Season Three Revisited (Part Two)

7. Treehouse of Horror II

• The wrap-around segments in this and next year’s special make me wish they had made a full in-universe episode set on Halloween, since what little we see in these two episodes is so great. Of course, we did eventually get “Halloween of Horror” much, much, much later, and surprisingly it turned out to be an admirable effort, but it’s interesting to think what a classic era Halloween episode might have been.
• Act one features the most scathing depiction of the hyper-commercialization of The Simpsons to date, where we see the new world of the family being rich and famous populated by lots of annoyed people sick and tired of seeing them (“If I hear one more thing about the Simpsons, I swear, I’m going to scream.” “At first they were cute and funny, but now they are just annoying.”) These lines feel like they could be direct quotes from TV viewers at the time growing a bit weary of the omnipresence of our favorite family. They even throw “The Simpsons Sing the Blues” under the bus with “The Simpsons Do Calypso,” an equally absurdist creative endeavor.
• “Come to think of it, the guy that sold me this thing did say the wishes would bring grave misfortune. I thought he was just being colorful.”
• Is that Agnes Skinner with a mustache as a delegate at the UN?
  
• It always bugs me that Kang and Kodos are painted a much different shade of green in this episode. In their first appearance they’re a much lighter green, as they are in every future appearance. It’s a weird error.
  
• It’s great when we see the establishing shot of the Simpson house, you can see the door is still plastered with egg residue.
• I love that Otto yells “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?!” while thrusting down on the accelerator.
• “May I suggest a random firing? Just to throw the fear of God into them?”
• Burns humming “If I Only Had A Brain” as he yanks Homer’s brain from his opened skull is such a beautiful touch.
• Just as in the opening of “Homer Defined,” I love seeing extended scenes of just Burns and Smithers shooting the shit with each other. Hell, that’s basically almost all of act three, which is probably why it’s my favorite segment (“His family might appreciate it if you returned his brain to his body.” “Oh, come on, it’s 11:45!”)
• When Homer gets out of bed to go to the bathroom, he says he has to go “shake the dew off the lilly.” He says it kind of quietly and mumbled that it took me many viewings to actually understand what he said, and even when I did, I had no idea what it meant. “Shaking the dew off the lilly” is slang for when if you’ve got a penis and you’re nearly done peeing, you shake it a bit to get out the few droplets of urine you’ve got left. That makes enough sense, but if you had to go pee, why would you announce it with a phrase referring to the act at the conclusion of your urination? Wouldn’t you just say, “Gotta take a leak,” or any of the other hundreds of pissing euphemisms there are? Was this an ad-lib? I remember the bite being featured in the legendary fan-made “D’oh Song,” which if you were trawling Simpsons fan sites in the late 90s, you’re in for a blast from the past.

8. Lisa’ Pony

• I love Homer’s Miss Atomic Pile calendar at work. One of the hallmarks of this show was the incredible attention to detail to everything, including the backgrounds. Homer could have just looked at a regular calendar, but every moment like that is an opportunity for a joke.
• Perfectly playing into his strict authoritarian character, it’s great that Skinner hates the children’s performances backstage, but has to put on a smiling face onstage. He views the school as a reflection of him, so of course he’d be pissed that the kids aren’t that good.
• That “My Ding-a-ling” kid is a national treasure.
• I played the saxophone through elementary and middle school (of course influenced by the show, which I denied in the face of other kids who teased me for it), and yeah, there’s nothing worse than having a chipped reed, or even just an old, worn one. You just sound like absolute shit, even if you’re playing “correctly.”
• Great animation on the wobble of the Mount Bellyache being hoisted onto the table. I also love the speed at which Lisa quickly takes one bites and drops the spoon with absolutely zero expression.
  
• An early sign of Homer’s latent homophobia: “Marge, if I spend any more time doing these girl things, I’m gonna, you know, go fruity.”
• “Where’s the hyperspace?!” is a line my best friend and I would quote, sometimes when we were playing video games, but a lot of times just for no reason at all, much to the annoyance of those around us. My parents never played video games with me, but my grandmother played Mario Party with me a couple times, and as a kid, I remember being surprised at how quickly she took to it. She definitely fared better than Abe.
• I love the bizarreness of hearing proto-Ralph’s deeper voice saying a relatively mature line about Lisa (“What man could tame her?”)
• On an establishing shot of the Fiesta Terrace (hey, Apu and Jacques are neighbors!), we hear a woman telling Apu to loosen up, followed by him groaning very loudly. I guess he’s supposed to be distressed, but honestly, it just sounds like he’s having an orgasm, and I feel like there’s no way they didn’t intend it to come off that way. Also, hey, good for Apu for getting with Princess Kashmir. I like that now that he’s finally free from the store during the night time hours thanks to hiring Homer, he makes up for lost time by bedding an exotic dancer. What a guy.
  
