(originally aired April 9, 2000)
So here we have our last of the “big change” episodes of this season, where Barney takes a vow of sobriety. And like all the other changes, it barely had any effect on the rest of the series. Barney was still always planted at Moe’s, only now they rotated in a new clean model sheet for him and gave him a coffee mug in place of a beer stein. And then a few seasons later he was off the wagon. So forget about the “impact” of this episode because there isn’t one, we’ll take it as its own story. I do feel like it could have been a lot worse… but similarly feel it could be a lot better too. So rock bottom for Barney is when he sees videotape of his birthday party, which he doesn’t remember, where he gets absolutely plastered, per usual. Seeing this footage horrifies him, and he vows to give up drinking. In its place, he challenges himself to take up helicopter lessons. It isn’t long before he and Homer have a falling out regarding Barney musing of the time he wasted at Moe’s, and the two must patch things up before show’s end.
To be honest, this isn’t really a story I cared much about seeing. It took us eleven seasons to come up with the concept that the town drunk should go sober? Maybe they thought it would tread over the same ground as “Duffless.” And now I have to compare this to that great episode now. Alcohol is Barney’s life, being drunk is his primary character trait. If done in an interesting way, taking that away from him could be interesting, to give him a whole new side of his personality. Bring back the academic Barney we’ve seen in flashbacks, but with a twist. Here, we really barely see Barney actually struggling with wanting a beer; compare this with the eternal struggle Homer had all throughout “Duffless.” Speaking of, Homer is all over this episode of course, and serves only to distract and annoy. A killer scene is when he and Barney have their falling out in the helicopter, where Homer basically acts like a petulant irrational child. Barney explains to Homer that while he’ll always cherish his Moe’s memories, he’d rather not spend his days getting smashed beyond belief. Homer’s reaction: “Oh, so you’re better than me, is that it!” He then tells Barney to take him home or he’ll scream, and cries up the stairs like a little girl once home. Always good to make your hero a petty, insufferable baby, right?
Though there’s plenty of material you could have gotten from the A-story, the writers ran low I guess, so we have our side story of Bart and Lisa going around town trying to find the perfect picture to enter to be the new Springfield phone book cover. It’s amusing enough as filler, but in the end intertwines with the main story when the two are caught in a wildfire, and it’s up to Barney and his helicopter to save the day. The climax is a bit over the top, but dramatic enough. I do like the stupidness of how Barney almost relapses, and how Homer takes one for the team, and how touched Barney is by it (“You brave man. You took six silver bullets for me!”) With any other character, it wouldn’t work, but with Barney, who knows beer better than anyone, knows the impact and the danger it has. So here I am once more at another impasse: an episode that’s sort of middle of the road. There are a few bits that I did enjoy about it, but the plot really could have been expounded on more to give us more insight into Barney and his addiction. Instead we got lots of dumb Homer jokes. Plus knowing the writers would do nothing with sober Barney, the feeling of it all being for naught lingers over this show. So yeah, nothing special, but nothing horrible either.
Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening with Homer and the tiki is absolute garbage, just more of him being a idiotic child rather than a dim adult. So he redirects the gas line, and ends up catching it on fire. He darts off to Moe’s as the fire is crawling down the line. The whole house could have caught on fire, perhaps triggered a reaction from something inside, and caused an explosion. Homer running from a raging fire at his home stranding his wife and children? Classic comedy!
– Great bit of Moe’s other tape, desperately waiting for a mysterious package to be slipped through the mail slot. I can only imagine what filthy, awful thing he’s got in there…
– Carl’s “morning-after” stationary is fantastic (“I’m deeply sorry for…”)
– So act two we see Barney cleaning out his apartment of all liqueur bottles and beer ephemera, going to start anew. Then he slides down a fireman’s pole into Moe’s, asking for a beer. Easy joke, yeah. But… he lives above Moe’s? We’ve see the building hundreds of times, and it’s very clear there’s only one fucking story. They could have just done a smash cut of Barney at the mirror to him rushing into Moe’s. It’s just another example of the mentality of, hey, we’ll throw this gag in here, who cares if it makes no sense or not.
– I like the asshole announcer for the phone book contest flashing the mailing address on the screen for mere seconds. Searching for a camera, Bart and Lisa check the elusive closet in the foyer, which is chock full of callbacks to previous episodes, from the Mr. Plow jacket to the town crier hat and bell.
