Season Four Revisited (Part Two)

6. Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie

• “Star Trek XII: So Very Tired” was specifically mocking the seemingly endless string of Star Trek movies featuring the aging original cast (ironically, the last of these, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Colony, released in 1991, when this episode was being written), but watching it now, it reminds me of modern day reboots/reimaginings of movies and TV shows where they bring original cast members back to do the same schtick they did decades prior. I guess they’re a draw to get people to watch, but it really just makes me sad more than anything watching that kind of stuff. It’s a more minor example, but I had a similar reaction trying to watch the fifth season of Arrested Development. In addition to the show being total garbage, it felt so depressing seeing the cast look so incredibly old trying to recreate the chemistry they had fifteen years prior. Also, Arrested might rival The Simpsons in terms of the greatest drop in quality for a comedy from the start of its run to the end. Season 4 was mostly not great, but season 5 is a complete and utter shit show.
• “What if one of us has been good and one of us has been bad?” “Poison pizza.” “Oh no, I’m not making two stops!”
• The drawing of Homer wedged in the small classroom seat with a big dumb smile always makes me laugh.
  
• “Where did Bart stick the fireworks?” I kind of feel like this gag is too dark, but I’m still impressed they got away with it.
• Bang-Bang Bart. What a tragic vision of Bart’s future, especially by his own mother.
• I absolutely love how episodes can feature Homer as an authoritative parent, and others have him as a complete pushover, and both characterizations feel completely appropriate to the character. This episode perfectly illustrates his psyche: by default, he’s a lazy slob, but when pushed or motivated to do something, he’ll stick with it until the end, believing in his heart of hearts he’s doing the right thing.
• I just love the Itchy & Scratchy Movie billboard. I wish they would have recreated it in the Springfield section of the Universal Studios theme parks. They could position it in such a way on top of a building where the spurting “blood” could be collected and reused.
• Another great Homer drawing as the absolutely checked out father. I love that he mostly holds this pose for the entire scene as Marge is talking to him.
  
• “Do you want your son to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or a sleazy male stripper?” “Can’t he be both, like the late Earl Warren?” “Earl Warren wasn’t a stripper!” “Now who’s being naive?” One of those jokes I love but don’t really understand. Is there any actual explanation for this joke relating to Earl Warren, or is it just ridiculous for its own sake?
• I’ve mentioned it several times, but I’ll never get over that you can watch both “Steamboat Willie” and “Steamboat Itchy” on the same streaming service. Disney owning the show as it exists now I don’t really care about, but them having and controlling the library of older episodes? It kind of sucks, spiritually speaking.
• “We’ll be back with a real-life Itchy and Scratchy: a rabid mouse in Boston who attacked and killed a small cat.”
• I recall someone posting a comment a while back talking about how I complain about the show doing weird unrealistic stuff despite the classic era having plenty of crazy moments, using Maggie driving the car as an example of a joke I would balk at if it were done in the series now. I can’t speak to every moment like this, but besides the comedy being subjective (this scene is funny to me, unlike [insert dumbass joke from season 29 here]), I can say that the Maggie driving scene also works in acting as the final straw of Bart’s reckless and negligent ways. Homer has let increasingly rowdier behavior go unpunished: destroying Abe’s dentures, ripping up the carpet, and so forth. Everything ramps up to this really cartoony, but still potentially dangerous incident of Bart letting his baby sister get into danger, resulting in Homer finally laying down the ultimate punishment.
• Homer angrily shouting, “Don’t point that thing at me!” at Bart pulling his pants down demanding a spanking is such a great fucking line.
• I’d love to know which of the nine categories “The Itchy & Scratchy Movie” swept at the Academy Awards.
• I really love the ending. I for one find the futures where Bart actually gets his act together feel more believable and satisfying than the ones where he’s a total fuck-up. Seeing him bonding with his elderly dad finally getting to watch the movie he’d yearned for as a child is genuinely really sweet.
  

7. Marge Gets A Job

• “The Half-Assed Approach to Foundation Repair” might be Troy McClure’s only production that gives actual useful information, but I’d love to see the other two he cites: “Mothballing Your Battleship” and “Dig Your Own Grave and Save!”
• Homer dumbly asking, “Did you see the bubble?” after watching Surly Joe’s level slide to the ground and audibly break always makes me laugh.
• It’s simple, but I love the animation of Homer sliding down the couch and knocking the lamp over. It’s also great that Marge doesn’t even acknowledge the breaking lamp as she’s talking, this sort of slanty-shanty chaos having become normalized at this point.
  
