The Sole Celebrity Who Dared to Roast Themselves in ‘The Simpsons’ Gritty New Year’s Special

Although The Simpsons includes several Christmas-themed episodes, a few episodes centered on the Fourth of July, and at least one episode occurring during Whacking Day, the series hasn’t celebrated New Year’s Eve to a significant extent — likely because acknowledging the flow of time merely highlights the characters’ unaccounted temporal stasis. 

One particular episode that ventured to narrate a distinct New Year’s tale was “Treehouse of Horror X.” Broadcast just two months before the turn of the millennium, the third segment of the 1999 Halloween episode, “Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die,” satirized the prevalent anxieties regarding the infamous “Millennium Bug.” Within this episode, the programming flaw causes every electronic device globally to act in full Maximum Overdrive.

The Simpson family tries to escape the planet through “Operation Exodus,” a spacecraft to Mars filled with Earth’s most cherished public figures like Mark McGwire and Mel Gibson (have we mentioned this was 1999?). Regrettably, Bart and Homer find themselves on a shuttle full of the world’s most irritating celebrities, heading straight for the sun. 

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While The Simpsons is renowned for attracting prominent celebrities to voice themselves in episodes, as stated by executive producer Mike Scully in the DVD commentary for this segment, “Securing celebrities for the second ship was not as straightforward…”

The beginning of the segment showcased a cameo from New Year’s Eve icon Dick Clark, who humorously commented on his public persona by agreeing to the notion that he was actually a Terminator-like robot (Clark later informed writer Ron Hauge that this episode resulted in “the greatest response he’s ever received from anything he’d done”). But, unsurprisingly, major stars weren’t exactly eager to feature in the segment where they’re literally doomed to incinerate on the searing surface of the sun. The ill-fated spacecraft hosts famous figures like Rosie O’Donnell, Pauly Shore, and Ross Perot, yet they are all voiced by soundalikes, except for one: The Kid & I star Tom Arnold.  

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The Simpsons team was quick to commend Arnold for agreeing to the self-mocking cameo, acknowledging him as a “real champ” who was “completely in on the joke.” To Arnold’s credit, the show does not hold back at all, supplying him with some quite unforgiving lines about binding audiences and compelling them to view his dreadful television shows, and including a peculiar non-sequitur in which Arnold gulps down a can of peaches. 

Hauge recollected that “Tom Arnold truly immersed himself in it,” although he couldn’t resist teasing the writers during the recording session. Between line deliveries, he would randomly banter with Hauge, telling him: “You need to catch some sun, man.”

Which is slightly less harsh than suggesting that someone ought to be launched into the sun for the sake of humanity’s survival.