Transcription
Imagine for a moment that you've just entered the front door of the Simpsons house. You're in the foyer with the stairs on your right. If you turn left, you enter the living room with the piano and the front windows. Around the corner, it's the TV room with the door to the backyard. Then you enter the kitchen with the refrigerator and a view of the backyard. If you continue going clockwise, you hit the dining room, and then it's back to the foyer again. Makes sense? Pretty simple loop.
Okay, now where do you go to get to the basement? What about the garage? Where is its entrance? If we go upstairs, how do we get to Homer and Marge's room? What about the kids' rooms and their bathroom? Where is this room located?
For today's Simpsons mysteries, we're going to explore the hidden nooks and crannies of 742 Evergreen Terrace. Find out if there's truly something rotten in the Simpsons house. The Simpsons house is low-key the most mysterious element in the series. It's low-key in that we know a lot of these rooms instinctively. This main loop is very well defined, but when it comes to certain areas, the writers fudge a lot of the details. To be clear, this discussion isn't focused on criticizing minor continuity issues. It's more or less a study on how the house evolves to serve specific episode narratives. How do these small cheats make the Simpsons better? We're going to start on the ground level and then work our way upstairs. Those upstairs bedrooms are kind of interchangeable with their orientation, whereas these downstairs questions tend to be focused on one mysterious corner of the house. And let's face it, we're all here to hear about the rumpus room, so let's not beat around the bush.
This is the rumpus room, made famous in "Three Men and a Comic Book." Now, you think it would be invented for the sole purpose of doing this joke, but this isn't necessarily true. The rumpus room was first mentioned in Season 1's "Moaning Lisa," although it's possible Bart was referring to a different room completely. The Season 1 geography is pretty bizarre, but the room itself was actually first seen in "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge" when Maggie enters the garage to attack Homer. Boom, rumpus room in the background. Though there had always been evidence of the room in all the backyard scenes. There are consistently three sets of downstairs windows: the TV room, then the kitchen, and then this one. This window had never disappeared from the exterior design, so theoretically, there has always been a room hidden in the back corner of the house. Rumpus room deniers, get out of here.
Over the next few years, we would get maybe one or two scenes in the rumpus room per season. Here it is in "Radio Bart," and again in "Separate Vocations," this time with Maggie ruining the carpeting. We get a recycled bit of animation during Season 4's "Brother from the Same Planet." Then in Season 5, the rumpus room serves as our opener for "Lady Bouvier's Lover." However, after this point, it takes an extended break, coming back finally in Season 15's "The Fat and the Furious." Interestingly, this episode confirms the rumpus room exists in the Berenstain dimension. In a moment that somehow didn't destroy the whole universe, the room is used again in Season 17, and then is specifically mentioned in Season 25's "White Christmas Blues." In that episode, Marge calls it the rec room and offers to let this family stay there during Christmas. Its final appearance, as of this video, is the rumpus room's most comprehensive in Season 28 of "Father Knows Flanders." This one is notable because we get a full view of its physical space. We see Bart working in the background from behind the garage, and then when he exits through the window, we can see the opposite side too. Marge said in the Christmas episode that the rumpus room is sometimes there and sometimes not, but is that actually true? It's clear that the rumpus room is right next to the kitchen and behind the garage. Unlike others, this room never, ever changes locations. That window is always there.
So next, we need to take a look at this kitchen hallway connecting these locations. This hallway is by far the least photographed area of the entire house. Think about it. Can you recall any scene that takes place in this hallway? Sure, we get plenty of views from this angle in the kitchen. We can see it in the background in the dining room sometimes, but we rarely see the family walk through this area. It's like one of those out-of-bounds areas in video games because of the way scenes are shot, where the camera is oriented. We rarely get a good view of exactly how many doors are in this area. In addition, they are much more likely to use this camera angle in the kitchen where we can see this rack on the wall, as well as this door, presumably to the garage. But reversing the shot, seeing the rumpus room side of the wall is exceedingly rare. In episodes like "Lisa's Substitute" and "Homer at the Bat," there is no rumpus room door. It's just a blank pink wall. However, it can be seen in episodes like "Star-Craving Dad," "Duffless," "Simpson Tide," and possibly "When You Dish Upon a Star." Not sure about this one. The store is pretty confusing. There's also this moment from "The Old Man and Lisa," which is also pretty weird. What is this left turn back here? It's one of those situations where the door sometimes appears, but the outside window is always there. So maybe at some point, they sealed the room up? Maybe that credenza is haunted or something.
The Simpsons garage is considerably less mysterious overall. We know physically that it's on the right side of the house, so logically, this door would have to connect to the kitchen in some way. Because of Simpsons' hate for this hallway, we rarely see people entering the garage directly. For example, in the Indiana Jones opener in Season 3, we see Bart flip around and exit out the hallway, and then they cut to the garage. In "The Springfield Connection," we see Herman leaving the kitchen in that direction and then entering the garage. In the first 10 seasons, "Lisa the Skeptic" is the only episode in which we see a character specifically exit this door from the garage. This seems to be the confirmation. The only weird thing about the garage is what the heck those stairs are in Season 2 and a couple of random odds and ends, like in "Rosebud" where the garage connects to the kitchen directly, or in Season 10 where it's directly in front of the kitchen. I think this would put the garage right smack in the middle of the foyer, but this was obviously done for the sake of the joke. It should be clear at this point that this mystery hallway just serves as a connector between the kitchen, the rumpus room, and the garage. Aside from "Duffless" and a couple of other episodes, this hallway does not have a door at the end, just a blank pink wall.
