Season Six Revisited (Part Two)

7. Bart’s Girlfriend

• “That’s not fair, Nelson. They didn’t have the Killmatic 3000 back then!” “Records from that era are spotty at best!”
• Bart’s “Soul Man”/”Troll Man” song is so great; every now and again, it pops into my head and I love it.
• “Yarrr, I hate the sea and everything in it.” Between this and his pathetic raft in “Boy Scoutz N The Hood,” I love how the Sea Captain is not only a complete fraud, but a self-hating one as well. It’s also yet another example of the show pushing their elements to their limits; how much more could you do with that character? I remember a show within the last two years that had a first act devoted to the Sea Captain’s life and an adventure out at sea and it just felt so pointless. Thirty years later and you’re going to try to make him a real character?
• I actually laughed out loud when I noticed “Sunday School, Est. 1 A.D.” written on the classroom door. I don’t think I ever noticed that before.
• Maggie Roswell voices the Sunday school teacher here with a really great performance, you can hear her struggle to try and be open-minded about Bart as to not sound like a hypocrite to her class. Tress MacNeille voiced her in “Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment,” and probably in however many other subsequent appearances she’s had over the next twenty-five years. I feel like I bag on MacNeille a lot, and I don’t mean to, because she’s incredibly talented. She would just end up being very overused on this show when we get to the Al Jean era and almost every single woman character would be voiced by her. She’s fantastic in more unique, over-the-top characters (Agnes Skinner, Brandine, Futurama’s Mom), but I think Maggie Roswell can do understated and subtle a lot better and funnier.
• This is the first of two times Bart has been tempted by the protruding behind of a teacher, the second being in “Team Homer.” It’s the same set-up twice, but with two different jokes (“Must… fight… Satan! Make it… up to him… later!”)
• It’s odd that Skinner performs his incredibly elaborate sting operation to catch Bart on a Sunday, giving him three months detention for a prank after school hours. But who cares, it’s worth it to hear Willie erupt at him for being an unwitting pawn( ”YAH USED ME, SKINNER!! YAH UUUUSSSSEEEDDD ME!!”)
• Bart and Jessica’s rebel montage is set to “Miserlou,” music at the time just made famous by Pulp Fiction. It’s funny how a few episodes ago in “Itchy & Scratchy Land,” they made the soon-to-be-outdated John Travolta joke, and now they directly paid homage to his comeback movie. It had just come out a month before this episode aired, so it probably was a last minute addition to use that music in post.
• Homer talking about Bart missing his old glasses is one of those bits that makes absolutely no sense, but is still so damn funny anyway.
• “Stop him! He’s heading for the window!” makes me laugh every time.
• I love how Lisa is at Bart’s side to help him through the whole episode, from the beginning when Jessica first rejects him, to the end where she takes it upon herself to expose her. It’s very sweet how despite how he annoys her constantly, she’s still very supportive and protective of her big brother.
• Great absurdist touch how they use a metal jack to lift Jessica’s mattress.
• The ending bit between Lovejoy and Jessica is so fantastic as it tells us so much info in so little time about the family dynamic of the Lovejoys. Timothy tells his congregation his daughter was at boarding school, but it’s logically revealed she was expelled, but Tim just plugs his ears and will not have it, turning a blind eye to his problems. But is Jessica’s somber admission of her crimes being a desperate cry for attention just a sweet lie to avoid greater punishment, or does she really mean it? Or both? It’s neat to speculate about, but considering she’ll never be seen from again, don’t worry too much about it.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Ouch. Not funny. Hardly smiled. Why, oh why…? Not even Willy’s bare behind saved the show. There was no bite to this episode, it was lacking the usual wit. Meryl Streep, eh? They should have done something interesting with her, not this predictable stuff.”

