781. Bottle Episode

Original airdate: December 29, 2024

The premise: When Marge accidentally uses a bottle of Mr. Burns’ prized, irreplaceable wine entrusted to Homer’s care by Smithers, the three cover their tracks thanks to Professor Frink synthesizing a believable replacement. When Smithers expresses his inner turmoil about working for such a wicked, evil man, Marge suggests they produce more fake wine to sell to the rich to use their money for good.

The reaction: Three years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by “Portrait of Lackey on Fire,” a Smithers-centric episode written by Johnny LaZebnik and his father, longtime show writer Rob LaZebnik, in its interesting and engaging look at one of our beloved side characters. The thing is, if you’re going to actually examine Smithers’ character in any meaningful way, you need to grapple with the question: why does he love Mr. Burns? The old geezer has been an exaggerated cartoon villain for almost four decades now, and despite typically being portrayed as an honest guy, Smithers has stood by his beloved boss through it all. But why? “Portrait” introduced a new wealthy older man into Smithers’ life, but when his own evil business practices were exposed, potentially putting the entire town at ecological risk, Smithers ultimately decided to put his happiness first and damn the rest, focusing on the man he loved, which felt true to his established character. This is a man who’s turned a blind eye to countless horrors for Burns, and it makes sense he’d do the same again. Sadly, there’s not a lot of this kind of character digging done in this episode. Smithers somberly talks to Marge about the obscene, selfish wealth of Burns and his fellow 0.1% percenters (“Those monsters!” “And I do their bidding. I’m just as bad, if not worse, because I know better!”) When Marge suggests they basically scam the rich into giving them money to actually do some good with, Smithers is intrigued by the very idea. Unfortunately, there’s really not much else we get out of this concept. We only get to this conversation at the midway point in the episode, as we have to get through the extended set-up of both Homer and Marge sharing responsibility for losing Burns’ priceless wine, and following the auction of the fake wine, we get a bunch of time devoted to Marge and Smithers being sent to “wine jail” and standing in court. Around this, we also have the running bit of Marge being enchanted by Homer’s lifelong mantra (told through song) of covering things up to get out of trouble, and how that ultimately bites them in the ass. Then, Burns ends up bailing Marge and Smithers out in the end by falsely claiming the fraudulent wine to be authentic, as a means to preserve the elite’s perception of questionably valuable extravagant items to actually be the real deal. That concept in and of itself felt like it could have been an entire episode, examining the richest of the rich and their naked, shameless attempt to flaunt their wealth, but it all being a big scam just waiting to be exploited by a couple of poor schmucks like Homer and Marge. Instead, it’s all relegated to a few scarce lines in the back half of the episode. Meanwhile, Smithers’ inner turmoil gets no room to gestate. When they’re released, Marge, for some reason, retains hold on the $2 million check for the fake wine in an evidence bag, and we see her and Smithers do a bunch of good deeds with the money as we go into the credits. How did they get away with that? I guess the rich guy who bought the wine is so insanely rich that he doesn’t even notice a paltry $2 million missing from his money vault. But once that’s spent, Smithers is still at the eternal beck and call of a heartless business tyrant who will continue to bulldoze orphanages and spit on poor people for his own amusement. What if Smithers actually quit? Wouldn’t that be something? I know status quo is God, but the longer this show goes on, the more I keep wishing that something new and permanent would happen to create a new dynamic to be explored. Krusty’s show going off the air. Ned Flanders losing faith in a Christian God and becoming a spiritualist. Smithers leaving Burns once and for all. These are big changes that could lend themselves to interesting storytelling opportunities. It’s at least worth a shot. But if you’re still gonna lock these characters in place, you need to examine them as they are, and seemingly as they always will be. “Portrait” did this in a shockingly honest way, portraying Smithers as sympathetic, but ultimately willing to be underfoot of a charismatic rich bastard for own happiness. This episode tries to pull the sympathy card on Smithers’ years of internal anguish, but it means nothing in the end if we know that he’ll continue humping Burns’ leg until the heat death of the universe. Or until The Simpsons finally gets cancelled, whichever comes first. This certainly isn’t a bad episode, as there are some good jokes here and interesting ideas I wish were delved into further, but I can’t help but feel a bit left down considering the strength of Johnny LeZebnik’s first episode.

Two items of note:
– Smithers has Homer transport the wine out of desperation, and Homer, for once, vows to actually take an assignment seriously. After an admittedly humorous sequence of saving the bottle from numerous bottle-specific hazards (almost being used in a ship christening, stomped on at a Jewish wedding, or used during spin-the-bottle at a swingers party), Homer manages to get home and, for some reason, decides to store the bottle somewhere safe, putting it inside his literal safe in the garage. Then he goes inside to take a nap. But wasn’t he supposed to get it to Burns Manor as soon as he could? They don’t make any kind of joke about him misunderstanding or being distracted from his mission, he just locks the wine up and decides to take a rest. Then it’s revealed that Marge accidentally used the wine in her stew, as we see there’s an enormous hole in the back of the safe connecting to the kitchen cabinets. Said hole is being blocked by Homer’s bowling ball, so I guess Marge moved the ball out of the way from the other side of the wall, saw there was a wine bottle there, a clearly incredibly old bottle, and decided to just use it, no questions asked.
– When Marge first pitches Smithers on the idea of being modern day Robin Hoods, Smithers imagines the two of them as Robin Hood and Maid Marian in Disney’s Robin Hood, as we see in multiple sequences throughout the rest of the episode of them sneaking in to steal from Prince John (Mr. Burns), giving riches to the needy children, getting arrested, and then having a party at the end. The designs are nice, they apply a little watercolor filter on the picture, it’s mildly cute… but so what? None of these sequences are adding anything to the story, they don’t really have any jokes in them, it all feels like filler. I remember I complained about the episode a season or two ago that paid tribute to Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, but at least in that one, those scenes carried out through the entire runtime, and the sequences mirroring what was happening in the reality of the show actually meant something, as Marge and Luann had their fierce territoriality related to primal animals. Here, the Robin Hood stuff is just cutesy time killing.