Status Quo Is God/Western Animation/The Simpsons

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Status Quo Is God in The Simpsons is played straight most of the time, but occasionally subverted. Examples include:

Played Straight

  • At the end of "C.E.D'oh", Homer has his "305th Everything Is Back to Normal BBQ." This was the 306th episode; this only accounts for one change to that point.
  • Fat Tony dies from a heart attack while Homer is working as an undercover agent infiltrating his organization. Afterwards, we're introduced to "Fit Tony"; Fat Tony's identical-sounding cousin and a fitness buff. He decides to step in for his deceased cousin but while working as the mob don, he begins to fall out of shape and resemble Fat Tony. Eventually, he ends up being referred to as "Fat Tony", thus restoring the status quo despite the fact Fat Tony himself was Killed Off for Real.
  • The Season 22 episode "The Blue and the Gray". Marge stops dying her hair and lets it revert to a natural gray color. This causes an uproar throughout the family and the town residents, and makes Marge the subject of many stereotypes about seniors. As it turns out, her sisters, Patty and Selma, have been dyeing their hair too. At the end, Marge goes back to blue, and everyone except Homer, in an interesting blue twist, he dyes what's left of his hair blue laughs it off and life in Springfield goes on as normal.

Lampshaded

Lisa: Snowball 5! But to save getting a new dish, we will call you Snowball 2 and pretend the whole thing never happened.
Skinner: That's awfully cheap Lisa.
Lisa: You're right, Principal Tamzarian.

  • The episode where Lisa and Bart are placed in the same third grade class. At the end of the episode, Bart and Lisa are given the choice to either stay in third grade or return to their respective classes. The characters start chanting for the status quo to be restored at the end.
    • There was even an episode where Lisa got to write an episode for a TV show. After making big sweeping changes that didn't go over too well, Homer tells her that the number one rule of television is that everything must go back to normal at the end of the episode.
  • Got a big Lampshade Hanging in "Pygmoelian", where Moe's face is crushed by a falling backdrop, undoing the Magic Plastic Surgery that made him handsome and reverting him to normal. The last scene has Moe asking why he got his old face back instead of being deformed; the episode ends before he can say "It makes no sense."
  • Other lampshades pop up with the trope page quote, a season 22 episode, that ends with Marge (after once again failing to get a social life outside of the house) reading a book called "The Joy of the Status Quo", and this exchange from "Bart vs Lisa vs the Third Grade":

Skinner: Well, if this episode has taught us anything, it's that nothing works better than the status quo. Bart, you're promoted back to the fourth grade.
Bart: Yay!
Skinner: And Lisa, you have a choice. You may continue to be challenged in third grade or return to second grade and be merely a big fish in a small pond.
Lisa: Big fish! Big fish!
Homer: [satisfied] The status quo.

Aversions

  • Played with in some of the few episodes which avert this trope; many of them feature endings that make it seem like the status quo will once again be restored, only to change it up on the viewer at the last second. The classic example is the episode where Milhouse's parents divorce; the episode ends with Kirk singing a romantic song for Luann in a last-ditch attempt to win her back. It looks like we're in for a heartwarming reunion, until Kirk asks her to come back to him and she replies "Oh God no!" They stay broken up.
    • They DID eventually get back together, but that was ten seasons later.
  • When Lisa became a vegetarian, she stayed a vegetarian. (Only because Paul McCartney wouldn't do the show otherwise) She also remained a Buddhist after converting in "She of Little Faith".
  • Also when Maude Flanders died, she stayed dead.
  • Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel have had an on-and-off relationship since season 8.
  • Apu got married in season 9; in season 13 he cheated, and ever since then every appearance by him or his wife references it, usually by having them act frustrated or angry at one another.
  • Sometimes the status quo changes gradually—for example, Lenny and Carl have pretty much replaced Barney as Homer's best friend. However, they just hang out with him just for kicks. This is made evident in the same episode where Barney decides to be sober.

Zig-Zags

  • Barney stopped drinking in the eleventh season episode "Days of Wine and D'oheses" and remained a sober, clean-cut compulsive coffee drinker after the end of the episode and for several seasons. Like the Luanne and Kirk example, he reverted to his original state in season fourteen's "I'm Spelling As Fast as I Can". Later on in current[when?] seasons, he would have less roles, aside from being passed out on the ground.
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