“The writers on those shows get to the point where they can almost write scripts in their sleep,” he said.

I had done a lot of sitcom work before, but George’s stuff was so different and so original that for a while I wondered if I wasn’t in over my head.” On other sitcoms, Scully explained, the dialogue is highly predictable, and the same kinds of setups inevitably lead to the same kinds of jokes. “When I first came to work here, seven years ago, he just blew me away. “George is the best comedy writer in Hollywood,” he said. Mike Scully, who shares Meyer’s title and serves as the program’s “show runner,” or editor-in-chief, talked to me about Meyer not long ago in his office at Fox. He has so thoroughly shaped the program that by now the comedic sensibility of “The Simpsons” could be viewed as mostly his. The credits in recent years have listed him as one of several executive producers, but no title could adequately describe his role. Meyer began writing for “The Simpsons” late in 1989, a few months before the show’s première, on Fox. Then they’ll mention their two favorite lines, and both of them will be George’s.” “A show that you have the writer’s credit for will run, and the next day people will come up to you and tell you how great it was. “That kind of thing happens to all the show’s writers all the time,” Vitti said. “It was extremely flattering-except that I hadn’t written any of those jokes.” Everything Tucker quoted from the episode was actually the work of a colleague of Vitti’s named George Meyer. “The article quoted five jokes from the show,” Vitti told me afterward. Several years ago, Entertainment Weekly ran an effusive review of the television show “The Simpsons.” The review’s author, Ken Tucker, singled out a particular episode as “a masterpiece of tiny, throwaway details that accumulate into a worldview.” That episode was written by Jon Vitti, who at the time was one of the show’s most talented and prolific writers.

The simpsons yoink or no yoink