T he Simpsons barrels into its 16th season with the show's producers improbably maintaining the same level of hyperdense comedic dazzle that has earned it the most adoring (and picky) mass audience in television history. However, last year actor Dan Castellaneta—who has given voice to the heroically slothful Homer Simpson since day one—hinted that he and his colleagues behind the mike felt sorely neglected by one key demographic. "All together we still don't make as much as one Friend," said Castellaneta, discreetly forewarning Fox TV executives about the cast's collective (and ultimately semi-successful) demand for a bigger taste of the show's profits.

We should probably be grateful that these six actors appear together in public less often than did the departed Friends, because when they do the very fabric of the spacetime continuum threatens to fold in on itself. Take the occasion when the company gathered to receive unctuous tribute from Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton, and to answer questions in character for his live audience. As the first few zingers flew, warm familiarity turned to unease, then metaphysical panic, as individual actors switched seamlessly between voices that should never spring from the same vocal cords. That funny little lady up there ... she's talking like Bart. . . and now she's Bart's schoolyard nemesis, Nelson Muntz! Noooo!!

The Simpsons' only single-character mainstay is Yeardley Smith, whose close identification with grade-school existentialist Lisa Simpson can sometimes engender a special familiarity among fans. For example: the Simpsons obsessive who once asked Smith if she sounds like Lisa while she is having sex. For the record, the answer was no.