Unproduced episodes

These are Unproduced episodes of The Simpsons where full scripts were written but the episode was never produced. This page refers only to full scripts, and not subplots or jokes that were dropped from episodes. Mike Reiss claims only a small number of scripts haven't been produced because they are difficult to work on and thus are rarely completely thrown away.

All of these episodes are either mentioned by Mike Reiss in the "Stark Raving Dad" commentary or Bill Oakley in the "Ask Bill & Josh" question session they did at NoHomers.net in 2005.

Finished scripts

"The Prince Episode"

• Parts of "The Prince Episode" script.
• Parts of "The Prince Episode" script.
• Parts of "The Prince Episode" script.

1/3

"The Prince Episode" (unofficial title) was started a year after "Stark Raving Dad" aired. The writers decided to make a sequel where Leon Kompowsky returns and thinks he is the musician Prince. It was slated to air during the fifth season. According to Mike Reiss, it was written by some freelance writers and polished by Conan O'Brien, however, Bill Oakley says it was written by Conan O'Brien

In the episode, Prince gets everyone in the town to "loosen up, become more flamboyant, everyone becomes more sexually open, they're dressing in paisley."

The script was sent to Prince and he sent back a page of notes about what he was wearing in various scenes. The notes didn't correspond to the writers script. As it turned out, Prince was talking about a completely different script. According to Reiss it was sent to him by someone, Oakley says a friend of Prince's wrote it and in an interview Matt Groening said Prince's chauffeur wrote it. Prince absolutely hated the writer's script and demanded the other one be made, but the writers didn't like it. The episode was written by his house manager. Prince loved the script so much he had started writing original music for the show and offered to pay for the WGA minimum but the writing staff refused to even consider rewriting the script and permanently alienated Prince. Prince refused the show's script because it was too derivative of the Michael Jackson show.

The episode eventually fell through.

A few days after Prince's death in April 21, 2016, Al Jean posted on his Twitter parts of the episode's script.

"Thirtysimpsons"

"Thirtysimpsons" was made for Season 3 and was a cross-over episode about the TV series Thirtysomething. Homer meets a group of Yuppies and hangs out with them. It was written by David Stern but "never seemed to work" and wasn't in the "style of the show" and wasn't produced.

A Military School episode

A script written in the first few years of the show sees Bart sent to a military school. The script never worked and was thrown out. In Season 8, a similar episode called "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" was made where Bart goes to military school.

Pitched ideas

• For the seventh season: "Greg Daniels pitched an episode about racism in Springfield. It never got past the planning stages because the topic was just too incendiary to be dealt with effectively."
• For season eight: "A hilarious and fully worked out story by George Meyer. I can't reveal the subject matter here but we never went forward with it because of 1) legal ramifications and 2) the fact that at least a couple of people on the staff/cast would've felt personally attacked by the episode and we just didn't want to deal with the fallout."
• Oakley and Weinstein had an idea for an episode about Lisa "discovering the joys of campy things", to be entitled "Lisa and Camp". It was never produced and eventually became "Homer's Phobia".