that the FCC won't allow on TV, so we're having to figure out how to do that. But any show that deals with comedy that's on the edge gets into some trouble. And, yeah, it is somewhat satirizing things that we've gone through."
(The episode, which airs Sunday at 7 p.m. on Ch. 13, is really the 399th. Episode 400 — a takeoff on "24" — follows at 7:30 p.m.)
A typically weird series of events lands Homer on "Smartline." And when he accidentally spills a hot cup of coffee on Kent Brockman's lap, the newsman utters a four-letter word that's forbidden on TV. And gets him and his station in trouble.
The PTC is never mentioned by name, but it's clear who the writers are referring to when Lisa says, "There are a lot of religious watchdog groups out there keeping the world safe from the horror of free expression."
"You mean there are losers who spend all day watching TV looking for stuff to complain about?" Bart asks. "Who'd be lame enough to do that?"
Well, Ned Flanders, of course. And he puts tapes of everything but "The 700 Club" and a test pattern (non-Indian) in the "naughty" pile.
When he sees "Smartline," Flanders immediately e-mails his group (Online Christian Soldiers), telling his sons he is "imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw."
It's shocking, not because it's inaccurate, but because "The Simpsons" is courageous enough to take on a ridiculously powerful lobby group.
But the episode spends a lot more time biting the hand that feeds it — and telling the truth about "The Simpsons" own corporate masters. Fox News is portrayed as wildly conservative ("Liberals hate families!" while the Fox network is shown as purveyors of the worst of TV (a "reality" series about strippers who run an airline).
"One thing I've always wondered — how can Fox News be so conservative when the Fox network keeps airing raunchy shows," Lisa asks. "They don't fit together."
"Fox deliberately runs shows that will earn them huge fines, which are then funneled through the FCC straight to the Republican Party," Brockman says. "Everybody in the media knows it but no one has the guts to say it."
(OK, that's an exaggeration. And, no, the Republican Party headquarters are not in a haunted castle, and Dracula isn't one of the GOP leaders.)
"The Simpsons," through Brockman, takes a well-earned shot at the media and the government.
"Friends, the press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel," he says. "Journalists used to question the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call 'The 6 o'clock News.'
"Demand more of your government. Demand more of your press."
Wow. To think we have to watch "The Simpsons" to hear the truth.
THE BIGGEST "Simpsons" fan at my house wasn't even born when the show debuted.
And when I look at my rather large 16-year-old son — complete with a (gasp) driver's license — that's hard to believe.
But the Simpsons have been on TV since Dec. 17, 1989. Actually, longer than that — they began as animated shorts on "The Tracey Ullman Show" in 1987.
In the past two decades, generations of fans have caught on to the show.
"I don't think there's a constant mass that watches this show as they grow older. I think it's replenished," said executive producer James L. Brooks. "And the great thing to us about the show right now, if you saw any of our work weeks, is that the passion still goes into the show. We still worry. Everybody comments to us about how long we've been on, but the experience of doing the show — except for a lot of creative independence we get — is very much like we're just starting."
"And sadly, many of our fans have died, they've gotten so old," creator Matt Groening deadpanned. "But luckily, new ones are being born every day."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com