I do remember them showing episodes in late slots in the late 00s with bits they wouldn't leave in the daytime showings... like Krusty "smoking moonrocks" and, Willy saying sh*te and Skinner being tricked into saying "wank".
There were genuinely episodes in the late 1990s that were edited so much I thought it was deliberate surrealism/anti-humour by the writers, not realising I wasn't watching the originals - such as one episode which ended with someone appearing on a motorcycle for absolutely no reason, the family suddenly saying "Here we go again!" for absolutely no reason and an abrupt cut to the credits, removing a few explanatory lines which featured the words "haul ass". I was almost disappointed when the uncut versions started airing on Sky in 2000-2002 and all the weird nonsensical moments were finally explained.
Sometimes I actually preferred the cut version to the original, like an episode where, originally, Mr Burns is hit on the head by a flying spoon, says "Ow!" followed by looking at someone and saying a offensive word beginning with W. In the cut version he says "Ow!", looks at them, only to then say "Ow!" again in exactly the same way (the same voice clip covering the offensive word) which I found absolutely hilarious. Hard to explain in writing!
There was an episode on Sky One a couple of years ago which had a cut scene where Homer pours bleach into his ear, but for some reason they left half a second or so of footage in, so you just got this strange brief shot of Homer pouring something in his ear before it moved onto the next scene.
There were genuinely episodes in the late 1990s that were edited so much I thought it was deliberate surrealism/anti-humour by the writers, not realising I wasn't watching the originals - such as one episode which ended with someone appearing on a motorcycle for absolutely no reason, the family suddenly saying "Here we go again!" for absolutely no reason and an abrupt cut to the credits, removing a few explanatory lines which featured the words "haul ass". I was almost disappointed when the uncut versions started airing on Sky in 2000-2002 and all the weird nonsensical moments were finally explained.
Sometimes I actually preferred the cut version to the original, like an episode where, originally, Mr Burns is hit on the head by a flying spoon, says "Ow!" followed by looking at someone and saying a offensive word beginning with W. In the cut version he says "Ow!", looks at them, only to then say "Ow!" again in exactly the same way (the same voice clip covering the offensive word) which I found absolutely hilarious. Hard to explain in writing!
Always edited on Sky, but that was the clip Channel 4 proudly showed on its first night airing the show in 2004, as part of the Jamie Theakston-helmed Simpsons quiz. After lots of shocked laughter from the audience, Theakston stated "Let's see that again" and they aired it twice!
One of my favourite edits in the Simpsons was a bit in an early Treehouse of Horror where Homer, muttering under his breath, called himself a "b*****d", but in a way it would be impossible to cut it without the animation looking wierd or the next line not making any sense.
Sky simply silenced it, BBC kept it uncut, C4 on the other hand? They took a clip of Homer screaming in agony from later in the episode, and dubbed it in!
As well as that spoof Thames ident, I like the “all seven episodes” joke. USA sitcoms tended to have 22 or more episodes in a season, while our quaint British practice was to have 6 or 7 episodes per series.
