Here’s A Compliation of Every Time Barney Was Secretly in Love With Homer on ‘The Simpsons’
Marge, and they won’t be crying for poor Barney any time soon.
Of all the unfortunate and unloved characters in the Moe’s Tavern.
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In a select few moments throughout the 36 seasons and counting of The Simpsons, we see Barney express his true desires, and the subject of that deep yearning isn’t Duff beer — at least, not all of it is Duff beer. A lot of him is donuts.
As we know from many of The Simpsons’ most famous flashbacks, Homer and Barney have been best friends since their childhood when the twin souls were rocking out and reveling in being “with it.” Now that the two men are middle-aged, clearly the raging love that Barney kept hidden during their early years is breaking through the dam he built in his heart, and his true feelings for Homer seep through the cracks in scenes like the ones depicted above.
Of course, given the fact that Barney is habitually drunk to the point of delirium, he has an easy out if Homer ever calls out his advances. “Sorry bro, I was so drunk I don’t even know what I said” has been the go-to excuse for men repressing their true feelings since the invention of alcohol, a day that Barney and Homer would both revere as a holiday.
Now, a cynic would say that six different jokes about Barney being attracted to Homer over 36 years isn’t enough of a pattern to suggest that Barney has anything more than a platonic love for his oldest friend. Naysayers would argue that the more likely explanation for the apparent throughline of forbidden love between barflies is just the natural consequence of so many different iterations of Simpsons writers’ rooms thinking that throwing in a surprise gay joke between the two drinking buddies is a good way to pad out a scene.
But those people are the same sort who would claim that England’s greatest prime minister was Pitt the Elder, and they should be treated as such.
