(originally aired February 18, 1996)
Lisa episodes always tend to be more understated. Not as bombastic as episodes starring Homer and Bart, but more introspective, or about a broader topic. In this show Lisa inadvertently uncovers a horrible truth regarding the town’s beloved founder Jebediah Springfield, that he was actually a murderous pirate who had nothing but contempt towards the town. This occurs during preparation for the town’s bicentennial celebration, and if one thing unites the typically ornery and volitale citizens of Springfield, it’s their mutual love and respect for their town founder. Among those excited is Homer, who manages to horn his way into the position of town crier, who he admittedly is quite good at (Bart comments, “You’re a big fat loudmouth and you can walk when you have to.”) A particularly sweet component of this episode is that Homer believes in Lisa’s story (remarking she’s usually right about everything), and vehemently assists and vouches for her in her quest to expose the truth.

Lisa finds herself butting heads with the curator of the Springfield Historical Society (where she found Jebediah’s confession stuffed in his old fife) Hollis Hurlbut, voiced by Donald Sutherland, giving a wonderfully subtle performance. Hurtbut assures Lisa the note is a forgery, even with her logical evidence to back it up. Any attempts Lisa makes to spread the truth are met with great scorn. From the school to Moe’s Tavern, no one will bear to hear anything derogatory about Jebediah Springfield. Lisa’s pursuits can only be calmed upon exhuming the founder’s corpse to see if he bears a silver tongue (his actual one apparently was bitten off during a grog house fight). When no tongue is found on the skeletal remains, Lisa is discouraged, but soon unravels the mystery, finding that Hurlbut is attempting to cover up the truth, unable to admit he had spent years devoting his life to a fraud. Unable to cope, he swiped the silver tongue off the body quickly, hoping the controversy would fade. But in the end, Lisa finds she just can’t rain on the town’s parade and keeps the facts to herself.

Like many Lisa episodes, this one doesn’t go for the huge laughs, but more focused on the content and feelings of the characters that keep it going. Jebediah Springfield’s true past is reminiscent of many other famous historical figures whose pasts may not be as clean-cut as we are led to believe. However, the ending is spot on: regardless if the man was the real deal, the legend certainly is. It brought out the best of the entire town, and that makes the myth just as real as anything. As I said, I love that Homer teams up with Lisa in this, and also that both end up in dour positions as a result: Lisa seemingly being proven wrong, and Homer being stripped of his town crier position as a result of making a fuss. The best moment of the episode is when Lisa apologizes to her father, who accepts, and Homer attempts to feign a smile until he deflates into a mope. He wants to keep his spirits up for his daughter, but can’t quite bring himself to it. But of course things are a-OK at the end, as father and daughter lead the parade in grandiose fashion, a sweet end to an interesting show.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The beginning film strip of young Jebediah Springfield (played by a young Troy McClure) is very shoddily made, with stage hands and boom mics in shots, and a poorly disguised stunt double for McClure when he’s taming the buffalo.
– ‘Embiggen’ and ‘cromulent’ have both entered my personal lexicon. They may even be real words at this point. The former certainly sounds like one. Embiggen (verb): To make bigger.
– I believe this is our first mention of Kearney being an especially old fourth grader, who, since he can recall Watergate, must be at least twenty-five years old. Later episodes would reveal he has a young son, Kearney, Jr.
– I love the uselessness of the essay contest, that the top eighteen essays will be put on file at the library, to rot away unread.
– I really love Jebediah’s actual name Hans Sprungfeld. It’s very silly.
– Wonderful awkwardness between Lisa and Hollis after she discovered the confession. The “You have arthritis?” line was apparently an ad-lib from Sutherland, and Lisa’s quieted “No…” is adorable.
– I love the title of Lisa’s essay, “Jebediah Springfield: Super Fraud.” She certainly doesn’t sugar coat, I can give her that.
– Nice quick bit with Comic Book Guy at the copy store, paranoid Homer will rip off his unpublished screenplay. Homer is just waiting for Lisa, but makes a mental note: “Steal his idea.”
– Brilliant bit when Quimby warns Lisa about the corporations sponsoring their bicentennial. Lisa rebuts that they’re sponsoring a murderous pirate, to which one man responds indignantly, “A pirate? Well, that’s hardly the image we want for Long John Silver’s!” The animation of their quick exit is pretty funny too.
– I would think Jebediah’s skeleton, not to mention his clothes, would be mostly deteriorated after all this time, but I guess it’s worth it to have Wiggum desecrate a corpse for a little ventriloquism act.
– I love the pathetic sight of Homer shaking an alarm clock when his town crier bell is taken, almost similar to him singing the blimp song with a pickle in “Lisa the Beauty Queen.”
– The flashback of Hans fighting George Washington is pretty epic, and pretty stupid. But even that is handled with care, and lays in a subtle clue about the end. We see Hans smash against the portrait and knock it to the ground, which must have damaged it slightly, at least enough to Hans to catch part of it on his boot and rip it, which he later used to write his confession on. Lisa completes the puzzle, and exposes Hurlbut, who stupidly has displayed the stolen silver tongue out in the open in one of the dioramas.
– Hilarious bit where Quimby has hired a sniper to take out an eight-year-old girl, who still fires a shot after Lisa doesn’t expose the truth as she walks away.

