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Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, wanted Eddie Haskell to have his own show — so he created Bart Simpson
"When I grow up, I'm gonna do my own show, and it's gonna star Eddie Haskell."
Main characters carry a show. You can't have The Andy Griffith Show without Andy Taylor. Gunsmoke without Matt Dillon. The Flintstones without Fred Flintstone.
Yet, while we need a main character to keep the show grounded and serve as an "everyman", audiences often favor the wacky side characters more. The Gomer Pyles. The Festuses. The Great Gazoos.
One of those side characters that audiences adore, sometimes more than the main characters, is Eddie Haskell. While Beaver and Wally might get up to some trouble, they're good kids at heart who always end up coming to June and Ward for some advice. Eddie is a smart-mouthed wise guy who always has some scheme up his sleeve, and a lot of the time he's the reason Wally and Beaver end up in trouble in the first place. Sure, he's a stinker, but boy, isn't that what makes him fun to watch?
Matt Groening, the 13-time Emmy Award-winning creator of The Simpsons, Futurama, and Disenchantment, sure thinks so.
In a 1999 CBS special, Influences: From Yesterday to Today, the cartoonist talked about growing up watching TV in the Fifties and Sixties, and how that impacted his own work.
"Leave It to Beaver... [Beaver] was a good kid, but he was like 'gee Wally, I don't know, I don't know'... the character I really liked on Leave It to Beaver was Eddie Haskell," Groening said. "He was the bad kid. He got away with stuff, and I really liked that."
"I thought, 'Eddie Haskell should have his own show. And when I grow up, I'm gonna do my own show, and it's gonna star Eddie Haskell,' or some version thereof. Hence Bart Simpson."
"Bart, for me, is just the kid that I always wanted to see on TV that I never did see on TV," Groening explained. "I mean, if you're a kid in class, you know that the most interesting kid is the kid over in the corner shooting rubber bands and dropping encyclopedias out of the window. That's what Bart is. Bart's the kid who refuses to be bored, and I can relate to that."
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35 Comments
In American English, commas and periods always come before the “end quote.”
( in the TOS universe, he's Trelane )
I smell a pre-quel.
I must've seen a different Leave It to Beaver.
Everybody had Eddie Haskell's number. He only *thought* he got away with stuff.
just cannot feature Bart pulling that off in the least. He seems more a brat just to be a brat.
No. Not at all. Nobody favors the Great Gazoo. Not in the least.