Old Gill

Perhaps the greatest thing about long-running animated television shows is that as the series progresses the scope of characters grows to include lesser-known members of the respective towns.

South Park, The Simpsons, even Family Guy all feature at least a dozen or so “minor” characters, that move in and out of the stories, often with hilarious results.

You can’t really do that with a live-action television show. To make a new character in one of those, you’ve got to pay an actor, which costs money. If the character sucks, well, you just wasted a few dollars. In an animated series, a new character costs, what, the price of the ink? I mean you’re already paying the guy to draw, so why not?

In my mind these minor characters are what makes the show worth coming back to. In South Park, we talked about how Butters, Jimmy Vulmer, and Token Black were some of the funniest characters on the show. In Family Guy, Tom Tucker is the guy who I laugh at the most. And The Simpsons, ahhh The Simpsons, there are few in the game that do it better. The picture up top says it all. There is not a single character in that drawing that I haven’t laughed at. Except for maybe Dr. Julius Hibbard, but he laughs enough for both of us.

Which brings us to the point of today’s post. Old Gill.

You may remember him from such Simpsons scenes as “Selling Ralph The Calico” and “The Wolf is at Old Gill’s Door”. He is the terminally depressed, down-and-out embodiment of an economy gone shitty.

And I find that hilarious.

The minor characters on the Simpsons satirize so many different aspects of life; they can deploy them at the right time for almost guaranteed laughs. The Comic Book Guy, Chief Wiggum, Mayor Quimby, Cleetus The Slack-Jawed Yokel, the list goes on and on.

So in honor of Old Gill and the rest of the gang, I hand down my verdict.

VERDICT:

UNDERRATED

P.S. Now let’s talk rust protections, because these Calico’s will rust up on you like that.

P.P.S. Aww, c’mon Gill, close the deal, close the deal