Lou (2024)

“Sweet.”

―Lou

“Uh... Chief?”

―Officer Lou's reaction to almost everything said or done by Clancy Wiggum

Louis "Lou" Merkel (unconfirmed spelling Merkhell) is a sergeant with the Springfield Police Department and by far, the most intelligent and competent officer of the Springfield Police. He is under the command of Police Chief Clancy Wiggum, and often takes the time to point out Wiggum's mistakes (often while a crime or the pursuit of a criminal—is still in progress, therefore distracting them all from the crime).

Profile[]

As stated before, Lou is the most competent police officer, unlike Eddie or Wiggum. Lou speaks more than his counterpart Eddie. Even though he rarely comes up, when he does he is in a police uniform. Lou once said he wants to leave the force as there is more money in private security; nothing ever becomes of this, though.^[1] His favorite on duty beverage is beer.

Biography[]

In"To Cur, with Love", in a flashback, Lou was young and Clancy Wiggum was a dog catcher. He crashed the car and Clancy Wiggum said he will be a policeman and Lou also says that he will be a policeman when he's grown up.

He once joined a grunge band with Homer, Lenny, and Carl called "Sadgasm", in which he played the drums. They broke up later.^[2]

He also was unintentionally instrumental in exposing to Chief Wiggum that Groovy Grove Juice Corporation's latest shipment had been laced with Peyote, where he ended up spinning around in a ecstatic manner and rambling about a monkey grabbing his "brain banana" in a half-lucid state (obviously hallucinating from the juice's effects), causing Wiggum to become suspicious of the juice he was drinking and taste it for anything out of the ordinary.^[3]

Other[]

Education[]

Even though he's never stated so explicitly, other people around Springfield have insinuated that he is a graduate of Princeton University. Following his undergraduate career, Lou applied and was accepted to law school at an unspecified university, but was forced to drop out as he could not afford the college tuition.

Family[]

Officer Lou was married to a woman named Amy, but later divorced^[4]. He complains occasionally that Eddie has been seeing his ex-wife, making Commissioner Wiggum act as mediator. Officer Lou became the temporary owner of Santa's Little Helper, who was trained to be a police dog^[5]. At around this time, it was revealed that Officer Lou has a girlfriend named Charquelle who had wanted to party with him. Officer Lou also has an unnamed son who lives in Baltimore.^[6]

Last Name[]

Officer Lou and his fellow officer Eddie have never been given last names. This was joked about in the episode "The Frying Game" (Season 13, Episode 21) where the following transcripts are taken from:

Wiggum: And I'm gonna be in the show.

Carmen: Yes.

Wiggum: Can Ed and Lou have producer credits?

Carmen: Yes.

Guy: Now what are your last names?

Lou: We don't have them. We're like Cher

Behind the Laughter[]

• According to the Season One DVD commentary, Officer Lou was based on Lou Whitaker. Like Lou, Whitaker was an African American, but made a career as a professional baseball player rather than as a police officer. At time Lou debuted on The Simpsons, Whitaker was still an active player for the Detroit Tigers, the team he played his career with between 1977 and 1995.
• Hank Azaria based Officer Lou's voice on Sylvester Stallone. This came in spite of the fact that unlike Whitaker, Stallone was mostly of Italian descent and did not have any African heritage in his mixed ancestry. which included an Italian father and a mother of mixed French-Jewish ancestry. However, Stallone would play some cop roles in the time after Lou was created, including in Demolition Man(1993) -which also featured Stallone's character pursuing a criminal played by African American actor Wesley Snipes- and in Cop Land(1997).

Trivia[]

• On January 1, 2022 former New York State Senator and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams would be sworn in as New York City's second African American Mayor. Like Lou, Adams is an African American who chose to make a career as a police officer, which he served as until he decided to enter politics in 2006. https://www.amny.com/news/bp-adams-condemns-cop-who-struck-youths-in-subway-without-provocation/
• Like Lou, 2014-2021 New York Police Department Deputy Police Commissioner Benjamin Tucker, who served in this position during the time Simpsons guest star Bill de Blasio was Mayor of New York City, was an African American who acted as a deputy to the head of police and who also donned a mustache.https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/nyregion/benjamin-tucker-is-named-new-york-police-departments-first-deputy-commissioner.html Tucker, who became a police officer in 1969, also became active in New York City politics in the 1980s, and even held not only local political positions, but also federal positions too, including stints as Deputy Director for Operations in the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration and Deputy Director of the Ofiice National Drug Control Policy for State, Local and Tribal Affairs in the Obama Administration.https://web.archive.org/web/20141106004912/http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/administration/training_co.shtmlhttps://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/news-releases-remarks/benjamin-tucker-brings-forty-years-experience-to-drug-policy-office
• In the episodes "Krusty Gets Busted", and "There's No Disgrace Like Home", Officer Lou was yellow, being portrayed as a Caucasian character. The first appearance of African-American Officer Lou was in "Bart vs. Thanksgiving" and he would be like this for the rest of the series. The one exception was an error in "Sweets and Sour Marge", when for just one shot he was accidentally colored yellow again.
• He gets a lot of murder cases, evidenced by the fact that he uses "Ya little murderer" as a metaphor on Lisa.
• Lou is named after baseball player Lou Whitaker.^[7]

Appearances[]

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Gallery[]

Citations[]