(originally aired November 7, 1999)
Already I can tell that season 11 is going to be curious for me. I think a big reason is that it’s the first season I can remember watching first run, and as such, I have a strange affinity towards some of these shows. Season 10 had a lot of garbage, as does this season, but I feel there’s a lot more to love here in terms of the ratio of enjoyability to shit. This episode is a good example, as there’s a lot of weirdness and elements that really shouldn’t work, but as a whole it kind of works in a weird way, has a fair amount of humor, and gave us the concept of tomacco, which is pretty amazing. Even the opening kind of makes sense to me: Homer is the kind of dolt who would mimic a movie hero in challenging strangers to duel (reminds me of him parroting an action one-liner way back in “The Way We Was”) and I can definitely see him taking advantage of the privilege, and get bitten in the ass when he tangles with the wrong southern fried sheriff. The stereotypical candor of the Sheriff is kind of stupid, but it’s stupidness I can get behind.
Homer and the family escape their house when the colonel arrives to duel and they must find a place to hide out. They end up at the old Simpson family farm, and must adapt themselves to a new way of life. Why he figures he has to grow crops and be a farmer now and not just drive to a convenience mart and stock up on junk food isn’t exactly clear, but it’s easy enough to hand wave. The jokes in the middle half are kind of hit and miss. You’ve got the most wildest risque joke in the show’s history (Sneed’s Feed and Seed, Formerly Chuck’s) and the condescending rival farmers, but the writers also seem to think tractors repeatedly falling on Homer to be comedy gold. Hoping to kick start the growing process, Homer loads up a pesticide sprayer with plutonium, and with his random assortment of seeds he planted, ends up tending to an entire field of tomacco, the unholy hybrid of tomato and tobacco. And wouldn’t you know, people just can’t get enough. Bart acknowledges it tastes terrible, “but it’s smooth and mild. And refreshingly addictive!”
Laramie Cigarettes takes notice of the new tomacco craze, wanting to buy the plant off Homer so they can use it to get kids addicted to nicotine (“Kids are crazy about tobacco, but the politicians won’t let us sell it to them.”) It’s an interesting idea, but it feels too crammed and rushed within the final four minutes of the episode. It also doesn’t help that Homer is a brain dead moron throughout, raising the stakes from million to billion and arguing with Lisa about how he can’t destroy the plant because he doesn’t know how, a bit that didn’t make any sense to me. Ultimately, the hopelessly addicted animals of the farm attack, and the last tomacco plant ends up in Laramie’s hands anyway, at least until their helicopter crashes thanks to a rabid stowaway sheep. And then we bring it all the way back around to the colonel, which has a pretty satisfying payoff that calls back to an earlier event and is somewhat satisfying seeing our hero shot in the shoulder. So here’s another episode that has its problems, but in the end is pretty damn enjoyable.
Tidbits and Quotes
– Nice Buzz Cola depicting the horrors of D-Day in the pre-film advertisements. Reminds me of when they have Veteran’s Day mattress sales. Something doesn’t quite compute with that…
– Seeing the Milk Duds swimming in “butter” makes me sick. I worked at a movie theatre, it’s all oil, that must taste absolutely disgusting. But that all makes it make even more sense that Homer would want it.
– The Zorro movie is pretty good, with his anachronistic fights between the Three Musketeers, the Man in the Iron Mask, and ninjas. I also like the over-the-top read at the end by the Scarlet Pimpernel (“Do you accept? Or are you a coward.” “I… am a coward!!“)
– One of my favorite bands, the B-52’s, guest star to play a variant of one of their hit songs as “Glove Slap,” which is pretty damn incredible. Whenever the tune gets stuck in my head for some reason, it’s a 50/50 chance of whether it’ll turn out as “Love Shack” or “Glove Slap.”
– Nice bit towards the end of act one where Homer wonders what Zorro would do against the colonel. Turns out, according to his dream sequence, he would just get shot. It’s a nice tie-in to the opening, and the mentality of how we got here. It makes the episode feel more complete, rather than just have random, tenuously connected sequences as we’d see later on.
