Season Three Revisited (Part Four)

19. Dog of Death

• The writing of the lottery commercial is absolute genius; “Why don’t you win the lottery too!” is the perfect manipulative call to action, unfazed by the presumably legally required disclaimer admitting the astronomical odds of winning.
• Homer’s lotto fever gives us two hilariously delivered lines: first his slow build in breaking the news to Marge (“I have a feeling… that we may win… the lottery!!”) and later him yelling at Abe after he says he “knew” they wouldn’t win (“Why did you keep it a secret?!”)
• Great newspaper subheadline: President, Rock Star to Swap Wives.
• ALL HAIL KING HOMER.
  
• It feels very appropriate for the world of this show that the rich get richer when Kent Brockman wins the lottery, and on the flipside of this, we see the lottery commission’s gift to Springfield’s public schools: one eraser. Skinner is rightfully pissed and rants to camera before getting cut off. Again, Skinner is much funnier as an authoritarian dork than a spineless wuss.
• I don’t remember seeing this episode televised, but that first act break cutting to black on a shot of a motionless Santa’s Little Helper is pretty damn harrowing. When we come back, Bart immediately assures, “He’s not dead,” but I can imagine that being a slightly worrying few minutes of commercials.
• It’s not callous enough that the overly passionate vet tosses the recently deceased bright pink hamster in a waste basket, but it’s got a little basketball hoop attached to it. Fantastic.
• There’s two great acting moments in the scene where Homer is talking about the wonders of Doggie Heaven. Bart isn’t following why his father is waxing on about this at first, but when he finally asks if this has something to do with Santa’s Little Helper, we see Lisa in the background make an exasperated expression, clearly pitying her brother being slow on the uptake. A few moments later, Bart is very distressed at the dawning reality of losing his best pal, but when he asks Homer, “You’re gonna just let him die?,” he covers the dog’s ears before he says it. What a wonderful, childlike touch.
• “Fried chicken night will now be organ meat night. Ham night will be Spam night. And pork chop night will now be chub night.”
• Of all the family members’ monetary sacrifices after Santa’s Little Helper gets his operation, Lisa’s is the most on the nose: after ending her subscription to her by-mail encyclopedias, she ends up having to do a report on Copernicus, the very subject she would have gotten in her next installment. Later, she annoyedly grumbles to the dog, “Can’t you see I’m reading a third-rate biography of Copernicus I found at the bus station?” This is one of those lines that effortlessly communicates like three jokes at once. Not only was Lisa trawling for reading material at the bus station, and not only did she actually find a biography of Copernicus, what are the absolutely unlikely odds of that, but she’s still pissed since she considers it a subpar biography. So great.
• What a great collection of family photos.
  

• Seeing LBJ hoisting the dog by the ears in the nightmare filmstrip reminded me of the absolutely extraordinary video from earlier this year of Mike Bloomberg grabbing a dog by the snout in an attempt to either pet him, or shake his… nose? I can barely even remember the details, since it feels like his presidential run happened years ago at this point. Remember those halcyon pre-pandemic days when that despicable ghoul burned through millions trying to run for President? Those were the days, man…
• Is Burns sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber a reference to the rumors of Michael Jackson doing the same? Either way, Burns’ half-hearted, slightly muffled “Release the hounds” always makes me laugh.
• “You can pet the cat.” “What’s the point?” Well said, Homer.

20. Colonel Homer

• All I can think of watching Homer squeeze his way into the compact spot is that parking lots across Los Angeles are full of super small compact spots despite the fact that barely anyone drives small cars.
• Bart and Lisa are watching the Space Mutants Down Under movie from “Principal Charming,” in a piece of clearly reused animation, as the movie screen is adorned with the Aztec Theater border.
• That is one unhappy pappy.
  
• Lenny quietly singing The Carpenters to his ball is quite a moment.
• A great blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke: right behind Lurleen in the line to record your own CD is the banjo player Homer drives by at the Spittle County line.
• Yet another of Homer’s lifelong dreams, and certainly one more believable than wanting to be a country music producer: to eat the world’s largest hoagie, with hilarious photographic evidence.
  
