Timothy+Lovejoy



Timothy Lovejoy is Springfield’s religious leader. Reverent Lovejoy is employed in Springfield’s church, //First Church of Springfield//. The 41 year-old clergyman has got a wife called Helen and a daughter called Jessica. Reverend Lovejoy appeared on The Simpsons for the first time in 1990, and is voiced by Harry Shearer. Reverend Lovejoy is not one of the most important characters of the show. He doesn’t appear in every episode, and is usually just seen when the Simpsons Family goes to the church on Sundays. But still, he is still a well known character to, I would say, everyone who have seen some episodes and takes some interest in the series. Lovejoy’s function is to be that typical boring priest who many people can recognize from real life. He appears as a reverent who often himself finds his own services boring. Lovejoy is also in the show to guide the believing characters, like an ordinary priest would do. Lovejoy is a static character. He doesn’t change in personality during the episodes, and he is “the same” in every show. Reverent Lovejoy is a flat character, but he’s also a stock character. As good as everyone can recognize this character from real life. Who haven’t been to a service where the priest have been babbling continuous for (what seems like) hours and hours, when all you ever wanted was to be somewhere else? Many people can easily recognize this character and the situations that often occur around it.  Timothy Lovejoy has a way of speaking which brings his character to life. Whenever he’s not having a passionate and exciting moment, he speaks slowly and with a quite deep voice. We don’t get to know what Lovejoy thinks and feels, since his thoughts are rarely (never?) revealed. But we are able to understand what he thinks because of his body language. The way he resigned stares into the room, his sleepy eyes and his posture and attitude often tells us exactly how he feels. The other characters’ feelings about Reverend Lovejoy himself is not shown, but the way Homer and Bart Simpson moan every time Marge Simpson tells them to get ready for church, says quite a lot about how they feel about his long, slow speeches. And when they are in church, Homer, and the other characters who attend service, often express their feelings by their body language.

Reverend Lovejoy has got the typical Simpsons-yellow skin colour. His hair is sometimes black and other times brown. He’s not fat, but not skinny either. He’s got the body of any typical ordinary 41 year-old male. In church he wears his white gown, pink shirt and blue tie and an often dark blue or orange pair of trousers and black shoes. When he’s not holding any service, he’s seen in either a black shirt with a white reverend stripe in his short collar or his pink shirt and blue tie, sometimes even with a blue sweater on top of that. Reverend Lovejoy is a passionate religious man, but Ned Flanders’ enthusiasm is often too much for him. When Flanders asks questions in church, it always looks like Lovejoy wants him to shut up, but he still takes time to listen to him and hears what he has to say. This must be Reverent Lovejoy’s strength. Lovejoy’s weaknesses must be how he sometimes says and do things a man – and maybe especially a priest - never should do. He has for instance called Lisa Simpson “ Marge Simpson's devil-daughter” for converting to Buddhism. He has also exploited his congregation for money, brawled with a Catholic priest, encouraged his dog to foul Ned Flanders’ lawn, told Moe Szyslak (the local bar keeper) he had nothing to live for, and he has burned down the church for insurance money. And when doing that, he also mumbled “I never thought I’d have to do this again”, which tells us he has done something like this before as well. Reverend Timothy Lovejoy is one of the characters in the show who makes the whole series seem a bit more alive. His appearance, personality, credibility, clichés, and contradictories make a funny character.