8. Lisa on Ice

• I love the small bits of acting at the very beginning of the family watching TV. Homer is wagging his beer can in front of Maggie, while Bart and Lisa do homework in front of the set. The latter is setting up the joke where Bart tosses his book report in the fire, but the former is just a sweet little extra that I always love to see.
• Lisa’s prank with the “fake” snowball is a great moment, as is Jimbo’s backfired taunt (“Nice PJs, Simpson! Did your Mommy buy ‘em for you?” “Of course she did, who else would have?” “…alright, Simpson, you win this round.”)
• Skinner’s Academic Alert system reminds me how impossible it is to hide grades from your parents in our digital age where most schools have all grades up immediately for helicopter parents to glom onto. My wife is a teacher and there are certain parents who get on her ass immediately about grades way before their kid would have told them about it. I feel bad for kids now.
• “If you lose, I’ll kill you!” Great call-and-response action between Homer and Bart here.
  
• I love how Apu has absolutely no problem hocking a puck at a defenseless eight-year-old girl not once, but twice (“Let’s try a hard one to make sure it wasn’t a fluke!”)
• The montage of Bart attempting to be a good student is fantastic. It’s one of those great jokes in this series where it’s openly making fun of shitty sitcom storytelling, then pulls the rug out under its characters. Bart tries to fill Lisa’s shoes, fails miserably, then gets beat up for his troubles (“This is for wasting teacher’s valuable time!”) I also like how this leads to Lisa protecting Bart from the bullies, which could have easily just been its own isolated scene, but that the two lead directly into each other makes the story feel stronger.
• Every Marge bit in this episode is great, she’s completely out of her element in an episode about sports. I can relate (“By blocking the net, I really think you helped your team!” “How about we play the basketball?  I’m no Harvey Globetrotter…”) And, of course, always watch out for her Shaq attack.
• Homer is definitely extra jerky this episode, but it’s for a story-specific reason. Just as he imagined he was living in a rowdy college movie in “Homer Goes to College,” here Homer is embodying all the shithead fathers who live vicariously through their kids’ little league sports (just as Lisa bitterly describes to her gym teacher). His riling up of Bart and Lisa against each other never feels like it goes too far, and all of that pent up passion purposefully builds up to the end, where even Marge gets poisoned by it (“He tripped my boy! I demand vengeance!!”), which makes Bart and Lisa’s mutual concession of the game feel even more satisfying.
• There’s some great painful sound design in this show, between Milhouse’s teeth getting knocked out to Homer banging his head on the range hood over the stove.
• The bit of Bart knocking the ketchup across the table and Lisa catching it is a wonderful quick bit of animation. I love that in exaggeratedly fast motions from Marge or Lisa, they have their pearls stretch and squash with them.
  
• Moe’s random appearance is definitely a highlight; it has nothing to do with the episode at all, but it still works in adding in more conflict leading up to the final game. And for every single instance in newer episodes where Marge acts nicely to Moe and is more than happy to help lift him up, I always refer back to this line: “You caught me at a real bad time, Moe. I hope you understand I’m too tense to pretend I like you.” It just makes more sense for her to be quietly angry at the man who runs the seedy bar that keeps her husband away from her and their children every night than for him to be a close family friend.
• The “Kill Bart”/”Kill, Bart” chanting is a tremendous joke.
• The ending with Bart and Lisa’s flashbacks is just beautiful, an absolutely perfect example of the show utilizing sentiment without feeling too treacly. It’s one of those great sequences like Homer’s proposal in “I Married Marge” where I’m laughing while tearing up simultaneously, where Marge is touched by her children’s actions, and Homer of course is crying for a different reason (“They’re both losers! Losers!!”)
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Grrrr! Who was responsible for last night’s monstrosity? He should be forced to apologize on the air, and then be fired from the show, sterilized, and sent to live like an animal in the sewers below Los Angeles for the rest of his life.”

9. Homer Badman

• Lucky Charms is a really terrible cereal. The grain, non-marshmallow pieces taste bad, and don’t really work to balance out the sweet marshmallow. Throw the whole box away, Bart.
• I love how openly and energetically Bart and Lisa help out in the great candy scheme, quickly backing down from asking Homer to go to the convention after understanding that Marge going means more candy for all (“For the greater good,”) to helping sew all the giant pockets into Marge’s enormous trench coat.
• It really bothers me that you can see Frink’s pupils through his coke bottle glasses in the sour candy scene.
• That’s a pretty damning expression. No wonder Ashley freaked out.
  