This is going to create some problems, though, when it comes to the Simpsons basement. As of today, I still have no idea where these stairs are located in the house. According to "Some Enchanted Evening," the basement entrance is in the foyer on the side of the main stairwell. This story usually doesn't exist in the later seasons, so this is strictly a Season 1 invention. In later episodes, the stairs are implied to be near the kitchen, like here in "Lisa's Substitute." They exit the basement and then enter the kitchen from the mystery hallway. In "Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," Homer leaves the dining room in that direction. In "Treehouse of Horror V," the hallway disappears entirely, and the basement door opens directly to the kitchen. This was deliberately done for a dramatic effect to get that shot of opening the door to a new world. "The Day the Violence Died" is easily the most confusing basement episode. The shape of the ceiling implies that it might be directly under the stairs in the foyer. In addition, it contains one of the only mystery hallway scenes in the entire series when Homer walks by this door and tosses some change inside. This moment is especially odd because of its orientation. That if the kitchen is over here to the left, then that means this basement entrance is where the rumpus room would normally be. Also, I think the basement would be physically under the backyard. In the setup in Seasons 8 and 9, they went through a phase where the basement was behind this door in the foyer. Here it is in "Burns Baby Burns," "Homer vs. the 18th Amendment," and "Three Times in Bart the Mother." As we know, this door usually leads to a closet, but occasionally it morphs into the basement. In "Homer's Enemy," however, the basement moves back to the kitchen hallway, specifically behind this door. Sometimes this door is the basement, sometimes the garage. Also, sometimes the basement has cellar doors connected to the backyard. Sometimes there's a secret sauna down there. The Simpsons basement is a very mysterious place.
The fun thing about the basement is that it's clearly somewhere below ground level, but there's no physical space in the house to really put these stairs. I think the smartest place architecturally would be to put it under the main stairs in this kitchen wall, but obviously, that ship has sailed. It seems most likely the basement is connected somewhere in the mystery hallway, like putting it here between the dining room and the garage walls would make some sense, but I think it's more likely that this is the door to the garage, especially given the rumpus room's location. A lot of fan recreations of the house put the basement stairs at the end of the hallway. It doesn't make a ton of sense from a building perspective, and it doesn't jive with the hallway shots we've seen, but I get the instinct to put it there. There are literally no other options when it comes down to it.
Finally, before we transition to the upstairs, I should probably talk about the Simpsons bathroom situation. Do the Simpsons have a downstairs bathroom? Many two-story houses have a half bathroom or something on the main floor. If there isn't one, the Simpsons would be going upstairs every time they need to pee. According to this fan layout and the 3D creation, there's a bathroom next to the rumpus room, but how many times have we actually seen it? In "Barth the General," we see Bart pass by the TV room and end up in the bathroom where Homer and Marge comfort him. However, this looks a lot like the kids' bathroom upstairs. Look at that bathroom and the tile work. It's similar to the one at the beginning of "Moaning Lisa." It's possible this episode opens in the downstairs bathroom too, but it's way more likely this is happening near their bedrooms. We have "Brush with Greatness" where Marge walks in on Mr. Burns. Once again, this is probably upstairs. Look at that Lincoln photo, often seen in the hallway upstairs. "Treehouse of Horror IV" has Lionel Hutz leaving the living room to use the bathroom for some reason. He turns right toward the front door here, and then Marge discovers the empty window in the bathroom. Seems like this is downstairs, but I wouldn't put it past Hutz jumping from the second floor to get away. From what I can tell, the only classic episode that definitively confirms a downstairs bathroom is "The Canine Mutiny" when Lady goes off-screen to use it. In later seasons, we would see a downstairs bathroom show up in a few odd places, like look at this one under the stairs, for example. In Season 26, the bathroom moves to the foyer closet for plot purposes. Overall, I would guess from a practicality perspective, there's probably a half bathroom somewhere on the ground floor, probably back in that forbidden hallway mystery, but hell, if I've ever seen it.
On Twitter, former showrunner Josh Weinstein shared the floor plan of the Simpsons house that the staff had been using. As you can see, it doesn't have a downstairs bathroom or even an exact location of the basement. Maybe that's why they put it in the foyer so much, huh?
That closes the door on the ground level, so let's finish with a trip upstairs. See if we can figure out what's going on with these bedrooms. The upstairs hallway typically looks like this: to the far left, past the overlook, we have one room, then a room in the back middle part of the house, and then one in the back right corner. One at the opposite end of the hallway above the garage, and then one room in the front middle position next to the stairs. So, just glancing at this hallway, can you instinctively tell which of these doors go to Homer and Marge's bedroom and which belong to the kids?
