As they prepare for the 26th season of the show this fall, the creators of The Simpsons are scraping the bottom of the proverbial peanut butter jar in their search for as-yet-unexplored niches of Springfield. Now we learn that their desperate digging has turned up at least one nut. (The peanut butter in this increasingly regrettable metaphor is crunchy, see.) That nut comes in the form of King Toot’s Music Store, the musical instrument shop that is the longtime next-door neighbor to Moe’s Tavern. As TVLine reports, Nebraska star and Saturday Night Live alum Will Forte has been cast as the supposedly “never-before-seen” King Toot himself, the owner of the tavern-adjacent establishment.
You may be asking, “Wait, didn’t we meet the owner of King Toot’s back in the season-three episode ‘Lisa’s Pony,’ in which Homer has to buy a reed for Lisa’s saxophone, and he puts it off until the last minute, so he has to beg the guy from King Toot’s to open up the store for him?” Apparently, the producers’ answer to your admirably specific question is either “No, that guy wasn’t the owner” or “We don’t care.” And even though “Lisa’s Pony” depicts a close bond between Moe and the seeming proprietor of King Toot’s—“Remember when I pulled you and your wife out of that burning car?” Moe reminisces—in Forte’s episode, Moe and King Toot might be two bad neighbors. Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman hinted at the story arc by saying, “Do they get along? I don’t think so.” Hopefully, Selman will know for sure by the time the episode airs.