• Smithers’ ode to Burns song is one of the many, many moments I was delighted to recognize upon finally watching Citizen Kane. It’s also a good illustration as to why this kind of reference works, and so many of the “parodies” this show has done in the last 10+ years doesn’t. The joke works even if you haven’t seen Kane, and it re-contextualizes the song from the original source material, with the misdirect of the song actually being about Burns, who is already a Charles Foster Kane figure himself. 
• The portrait of Burns behind Smithers in his office glaring down at him is great, but I also love in the reverse shot of Marge, we can see the picture of Burns meeting Elvis that Burns gifted to him when he left the plant in “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk,” a pretty impressive callback.
• Bart’s daydream about the radioactive Curies is one of my favorite random cutaways. Despite it being a totally random joke, the likes of which would be picked up by Family Guy, pioneering a new comedic plague on our nation, I feel like it still feels true to what a boy like Bart would fantasize about learning that the Curies got radiation poisoning.
• I love the music over the pneumatic tube scene. It feels melodically similar to the music later used in “Last Exit to Springfield” when Burns and Smithers try to run the plant by themselves.
• “Think warm thoughts, boy, ‘cause this is mighty cold!” Not just any show can make a joke about an old man rectally probing his grandson.
• The staging of the start of this scene is really great, where as Marge keeps moving her head back and forth, we see Burns in the background get in closer and closer.
  
• I love the awful drawing of the portrait of Burns in the background. We see the normal-looking portrait in the following shot behind Smithers, but here, it’s like the background artist had to finish in thirty seconds and scribbled this masterpiece.
  
• Tom Jones really is a good sport of a guest star, getting repeatedly gassed, chained up and held at gunpoint, by Smithers of all people. I also love when the automatic door in Burns’ office closes, it conks him on the head on the way down.
• “I want you to show this woman the time of her life.” “Gotcha! Marge, we’re getting some drive-thru and we’re doing it twice!” I love that we cut to Marge’s smiling face as Homer says this. Despite their differences, Homer and Marge really are made for each other.

8. New Kid on the Block

• Upon hearing she’s moving, when Homer asks Mrs. Winfield, “Gonna run out the clock in Florida, eh?,” she replies with a quick, quieted, “Yes…”
• Captain McAllister’s joyous, crazed laugh after the dining woman quietly asks for more iced tea is so funny.
• “I actually had some doubts about moving to Springfield, especially after that TIME cover story, ‘America’s Worst City.’” “You can see our house in that photo!”
• Lots of great looping gifs to be had this episode.
  
• With Ruth only appearing two more times (the latter being in the awful “Strong Arms of the Ma,”) the Powers really are underutilized characters. I get they were voiced by guest stars, but Laura and Ruth could have been interesting recurring characters, with Ruth acting as a good foil for Marge, as we’d see in her re-appearance next season.
• Bart and Laura’s dream dance is really well animated.
  
• “Hey, can your grandfather do this?” Also, is that a picture of Bea Simmons on the wall?
  
• “Good luck in your trumped-up lawsuit, Dad.” “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
• Barney gets in a pretty funny retort after Moe loudly wonders why he can’t find “Amanda Huggenkiss” (“Maybe your standards are too high!”)
• One last looping gif of a crazed Moe at the window (yes, I know what it looks like.) Every time the show does an episode featuring Moe as sad and sympathetic, I think back to this episode where he was ready and eager to slice open a young boy with a giant rusty knife. Although to be fair, he didn’t actually go through with it.
  
• I like that as writer Conan O’Brien points out the absurdity of the ending on the commentary, as Bart exposes Jimbo as a coward… by showing him get scared and plead for his life when an insane stranger bursts down the door with a knife and threatens to kill him. What a wuss.

