(originally aired November 14, 1999)
Normally when you’re writing an episode, you should make it around one story, one concept, one core idea. This show is very disjointed, but even stranger is there is some groundwork for the final act put into the first, but the middle portion of the episode is so disconnected and irrelevant that it doesn’t even matter. It’s just such a mess structurally. Things are pretty aimless at the start with Homer blowing off steam after work going bowling, with a crowd slowly emerging as he gets closer and closer to bowling a perfect game. For him, it’s a release after a particularly bad day, but it’s less satisfying to us as the audience since all the bad things that happened to him were his fault. Classic Homer was an unlucky son-of-a-bitch who fate spat in the face of repeatedly. Here, Homer oversleeps, runs his car through the median and molests his boss’s face repeatedly. Then he’s punished and made to eat barrels of toxic waste. Nothing wrong with that. Nope. Totally makes sense.
When Homer gets his perfect game, the episode shifts gears to be about the fleeting nature of fame, particularly of the flash-in-the-pan variety. Homer has his brief moment in the sun, but is unable to step away. I really don’t know what to make of this second act, every single scene is truly bizarre. I get that Springfield is an easily impressed podunk town, but why are they this amazed about a guy who bowled well? Also, we just jump from random set piece to random set piece. From giving a talk at Bart’s class, we immediately go to Springfield’s answer to Hollywood Squares, with Homer as the center square. And placed over Ron Howard, no less, in his second guest appearance for some reason. From then on we’re just burning through celebrities. Homer tries to do a walk-on during Penn & Teller’s show and almost gets crossbowed, one of the only funny scenes in the show (“I’m gonna kill you!” “He’ll do it! I’m not the first Teller!”) Then he watches TV at home where Pat O’Brien and Nancy O’Dell tell him he’s old hat. Why have them on the show? Hosting “Access Springfield”? Not only does it make no sense, but was it really necessary? All just to raise the guest star count, I guess.
What’s a man to do when your popularity is waning? Commit suicide, of course. Think back to “Homer’s Odyssey,” where Homer wanting to jump off a bridge was a tough pill to swallow, but at least it made sense and the episode was building toward it. Time and again we’ve seen that Homer feels he only has worth if he can provide for his family, and when things seemed impossible for him to do that, he gave up. Here, he thinks his life has peaked and he makes a snap decision to jump off a building. No consideration to his family, nothing. Then he’s saved by Otto bungee jumping and everything’s okay. Brilliant. After that, he decides to devote his life to his kids, but when he finds himself too out of his depth with Bart and Lisa, he settles for Maggie, who has a not-so-great view of her distant father. Now, this technically was set up earlier in the episode how Homer ignores the baby and the effect it has on her, but there’s nothing in the rest of the show that built toward his realization that his kids could give his life meaning. The only prompting was him running into Ron Howard and his kids, it was more random than anything, much like most of the content here. This is the most scatter-shot episode ever, with no focus, no ideas and no clue where to go. There’s a few funny lines, but that’s about it.
Tidbits and Quotes
– In art school, I leaped at the chance to see Koyaanisqatsi basically because I knew it from this episode in the fast-motion sequence of Homer oversleeping. It was… interesting.
– Homer pulls out Burns’s dentures, who regenerates a new pair complete with a cash register sound. He escapes and hides in the reactor core, where Burns proceeds to strangle him through the mounted gloves, and kick him with the mounted feet, which makes no sense. Then Homer is forced to eat nuclear waste. That’s a trifecta right there, the show is officially a goofy cartoon that can do anything.
– Lenny and Carl at the bowling alley have a lot of great material: ‘POO’ and ‘ASS’ on the scoreboard, Lenny’s banana split (“I paid 7.10 for this split.” “Will you at least call it a banana split, you dumbwad?” “Hey, spare me your gutter mouth!”), and Lenny dumping his pills in the trash seeing a “psychotic” Homer get strike after strike.
– I don’t quite see why Marge isn’t upset that Homer lied to him to get out of bonding with their daughter. Instead, she and the kids just stand at the sidelines at the bowling alley, telling them to not disturb their father.
– I don’t understand the Springfield Squares bit. Why is the Capitol City Goofball there? And really, if you’ve got Ron Howard, you make him the center square. And Itchy & Scratchy are real? Somehow? Whatever. I do like this exchange though regarding Howard (“Homer, you can’t just ride one accomplishment forever. Why do you think I stopped acting and became a director?” “I don’t know, because you weren’t cute anymore?” “Hmm… I’ll agree.” “Circle gets the square. Goodnight, everyone!”)