• Homer’s Li’l Nemo in Slumberland-inspired dream sequence is one of the best fantasies of the entire series, both visually and musically. I usually try to play it in my brain when I had trouble sleeping.
• “Homer sleep now” is another overused quote by my best friend and I, again mostly used at completely random moments.
• “All the years I’ve lobbied to be treated like an adult have blown up in my face.”

9. Saturdays of Thunder

• The Spiffy infomercial with Troy McClure and Dr. Nick might be a series high for the amount of jokes per scene. Calling the tombstone “a depressing eyesore,” “you’ll think the body’s still warm!,” the Kansas Jell-O mold… there’s at least ten jokes within the minute-long commercial, and that’s without including the absurdity of the premise: not only in why would they be testing a cleaning product on a tombstone, but that they apparently absconded with Edgar Allen Poe’s tombstone just to hawk their cheap wares on TV.
• Speaking of cramming as many jokes into a scene as possible, that applies just as well to the McBain clip. There’s at least four overtly ironic lines leading up to Scoie’s murder (“live a litte,” “Got me a future,” “Two days from retirement,” the Live-4-Ever,) as well as Scoie eating a healthy salad versus McBain scarfing down a chili dog. All of this is within twenty seconds. This show really was incomparable when it was firing on all cylinders.
• Poor Galloping Gazelle. The animation, combined with the single bone crack, makes this feel incredibly brutal.
  
• The Fatherhood Institute mural is such a wonderful design.
  
• Bart’s unaffected reaction to seeing his father hauled off to the nut house is made all the funnier considering he’s already been to one this season.
• I always laugh at Dave’s reaction of “Dear God, not again!” to the shark attacking the father in the underwater fathering experiment. The concept is absurd on its face, but the inclusion of “not again” implies that this predictable yet horrific shark attack incident has happened before, yet they continued to test anyway. Just two simple words beyond the horrified “Dear God!” makes it even funnier.
• I love how quickly we breeze past Homer’s collapsed birdhouse killing the poor bird inside.
  
• Putting aside all recently revealed information concerning Bill Cosby, his “role” in this episode as the ideal father figure Homer strives to live up to is really great (“Thank you, Bill Cosby, you saved the Simpsons!”) Starting season 2, FOX moved the show to Thursday nights to directly compete with primetime big dog The Cosby Show, but the writers had nothing to do with this schedule change. I like the idea of them taking the piss out of this manufactured “war” by having characters on their show passionately praise the other.
• Martin catching on fire and the firefighters only extinguishing the car always makes me laugh. I love the complete disregard to children’s safety that’s often depicted in this show (kind of odd writing it out like that, but it’s true just the same). It’s made even better with Martin’s long, loud scream of terror as the Honor Roller shoots down the hill directly into the wall. Russi Taylor really gave her absolute all to this role.
• My favorite moment of the whole episode is Homer dramatically calling Martin a homewrecker, followed by Martin, a young boy, channeling a sympathetic mistress in assuring Homer that his son still loves him and he has every right to be mad. What a great show this is.
• I like that three-time soap box derby champion Ronnie Beck was name dropped just enough to perfectly set up his surprise appearance at the end. And once more, the show compounding jokes: his reveal that despite having three big wins under his belt, he’s even younger than Bart, him talking like a hardened veteran (“Seeing you out there brought back a lot of memories,”) and Bart calling him “Mr. Beck.” Again, that’s three jokes in less than ten seconds.

10. Flaming Moe’s

• More things I’m surprised they got away with in 1991: Drederick Tatum clearly saying “fuck” albeit bleeped, and Bart walking by the TV commenting, “Wow, T & A!” To be fair, I’m not super familiar with the TV landscape of the early 90s, but these feel like things that wouldn’t fly on other shows. Hell, even today you’d probably have problems with it. Like for whatever reason, Brooklyn Nine-Nine couldn’t do jokes involving characters being bleeped until they moved from FOX to NBC.
• The sleepover girls pursuing Bart is such a great sequence, as Bart flees and hides in terror like in a horror movie. It’s inherently comical, but is visually played completely seriously, like this scene where the girls unscrew the hinges on Bart’s door, and you see the screws falling as Bart is shrouded in a blood red shadow.
  