9. Mr. Plow

• “Take it easy out there, folks, it’s snow picnic out there!” “I snow what you mean!” “You’re dead weight, Marty.” God, I love the Bill & Marty moments where one of them just cracks. Those two pretty much disappeared after their only major plot-relevant in-person appearance in “Bart Gets An Elephant,” but I think they’re great sleeper characters who were so fantastic when they’d pop up randomly for a slam-dunk joke every now and again.
• Homer’s deadpan read of “It’s a pornography store. I was buying pornography” is just the best.
• Crazy Vaclav and his cries to “put it in H!” spawned an endless parade of phenomenal shitposts. Doing this rewatch now is just further illuminating how rich this show is, in seeing how almost every single episode has at least one still frame or scene or quote that’s been spun off into literally hundreds of different memes over the last few years. This scene was also fodder for one of my favorite Dankmus remixes (all of them are great, if you’ve never listened to them).
• “Pure. West.” RIP.
  
• Another great callback: Homer’s plow is manufactured by Kumatsu Motors, the auto company that took over Powell Motors at the end of “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”
• Homer envisions himself mowing down protesters at the behest of President George H.W. Bush, which is kind of funny given this episode aired two weeks after the 1992 election where Bush Sr. lost. He was still President at the time, but I imagine when they wrote this joke, they assumed he would probably win re-election.
• “It might be on a lousy channel, but the Simpsons are on TV!”
• “Well, John Q. Driveway has our number.” As a kid, I had the two Simpsons CDs that featured the music from the first nine seasons, and included was the Mr. Plow commercial and jingle, which included the “waiting game” scene as a little tag. I listened to those CDs endlessly as a kid, and for all the times I heard that track, I could never fucking understand what Homer was saying. I knew he was saying “driveway,” but my brain merged “John Q” as one word and never could figure out what it was. I certainly didn’t know the expression “John Q. Public,” so it was understandably lost on me.
• Bart getting pelted with snowballs is another effective use of parody. The over dramatic scene of him writhing in anguish is funny in and of itself, but when you later realize it’s directly referencing Sonny Corleone getting killed in The Godfather, it makes it even better. Reframing a violent shooting as kids throwing snowballs adds on another comedic layer. Over a decade later in season 16’s “All’s Fair in Oven War,” James Caan would appear as himself, and the ending featured him getting shot to death at a toll booth by Cletus and his kin, literally just recreating the Godfather scene with no subversion.
  
• The flashback of Barney’s first beer is really funny by itself, but it’s kind of sour when shown as the ironic example Homer uses to hold up their great friendship (“How could you, Barney? After all I’ve done for you!”) Considering we’re meant to sympathize with Homer’s business being in trouble, it feels wrong to start act three showing how he actively helped ruin Barney’s life. And then since we also saw Barney shoot out Homer’s tires and start a slander campaign against him, it makes both of them kind of unlikable, which I guess is the point since they’re friends who take a rivalry too far and have to make amends, but it all feels less impactful being isolated in the final act.
• I felt it back then, but I still feel “Mr. Plow” is one of the most overrated classic episodes. I follow a Simpsons Shitposting group on Facebook (the only reason I even still have a Facebook), and remember being annoyed that “Mr. Plow” was sweeping a Best of Season 4 poll. I think its biggest failing is I didn’t really care about Homer’s plow business. He liked the idea of having a big truck, and revelled in the fame his business brought, but none of that felt very meaningful. Even the most unrealistic of Homer-gets-a-job episodes, “Deep Space Homer,” has the emotional through-line of Homer wanting to be treated with respect, where here, Homer cares about being Mr. Plow just because that’s what the episode is about. It has a good amount of funny moments, of course, but so does every other season 4 episode. I dunno, maybe it’s just me.

10. Lisa’s First Word

• The cover of Fretful Mother magazine feels straight out of a Life in Hell strip.
  
• The punchline for the Bart swinging on the clothesline gag always sticks out to me, since it’s clear they just created it in post, using the same looped animation but darkening the frame to make it look like it’s night, despite the obvious blue sky and clouds.
• Nancy Cartwright does such a great job as baby Bart, infantilizing the voice down to an adorable level. I love his attempt to mimic Ed McMahon’s “Hi-yo!” while watching Johnny Carson.
• “There’s going to be twice as much love in this house as there is now!” “We’re going to start doing it in the morning?”
• One of Homer and Marge’s prospective homes is right next to the rendering plant. Is that near the pony farm according to the pet shop owner in “Lisa’s Pony”?
• “Don’t forget to check out the galley! That’s real shag carpeting!”
  
