The episode in question is the season premiere from last year. THe episode starts off with the badger in SLH's doghouse, prompting homer to call animal control, only to find out the town has been split into two area codes, then blah blah blah, the Who plays a concert.

ANYWAY, my favorite part of this episode was missing. Homer and the kids go inside to call animal control, they find out about the two area codes, and homer gets angry, the badger comes up to the window, makes a noise, and homer goes "Go away you, we have bigger problems now"

GONE, wasn't there at all.

And to make things even stranger, the end of the episode was changed. The wall dividing the town has cracked, all the people go over to new springfield and they listen to the Who... The camera pans up, and up, and then you see a badger talking to another badger, "The music is distracting them, now's our chance" And you see tons of badgers storm down the hill ... But that was gone too. Instead it just pans up once, and goes to the credits...

Why would they edit out these parts? It would make no sense to take them out for time, the two jokes take up a total of about 4 seconds... But they were two of my favoritejokes from this episode... editing it this way, you don't even get to see the badger.

Thats syndication - I think every Simpsons episode is edited this way so that they can squeeze in more commercials.

I've noticed a considerable amount of editting of The Simpsons, particularly in the late night (11:00 in Southern California) time slot.

Fox most often cuts out "less vital", tangential scenes and asides in order to leave the more vital story points. The problem with this editing is that the tangential stuff on the Simpsons is usually the funniest stuff.

Another example is: In the Episode where Bart and Homer become grifters in order to pay for the damage done to Homer's car by a Sturgeon, Bart shows Homer a book of Father and Son Grifts. One of these grifts is the "New England Ham Scam" and the included illustration is hilarious. The whole Ham Scam aside was cut from the syndicated version I saw most recently.

mine cut the funny ending of the episode where lisa rips up a check from mr burns. Well they cut the part where homer has a heart attack because of the amount of money lisa ripped up.

Unfortunately, almost every episode in syndication has this problem. What to cut? It's all good stuff. Luckily, now that they are putting them out on DVD we'll get to see them again in all their glory. Unfortunately, at the rate things are going we'll all be dead and buried before they get to the episode in question.

Well great .. in 9 years i can finally see the badger again By that time DVD will be on the way out anyway.

On a side note, i've decided this is my favorite episode ever.

I just wish that Fox would air the episode where the Simpsons go to New York and Homer parks in between the twin towers. This is one of my all time favorite episodes but they won't air it because of the terrorists.

I saw it a few weeks ago. In fact i think i started a thread on it cause i was surprised to see it.

You can also see the syndication cuts through Season 11 here: http://www.snpp.com/episodes/scg.html

Some of them are horribly cut. But hey, you can always wait for this episode on DVD, although I think 9 years is a bit too optimistic given their current snail-paced schedule.

hey everyone is right, they do cut out the best jokes.

That one with the two area codes wasn't edited here in Chicago. That "Go away we have bigger problems" was still there.

Is this edit thing by choice of the FOX affiliate? I saw the area code episode just the other day and there were no edits. They still had those pesky badgers running down the hill.

I used to know someone who worked for a network. His Job was to "cut down" the reruns of syndicated shows by 1 minute to 3 minutes so the network could fit in more commercials. This is what is happening here.

Yes it was - the last shot was still missing.