“You do not conquer anything with a salad”; “The yogurt is also cursed”; “Pa crazy you, bald”; “I want my sandwich”; “I’m going to kill Moe, wiii!”; “Nu-celar, the word is nu-ce-lar”… We could spend months naming all the mythical phrases of ‘The Simpsons’ and we would still lack time: from season 3 to 9 there was not a joke that failed, a reference that did not hit the nail on the head or a character that did not have at least one moment of glory But I have to confess that my favorite moment in the series is a gag that is not a gag, that I never fully understood and that despite everything I use practically every day: “And then I told Mabel, I tell her.”
Five-alarm chili, huh?
I put you in situation. Season 8, episode 9: ‘Homer’s Mysterious Journey’. Homer eats a hallucinogenic chili pepper after filling his mouth with wax to withstand the heat. and ends up having a trip where he ends up meeting a talking coyote and ends up discovering that his soul mate, of course, had always been Marge. The episode had not been produced for five seasons because in season 3 Matt Groening still considered it “too weird” for that point in the series. (and he was right). However, once resurrected, it was Ken Keeler who was in charge of most of the script.
In ‘The Simpsons’ they work with a room of writers, although the script is signed by one person or another: Someone hands in the script and then jokes are added, scenes are changed, and attempts are made to double the fun of the original. Keeler, a summa cum laude graduate in applied mathematics, left his secure job to pursue his calling. He wrote for David Letterman and ended up doing the scripts of episodes as fabulous as ‘A Star Is Born’ (the crossover with ‘The Critic’) or ‘Two Bad Neighbors’ (the one with George Bush Sr) before going to ‘Futurama’.
The episode tinkered with experimental animation using live action footage and computer animated characters, something risky considering that the episode is from 1997, only two years after the premiere of the still primitive ‘Toy Story’. The episode had references to ‘Dances with Wolves’, ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ and the American variety show ‘Soul Train’, but there was a gag that, out of sheer absurdity, no one knew where to fit in. It has to do with Mabel, indeed.
Who is Mabel?
For years it was believed that “I says to Mabel, I says”, the original phrase, came from some program of the 50 or was it an almost arcane reference to something only a few understood. Some said that it was a nod to the way of speaking of Popeye or Pete, the villain of Mickey Mouse. Some even claim that it comes from ‘The Great Gatsby’ or from a short story from before the series began airing. Some have even traced it to video games by Carmen Sandiego or Monty Python from the 80s, specific issues of Cracked magazine, Krazy Kat comics, Gracie Allen phrases or ‘The Jack Benny Show’. Too many possible references for a single joke.
But Josh Weinstein, one of the main writers of the series (theirs are ‘Lisa against Stacey Malibu’, ‘Bart against Australia’ or ‘Who shot Mr. Burns?’, where they wanted the criminal to be Barney), has answered the million dollar question On twitter. It’s not the first time she’s done it, though I had never given so much information about it.
Two years ago, in a thread where explained some of the series’ most seemingly cryptic jokes (such as “Speak up, I’m wearing a towel” or “The car shack”), winding them down with “It just sounded funny to us”, Weinstein talked about it by “I told Mabel, I tell her”: “It’s totally a throwaway line with no meaning (or rest of the sentence). We just needed Bart to talk to Lisa at the time but they couldn’t say anything related to the story. Plus, we like the old-fashioned tone.” That didn’t make die-hard fans want to know even more.
Mabel that they invent
The Story Behind ‘I Told Mabel’: Homer’s story in the chili episode was so long that we didn’t have time for the children’s side story. So when Homer asks where Marge is, they’re not doing anything. What they do at that time should be 100% no strings attached. And so Mabel was born. And to be clear, because people often ask me, Mabel’s line doesn’t reference anyone, it never appeared in a book or a movie or anything. As far as I know, she is totally independent in the history of mankind. It’s one of those lines whose randomness makes it better.
The phrase is so good and so random that We’ve been thinking for years that it’s a reference to somethingbut Weinstein himself clarifies “50% of the dialogues and jokes that people think are references are NOT at all, but THERE ARE a lot of specific references that a lot of people never caught on to. but it doesn’t matter, because they work well by themselves”. As a curiosity, the phrase has had a run, and has even appeared in a comic about the incredible ‘Gravity Falls’ where Mabel herself met the different versions of herself in the multiverse.
And this is the end of the genesis of a gigantic snow globe only suitable for very coffee lovers. After 25 years of thinking about the same phrase, the conclusion has finally been reached that it exists because it sounded funny. That hasn’t stopped the most fanatical fans, who want to know who Mabel is and what Bart told her, but personal obsessions have to be let die. Anyway, as I was telling you, I told Mabel, I tell her…