Santa's Little Helper event; however, their plan fails and a drunk shark that's discovered at the event becomes the new mascot instead. Santa's Little Helper gladly returns to the Simpson family. Santa's Little Helper's initial appearance on "The Simpsons" was in the first episode of the series, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", which aired on Dec. 17, 1989. Since then, he has become a recurring character. "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening told "TV Guide" in 2000 that "we [the staff] painted ourselves into a corner with our Christmas episode. Once we wrote the dog into the show, we were stuck with him."
Media in The Simpsons let the users of the Internet vote over what direction "The Simpsons" should take. In the twenty-second season finale "The Ned-Liest Catch", the characters Ned Flanders and Edna Krabappel started dating. The episode ends with Homer and Marge Simpson giving the viewers a link to the official "The Simpsons" website, TheSimpsons.com, and encouraging them to go on the website and vote over the summer of 2011 on whether Ned and Edna should stay together. Showrunner Al Jean said in an interview that the writers decided it would not be interesting for them to do another episode where a relationship ended,