• “This studio has a lot of history. Buddy Holly stood on this spot in 1958 and said, ‘There is no way in hell that I’m going to record in that dump.’”
• “It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen” is an immortal line.
• After getting a chair smashed over his head at the Beer ‘N Brawl, good ol’ Yodelin’ Zeke goes on to get top billing on Yahoo! What a success story! Also, an excellent detail that we see him with head bandages from his earlier unfortunate incident.
• This whole episode has always been strange to me. Firstly, Homer’s motive: he’s moved by Lurleen’s song, but I never quite buy him having the drive to want to be her manager. Young Homer was big into Steve Miller Band and Grand Funk Railroad, but his dream was to be a country music promoter? Secondly, Homer’s complete obliviousness to Lurleen’s increasingly overt advances and Marge’s understandable discomfort with the entire situation. Yes, that’s effectively the point of the entire episode, and it lends itself to some very funny moments (“No man has ever been this nice to me without… you know… wantin’ somethin’ in return.” “Well, I was going to ask you for a glass of water, but now I feel kinda guilty about it,”) but that kind of makes act two and three feel a bit stagnant. The Homer-Marge-Lurleen dynamic doesn’t change, it just ramps up to the inevitable conclusion, and considering I’m already not really on board with Homer’s country music dreams, there’s nothing for me to hold onto.  Plus it’s muddled exactly how aware Homer is in the situation he’s created: when she meets Lurleen, Marge says to Homer, “I thought you said she was overweight,” which implies Homer lied about her attractiveness to soothe any of Marge’s potential concerns. I also just feel so terribly for Marge through the whole episode: Homer casually giving the family’s life savings over to produce Lurleen’s record creates a nightmarish scenario for her, where her family’s financial future is now directly tied to the success of a woman aiming for her husband’s heart. And again, this emotional turmoil is all in service of a lifelong dream I just don’t buy Homer being that driven toward. I dunno. There’s undoubtedly a lot of funny and memorable moments in this episode, but it always sticks out to me as one of the less stellar classic era shows.
• When Lurleen’s intentions finally permeate Homer’s thick skull, he removes himself from the equation, but not without innocently asking for his own assurance, “Just so I don’t wonder, you would’ve gone all the way with me, wouldn’t you?” The whole episode is basically about Homer being so devoted to Marge and knowing how lucky he is to be with her, but as we see with quick flashbacks, he was never really a hit with the ladies, and is just plain flabbergasted that another woman actually wants him.

21. Black Widower

•  Has anybody watched Dinosaurs recently? Does that hold up? As much of a fan I was (and still am) of the Muppets, I don’t remember ever watching it. In the commentary, Mike Reiss considers it a “character-for-character knock-off of The Simpsons,” which is why they made this joke, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
• Way back when, Dead Homer Society did an analysis about the Daytime Emmys scene as a compare-and-contrast to some garbage new episode, but also to illustrate just how many jokes this show crams into every frame. Each of the nominees is accompanied by their own visual gag: Droopy Drawers is present with a serious expression and his very attractive plus-one, Colonel Coward is overcome with nerves, Pepito the cat needs no explanation, and Suck-Up the Vacuum is apparently the busiest star of them all, unable to attend due to a previous movie commitment. It’s less than ten seconds to go through all this, and you get all of that great material, and that’s all before we see Pepito cover his eyes in shame after losing the award. It’s tremendous.
• I always laugh at the overcrowded cell scene (“Who used my chapstick?”) Kelsey Grammer’s read of “I don’t want it” when his fellow inmate hands him it back is so dripping with revulsion it’s fucking perfect.
• Bob playing the violin for the rocking conjugal trailers is yet another gag I didn’t understand until I was older.
• What a great photo.
  
• For our first dance at our wedding, I picked a cover of “Something Stupid” that was then-recently featured in a brilliant cold open on Better Call Saul. But of course I also remembered Sideshow Bob and Selma’s karaoke version of the song. Perhaps you could say it’s a questionable choice to use a song tied to two questionable TV relationships, but the Saul version is so beautiful, it was worth it.
  
• The animation during Krusty’s telethon is just so damn good, I’d just need one minute long gif to feature the whole thing. Krusty’s manic excitement over seeing the donation total, his tearful reunion with Bob, and his absolute glee in getting to kick his old sidekick repeatedly in the ass again like old times.
• “I told you, I got money. I bought stock in a mace company just before society crumbled.”
• This is my favorite Sideshow Bob episode, and with it, it’s the greatest Kelsey Grammer performance ever. How he switches from unassuming to charming to duplicitous to villainous is just fantastic. My favorite bit is his absolutely unrestrained outrage on how much he detests MacGyver. His plans for murder are already underway, but he momentarily thwarts himself due to his snobby views on pop culture because he just can’t help himself (“Just tell me you like MacGyver.” “Very well, Selma. I… I… I can’t do it! Even that car chase seemed tacked on!!”)
• Krusty fumfering about not being able to tell the pianist joke is a wonderful, almost adorable moment.
• More great Bob acting, both in vocal performance and animation, in the third act: I love how we see him visually clear his head after the explosion before he calls the front desk and acts surprised at what’s happened, and I equally love Bob’s dark reprise of “Something Stupid” as he approaches what he thinks is Selma’s torn apart corpse (“And then I went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like explooooode yooooouuu…”)
• The sequence of Bart trying over and over to get Homer to understand the plan is so funny (I love the Science Made Very Very Simple book.) It’s also great how it’s all played out in slightly washed out colors, visually denoting it being a flashback.
  
