Homer bats 400

WHEN you are watching the final half-hour of “The Simpsons’ ” season finale, and you are one of the devoted who can say with some accuracy and no little pride that you have “never missed an episode,” consider: That’s 400 episodes, dude. Yessir, many hundreds of hours of television have been occupied by a family of dandelion-skinned, voice-challenged middle Americans; a family that, if nothing else, has managed to both conjugate the word “d’oh” (“I d’oh, you d’oh, he/she d’ohs”) and cement it into the English language.

Twenty years ago, when Bart Simpson was but a gleam in “The Tracey Ullman Show’s” eye, who would have thought that a half-hour animated show would rule the world? Since then it has become not only a merchandising sensation but the hottest guest-star spot in town. What other show can claim to have acquired the voice talents of, among many others, Mel Gibson, Elizabeth Taylor, Lily Tomlin, Ricky Gervais, 50 Cent, Stephen Hawking, Albert Brooks, Glenn Close, Michael Moore, Ian McKellen, J.K. Rowling, Tony Blair and the Olsen twins.

Relentlessly irreverent, “The Simpsons” gave us, for better or worse, a new genre: cartoons for grown-ups. The visuals may please the kiddies, but the plotlines and language are most often PG-13, the jokes as multilayered as Marge’s hair. Without “The Simpsons,” there would be no “King of the Hill,” not to mention all those Bart Simpson acolytes on the Cartoon Network. For those who, like Homer, do not comprehend the term “enough,” “The Simpsons Movie” is due in mere weeks.

Four hundred. It’s the new “300.” Coming soon, to a theater near you. Dude. (Fox, today, 8 p.m.)

-- Mary McNamara