(originally aired February 11, 1996)
There was a time when Krusty actually had artistic integrity. He was a clown of the people, one who lived to entertain. He has some of that vigor of the past deep within him somewhere, but his enthusiasm has been replaced by his status as a celebrity, his high accolade and millions of dollars made from shoddy merchandise. He’s become so far removed from his humble roots that if you take away the fame, you’ve broken the man completely. And that’s precisely what happens in this episode, as Bart inadvertently gets Krusty cited for massive amounts of tax evasion. His show (and his trademarked name) are stripped away completely, as are all of his subsidiary assets and his estate. He gets increasingly despondent about his situation, eventually culminating in him driving his plane into a mountain side, where he is declared dead.

This episode is an absolute vocal tour de force from Dan Castellaneta, giving his all as Krusty, loudly bemoaning his predicament and bitching about having to be a normal human being (“I was a big cheese. A huge cheese! And now look at me! I got to ride the bus like a schnook. I got to live in an apartment like an idiot! I have to wait in line with a bunch of nobodies to buy groceries from a failure!”) A key scene depicts Krusty’s show under IRS scrutiny, now dubbed the “Herschel Krustofsky’s Clown-Related Entertainment Show,” with Krusty in sweats forced to perform with no sets or props. Is his attempted enthusiasm his natural showmanship, or just his desire to stay on the air as a celebrity? I dunno, maybe it’s a little of both. Meanwhile Bart has to cope with ruining the life of, and then by association causing the death of, his beloved hero. As a result, he seems to see Krusty everywhere, until he realizes all of his sightings had some kind of connection… maybe Krusty isn’t dead after all.

As in many classic episodes, Bart and Lisa join forces to put this mystery together; it turns out Krusty is alive, now reborn as Rory B. Bellows, man of the sea. Krusty seems to have had a change of heart, no longer desiring a life of notoriety and riches, but a simple life of quiet solitude. I feel like I can buy this, that at his lowest point, Krusty concluded that he can begin life anew in an entirely different direction. But we’ve only got two minutes of show left so we have to get the Klown back into Krusty. Bart manages to convince him by reminding him how he’s more respected than all the country’s educators, and Krusty declares he’s not going to let them hog all the respect. I feel like the joke would have worked better if Krusty hadn’t already had a monologue about it earlier (“Everywhere I go I see teachers driving Ferraris, research scientists drinking champagne. I tried to drink a Coke on the bus, and they took away my pass!”) But regardless, the status quo is restored, a fair enough end to an episode with great performances and plenty of laughs to go around.