• I love the bit where Marge tells the kids they can donate the extra candy to charity, and a sick Bart and Lisa feebly grasp their sugar pile and continue to eat sweets for breakfast. It feels like the perfect contrast to the hundred jokes in later seasons where Homer would wail and scream at the very concept of something being given to charity; here, it’s little kids being selfish over a childish thing, rather than Homer just being a heartless dick.
• “Two! Four! Six! Eight! Homer’s crime was very great!” [pause] “‘Great’ meaning ‘large’ or ‘immense,’ we use it in the pejorative sense!”
• It’s really fantastic that from the very start, Marge believes Homer’s story, so we don’t have to deal with any stupid bullshit like her actually thinking Homer groped a teenager. I also love the scene later when they’re in bed and Marge has to break it to Homer that she can’t help him out of the situation. It’s a very sweet, genuine scene, where Homer pleas with his wife to help his dumb ass, but his dependency comes from a more earnest place than it felt in “Secrets to a Successful Marriage.”
• One of the protestors is Marge’s high school friend from “The Way We Was,” but the exact same age as she was in 1974. They must have just recycled the character sheet without realizing it.
• The “Rock Bottom” interview is so damn good. The constantly changing clock after each of Homer’s cut up words is great, but it’s even better that we saw his uncut interview and it’s less than a minute of him talking and the clock not moving, so it makes no sense either way. I also love that the reverse shot of Godfrey Jones they shot outdoors, they didn’t even bother shooting it in the same studio to make it look consistent. They could barely give a shit to make it look the least bit credible.
  
• “Simpson scandal update: Homer sleeps nude in an oxygen tent which he believes gives him sexual powers.” “Hey, that’s a half-truth!”
• The theme of this episode of people being emotionally manipulated by sensationalist media, even affecting the thoughts of their own family, definitely rings truer than ever in 2020. This episode’s specific story about a man being railroaded by a woman slandering them on sexual harassment feels like it’s probably been held up by some folks as a means to mock any woman who comes forward with a story, but I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole any further. In-universe, it’s great that Homer doesn’t begrudge his kids for believing TV over him, he’s just as conflicted as they are (“Maybe TV is right. TV’s always right…”)
• “The courts might not work any more, but as long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.” Jeez, speaking of bits that feel more relevant now… In an age where everyone can film stuff on their phones, we’re definitely exposed to more horrific stuff going on, but we’re in an even greater hellscape than The Simpsons could have ever predicted, where there’s people in our society who can see actual video evidence of crime and corruption, and still not believe what they’re seeing is true.
• The “Rock Bottom” corrections are a freeze-framer’s dream. Some highlights include “Our viewers are not pathetic sexless food tubes,” “Licking an electrical outlet will not turn you into a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger,” and “Godfrey Jones’ wife is cheating on him.”
• The twist at the end of Willie getting blasted and Homer going along with it is fantastic (“Marge, my friend, I haven’t learned a thing.”) He may have missed the moral completely, but at least he and TV are back together.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “C-plus – a good episode, with a few laughs, but the story just dragged along, and the “Willy with his video tape” ending just made the show stop cold as if it had slammed into the side of the house. I’ll agree with one thing: the nerds on the Internet are not geeks…”

10. Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy

• First off, this is probably the best episode title ever. I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw this episode, but I remember reading the title as a kid in the Simpsons complete guide and not understanding it whatsoever.
• I love how by the end of a sexless year, Marge is so pent up she completely shoos a terrified Bart off in the middle of the night.
• Al Gore “celebrating” is a fantastic scene. Ah, the days when your most scathing critique of a high-ranking politician was that they were too boring. Wasn’t that quaint?
• I love how pissed Homer and Marge look when they’re at the end of their patience with the Paul Harvey tape. It’s also great that Marge is the one to toss the cassette out the window, then Homer backs the car up over it. Teamwork!
  
• Hilarious work by Dan Castellaneta as Abe for really elongating “seeeeeeeexxxxxxxxxx!”
• The Stock Footage Festival joke is pretty silly. It’s bizarre that the kids would go to such a thing, but for the purposes of the joke, the Festival sign is hanging on the wall in the dark theater.
• “You look like a man who needs help satisfying his wife!” “I guess people have some sort of moral objection to our sex drug.” Most comedies would kill for two slam-dunk jokes like this in a single episode; this show doles them out in ten seconds.
• I love Milhouse’s stupid little head nodding, completely none-the-wiser of what his parents are up to.
  