– Nice shot of the Play-Doh factory. Feels like a good ol’ classic gag.
– Barney returns to Moe’s to make amends for his misdeeds (“I broke bar stools, befouled your broom closet, and made sweet love to your pool table, which I then befouled.” “Well, that would explain the drop-off in play.”)
– Firetrucks would be putting out the wildfire, but are all being used for Burt Reynold’s latest movie. Reynolds himself explains (“I play Jerry ‘Fireball’ Mudflap, a feisty Supreme Court justice searching for his birth mother while competing in a cross-country firetruck race. It’s… garbage.”
– I kind of like the payoff to the photo story, where Bart and Lisa submit the whole roll of film and are shocked to see the new book cover is them as babies sitting on the toilet nude (“I guess some baby pictures were on that old roll of film.”)
– Even Barney’s new coffee addiction could have been expounded upon. Just a little bit more than a quick joke at the finale; it’s a good observation of how one could jump from one addiction to another, where the problem isn’t so much the substance itself, but the dependency on it. I think that kind of thinking might be too much for the show at this point though…
Me Blog Write Good 
I actually liked Barney going sober. Yeah, it did little to the series overall, but it was the first non-relationship change in character that I can remember. And as terrible as the series gets, I sort of commended them for sticking with Barney being sober.
Until they decided change was scary and began undoing every change they’ve done.
We didn’t need all these major changes, though, the show just needs to end. Eleven seasons is well past the natural lifespan of any show. Put it out of its misery. There’s nothing left to say with these characters.
Thought for sure you were going to complain about the part at the end where Homer falls out of the helicopter, with only his foot hanging onto the glider. Looney Tunes, eat your heart out.
Kinda a cool idea but WHAT A BORING EPISODE.
Just realized “Kill the Alligator and Run” is next on your list.
Oh dear god. I pray for you!
eh, it’s a shit episode but it never stood out as the worst of the season. But I guess we will see what mike thinks soon
Apparently this episode was actually written and pitched by Dan Castellaneta and Deb Lacusta back in the Al Jean and Mike Reiss era, but the concept was shelved because they were working on Duffless at the time.
Charlie over at DHS made an excellent point about this episode – when Barney goes sober here, he turns into a complete wuss, totally nervous and insecure about everything. Compare that to “Deep Space Homer”, when he gave up drinking for the sake of his NASA training and became poised, athletic, and articulate. Barney may be the town drunk, but he’s still a generally positive guy. Here, he’s just a whiner from beginning to end, and it’s just not that funny.
Gods, that “six silver bullets” line has always made my skin crawl. Not exactly sure why.
Coors makes anybody’s skin crawl
For an episode tackling a major issue with a character who could be interesting, I find this one is just so much meh.
A shame really since this could’ve made something both funny and meaningful, but actually until I started bothering with simpsons fan sites after watching the show for years on sky 1 as a nightly thing, I barely remembered there was a point Barny was sober.
compare this to Barny’s film in the film festival episode which deals with his alcoholism and is both genuinely touching and funny, and well methinks it speaks for itself.
I’m not really sure what to say about this episode. I mean, it’s pretty meh. There’s really nothing at all funny or entertaining about it, but it’s not terrible enough to anger me (unlike whatever the hell last night’s new episode was about).
The problem is that all of these things have been done before. We’ve seen the sober up plot in “Duffless.” We’ve seen Homer and Barney have a rivalry in “Mr Plow.” We’ve also seen Barney go sober and be great about it in “Deep Space Homer” and then Barney point blankly showed us he knows how miserable he is and is okay with it in his own film. “Don’t cry over me, I’m already dead.”
Most of this episode though seems to be about Homer doing stupid gags as if a laugh track is following him around rather than telling a story about Barney.
Now I don’t mind the Lisa/Bart story. I got a great laugh out of them going through a big ordeal to get dogs playing poker, only for Nelson to steal the shot. The biggest issue is that their little jaunt through Homer’s closet made me want to watch thos episodes instead.
For an episode that changes a core part of a character, it really isn’t all that memorable. There’s some dumb stuff in the last act that’s annoying and feels out of place on a show like this (but right at home with seasons 10 and 11), and some other stuff like Barney living above Moe’s that makes no sense at all. It really isn’t that memorable even with that stuff. Also, Barney going sober did pretty much nothing for the series. They didn’t do any interesting concepts with him or anything, they just did this, and that’s it. Oh well. It’s at least better than the next episode.