Springfield's worst-kept secret is almost out of the bag.
Waylon Smithers -- loyal (too loyal) assistant to C. Montgomery Burns, Malibu Stacy collector extraordinaire, Village People enthusiast, implied former flame of John Waters, and, er, confirmed bachelor -- will finally come out of the closet on this season of The Simpsons.
[seealso slug="homer-marge-breakup-simpsons"]
Executive producer Al Jean tells TV Line that the big reveal will be dealt with in a pair of episodes: “In Springfield now, most people know he’s gay, but obviously Burns doesn’t. … We actually do a lot with Smithers this year; he gets fed up with Burns not appreciating him and considers his options."
Previously, Jean revealed to Entertainment Weekly what one of those "options" would be: "We have a show where Smithers realizes he’s never going to get what he wants from Burns so he quits and falls in love with somebody else," Jean said. "The someone else is a character that Hank [Azaria] has done on the show before, Julio, who is a little like his character from The Birdcage."
Smithers' sexuality, of course, shouldn't exactly come as a shock to long-term viewers of America's longest-running sitcom. At this point, it's been teased and implied for nearly 27 years -- both obliquely and blatantly, as when Smithers accidentally revealed this to be his home computer's screensaver, way back in Season 5:
That said, some of the series' writers and producers have made a point in the past of claiming that Smithers isn't actually homosexual -- he's just deeply in love with Mr. Burns. Jean himself was once among them: "I've always thought of Smithers as a Burns-osexual. Whatever gender Burns is, he loves," he told the Sun-Sentinel in 2005.
But evidently, times have changed -- which should be good news for anyone who's been replaying this clip since 1997.