From: garvey@simpsonsarchive.com   
      
   The Simpsons are going to Scotland! Eh. I liked some of Homer's ranting about   
   destination weddings (to a point), and the very brief gags about the fringe   
   festival, but the rest didn't add up to much for me, including most   
   characterizations and the    
   rapidly wrapped-up ending. Can someone explain what the title refers to, and   
   in particular why the first word(?) is in all caps?   
      
   Previous episode stuff   
   HABF05: As it happens, a Willie-heavy episode starts with the "bombardment"   
   gym teacher (who was introduced in that one I think)   
   AABF19: Red-eyed kids rampaging on nicotine patches reminiscent of barnyard   
   animals on tomacco   
   Various: Willie in old episodes, seen as stills in credits, not something I   
   care to identify   
      
   The new Lunchlady Doris list (not that she's the only character with a new   
   voice by a long shot, but might as well keep it up):   
   HABF15, JABF02, KABF06, LABF08, MABF12, NABF11, NABF13, NABF15,   
   NABF16, PABF06, PABF15, PABF19, RABF03, RABF09, RABF10, RABF11,   
   SABF07, TABF16, XABF21, ZABF06, ZABF08, QABF03, QABF12, UABF19,   
   OABF15, 35ABF02   
      
   Another one bites the dust   
   Well, it's official. The Simpsons has stretched another numbering system to   
   the breaking point (more or less), and I knew what the new one was going to be   
   but it's nice to have it confirmed.   
   The show began at the very tail end of 20th Century Fox Television's code   
   system of more or less random number-letter prefixes (with some small amount   
   of order: by the late '80s, multi-season shows tended to keep the letter and   
   increment the number by    
   year, so The Tracey Ullman Show had 4W, 5W, 7W with a slightly interrupted   
   production schedule). For 1989-1990, it was assigned 7G (and a sector was   
   born).   
   Right around that time, after about a decade of number-letter prefixes, there   
   was a change that affected Simpsons season 2: code prefixes would still be   
   number-letter, but the letter would be consistent for each show and the number   
   would reflect the    
   production year, like the Ullman example but with more reliability. For   
   whatever reason, the 1990-1991 season used 7, and thus The Simpsons already   
   broke the system, now getting the letter F instead of G. Codes had been reused   
   from time to time, and one    
   imagines the people behind this expected to be able to recycle for a while as   
   shows came and went. For seasons 2 to 9, The Simpsons kept up this pattern   
   almost without exception: 7F 8F 9F 1F 2F 3F 4F 5F (and four special episodes   
   produced in season 7/3F    
   got 3G codes, perhaps drawing on the 7G precedent).   
   Whether or not the longevity of The Simpsons made this a clear necessity, I   
   can't say, although I like to imagine it's true (even if it could have lasted   
   one more year, through a 6F): in the late '90s, another new coding system was   
   introduced over the    
   course of a year or so. Now shows would have 6-character codes, with   
   4-character prefixes: the first character identifying the production season of   
   the show (not on the calendar), and the next three being letters that   
   identified the series, more or less    
   sequentially assigned like license plates. Existing shows got AB_ codes,   
   mostly with their existing letter at the end: in this case, ABF. Although some   
   internal documents suggest the change happened in time for part of season 9   
   (9ABF codes rather than 5F)   
   , the onscreen codes did not show the new system until season 10, and once   
   again The Simpsons got in the way of a straightforward implementation! Where   
   do you go after 9? Why, to letters! And so it broke in season 10 with AABF   
   codes, BABF, etc. Weird    
   that a show would make it to 10 seasons, but the letters should hold out,   
   right? Still, gotta skip a few letters that look too similar to numbers (and   
   to other letters): no I, O, Q, or U. (Only a few other shows have gotten this   
   far, but curiously,    
   Family Guy skipped G too, yet American Dad would go on to use it.) Meanwhile,   
   the 3-letter codes have been working out pretty well, although a few years   
   ago, the first letter rolled over... to L, not to B. And the codes have been   
   better for revivals like    
   Futurama and Family Guy, just picking up where they left off, but the short   
   X-Files revival was assigned 1AYW/2AYW rather than AABX/BABX. I guess they   
   forgot.   
   And then came season 32. What comes after Z? It's broken again! The system   
   didn't have to change, exactly, but a solution came in the form of what turned   
   out to be three unused letters: QABF, UABF, OABF. I guess they weren't that   
   confusing after all.    
   Even so, they don't go in alphabetical order, and I think QU went first   
   because they're less similar to digits, and they were only assigned one or two   
   at a time. Hey, maybe the show will end before we have to commit to the worst   
   letters, right? But of    
   course it didn't. And this all just delayed the inevitable. Either IABF was   
   completely unacceptable, or renewal by pairs of seasons meant the time for   
   stopgaps was over before it could be used. Because, apart from holdover   
   episodes, here comes...   
   Season 35. The system breaks again, one year before it TRULY had to, and   
   anything that might have assumed codes maxed out at 6 characters is not going   
   to be happy. In a way, it's really just going back to the numeric season   
   concept, but no longer coding    
   two-digit numbers as letters. 35ABF means 35th production season of The   
   Simpsons. If Family Guy makes it this far, I bet it jumps from ZACX to 31ACX   
   (remember Z=30 there because it also skipped G), or it uses O/Q/U in the   
   normal sequence and then 34. We'   
   ll see whether next year goes to OACX or PACX. And in hindsight, The Simpsons   
   probably should have jumped from ZABF to 32ABF and saved a lot of weirdness.   
   In fact... had anyone anticipated the extraordinary way the show would last,   
   especially when    
   deciding how to code season 10 right at the start of the new system, I bet   
   we'd have seen 10ABF instead of AABF. And yet I must confess it doesn't look   
   as neat.   
   Anyway, here we are. Hard to see this one breaking, huh? We'll see.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)