‘The Simpsons’ Disney+ Christmas special: Who will restore the faith of Flanders?

Former Simpsons writer Carolyn Omine has faced a number of personal setbacks in recent years, as both her father and sister died – while also dealing with the professional uncertainty that came with the Hollywood strikes.

While facing these difficult moments, Omine found an escape by watching videos of English mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown. Brown’s clips show him playing pranks on people – not in a mean-spirited way, but rather to explore human behavior. “There was something very moving about them,” Omine says. “Something that reflected the beauty of what people are.”

When the strikes ended, “The Simpsons” found itself on an accelerated schedule to produce the first-ever original episode for Disney+, a Christmas-themed special that premiered on December 17 (timed to December 35).^e anniversary of the very first “Simpsons” half-hour, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” which premiered on that date in 1989).

“We were about six months behind,” she says. “And normally I probably wouldn’t have done an episode that year because I had been through so much. But it was all hands on deck. Everyone has to do something because we were so behind.” She then pitched the idea for what would become “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” inspired in part by Brown. “I just wanted something uplifting and somehow soul-nourishing,” she says.

In the episode, Brown comes to Springfield to see if he can convince the stodgy town to restore some of the Christmas spirit. He targets Homer Simpson, who is known to be a terrible gift giver, and hypnotizes him to see if Homer can be convinced otherwise. Homer eventually thinks he is Santa Claus, and Springfield falls in love with Santa Homer.

But that’s all a prelude to the even deeper story that comes halfway through the episode, when Ned Flanders has a crisis of faith. Ultimately it is a mix of Brown, Prof. Frink and a little magic that brings him back.

Variety spoke with Omine about the episode, including what it was like bringing in guest stars Brown, Pentatonix and Patti LaBelle. She also touches on the way a surprisingly mature Homer interacts with Ralph Wiggum (who signs up as his elf) and the serendipity at the end of the episode.

How did you come to the conclusion that a man of science, Prof. Frink, is the character who brings back Ned Flanders’ faith?

I thought, if we take away Ned’s trust, we’ll probably have to give it back by the end of the episode. And then it became: how do you do that without it being just super easy? It would be easy to cheat because we have actually shown God as a character. He could have just shown up and said, ‘Hey, here I am.’ Believe in me, I’m real!’ But how would you give Ned his faith back, just using the things a real person would have at his disposal to try and find a reason to believe in a higher power?

I was listening to KCRW, and there was a woman who had talked about doing a super deep dive on one of those experimental submarines, where she went under the abyssal zone and the hadal zone, and just saw these creatures that logically shouldn’t. exist. She said it was this moving experience because it kind of made her realize that anything can happen. I liked the idea that Frink would be the one who, surprisingly, wouldn’t completely reject the idea of ​​God.

Frink is open to the idea of ​​God, and I didn’t expect that.

The quote he says was actually Einstein’s answer when people asked him if he believed in God. ‘I see God in the orderly harmony of nature.’

Of course, the submarine that Frink and Ned took reminded me of the Ocean Gate submarine that fell apart while trying to visit the Titanic site. Was that in the back of your mind?

Definitely the idea that it’s imploding and even that Frink is just a bit irresponsible. Then it turns out it was all just a joke. I had originally planned that eventually, when you find out that it was all just part of a Darren Brown experiment, that even the yoke was something that Derek Brown had done. But I had a friend who had actually just died, but he was very sick, and I told him the story. And when I told him that Ned breathes through the yoke, he said, “Oh, that’s so beautiful.” Then I told him it was all a trick. He said, ‘Can I just be honest with you? That breaks my heart.” I realized, you know what, let’s just say there’s some magic there.

Even Derren ends up believing in a little magic with the bow tie gift he gets from Homer. How did Derren Brown react when you introduced him to his role?

If we were to base something so much on someone, we would usually ask him or her first. But I wrote it all, and got it to the point where we broke the story, and we wrote the script. Then we just sent it to him. And I kind of crossed my fingers. I was like, ‘well, if he doesn’t want to do it, maybe we’ll come up with someone who looked like him.’ He immediately wrote back and said yes.

Did he live up to expectations?

He absolutely did. Normally we record everyone via Zoom, but I had gone from LA to New York because Hank Azaria was celebrating his big 60th birthday. And then it so happened that Derren was free. So I justified it in my head that I could, well, fly back to LA or fly on to London. So I flew to London to shoot it, and I thought it was probably worth it for the episode too, because it played such a big role.

