Barney Gumble

Homer Simpson is a drunken buffoon. But even drunken buffoons need someone to look down at, and for that, the creators of The Simpsons provided Homer with the brain-dead slobs at Moe’s Tavern. Homer might not be husband or father of the year, but at least he has a family, which is more than can be said for Sam, Larry, or the constantly belching and endlessly inebriated Barney Gumble. But while the first two names in that list remain background players, The Simpsons has never shied away from showing Barney as a sensitive soul drowning in an ocean of booze. The first hint of his true capabilities was in season four’s “Mr. Plow,” in which Barney successfully steals his best friend’s business idea (with some musical assistance from Linda Ronstadt). The episode also shows Barney before his first taste of beer (provided, of course, by Homer), an idea that was revisited in the following season’s “Deep Space Homer,” when a forcedly sober Barney proves himself Homer’s better at every test NASA can provide. Despite his perpetual buzz, Barney has revealed himself to have an artist’s soul, winning acclaim for his fine Irish tenor and work as a filmmaker creating haunting shorts.



Eventually, though, the boozehound hit rock bottom and bounced back toward sobriety, getting himself clean in season 11’s “Days Of Wine And D’oh’ses” (co-written by Barney’s voice actor, Dan Castellaneta). But the episode’s conclusion, one of the darkest the show has ever mustered, shows that the real cause of Barney’s problems isn’t Duff Beer, but his highly addictive personality, as Moe successfully hooks his most lucrative customer on coffee in place of booze. The show has gone back and forth in recent years on Barney’s sobriety, depending on what serves that week’s jokes, but the basic point stands: Despite his origin as pitiable joke fodder, Barney Gumble is a better man than Homer Simpson on every measurable level—intellectually, artistically, and morally—if not for the addictions constantly dragging him down. [William Hughes]