Quirks become key components of a TV character’s makeup over time. Sometimes this provides good fodder for material or sheds light on a new facet of a character. Other times it takes over the rest of their personality to their detriment. The Simpsons has done this so often — with characters like Mr. Burns, who used to be a villain but is now a punchline — that it has its own term for it: “Flanderization.”
The name comes from the Simpsons’ next door neighbor Ned Flanders. When first introduced, Flanders was a well-meaning neighbor with a pool table and bar in his basement who happened to be fairly religious. Over time the latter part became the whole of his character, turning him into little more than a Bible-verse spouting wimp. While Flanders managed to maintain some dimensionality due to storylines about the death of his wife Maude and subsequent romances, other characters have been less fortunate — none moreso than Ralph Wiggum.
Ralph (played by Nancy Cartwright, also the voice of Hall of Fame dater Bart Simpson and fatherless bully Nelson Muntz) would be a background character in Lisa Simpson’s second grade class until the 1993 episode “I Love Lisa,” which saw him develop a crush on Lisa after she was the only one to give Ralph a Valentine’s day card. The episode written by Frank Mula and directed by Wes Archer had jokes about Ralph eating crayons and being the “weird kid,” but the jokes were never entirely at Ralph’s expense and the ending left him with his dignity.
He’d settle into being a bit of a clueless oddball, often misunderstanding things for the sake of a punchline but still the same character. That all changed with 1998’s “This Little Wiggy,” written by Dan Greaney and directed by Neil Affleck. The episode was an amusing installment but opened the door for Ralph’s worst traits to take hold.
While the Ralph in “I Love Lisa” was simple-minded, the crux of the episode was his crush on Lisa and her subsequent admission that she’d only given him a Valentine’s card because no one else did — breaking his heart but giving the episode and character some genuine emotional depth. That was a far cry from the Ralph seen in “This Little Wiggy,” who reacted to things with blissful detachment or overblown childlike fear. It was obvious and trite characterization, aiming for the easiest and laziest joke.
It’s not that Ralph hadn’t been a go-to for a safe and easy punchline before — look no further than his Season 6 line “My cat’s breath smells like cat food” for a prime example. But in that case, the joke was uttered because Ralph wasn’t sure how to respond to something and scrambled for an answer. “This Little Wiggy” was Ralph as the lowest common denominator, and he hasn’t overcome that characterization since.
That the episode still somehow worked despite that was reflective of the show even being able to execute poor ideas well at that point in its history. It did get the ball of Ralph’s Flanderization rolling down its slippery slope, though; just a few seasons later he would be reduced to making random non-sequiturs and soiling himself for a cheap laugh. It’s interesting that Ned Flanders became the poster child for the degradation of Simpsons characters when it’s poor Ralph who is actually the best example of that conceit.
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