• Speaking of, I love the “B-plot” of the kids trying to figure out what’s wrong with their parents. It’s not even really a plot since it goes nowhere, but it’s a cute couple of scenes that thankfully doesn’t rely on the kids’ misinformation about sex, but just child-like silliness (beware the reverse vampires!)
• Young Homer doing his Kennedy impression is pretty damn adorable. And of course, it’s the perfect lead-in for another great awful parenting moment from Abe (“This is the greatest country in the world. We’ve got a whole system set up to prevent people like you from ever becoming president! Quit your daydreaming, melonhead!”)
• As we wait for the Homer/Abe reconciliation in the third act, Homer attempting to overcompensate on being a good father to make up for his own lackluster childhood is logical to the story, and very funny. I love at one point we see him with Maggie strapped to his chest, but he’s eating a bag of potato chips and all the crumbs are falling all over her. Bart and Lisa are less than enthused by all this extra attention (“Dad, it’s just that too much of your love can really be… scary.” “Someday you’ll thank me for all this scary love.”)
• Not as big an emotional wallop as “Lisa on Ice,” but I like how this ending feels incredibly genuine. Homer finding the picture of his father dressed as Santa doesn’t absolve all of Abe’s sins, but it does show that he did care for his son. Meanwhile Abe is truly sorry he hurt Homer. The two accidentally burning down their family house is representative how they both share some of the blame and need to apologize to each other, which Abe sincerely, though begrudgingly, does in his own way (“I’m not sorry I had you, son. I was always proud… that you weren’t a short man.”)
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Although I’ve supported the show this season while other people have trashed it, I’m afraid that tonight’s episode sucked. Grandpa, who is usually the highlight of the show, got on my nerves tonight. His stupid lines got boring, and the plot was not too well thought out.”

11. Fear of Flying

• The Mt. Lushmore caricatures are really fantastic, drawn by David Silverman in the style of famed caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. You don’t get a great look at them in this episode, but seeing them reminded me that the drawings appear in the Moe’s Tavern section of “The Simpsons Guide to Springfield,” probably the best tie-in book the show ever put out. It was like a fake travelogue with a little write-up on every single attraction, shop, restaurant, and other miscellaneous tourist highlights if you were to visit Springfield, USA. The fact that you could fill an entire book talking about fictional locations is a true testament to how fleshed out the world of the series is. It’s a really unique book that I’d highly recommend you check out if you can find it in a used book store for fifty cents or something.
• The Little Black Box is such a brilliant name for a pilot’s bar. I also like that Homer’s wacky accident was completely a result of being thrust into it against his wishes in an absurdist fashion (“I keep telling you I’m not a pilot!” “And I keep telling you you flyboys crack me up!”) There are plenty of examples in later seasons of Homer doing dumb shit on his own and inexplicably getting rewarded for it.
• The build of Marge’s increasingly fraying psyche is pretty engaging, she just gets more and more unhinged and you really wonder what the root of it all is.
  
• Homer’s paranoia about therapy is also played out very well. Despite his aggressive stance on not wanting to get “blamed,” it comes off more like his insecurities of being bad for Marge, and worrying that the jig is finally up and she’ll rightfully leave him. His nervous backpedaling asking Marge about her session is a great moment (“Don’t tell her I raised my voice! Happy family, happy family…”)
• Marge’s father has always remained a big question mark in the lore of this series. There was clearly less interest or desire to explore the Bouvier family on the part of the writers, so sadly, this episode remains the only show that ever highlighted him in a real significant way. Given her very traditionalist upbringing in regards to societal roles for men and women, Marge seeing her father figure in a “feminine” occupation definitely seems like it would be jarring for her as a child. Part of me wishes we got more information about the fallout of the inciting incident; almost thirty years later, and I still want to learn more about the Bouviers.
• The ending is very rushed, but purposefully so (“That’s okay, you don’t have to make her into some kind of superwoman. She can get on a plane, that’s plenty!”) Again, I want to know more about Marge’s family, but instead we get the joke montage of her past traumatic incidents involving planes, although I love Ann Bancroft’s read as she brushes it all off (“Yes, yes, it’s all a rich tapestry.”)
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “It sucked for one simple reason. Homer is funny. Bart is funny. Willy the Groundskeeper is funny. Principal Skinner is funny. The Flanders family is funny. C. Montgomery Burns is the living avatar of ‘funny.’  Even Lisa has her moments of being funny. Marge, however, is not and never can be funny.”

