In 'C.E.D’oh', the 15th episode of the 14th season of The Simpsons, Homer hosts his “305th everything is back to normal BBQ”. Aside from being quite the shindig, it’s a knowing wink at the show’s habit of hitting the reset button when the story of the week is done, a riff on the idea that whatever’s come to pass during the previous 22-or-so minutes will be conveniently forgotten by the time the next episode rolls around.
Springfield is an extreme example, of course – only South Park has trapped its child stars in a similar state of arrested development – but once upon a time Homer’s party would have been representative of mainstream US television as a whole.
