| “ | You know, a town with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No-one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it. | „ |
| ~ Lyle Lanley's first line. |
| “ | Well, sir, there's nothing on earth, like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail! | „ |
| ~ Lyle singing a song to charm the crowd |
| “ | North Haverbrook, where have I heard that name before? Oh no... OH NO!! | „ |
| ~ Lyle as his plane makes an unexpected delay in a town he swindled, and getting his comeuppance. |
Lyle Lanley is a minor antagonist in the long running sitcom The Simpsons, serving as the main antagonist of the season 4 episode Marge vs. the Monorail.
He is a con artist who sells monorails to communities, His main method is fraud and embezzlement, cutting corners and using cheap shoddy materials in places where they would not show.
He was voiced by the late Phil Hartman, who also played Ted Maltin in Jingle All The Way and Tom Morgan in The Pagemaster.
Appearance[]
Lyle wears something resembling a 1920s-barbershop quartet outfit, with beige pants, a beige vest with a red jacket and a red bow tie. He wears a brown hat with a red band and has blond, curled hair. He also has noticeable smile-wrinkles.
Personality[]
Lyle is very charismatic, cunning, smart-spoken and also comedic at times. He can easily grab everyone's attention and is a great showman. He can easily get people to like him. He has his own way of manipulating everyone into believing him. Lyle is good at avoiding questions by flattering the asker and distracting them. Underneath he is actually an egotistical, scheming and greedy person, who doesn't care if people die because of him.
Biography[]
Mr Burns was found convicted of pollution. His punishment was to pay a fine of $3 million. The town held a meeting to determine what the money should be spent on. Lyle appears and states he has a great idea, but then stops himself and states it would probably be better for Shelbyville. Since this is Springfield's rival town, everyone assures him that it'll be good for them. So he presents them with the monorail plan he has. He tells everyone that every great town has one and that he has sold many to other towns. They cost a lot of money, but he is charismatic enough to convince everyone they are a good investment. Lyle starts to sing a musical number explaining all the benefits of the monorail. Near the end, everyone tunes in, and they all finish singing together.
The next day, Lyle shows up at school and lets the kids ask questions about the monorail. Lisa confronts him about why their small town would even need it and is suspicious. But he replies that only someone as smart as she would understand the answer anyway and no-one else would, which flatters and distracts Lisa, from the fact that he didn't answer her question. He also has a commercial on TV where he speaks to lazy couch-potatoes and suggests they try out monorail conducting. During the introductory class, he asks if there are any investigative reporters in the class. When a couple of students readily admit they are, he nonchalantly asks them to leave. Unlike Homer's earlier lackadaisical ways, he is making an effort at this, in which he actually succeeds as he fails to realize it is a slapdash diploma mill which hardly teaches anything of substance (some of the lessons Homer learns are that mononucleosis cannot be contracted from riding a monorail and that the word "monorail" means "one rail".) Lanley says the school is over after three weeks. Otto, who is one of Homer's classmates, asks that wasn't the entire point of the course to see who would get hired as conductor. Lanley acts surprised to be reminded of that and opens his notebook, which reveals a doodle of himself holding sacks of money and absconding to Tahiti. Lanley says after intense progress review "this man clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest", and motions to Homer, who is sitting in the front row.
When Marge finds a family of opossums inside the monorail, she suspects something amiss and decides to report this to Lyle Lanley. She enters his trailer and sees no one is there, but finds his notebook, where he sees the earlier Tahiti picture as well as another doodle of Homer crashing to his death, and a bunch of people in danger, which is marked "suckers". Marge is then startled by the sudden appearance of Lyle, who demands to know how much she read. Marge responds "Nothing incriminating", to which Lanley accepts her story and allows her to leave. Lyle talks to himself about why he always leaves it lying around. Marge decides to visit one of the towns he sold a monorail to and finds it to be desolated and run down. People seem traumatized by the mention of the monorail. Sebastian Cobb, the monorail engineer who was hired by Lanley then informs her that it crashed and the passengers died. He also reveals that Lyle cut corners everywhere and it was already built in a horrible condition.
On the day of the maiden voyage, the entire town is excited. Lisa sees Lanley leaving in a car with suitcases filled to the brim with cash. She asks if he'll ride the monorail with them. He says he has a plane to catch, When Lisa says the monorail ride takes one minute, Lanley furtively remarks his flight departs in less time than that, then orders the taxi driver to drive away at high speed. Shortly afterwards, the Springfield monorail starts going awry due to Lanley's shoddy building. Meanwhile, he sits in his plane, where the speaker mentions a short landing in North Haverbrook, one of the previous cities Lyle scammed. Lyle reflects shortly about where he heard that name before when it hits him, and he is terrified. An angry mob rushes the plane, attacking (and presumably killing) him.
Unlike the other communities Lanley defrauded, however, the people of Springfield are saved as Homer manages to use some odds and ends to anchor the out-of-control monorail.
Simpsons Tapped Out[]
Lyle Lanley returned in the mobile videogame, "The Simpsons: Tapped Out" where he appeared in the questline "A Rail of One City": in it, he returned to Springfield and offered to build another monorail. Lisa mentioned how he built one before and bankrupted the town after it got destroyed. Lyle then offered to build another. He put on a musical extravaganza and convinced the citizens to build a monorail. The town gave him an envelope full of money for the monorail and he promised one final performance before disappearing, having scammed the town once again.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Lyle Lanley's plan of conning everyone into buying the monorail and skipping town with their money was mentioned in "The Simpson Already Did It", an episode of South Park. Professor Chaos was going to do the same but General Disarray told them The Simpsons did it already.
