The Simpsons Christmas Special is a throwback to the classic Ned Flanders episode

“The Simpsons” is an institution. It’s a show that changed animation and television, influenced countless other series, and created the standard for sitcom cities that look like real places inhabited by dozens of side characters. Even if it’s not the cultural phenomenon it was in the ’90s, there’s a reason why “The Simpsons” is not only still alive 35 years later, but still going strong. It even offers a fake final series – which would have served as the show’s actual ending – as merely a season premiere.

No matter how much time passes, “The Simpsons” is still very much a sitcom. It’s also a series where real change is impossible, happy endings are fleeting, and consequences never last because there always has to be more exposition. The characters remain static, even if time passes around them, meaning that the past cannot be returned. Bart is always 10 years old, even if that means he was no longer born in 1979 but in 2014, and even if Maggie is now a post-lockdown baby. Sure, there were marriages, births, and deaths, but they were rarely (if ever) revisited after the fact. Otherwise, it means time has really passed, and time never passes in Springfield.

Except it finally happened in “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” the new Disney+ Christmas special that celebrates the series’ 35th anniversary. In this film, British psychologist Darren Brown comes to Springfield to try to lift the town’s holiday spirit with some clever psychological magic tricks. In the process, he makes Homer mistakenly believe he is Santa (resulting in… Funny joke about the Grinch that admittedly was actually made in “Family Guy”), and also makes Ned Flanders lose his faith in God.

This is not just a spur-of-the-moment crisis of faith brought on by a British man. Rather, it is the culmination of, as Ned puts it, “the things that go around in my spaghetti,” such as the fact that God took from him not one wife, but two. That’s right, The Simpsons has finally made a reference to Edna Krabappel and Maude Flanders, and it’s been presented as Flanders’ most emotionally powerful episode in nearly 30 years.

Ned Flanders has faced crises of faith before, most notably in the 1996 episode “Hurricane Neddy.” In that episode, Flanders’ house is not only destroyed by a hurricane, causing him to lose his faith in God and launch into a string of angry, rude (well, by Ned’s standards anyway) profanities. It’s a great episode, and doesn’t need a follow-up or remake, which makes the approach to “O C’mon All Ye Faithful” so effective.

Because it’s not just that Flanders is having a crisis of faith or going against his image by hurling insults at people. What makes this particular crisis so powerful is how emotionally brutal it is. Harry Shearer gives his best vocal performance in years, making Flanders incredibly vulnerable in the way he talks to Marge about the injustice of losing both Maude and Edna despite not only following the Ten Commandments, but even coming up with two more commandments on his own. There is also the fact that Flanders does not attack the city; Instead, he falls into a deep depression and replaces all the religious images in his house (including taking the Bible out of his medicine cabinet and putting actual medicine in it).

“The Simpsons” is a funny, silly, and creative show, but it can also be quite honest and emotional. It’s fitting that the series’ 35th anniversary celebration will give us not only a great Homer Christmas story, but also Ned Flanders’ best story in decades – having already earned A beloved bootleg episode that parodies the hit TV show “Fargo.”

“The Simpsons” is streaming on Disney+.