– The Simpson farm did burn down in “Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy,” but I’m not that huge of a stickler for continuity. Perhaps this episode took place before that one chronologically, who cares.
– I like the discourse between Homer and the condescending farmers, a running bit that has an amusing rhythm and great payoff (“Well, well. Look at the city slicker pulling up in his fancy German car.” “This car was made in Guatemala.” “Well, pardon us, Mr. Gucci loafers.” “I bought these shoes from a hobo.” “Well la-de-dah, Mr. Park Avenue manicure.” “I’m sorry, I believe in good grooming.”)
– I like Homer’s haphazard approach to farming: he figures if he just plants a little bit of everything, like candy corn and gummi bears, something must grow. And if not, just get some plutonium to help it along. He calls Lenny to have him mail some (“Plutonium? Gee, Homer, isn’t that kind of risky? …yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not.”)
– Great Ralph line where he comments the tomacco tastes like Grandma. But nonetheless, he and the Chief are hooked (“We’ll take a bushel or a pack or just… just give it to me.”)
– I really do love the ending. We have Marge earlier unable to sell her mincemeat pies (Homer even chastizes her for it: “You’re scaring off the customers, honey!”) but in the end they almost save Homer when the Colonel asks to have some. But thick-headed as ever, Homer calls for the duel to begin and the Colonel casually shoots him in the arm. But that won’t stop Homer from having some pie himself. Great stuff.
Me Blog Write Good 
I’ve always had a soft spot for this episode, and I can’t put my finger on why. When I rewatched it recently, I was kind of surprise how much of that episode I had forgotten, because it was so unmemorable. There’s still something about tomacco that kept this episode as one I remembered fondly…
The entire Zorro movie is brilliant to me. But it exists in it’s own little bubble. The rest of the episode is fine, but did it really need a talking sheep? Keep your cartoon magic out of my animated show!
“The rest of the episode is fine, but did it really need a talking sheep? Keep your cartoon magic out of my animated show!”
So you must have hated Santa’s Little Helper’s “we love you” from “Bart Gets an Elephant.”
This is an episode that always rubbed me the wrong way. Homer smiling. that’s the thing that does it. He’s so proud of his astronomically bad idea.
We’ve SEEN him try radiation to make things grow. Remember the donut in the reactor? The tomacco bullshit is proof we have LEFT what vaguely constitutes reality and are now in coma patient homer’s dream.
This was probably the first time (when it aired originally) that I got really angry about continuity. The house was /burned down/. It should have been a charred pile.
“The tomacco bullshit is proof we have LEFT what vaguely constitutes reality and are now in coma patient homer’s dream.”
You are aware tomacco has been successfully grown, right? It may not be like it is in this episode, but it is possible to cross the two plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-I-E-I-(Annoyed_Grunt)#Legacy
Yes, but as you pointed out, it’s absolutely nothing like it is in the episode, either in what it is or how it was created.
Hey Lenny, sending some outgoing mail?
This one just felt flat to me, tomacco not withstanding. The southern colonel was rather fun, but the hole thing just felt as if the writers weren’t trying for some reason.
Maybe it’s that a few bits are very American specific, I get that Jimmy carter was a president though why he’s building houses here I’m not sure.
Not the worst episode by any means, but one I have always felt a little “meh” about.
I hated this episode. Tomacco was a stupid, cartoonish idea, the plutonium thing was stupid. Not a fan.
“The Poke of Zorro” is the best part. A great parody of all the over-the-top adaptions of classic films that were a huge trend in the 90s, compete with nonsensical hip-hop theme song
“From the Z to the O to the double-R O”
For a while this was on my list of worst episodes of the series. Well after giving it a watch yesterday I have to say that there are two lines that make this episode worth watching. The first is Homer when he is starring at the colonel’s wife and Marge gets mad, so he retorts, “I’m not dead yet.” The second is when the family is going over their duties and Marge says, “I’ll repress the rage I’m feelilng.”
