Role in The Simpsons
Homer Simpson is the bumbling husband of Marge and father of Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson. He is the son of Mona and Abraham Simpson. Homer has held over 188 different jobs in the first 400 episodes of The Simpsons. In most episodes, he works as the Nuclear Safety Inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position he has held since "Homer's Odyssey", the third episode of the series. At the plant, Homer is often ignored and completely forgotten by his boss Mr. Burns, and constantly falls asleep and neglects his duties. Matt Groening has stated that he decided to have Homer work at the power plant because of the potential for Homer to create havoc. Each of his other jobs has lasted only one episode. In the first half of the series, the writers developed an explanation about how he got fired from the plant and was then rehired in every episode. In later episodes, he often began a new job on impulse, without any mention of his regular employment.
The Simpsons uses a floating timeline in which the characters do not physically age, and, as such, the show is generally assumed to be set in the current year. Nevertheless, in several episodes, events in Homer's life have been linked to specific time periods. "Mother Simpson" (season seven, 1995) depicts Homer's mother, Mona, as a radical who went into hiding in the mid-1960s following a run-in with the law; "The Way We Was" (season two, 1991) shows Homer falling in love with Marge Bouvier as a senior at Springfield High School in the 1970s; and "I Married Marge" (season three, 1991) implies that Marge became pregnant with Bart in 1980. However, the episode "That '90s Show" (season 19, 2008) contradicted much of this backstory, portraying Homer and Marge as a childless couple in the early 1990s.
Homer's age has changed as the series developed; he was 36 in the early episodes, 38 and 39 in season eight, and 40 in the eighteenth season, although even in those seasons his age is inconsistent. During Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein's period as showrunners, they found that as they aged, Homer seemed to become older too, so they increased his age to 38.
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