The Simpsons' Baby Translator
Am I the only one bothered by this plot hole? In the season three final episode of The Simpsons "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" baby translator technology was introduced and then it's never seen again. Also, I know the trope of disappearing characters is called the "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome". That term seems to only cover characters and not technology. I am sure the baby translator isn't the only technology that's introduced and then just dropped in a franchise's media. Surely an equally cool trope syndrome name can be adopted for technology that disappears.
For comparison there is more information about self-sealing stem bolts on Memory Alpha than The Simpsons' Fandom wiki has for the baby translator.
Maybe one could argue that the inventor Herb Powell was Chuck Cunningham Syndromed and that's why the technology disappeared.
Except that's not technically true.
In the 24th season episode "The Changing of the Guardian" Herb Powell's answering machine message is, “Hi, you've reached Herb Powell. I'm poor again.”
Not seeing baby translators in wide use probably explains why Herb Powell is poor again but it doesn't explain what happened to all the baby translators.
What happened between the end of season three and "The Changing of the Guardian"? The machine worked and it was selling well at the end of season three.
i think as a cartoon, and one that is not to be taken too seriously, they aren't held to the strictest continuity rules... im willing to bet they have made fun of that themselves even.
i think there's a term in tv shows how they always revert to the same position as the previous episode. probably almost never is the previous weeks plot even mentioned.
great show
I think the term you're trying to remember is "return to the status quo".
This post is meant to have some fun critically examining a media and my interest in fictional technology and science is why I created the Wakanda community.
I might make a part 2 of this post in the Fan Theories community trying to come up with a narrative that would plausibly explain the lack of baby translators. After all, fan theories and speculation are a lot more legal than the questionable gray area of copyright law that fan fiction is in.
yes i read another one of yr posts after and realized maybe you were joking. i mean, they could have turned maggie into a talking character like the dog from married with children
i think the baby translator is one of those things that the Simpson's predicted to come true though
Perhaps. I am still waiting for Sideshow Bob's sarcastic remark about someone getting a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry to come to pass.
what about the de biggifier-we could use one of those