I’m not sure if I am now more forgiving of this episode due to more recent seasons of what, but I didn’t hate it as much. I still think the plot is stupid, and how the Simpson farm home is not burnt to a crisp (you can’t say this is before Sexual Inadacy because Homer didn’t remember his family home until that episode), but overall, it could have been worse.
I agree that the tractor falling over Homer got tiresome, but there were some legitimate funny scenes throughout. You do see the personality of Jerkass Homer in the episode, but at least some of it was forgivable given how people can get way too into a scene from a movie they have just watched.
The Night of the Living Dead parody scene works regardless of how stupid it is.
It isn’t a harmful episode, it just isn’t that good of one.
I have a soft spot for this episode and it’s one of my favorites from season 11. There’s a bunch of stupid stuff in here but it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment. The whole farmhouse sequence was fairly entertaining and the tomacco.plant was a unique idea and surprisingly memorable. Even though it’s dumb, I enjoy the rabid animals as well.
“Why he figures he has to grow crops and be a farmer and not just drive to a convenience mart and stock up on junk food isn’t exactly clear, but it’s easy enough to hand wave.”
That’s the cowards way out!
Do you really think the first act is believable? Escape from home for ever and starting a new life away because he’s afraid of a duel? Are you kidding me?
Anyway, I find this episode full of noise. Too many things happen, and too many of them make no sense (platinum? Gimme a fkng break); plus Homer is at his Jerkass\ brain dead \ irritating best.
But I love the super dumb Zorro’s movie, and Lenny’s “isn’t that kind of risky?…yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not.”
For the most part this is an okay episode, but the Zorro movie is just classic. And for those of you who haven’t bothered to freeze frame the credits to the film, the characters include:
Zorro – John Bynder
Robot Zorro – Shawn Wayans
Mrs. Zorro – Rita Rudner
Scarlet Pimpernel – Curtis “Booger” Armstrong
King Arthur – Cheech Marin
Man in the Iron Mask – Gina Gershon
Wise Nun – Posh Spice
Stupid Nun – Meryl Streep
Time Traveler #1 – Stone Cold Steve Austin
Orangutan at Dance – “Puddles”
Man Beating Mule – Eric Roberts
Mule Beating Man – “Gus”
Hiccuping Narrator – Robert Evans
Corky – Anthony Hopkins
Voice of Magic Taco – James Earl Jones
That list genuinely makes me laugh out loud.
I feel like I shouldn’t like it, but the writing is sharp enough within the crazy plot it’s enough to be enjoyable. Sometimes I say “shut your big yap” (well, shortened down to “shut your yap”) because of this episode.
This episode is okay. There’s a few weird things about it, like the concept of the tomacco plants in general, and tractors falling on Homer really wasn’t that funny, but it’s not a terrible episode. I love some of the good jokes they have (that Sneed’s Feed and Seed (Formerly Chuck’s) joke is golden), and the story isn’t too bad. It’s a decent episode overall.
Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot to mention the Zorro movie! Yeah, that’s one of the few bits in season 11 that I think is fantastic. The credits are funny, too.
At least Mike the blogger confesses his bias towards this season/episode to start with otherwise this review would have really confused me. Jerkass Homer behaviour which he was lambasting only a few episodes ago is let off the hook, as well as a terrible plot which doesn’t make sense many times over. It’s your typical wacky episode with awful characterisation to boot (Bart effectively wanting his Dad to be killed twice in this episode when he wants the colonal to shoot Homer as he hides in the try and when he trys to stop Marge preventing Homer from hanging himself)… I’m just a little surprised how this episode is seemingly let off the hook. Does this episode have photos of you that you don’t want out?
Thought the plot in this episode was actually pretty consistent and the jokes largely enjoyable throughout.
The scene of Homer and Marge standing in the plutonium glow at night was eerily atmospheric and very well done.
Some bizarre, awesome jokes like feeding a groundhog to the elephant and “You couldn’t grow stink on a monkey.”