• I’ve never seen a single frame of Cheers, but it was a hugely successful show at the time, so it makes sense they would lampoon it with Moe’s. However, they smartly do so in a successful way by playing off the will they-won’t they teasing banter with Moe and the unnamed waitress. The bar crowd even hoots and hollers like a studio audience when the waitress gives her innuendo-laced punchline. I assume this is directly based on the interplay between Ted Danson and Shelley Long’s characters, but this slap-slap-kiss relationship is a universal constant in most sitcoms and movies that you still get why it’s funny even without knowing the source material. The only real overt reference (I think) is at the end when Moe mentions the waitress left to pursue a movie career, just as Shelley Long left Cheers, but even not knowing that, I just read it as an absurdist joke explaining why she left Moe.
• “I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good.” All of the flames in this episode look absolutely fantastic. I don’t know how they pull off making something look “brighter” in cel animation, but they’re really gorgeous.
  
• Another scene where the jokes just compound: Bart brings alcohol to school so he can demonstrate how to make a “Flaming Homer” (1), then he assures an outraged Mrs. Krabappel that it’s okay, he brought enough for everyone (2). Edna tells Bart to take the bottles to the teacher’s lounge (3), and that he, a ten-year-old, is more than welcome to take whatever booze is left by the end of the school day (4). Four separate jokes in ten seconds.
• Quimby’s “It can be two things!” is a line I still use to this day.
• It’s great how Bart takes off his Flaming Moe’s shirt and casually starts eating dinner shirtless, and it’s just like this understated side action as Marge is giving her next line.
• This animation of Steven Tyler’s “Are you ready to rock?!” has always stuck out to me. Speaking of, Aerosmith is a pretty huge guest, probably the biggest for the series so far to be playing themselves, but this show quickly sets the precedent that yeah, you can be kind of cool showing up on The Simpsons, but we’re still going to make fun of you. The band begrudgingly agrees to perform for pickled eggs, Joey the drummer acts like a meek wuss being trapped by hungry groupie Mrs. Krabappel, and in the end, Homer falls from the rafters and crushes the entire band, leaving their fate unknown.
  
• The second act break is so incredibly well done, with Homer getting gradually drowned out more and more by the boisterous crowd, the flaming drinks and the ringing of the cash register, further undermining his threat to Moe that he just lost him as a customer.
• We get one of many great tragic endings in this series, where if Homer had just held it together just a few more hours, Moe would have signed the Tipsy McStagger deal and he’d have had half a million dollars. Hell, Moe could have quickly just signed the damn paper while Homer was giving his lengthy prelude before revealing the secret ingredient and they could’ve been set.

11. Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk

• Mr. Burns is very publicly anti-outsourcing, even xenophobic-ly so (“I want to look Uncle Fritz square in the monocle and say, ‘Nein!’”), but like all good American capitalists, he goes to the meeting and makes the deal anyway. But who could blame him? Just look at that clean German penmanship!
  
• I love that Homer frets at night by saying, “Oh, woe is me!” We also get our first instance of Marge sleeping in bed nude, which is a character touch I kind of enjoy, a subtle way of showing she’s not as straight-laced as she seems.
• The Land of Chocolate is of course an all-time great scene. I want that music playing at my funeral.
  