• It’s interesting tracking Abe Simpson through the three years of flashback episodes. In “The Way We Was,” he was incredibly harsh and blunt with Homer. In “I Married Marge,” he acted similarly but with slightly less vigor, and now we see he’s definitely much softer, which I chalk up to good ol’ senility. Homer shoving him into the retirement home would continue to sand down his edges, surely.
• 80s Sideshow Bob with teal hair must be a coloring mistake, I never understood what that was about.
• The clown bed is a legendary moment, of course, but it never dawned on me just how preposterous it is that we’re to believe Homer actually built this seemingly well made piece of furniture.
  
• Following up Cartwright into the final act, Yeardley Smith as newborn Lisa is even cuter, with her little coos and giggles. Right after Bart triumphantly announces, “You can talk!,” she makes a little babbling noise right before we cut to the next scene, and it’s so goddamn fucking precious.
• It’s a pretty good gag to cast a legendary actress to be the “voice” of Maggie for just a single word of dialogue. It reminds me of the first season of South Park when they had George Clooney “guest star” as Stan’s dog and just had him bark and growl for a bit. I’m sure there was a big marketing push focused on Elizabeth Taylor and the big question: what will Maggie’s first word be? It could be anything! TUNE IN AND FIND OUT!! As someone who works in promo marketing, this feels really funny to me, like you make a big deal out of it, and then when it turns out to be “Daddy” and people feel tricked, it’s like, what the fuck did you think a baby’s first word would be? And what word could it have been to make you feel satisfied?

11. Homer’s Triple Bypass

• “COPS in Springfield” features the police tracking down cattle thief Snake at 742 Evergreen Terrace. Had that not been established as the Simpsons’ address at this point, or was this a goof?
• The music sting over Homer’s heart pangs leading up to his attack is so great. Combined with Homer’s painful groans, it really feels dramatic and really sets the stage for the inevitable climax.
• Homer’s heart attack is one of the more famous pieces of animation in the whole show, thanks to David Silverman’s great Homer poses as Burns chews him out. How can someone make cardiac arrest look so funny? I also love right before his heart gives out, the picture-in-picture flashes the different playing card suits. I assume that idea was also Silverman’s. It’s one of those things I don’t really know why it feels so great, but it just does.
  
• The waiting room of the hospital is another quick scene featuring a collection of familiar faces, illustrating how filled out the world of this series has gotten, and they’re all “amusing” injuries: Jasper’s beard caught up in a bike chain, Akira’s hand fractured against a piece of wood, and of course, Chief Wiggum’s locked jaw, complete with a reprise of the “COPS” music.
• “Woo-hoo! Look at that blubber fly!”
  
• “Don’t worry, Marge. America’s healthcare system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain… well, all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars that we don’t live in Paraguay!” Nearly thirty years later and this is still depressingly accurate.
• The entire scene at the insurance office is so damn funny, with Homer barely keeping his “scheme” together, breaking even before he gets the chance to sign, and when he finally does, his heart gives out once again. I love the camera turn from him signing back to the two-shot, that extra bit of motion really enhances the desperation of Homer and the insurance agent tugging the form back and forth.
• I can’t say I’m too familiar with the medical business, but how is Dr. Nick allowed to operate in Springfield General Hospital? Outside of him being grossly incompetent and a legal liability, he’s not a resident doctor. I think hospitals allow outside doctors to use their facilities, but only if it’s like a certain specialty or a certain type of procedure, I think. How does Dr. Nick keep his operation costs so low? Is he juiced in somehow? Also, have Dr. Nick and Dr. Hibbert ever had a scene together? I can’t recall at the top of my head, but I feel like I must be forgetting something. I imagine Hibbert would be low-key pissed by him being allowed to step foot in his hospital.
• I love the pantomime action by Krusty explaining why he has to do community service (“Glug glug, vroom vroom, thump thump!”) It feels like a more elaborate version of similar acting he did off-handedly talking about the exploits of a previous Li’l Miss Springfield winner in “Lisa the Beauty Queen.” Also, ”This ain’t makeup!!” is easily in the top three of best Krusty lines.
  
• The designs of the guests on the “People Who Look Like Things” segment are all fantastic. I also love the pumpkin head guy’s disgruntled face after the host jokes about him.
• There’s a lot of touching moments by the end of this episode, but Homer’s goodbyes to Bart and Lisa is my favorite. It doubles up as both a sweet Homer moment with the kids, and a sweet Bart-Lisa moment, as the two are basically making each other feel better through Homer’s words, reassuring that they’ll be there for each other in case anything goes wrong.