Here's the upstairs floor plan shared by Josh, which we're going to call the canonical layout. The master bedroom is on the far left side, near the Flanders house, then Lisa next door, then Bart next to her, and then Maggie at the end. As a whole, this layout is probably the most commonly seen on the show. For example, episodes like "Bart's Friend Falls in Love," "Springfield," and "Itchy & Scratchy Land" all confirm the master bedroom being at the end of the hallway near this railing. For the kids' rooms, you have something like "Home Sweet Home Diddly Dum Doodly" that shows off each of their positions, for episodes like "Star-Craving Dad" and "Treehouse of Horror VII" doing the same thing. Sometimes you get outdoor shots for confirmation. However, there are a ton of moments where the writers are forced to cheat a little. Maybe they need a character visible for a specific scene, maybe something needs to be switched around for the sake of a joke. They play pretty fast and loose with these bedrooms depending on what they need. For example, there are several instances of Bart having a front-facing window for when he needs to yell down to Homer watch the school bus leaving without him or spying on Lisa. Sometimes Lisa's room faces the front when she needs to give away her Malibu Stacy stuff or meet her extended family. Sometimes Bart and Lisa's rooms are switched around, and Bart is in the middle position. Sometimes this spot is taken over by the bathroom, or the bathroom is moved further left between Lisa and her parents' room. The bathroom in general is very vaguely defined. I usually just think of it as being behind whichever door isn't being used at the moment. Really, the bathroom and Maggie's rooms are pretty interchangeable in terms of which one is which. According to the map, this front room is the bathroom, but we've definitely seen it belonging to Maggie, like at the end of "Lisa's Substitute" and most notably in "Homer the Heretic." But to be fair, we've seen it at the end of the hallway too, like in "Bart on the Road" and "My Sister, My Sitter."
Some of the weirdest stuff happens when Flanders gets involved in the plot. The only upstairs window that faces the Flanders house is the master bathroom, whereas the master bedroom faces front. However, in "Lisa's Day of Non-Violence," we gotta do this joke, so let's rotate their whole bedroom 90 degrees. With Bart, we know his bedroom is on the opposite side of the house with his window facing the backyard, yet he is still able to kick off his shoes into their house. He's able to pull off this prank with the radio. When the foundation shifts, he falls out of this side of the house. Then there are instances where the bedrooms shift around mid-episode, like "Bart of Darkness," for example. We have Bart's room in his typical place in the corner. During Act 3, this ends up making the angle to watch Flanders' house kind of awkward, but sure, it's doable, even if Bart is pointing the telescope all over the place. However, by the time Bart has to rescue Lisa, his room is on the opposite side where the balcony railing is. I blame Alfred Hitchcock. In "My Sister, My Sitter," Bart's room arguably changes places three times. First, he has a front-facing room. This angle looks like it'll be from the left side of the house where Homer and Marge's room usually is. In Act 2, when Lisa's looking for him, his parents are his neighbor to his left, likely putting his room in its usual spot. Then in Act 3, when he barricades himself, he has the front-facing room next to the stairs, and now Maggie is his neighbor to his left at the end of the hallway. And then Lisa climbs out of Maggie's window onto a tree that doesn't exist in their front yard. Yeah, "My Sister, My Sitter" is kind of a nightmare.
I've poked fun at a lot of the weird continuity stuff, but by and large, these are the exception to the rule. When weird stuff happens with the Simpsons house, there's usually a purpose behind it. The writers take the stance that this joke is better if the room is magically over here, so let's just do it. Let's not hamper ourselves because technically this isn't correct. If Homer's going to sneak bowling balls out of the basement, it's better he do it through the main foyer. If Homer has to ask Marge a question from the basement, it's better he pokes his head out of here. To be honest, I think the writers and animators have played it pretty smart with the Simpsons house that they don't mess with places like the TV room or the kitchen all that much. If they're gonna cheat, they'll use these more poorly defined areas. The Simpsons house is amusing in how the writers and animators cheat constantly with the backgrounds and the layout, but usually get away with it. There are a lot of classic memorable moments that our brains accept without thinking, even though they technically contradict each other. It's a really fun dynamic. There's certainly moments that leave me scratching my head, wondering if they've stretched things too far, but I appreciate that their focus is not getting too hamstrung by details, always putting the emphasis on what's best for the story or visual composition.
As for the rumpus room, I guess it's weird that we don't see it more often, but let's face it, they already have a room for watching TV, and the kids don't need a designated play area, and we can look at the backyard from the kitchen. I really like that there's this mysterious corner of the house that we rarely get to see. If a new showrunner started jamming rumpus room scenes in every other episode, I'd be disappointed. Besides, technically, the rumpus room entrance can be seen in almost every episode of the series, so that's enough for me. My theory is that if Homer Simpson can afford a house like this on his salary and work experience, then yeah, there's probably something wrong with it. I say for a low mortgage payment, he can deal with a room disappearing every once in a while.
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