Don’t Trust Anyone Over 20

A countdown of the top 100 characters of the past 20 years, which Entertainment Weekly just made public this week, puts Homer Simpson above everyone else on the list. If you’re wondering what makes these past 20 years so special, keep in mind that Entertainment Weekly is turning 20 this year.

Although these countdowns are popular no matter what year we’re in, if you’re using 1990 as the cutoff point, it doesn’t seem fair to pick somebody from 1987, which was when the Simpsons made their first appearance on “The Tracey Ullman Show.”

Even if being off by three measly years doesn’t seem like a big deal, you’d think that’d be about as far back as they’d go. It’s a little surprising then that, just a couple of spots down at number five, there’s a character who originally turned up way back in 1940: The Joker. Sure, Heath Ledger took the Joker to new heights in 2008’s “The Dark Knight” and Mark Hamill gave him a new voice during the ‘90s as the cartoon version, but Jack Nicholson played him as early as 1989 in “Batman,” and Cesar Romero portrayed him even earlier in 1966 opposite Adam West on that old TV show.

What the people at Entertainment Weekly probably tried to do was take a look at characters who have hit their prime over the past 20 years, regardless of how long it took for them to do it. Besides, some of them managed to hit it pretty quickly – though “Seinfeld” technically got started in 1989, Kramer was a big part of what made it such a big hit in the early ‘90s, and while author Thomas Harris first wrote about Hannibal Lecter back in 1981 in “Red Dragon,” his day in the sun came in 1991 when Anthony Hopkins brought him to life onscreen in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

If ten years seems like a pretty long time to have to wait, remember that Gollum, who author J.R.R. Tolkien created in the ‘30s, didn’t become a big deal until the “Lord of the Rings” films turned up a few years ago.

You’d have to be pretty lenient to put somebody that old on the list, but even a guy like Homer doesn’t quite make the grade. Since Harry Potter is the runner-up at number two, maybe he should be getting the accolades instead. Besides, Homer’s had more than his fair share already – Time, which is even older than Entertainment Weekly, praised “The Simpsons” as the best show of the 20th century.

Given a whole century’s worth of other shows that “The Simpsons” was up against, maybe Homer’s an even greater character than the folks at Entertainment Weekly credit him for.

This article was originally published on AllMediaNY.com.