Pioneering, Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton has a long history with The Simpsons, having offered up his own riff on the show’s opening couch gag five times since season 23. It’s been confirmed that Plympton would also provide one for the show’s current season, but we hadn’t had a glimpse of it until today.
This morning, Animation On FOX’s YouTube channel uploaded a new piece from Plympton, this one a spin on his Oscar-nominated 1977 short “Your Face.” In the original, a man sang a song of his lover as his face twisted and transformed into a variety of strange shapes. Homer steps in for this variation, Dan Castellaneta taking over the vocals in surprisingly earnest fashion as his animated counterpart’s head stretches, pops, liquefies, and envelops itself in ways that, when coupled with the melancholic piano, take on a resonance beyond “gross.” Soon, the head becomes many, transforming into his long-suffering clan and the couch that’s sustained them for so long.