– More dumb cartoony shit where Homer somehow inhales the ‘300’ balloon. He didn’t even inhale that deeply, it just plummeted down his throat.
– Otto was conveniently bungee jumping off the building and managed to catch up to a falling Homer, which defies gravity, and for some reason his cord was long enough to descend through various underground levels below the city. So if they hadn’t gone in that manhole, Otto would have smashed his face into the pavement. Was that the aim? And I love that Homer gets hit with the manhole cover before he pops back on the surface, just one more opportunity to see him get hurt.
– Speaking of which, his Teletubby bit makes no sense either. He’s got the TV chained to his neck, sometimes holding it with one hand, which is ridiculous as that thing must weigh a fair amount. Then the TV seems to work without being plugged in, and electrocutes him somehow. Okay?
– I don’t even feel like commenting about Maggie saving Homer’s life at the end. The commentary yields no answers, as usual. But the episode can barely be bothered to explain it, they just crammed in a quick Hibbert line (“When a parent’s life is in danger, a child can summon super-human strength.”) No joke, no response, no questioning. Honestly, if you’re going to pull this kind of shit, at least have characters acknowledge how it makes no sense. By this point though, I’d been so dulled by the rest of the episode, this is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae. …oh, but I will say that I thought Maggie looked very cute in her little swim suit. At least I have a positive note to end on. …before she pulled a two hundred and eighty fucking pound man to shore. WHAT THE FUCK.
Me Blog Write Good 
This one came around right when you were ready to be charitable, too.
It’s not until 236 that you’ll face an unbroken string of clunkers.
yeah, this one is just awful. there are lots of jokes that should’ve worked, but for whatever reason, they just don’t. the whole bizarre lenny worship thing is a great example; it really feels like that should’ve been funny, but it was just stupid. and agreed, the bit with maggie at the end was ridiculous.
Great write-up. I’ve always thought this was one was bizarre and nonsensical to an insane degree too.
Koyaanisqatsi… ahhhh. One of the best films ever..
The extra weight made the cord stretch more, Otto says that.
I’ll just say this. Ron Howard is a jerk in this series, and I pretty much lost all respect for the man (along with Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin). He steals Homer’s movie pitch idea, then he takes back money that he gave him a few seconds later. Overall, he thinks he’s so much better than him because he can afford to spoil his own random children by taking them to zoos with unheard-of animals (probably screamapillars and Boliavian tree lizards in that joint too).
They should have had Homer trying to win a 300 game as the plot of the whole episode, instead of the hype dying down and implications that two free-range Simpson children are in need of their hands being held (like any ordinary impressionable *cough*Rod*cough*Todd*cough children). Oh and Maggie having no interest in him “Do it for her”.
Bart and Lisa didn’t need Homer to bust Sideshow Bob for framing Krusty, foil Ugolin and Cesar, stop Bob Arnold’s bribery schemes, stop Sideshow Bob from getting rid of television, bust Sideshow Bob for rigging the mayor election, stop Cecil from killing them, or stop Sideshow Bob from killing Selma. And they don’t need him to give them his attention now. It also makes them look like handicaps with no real refining individual qualities.
And besides, didn’t they already do a plot like this in season 6.
Ron Howard being a jerk in the series–which is actually funny and self-deprecating–made you lose respect for the man in real life? Wtf lol
“Maggie pulled a two hundred and eighty fucking pound man to shore. WHAT THE FUCK.”
Then she bowled a 300 game. Double WTF.
And Homer, in full Jerkass mode, refused to be beaten by her, so he blatantly lied about her stepping over the line on her last strike. Quadruple WTF.
More awfulness. I’m genuinely shocked.
If you asked me what season all these freaking terrible episodes were I’d have guessed maybe 13 or 14, something around there.
The slide in quality was a hell of a lot quicker than I remembered it being.
But yeah “He’ll do it! I’m not the first Teller!”” is pretty funny.
People say homer’s enemy is the harbinger of zombie simpsons, but for me I think it was this one. I remember at the time thinking what are they doing? this series has gone on too long.
Penn is an ass in real life, he probably has gone through multiple Tellers
About the Otto thing – I think it’s supposed to be that Homer’s weight causes them to go down farther than they otherwise would have. They should have made that much, much clearer though.
Anyway I love the first scene in the bowling alley. Homer’s list is classic (apparently he’s seen Stevie Nicks naked three times!) as are Lenny’s bowling puns. The rest of the episode is crap though.
