The Itchy & Scratchy Show influenced by Tom and Jerry
Role in The Simpsons
The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a show within a show that appears occasionally in episodes of The Simpsons. They appear in the form of 15- to 60-second cartoons that are filled with gratuitous violence, usually initiated by Itchy the mouse against Scratchy the cat; Itchy is almost always the victor. Itchy & Scratchy airs as a segment on The Krusty the Clown Show, and also aired on its brief replacements, Sideshow Bob's Cavalcade of Whimsy, and Gabbo.Itchy & Scratchy is usually a parody of traditional cartoons or takeoffs on famous films, but the plot and content are always violent and bloody, with Itchy performing unprovoked acts of graphic violence and homicide unlike most classic cartoons. The most direct and obvious example is Tom and Jerry, an animated series which was also about a constant battle between a cat and a mouse, with the mouse usually victorious, though in Itchy & Scratchy, the mouse acts as the antagonist. Itchy & Scratchy also includes shorts such as Scratchtasia, a parody of Fantasia, and Pinitchio, a parody of Pinocchio. Animation-related jokes are prevalent in the show, such as the Manhattan Madness cartoon in "The Day the Violence Died", which is based on very early animated cartoons such as Gertie the Dinosaur. The cartoons also occasionally serve to play out an exaggerated form of the conflict in the surrounding episode. For example, in "Deep Space Homer" (season five, 1994), Homer is recruited by NASA, and later watches an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon which directly (and gruesomely) parodies the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien.Characters
Shown in The Itchy & Scratchy Show
Itchy the mouse (voiced by Dan Castellaneta and Tress MacNeille) and Scratchy the cat (voiced by Harry Shearer) are the main characters in the show. The duo first appeared in The Tracey Ullman Show short "The Bart Simpson Show", which aired November 20, 1988; the performance style at the time was like Tom and Jerry. Their first appearance in The Simpsons was "There's No Disgrace Like Home". Itchy is a blue mouse and the show's villainous protagonist; he almost always succeeds in his relentless attempts in mutating or killing Scratchy and any other cats around. Scratchy is a threadbare, dim-witted black cat and the perpetual victim of Itchy's violent acts; as opposed to Tom of Tom and Jerry, Scratchy seldom antagonizes Itchy to provoke him in any way.Poochie (voiced by Dan Castellaneta when voiced by Homer Simpson, Alex Rocco when voiced by Roger Meyers, Jr.), is an orange dog that appeared in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" (season eight, 1997). In the episode, the producers of The Itchy & Scratchy Show believed the cartoons were getting stale, and needed a new character to reinvigorate the show. Homer Simpson gets the job of voicing Poochie, who is introduced in the cartoon, "The Beagle Has Landed". A product of marketing department thinking, Poochie was near-universally despised due to interfering with the graphic violence, and was permanently killed off in his second appearance, despite Homer's objections. The episode was both a reference to TV shows which added new characters purportedly to reinvigorate the show, and a commentary on the growing complaints of fans of The Simpsons. The original idea for the episode was that Poochie would be obnoxious because he was so rich, rather than because he was so cool. Poochie would later make brief speaking cameo appearances in "Treehouse of Horror IX", "Little Big Mom", and "The Nightmare After Krustmas".