• “We regret to announce the following lay-offs, which I will read in alphabetical order: Simpson, Homer. That is all.”
• Maybe I’m just obsessed with seeing as much Burns as possible, but I think this episode would have benefited with showing another scene or two of Burns feeling listless and out-of-sorts in his new semi-retirement. The episode opens with him lamenting about the things he doesn’t have time to do while running the plant, I feel like it would have helped that story to show him attempting more of these things and finding that it leaves him empty all the same.
• Marge tells Bart to go on down to Moe’s to pick up his drunk father (in and of itself, a pretty sad joke.) But that begs the question, where is Moe’s relative to the Simpson house? Considering Homer always drives to Moe’s, I figure it’s at least a couple miles away. It could just be right outside the little residential area that they live in, I guess. I also remember the episode “Brake My Wife Please” had a joke where Homer actually walks to Moe’s for once, and it’s revealed to be just a few houses down from the Simpsons. But ultimately, none of the geography shit matters since the map of Springfield changes constantly. Those kinds of jokes live or die based on whether you’re fine with hand waving it not making sense (the greatest example being the power plant parking lot being right up against the Simpson backyard in “Homer the Great.” Makes absolutely no sense, but I still love it.)
• We’re only in season 3 and the show is already making fun of their running gags, here with Bart’s prank phone calls. Last episode had the infamous “Hugh Jass” appearance, and now we get Bart coming face to face with Moe, who thankfully is too dim to realize his tormentor is right in front of him. This is the point where the joke should be phased out, which it more or less was, with only a few more subversive appearances from here (Moe thinking the prankster is Jimbo, Mr. Burns calling Moe’s asking for Smithers.) After a six year absence, the prank calls came back around season 13 and recurred every now and again, except by that point, the joke was as stale as month-old bread.
• Mr. Burns going to Moe’s is such an illuminating scene for him in two respects. First is his utter joy at the idea of “going slumming,” the concept of simply going to a normal bar with regular working class people being a hilarious lark for him. It’s a perfect portrayal of elitist detachment, showing how Burns operates on a completely separate level than everyone else. He can barely even pretend to act like a normal human, just like all rich people. Second is Homer confronting Burns. Yes, money does cheer Burns up when he’s blue, but it can never love him back like he loves it. The emotional music plays as Burns is a bit affected by this revelation, and is promptly jeered and teased right out of the bar. But ultimately, the message for Burns isn’t the futility and emptiness of immense wealth, it’s how it can be used (“What good is money if it can’t inspire terror in your fellow man?”) That’s who Mr. Burns is, the money doesn’t mean anything if it’s not used to actively prop up his superiority and wield direct power over those he views as lesser. This is the crowning characterization moment for Mr. Burns; any time in future episodes they would portray Mr. Burns as meek, willfully conversing with other townspeople, desperate for their favor (“Monty Can’t Buy Me Love” being the biggest early offender), I always think back to this scene.

12. I Married Marge

• “If the water turns blue, a baby for you. If purple ye see, no baby thar be. If ye test should fail, to a doctor set sail.”
• Homer and Marge camping out in the castle is pretty adorable, but that’s gotta be a real uncomfortable place to get busy.
  
• There it is, the greatest pamphlet ever written. Using Frinkiac to find these framegrabs, apparently the episode “Jaws Wired Shut” stole this gag, with Dr. Hibbert giving Marge the slightly varied “So Your Life is Ruined” flyer. I’m sure I didn’t care for that episode, but now I don’t care for it even more.
  
• More of Abe being a supportive father: complimenting Homer for knocking up Marge since he’ll never do any better (“The fish jumped right in the boat, and all you gotta do is whack her with the oar!”)
• Watching this ten years later, I don’t know if the fact that Homer and I both proposed to our wives in the car is a good or bad thing. I didn’t lose my card under the seat at least.
• Lisa and Bart’s suggested baby names are a bit of an early 90s time capsule: Ariel or Kool Moe Dee Simpson.
• “I’d be lying if I said this is how I pictured my wedding day, but you are how I pictured my husband.” “I am?” “You may not look like Ted Bessell, but you’re just as nice.” Ted Bessell played the boyfriend on That Girl, and, as a nice inside joke, also directed many episodes of The Tracy Ullman Show.
  
• I’m having some difficulty imagining Smithers as a frat boy, let alone a “keig-meister” as his fraternity brother calls him. Then again, we don’t really know much about Smithers’ history. He could have had a wild youth before deciding to straighten up and fly right as a corporate bootlicker. It certainly would lend itself to an interesting episode, but alas, the days when that could actually be pulled off effectively are behind us…
• I always laugh at the overdramatic tourists in Olde Springfield Town (“What a crappy candle!” “You’ve ruined our vacation!”)
• Krusty Burger is kind of a dump, but I have to imagine Gulp ‘n Blow is even worse. The name itself implies you’re going to throw up after eating it. Or it’s something even more dirty… Yeesh.
• I absolutely love Homer’s “Pour vous” when he puts the onion ring on Marge’s finger, echoing his words when he put the corsage on her all those years ago. It’s both a callback to us, and a sweet little in-joke within their own relationship.
• More determined than ever, Homer storms into Mr. Burns’ office and gives a dynamite speech, selling himself as a sniveling yesman in the most alpha way imaginable (“You can treat me like dirt, and I’ll still kiss your butt and call it ice cream! And if you don’t like it, I can change!!”)
• The ending is another of those great have-it-both-ways moments where Homer fondly waxes on about how much joy his three kids have brought to his life, but upon hearing Marge is not pregnant, he leaps off the couch, dumping the kids onto the floor in the process, to high-five his wife. It’d be so easy to play this as a mean, snarky moment, but this ending doesn’t undercut Homer’s sincerity in the slightest. It’s really amazing how they can pull these kinds of moments off.