• “You can’t keep the Democrats out of the White House forever! And when they get in, I’m back on the street! With all of my criminal buddies!” It’s funny thinking back how this episode came out on the tail-end of twelve uninterrupted years of GOP leadership. Trump should use this clip in one of his campaign ads, where he could issue Bob a presidential pardon.

22. The Otto Show

• It’s still very odd that this episode features Spinal Tap, a fictional band, as if they were a real rock group. I’m sure there are other examples of fictional characters showing up on the show in “real life,” but I can’t think of any at the moment. There’s so many great bits with Spinal Tap (“Each of us bought our own soccer team, how many Hungarios can say that?” “This is a rock concert, not a… splish splash show!”) but earlier this year, I actually watched This Is Spinal Tap and got kind of bored with it after a half hour. Clearly the writers of this episode were emulating the comedic writing of the movie in writing these characters, but for some reason my brain couldn’t make the leap from this show to the original source material. I dunno. I’m not a big fan of older comedies, it seems. I just watched Groundhog Day last week and I hated it. That and Ghostbusters. Comments are open to all hate mail on this issue.
• Pretty smart shortcut on behalf of the animation team to have almost every single attendee of the concert have long, shaggy hair that covers their eyes
  
• “We salute you, our half-inflated dark lord!”
  
• Any time I hear the “Spanish Flea” music, I immediately think of Homer singing it.
• Bart’s rockstar fantasy ending with him lying in a drunken stupor backstage is so great. Just like we saw a couple episodes ago with him daydreaming growing up to be a drifter, it’s always fantastic when Bart fantasizes about an otherwise horrific future and thinks it’s cool.
• “Better fasten your seatbelts, little dudes!” “We don’t have seatbelts.” “Uhh… well, just try to go limp.” Child endangerment makes from great comedy!
  
• I love how we see Skinner stuck at the intersection still unwilling to inch his way into oncoming traffic. He’s got a five o’clock shadow, implying he and his passengers have somehow been there for several days. Equally great is him angrily snapping at a singing Ralph.
• Remember that notable Bible verse: Thy shalt not take moochers into thy hut.
• This is the longest we’ve ever had Otto in the spotlight, and we actually learn quite a bit about him. He’s a hedonist burnout, he’s a talented musician, he had overbearing parents (“The Admiral and I don’t get along,”) and he loves books written from the vampire’s point of view. The only other plot he’s prominently in I can think of was his aborted wedding in the first act of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge,” where we actually get to see his parents. Otto’s not exactly the richest character the show has in its arsenal, but there’s enough established here they could have featured him in a couple different stories going forward. Why not? Instead, the show was content to reduce him to shock jokes involving drug use once they were allowed to show bongs and other drugs on-screen. Sigh.
• Another episode with a great anti-moral: “If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.” The sentimental music as Homer and Bart have a heart-to-heart just adds to the effect.
• Homer is disgusted pulling a giant tangle of Otto hair from the sink, but you’d think he’d be used to clumps of hair down the drain given Marge’s enormous ‘do.
• How weak are the walls of the DMV that Otto can crack them with his bare fists? Or is Otto just that freaking strong? (“Does this look like something that a sponge could do?!”)
• In his triumphant return at the end of the episode, Otto runs down the Bus Stop sign and drives right through a four-way stop, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

23. Bart’s Friend Falls in Love

• The Raiders of the Lost Ark opening is probably the most extended and direct parody the show’s done so far, but despite repeating so many specific moments from the opening of the film (Bart rubbing his mouth before grabbing the jar, saving his hat before the garage closes), it creatively reframes the elements of it (such as Homer subbing in for the giant boulder and the angry natives.) And most importantly, it’s still funny separated from the source material, as I remember loving it as a kid before even knowing much of anything about Indiana Jones.
• Kimmy Robertson is great as Samantha, she’s got such a sweet and distinct voice that lends itself so well to voice over, and her timid and kind of awkward performance makes her feel like an ideal companion for a little loser like Milhouse. Best known for Twin Peaks (which I eventually really need to watch), I’ve loved her recently voicing the lead character in the indie animated series “Ollie & Scoops,” which is definitely worth a watch.
• Great detail on Bart’s F paper, an additional note by Mrs. K (Very Poor, Even For You.)
• “Fuzzy Bunny’s Guide to You-Know-What” is one of the greatest bits of the entire series, and I’m not even going to try to dissect all the reasons why. The whole concept of it is a joke, Phil Hartman gives a great performance as always (his serious, emphasis of “throbbing biological urges” always makes me laugh hard), and of course, the honeymoon scene. Not only is it scored with porno music, and since we don’t see it, your brain can fill in whatever awful thing you want as to what’s on the screen, we have the apathetic teacher of this horrified class having their childhoods simultaneously stripped from them smoking in the back of the room, flatly commenting, “She’s faking it.” Holy fuck, that’s like ten different joke layers at once. The icing on top of the cake is they repeat the porno music over the THE END card as well.
  