After the past few fairly decent episodes, I was hoping that maybe the premiere of this season was red herring and that the season really was an improvement over season 10. I figured maybe the rest of season 11 would be decent. Then this episode occurred, and I was flabbergasted by how bad it was. It’s not one of the worst episodes of all time or anything, but it’s an episode with a really messy story and more terrible characterization of Homer.
The story really is constructed poorly. It feels like the writers took three different stories and put them together. I was a bit worried in act one that we’d be seeing a Team Homer rip-off, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. We have Homer as a bowler, and yeah, his character isn’t good here, lying to his own wife, who doesn’t even care upon finding out he lied to her. The “Not Lenny” bit was mildly amusing at first, but then went too far, in my opinion.
Suddenly, in act two, we have Homer becoming a star. He literally becomes a star simply because he bowled well. Keep in mind that his bowling team in season 7 didn’t become this famous, and they were a whole team that beat a bunch of others, more worthy of fame than Homer here. There’s a bunch of random celebrities, because apparently the writers just want to knock them all off the list of people that they need to drag on the show. And, again, it’s all over Homer bowling well. Come on. Then he loses fame, and chooses to kill himself.
I’d like to point out that Homer’s attempted suicide in Homer’s Odyssey was brilliant. It had jokes, but the story took the event fairly seriously, as it was a pretty impactful thing going on. Here, it’s portrayed in a really silly way that I can’t take the story seriously after it. Otto saves him by happening to bungee jump, and yeah, it’s a good thing that manhole cover was there because otherwise he’d be dead. There’s also an underground colony of mole people. Again, we’re having this joke occur during a failed suicide attempt. I’m not saying the show has to have no jokes, but please make sure your jokes don’t contrast too much with the events of the story. Otherwise, it feels really mood whiplash-like.
Then Maggie saves Homer in the ocean later. Yes, this infant baby somehow managed to drag this 250 pound man out of the water. The set up to the Homer and Maggie thing was done earlier, but the pay off is pretty bad. And Homer being the way he is now, he repays his daughter for saving his life by lying about her cheating at a bowling game she legitimately won. Class act, Homer. Class act.
If you can’t tell by the fact that I just wrote five paragraphs about it, I really dislike this episode. It’s far from the worst episode of the season or even the series, but it’s still bad. The story is a big mess and feels like three separate stories put together, there’s a bunch of stupid jokes (I didn’t even mention the garbage about Homer eating nuclear waste), and the characters are not good here. Again, there are worse episodes, but this one is just a hot mess from start to finish.
This is a bit of a hot take but I personally think this episode is just as bad as Saddlesore and Kill The Alligator and Run. It actually has elements of both- unnecessary surreal elements in the third act (Saddlesore) a disjointed as fuck plot and pointless celebrity cameos that do nothing in terms of jokes or plot (Kill The Alligator and Run). I have zero idea what they were going for here; it’s one of those episodes that just feels like 3 or 4 scripts just got combined together without trying to make it coherent at all.
They really should’ve just made it Homer gets five seconds of fame and has to deal with the fallout when he’s not town famous anymore. Not the most original or interesting plot, but whatever. Anything (for the most part) can be interesting with the right writer. But instead, they decide to have the whole thing with Maggie at the end and it’s introduced so late into the show that it has literally no time for it to be fleshed out. Does this show want to be about Homer dealing with fame, or does it deal with him wanting to be a better father to Maggie? The episode can not pick an identity to save it’s life.
I get the stuff with Homer having a shitty day but there’s a serious air of mean-spiritedness to it all, where it should’ve just had him have an unlucky day. But instead, we have Homer eating toxic waste as punishment. Blech. The bowling stuff’s whatever, I like Lenny and Carl’s names, but that’s really the only joke I remember liking. I really, really hate the fallout stuff. I really do. I hate how seriously it’s taken for an episode that’s been pretty silly throughout. It has to be one of the most jarring tonal shifts in the entire series. Especially the scene with “The End” (I love The Doors so hearing them in this episode is both a blessing and a curse). It’s taken so goddamn seriously only for Homer’s suicide attempt to get unrealistically cartoony. Also it just feels so goddamn fucking weird for Homer to basically just become suicidal out of nowhere for no reason other than to serve the plot.
The third act isn’t really even worth talking about. There is zero goddamn time to make any of the Maggie stuff stick or feel important. And it’s a dead zone with jokes and ends with an ultra cartoony ending that makes no sense. Blech. Fuck this one. It has to be one of the most scatterbrained episodes of the whole series.
Al Jean wrote this episode… I think it’s safe to say that there should not have been *that* much hope that he’d make the show good again when he took over from Mike Scully.