He plays such a big role in this episode. Were you worried about whether or not he would be able to make it happen?

I felt pretty confident that he would probably be good, because he’s such a showman. There’s a lot of acting involved in that magic. But I was really pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I thought his timing was really excellent and funny. And when he had to be sweet, he was sweet. There were just a lot of moments where I thought, ‘that’s good.’

Did he have notes like, “I would say it this way” or “this is how I would describe my process”?

No, he didn’t. I looked a lot, so maybe I was pretty close. He is so easy going and was totally fine with it because there are times when he gets made fun of. When he did the scenes where he hypnotized Homer, he almost had trouble saying the line because he couldn’t stop laughing at the thought!

Speaking of Homer, we see a more mature Homer, perhaps more so than we’ve seen in recent years. Once he recovers, he’ll have a pretty good head on his shoulders. It was quite refreshing in some ways to see that. How would you describe Homer in this episode?

I’m very protective of Homer. Even in that first moment of shopping, when you saw him sitting in the men’s department and Maggie put glasses on his head, I thought: Don’t make him look bored. Make sure he looks engaged. Because I want it to be very clear that Homer doesn’t hate Christmas because it’s a hassle, or that he hates buying people gifts. I wanted it to be very clear that he hates buying gifts because he thinks he’s bad at it, and he thinks he’s disappointing people.

Once he became Santa Claus, I wanted him to be a bit like the Peter Sellers character in “Being There,” where he is serene and peaceful and maybe some of his genius is credited to him. Then when he finally wakes up, we try to explore this other idea of ​​belief, which is that hypnosis is essentially the power of suggestion. Someone said to him, “You know exactly how to buy the best gifts for people.” Of course, Homer takes it to mean that he is Santa Claus, but once he believes that he is Santa Claus, he believes that he can give people the gift they want, and that he is capable of doing so. Once he’s out, he wants to be able to believe that way again. I don’t like it when Homer is a food monster and a complete raging id sometimes. Because I think he does have a desire to be a good person.

The way he interacts with Ralph is really moving.

We didn’t really connect Homer and Ralph. It’s kind of nice to go after all these years, this is such an interesting duo that we haven’t really seen yet. It’s so easy to write this relationship. One of the real gifts of writing for The Simpsons right now is that the characters have such a rich backstory.

It’s perfect because who is the only character in Springfield that Homer has an edge over? Ralph.

They both have a sweet, dumb-dumb quality. It’s a good match. Just the idea of ​​the town finding something to believe in, namely Homer for a short period of time, excited me.

How did you end up with Pentatonix and Patti LaBelle to handle the music?

Growing up, my mom really loved Mahalia Jackson, so my Christmas album was always Mahalia Jackson’s Christmas album, especially “Silent Night.” We really needed a singer who could convey that kind of soulfulness, singing these lyrics that are a bit, I don’t want to say sacrilege, but really about feeling like God is gone. For someone like Ned, this is the most terrifying, sad thought he can have.

I knew it was going to be great because it’s Patti LaBelle. When she sang, we were all in tears. I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was. She did it maybe four times, and each time it was completely different. To have this recording session that was so emotional and beautiful, we were all talking afterwards about how we got goosebumps. It surpassed any dream we could have had about how good that was.

And then Pentatonix, they made their arrangement themselves with their producer. Our music people, Kara Talve and Russell Emanuel and Jake Schaefer, are all part of Bleeding Fingers Music. They are musical people. And yet, as they looked at Pentatonix, they said, “Holy crap!” These guys are so precise. They were so wild and so excited about the show. They asked if they could do the “fly through,” which is the end credits when the words to “The Simpsons” appear. They’ve done so well.

Normally ‘Simpsons’ episodes take so long to make, but for this one you had a short deadline. How quickly did you have to work?

We found out that for the premiere on Disney+, which is the first time we’ve done that, everything had to be done by October 17th so that they would have two months to translate and dub it into all the different languages. We had already agreed to do this double Christmas episode. So we didn’t have to rewrite that much. We really had to choose what we could do because we were limited by time and money. Luckily, knowing that we were going to be very tight, we were actually a little bit obsessive about the first part, about the storyboards and the animations, to try to make sure we got that part right. Once we got the color back, we had to edit, score and mix it in quick succession. It’s been a bit of a crazy October.

It’s just because we’re such a well-oiled machine that anyone could step up and do that. Our mixers are so good, and our music, people like Kara, compose all that in just a few days. It’s really insane.