• “Did you know that 34 million American adults are obese? Putting together that excess blubber would fill the Grand Canyon two-fifths of the way up. That may not sound impressive, but keep in mind it is a very big canyon.”
• A weird reaction watching these episodes ten years later: the Good Morning Burger looks really good, but I know if I ate that thing now, I’d get instant searing heartburn.
• Marge picturing Homer as a hostage negotiator feels like the show’s first random cutaway gag. There’s been jokes in a similar vein done previously, but those all seemed like a character recalling a memory, or showing something going on in another location. The Homer scene is born of a character thinking or dreaming about something completely unrelated to the plot, which can break up the flow of the show, but a lot of the ones the show did are really funny (the kaiju Curies from “Marge Gets A Job” come to mind.) This joke style of course would later be adopted by Family Guy, who would proceed to run it into the fucking ground.
• I’m a humongous softie, so I really like the small moment where Bart tears up a bit after storming off from Milhouse and Samantha. He’s a little brat who usually takes his friendship with Milhouse for granted, but he’s just a kid, and that brief moment humanizes him so much.
• “Let’s just say I’m a concerned prude with a lot of time on their hands.”
• What a beautiful shot. It so perfectly captures Milhouse’s broken-hearted anguish, a feeling I’m sure we can all relate to. We also get our last deep-voiced Ralph line (“It’s recess everywhere but in his heart.”)
  
• When Milhouse and Bart get into their vicious fight, I like that the Van Houtens not only do nothing to stop it, but they promptly shut the door and just go about their day as normal.
• “Disingenuous mountebanks with their subliminal chicanery! A pox on them!”
  

24. Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?

• “No eating in the tank!” “Go to hell.”
  
• “I owned Mickey Mouse massage parlors, then those Disney sleazeballs shut me down. I said, ‘I’ll change the logo, put Mickey’s pants back on!’ Some guys you just can’t reason with.” This episode is streaming now on Disney+!
• In addition to Marge’s Mr. Burns’ portrait, one day I want to have a replica of The First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence in my office.
• “This show is the biggest farce I ever saw!” “What about the Emmys?” “I stand corrected.” I thought this was a shot at a recent Emmy loss for the show, but actually, this episode aired three days before the 1992 Emmys where they lost to Will Vinton’s Claymation Easter special. The show had won the Primetime Animated Program category twice for their first two seasons. So where did this bitterness come from? Were they predicting their defeat and decided to air their sour grapes?
• “Discarded pizza boxes are an inexpensive source of cheese.” Advice I’ve kept in my back pocket ever since I first heard it. Just in case.
• I really love how Herb sings his old company jingle as a lullaby for Maggie. Also in that scene, I don’t quite understand why ominous music starts playing when he tells the baby, “You’re gonna make me rich again!” It’s not a misdirect, since there’s nothing else in the episode meant to imply that Herb has duplicitous intentions. It’s just kind of weird.
• Danny DeVito is just as good in this episode as he was the first time around. Some of his greatest lines are nonverbal, like his annoyed “Nyah!” as he takes the drinking bird off the table, and his reactive noises to Homer’s kissing him when he tells him he bought him the vibrating chair. I also love the moment at the end of act two, where Homer tells Herb he’ll front him money, but only if he forgives him and treats him like a brother, and Herb just flatly replies, “Nope.” That “Nope” is clearly taken from earlier in the episode when Herb is deciding which train car to jump on to get to Springfield. It creates an added meta layer for me, where Herb not only completely rejects Homer’s request, but he does so with a recycled line reading.
• Nancy Cartwright also is fantastic as Maggie in the third act, doing all her little noises for the translator. Her concerned noises and her giggle at Lisa’s peek-a-boo are just so damn adorable.
• It’s so funny how Herb’s baby translator is such a monumental invention, but is never seen or mentioned ever again. Surely the Simpson family would have put it to good use with Maggie, but I guess not.
• Homer’s tentative “I never really hugged a man before” is weirdly sweet and vulnerable, and I love how he slowly gets more comfortable with it, and then of course, can’t contain his excitement when Herb gives him his big surprise. That whole scene provides the perfect, most satisfying closure after the ending of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Unlike Lurleen Lumpkin or Rabbi Krustofksi, I’m really glad the show never dredged Herb back up to make a decades-later reappearance. He made a very brief cameo over the phone in a season 24-ish episode, where Homer gets Herb’s answering machine where he says he’s poor again, but it was a really quick moment you could easily ignore. And I did.
  

(Starting next week, I’ll be pushing these Revisited posts to Fridays, since we’re fast approaching the start of season 32. I CAN’T WAIT.)