12. Homer the Great

• The power plant parking lot extending to the Simpson backyard has got to be the biggest geography cheat in the show’s history, but it’s so damn funny, I don’t even care. The point is Homer is having a tough morning, and how he barely acknowledges Bart and Marge at the window, nor the ridiculousness of his insane commute being for nothing, makes the cheat completely worth it.
• Homer’s paint can plan to track Lenny and Carl is actually pretty clever, maybe even too clever for him to come up with (“Now all I have to do is follow the yellow drip road…”)
• The scene at the dinner table where Abe keeps trying to say he’s a Stonecutter is pretty unique. Rather than just play the scene straight with Abe bringing up the information, or the family just ignoring him and having that be the joke, they add on top of it with Bart commenting on it (“Dad, remember those self-hypnosis courses we took to help us ignore Grampa? Maybe we should be listening to him now.”) And of course we get Homer giddily saying he’s a chicken and Marge being completely fed up by it.
• “And by the sacred parchment, I swear that if I reveal the secrets of the Stonecutters, may my stomach become bloated and my head be plucked of all but three hairs.” “I think he should have to take a different oath!”
• I wonder how extensive the Stonecutter secret tunnel is. It’s not like it only leads directly to the power plant, it’s got to be a whole series of routes to different locations around Springfield. I also love how it was included in “The Simpsons: Hit & Run” video game.
• I saw this episode a lot in syndication, so I always forget about the cut scene of the Stonecutter’s version of what happened at the Declaration of Independence. The idea of a secret society’s bastardized history is funny, but I can’t say that I missed seeing it from all those reruns.
• The Stonecutters song is just wonderful, especially having heard it and sung it for years at the Stonecutters LA live trivia events.
• Similar to the last episode with Homer damaging the plane not being purposeful, I love that Homer using the sacred parchment as a bib was originally a precautionary measure as to not make a slob out of himself and disrespect his fellow members. Of course, he’s an oblivious moron, but it’s funnier if his intentions are good and he acts dumbly because of it, not just him being a selfish, destructive dick.
• I love the start of act three where Homer, in full Chosen One garb, just walks to the stage just absolutely giddy, giggling to himself. All he wanted this episode was to feel a sense of belonging, and now he’s gotten more than he ever could have imagined.
• It’s a little unclear why the other Stonecutters treat Homer with such absolute reverence, letting him win at cards and bowing before his presence, even outside of the Great Hall. The whole point of the Stonecutters is to just be a rowdy, boorish men’s club, a place to get drunk and play ping pong. All the mysticism and prophecy stuff is just nonsense set dressing. Now all these guys have to cater to Homer’s every whim, which doesn’t make it seem very fun. But it’s fine as a stepping stone to Homer making them actually do good and charitable things for the community, which they get really pissed about, which makes for a great third act conflict.
• “He’s gone mad with power. Like that Albert Schweitzer guy.” I never understood this joke. Finally, based on the footnotes on the Simpsons Archive capsule, I think it’s that Moe actually meant to say Adolf Hitler? That definitely seems to make sense. But when I watched it, it just made me think, who’s Albert Schweitzer?
• This ending is another sneak attack sentimental ending. Homer realizing his sense of belonging in the family Simpson is genuinely sweet, and again, it’s fucking funny at the same time, with Marge’s talk about two special rings, prompting Bart and Lisa to loudly blow on their cereal box whistle rings.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This is the first time I’ve ever been disappointed by a episode with ‘Homer’ in its title. First, the plot was simply too UNbelievable. Second, many of its gags just didn’t work: They were either predictable, stale, cheesy, or just plain embarrassing. Grade: C.”