Tidbits and Quotes
– To receive an inheritance from their deceased great aunt Hortace, the Simpsons must stay one night in a haunted house. But unlike “Homer Loves Flanders,” the joke here is that the stay is actually quite lovely (Lisa comments, “Their tap water tasted better than ours.”) In the end, each Simpson only gets a hundred dollars each, with the rest going to Ann Landers.
– Another great Springfield business: the Tacomat, now with a special: 100 tacos for $100. Comic Book Guy makes out with a wheelbarrow full, all set for a Doctor Who marathon.
– I love the running gag about the various stupid bank promotions, first with “You’ll Go Ape Over Our Car Loans” (“A professional in an ape mask is still a professional,”) the reindeer antlers, and then later in New York, “Our Interest Rates Are Through The Roof!” with a man wearing a giant house.
– It’s kind of odd that Jimbo harasses Bart for only a one dollar check.
– Great laugh from Milhouse when he exposes his autographed stomach to some grossed-out girls. It’s so delightfully nerdy.
– One of the greatest scenes in the entire series is with the Cayman Islands representative. His character design is great, and the timing of his scene is just perfect (“I’m sorry, but I cannot divulge information about that customer’s secret illegal account. …oh, crap. I shouldn’t have said he was a customer. Oh, crap. I shouldn’t have said it was a secret. Oh, crap! I certainly shouldn’t have said it was illegal. …it’s too hot today.”)
– Great bit with Kent’s tiff with an off-screen producer on his pronunciation of ‘evasion’ as ‘avoision.’
– I love how uncontrollably devastated Krusty is meeting with the IRS. When told they’re going to garnish his salary, he thinks they said ‘celery,’ but he wasn’t actually joking, he’s just overtly (and loudly) distraught.
– IRS Burger is an example of a set-piece with ten jokes in one scene. The idea that the IRS wouldn’t just repossess the Krusty Burger building, but open their own restaurant is stupid enough, then we have Homer ordering various joke items (“I’ll have four tax burgers, one IRS-wich, withhold the lettuce, four dependent-sized sodas, and a FICA-ccino.”) Then Pimply Faced Teen gives him a form to fill out, which Homer intently does, asking Marge what her gambling debts were for the year (to which she loudly replies, “Seven hundred dollars!”)
– I love Krusty’s plane, the “I’m-on-a-rolla-Gay,” and Krusty’s sentimental memories of it (“I used to fly to Vegas in it with Dean Martin. One time we were flyin’ in it, and the moon hit his eye like a big pizza pie! We wrote a song about it! But it ended up infringing on one he recorded years before.”) I like the subversion that you think it’s going to be the origin of that song, but actually isn’t, making it even more stupid and hilarious.
– I love how mean Krusty is toward Bart, who is nothing but apologetic to him. He even considers punching a ten-year-old in the face when he asks him to, but not even he at his lowest point can go through with such a horrible thing.
– We see Chalmers and Agnes Skinner on a date this episode, and Skinner’s wishes for a distraction from the awkwardness are answered as Krusty’s plane whizzes by (“That’ll do nicely.”)
– Great read by Chief Wiggum proceeding to the crash site (“Folks, show’s over, nothing to see here… oh my God, a horrible plane crash!! Hey everybody, get a load of this flaming wreckage! Come on, crowd around, don’t be shy, crowd around!”)
– John Swartzwelder is among those at Krusty’s funeral, who for some reason has a Kermit the Frog puppet.
– Troy McClure is the perfect host for Krusty’s funeral (past ones he’s helmed include “Andre the Giant: We Hardly Knew Ye” and “Shemp Howard: Today We Mourn a Stooge.” It’s a bit random why he’s there, but I liked Bob Newhart as a guest, and his stumbling attempt at giving a speech about a man he knew nothing about. Then Troy concludes the funeral (“We’ll be sitting shivah at the friar’s club at 7 and again at 10. You must be over 18 for the 10 o’ clock. It gets a little blue.”)
– I love Homer’s attempt to console his son (“Don’t let Krusty’s death get you down, boy. People die all the time, just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow.”) He stares at Bart for a few seconds… then quickly bids him good night.
– Bart blows up a Krusty balloon asking Captain McAllister if he’s seen him. The Captain mistakes the distorted face as Handsome Pete, a midget accordionist who dances for nickels with a face just like Krusty’s, but more manic looking, perhaps the most insane idea for a Simpsons character. But we also get the great line from the Captain, “Not a quarter! Yarr, he’ll be dancin’ for hours!”
– We get a semi-satisfying conclusion to Krusty’s money problems where he reveals the life of his other persona is insured for a lot of cash… then his boat explodes.

(originally aired January 6, 1996)
This season has been filled with a lot of emotional episodes that take deeper looks at our characters and their relationships in new, interesting ways. “Team Homer,” on the other hand, feels like a throwback to the sillier, more outlandish episodes of season 5 (surprise surprise, David Mirkin is the executive producer here). We have two stories running side by side, premises that feel a little scant, but have enough laughs and interesting stuff in them to keep going. The main story reintroduces Homer’s love of bowling; in order to play during league night, he wrangles Apu, Moe and Otto together, thus introducing the world to the Pin Pals. They eventually start building a camaraderie, and work their way up through the ranks during tournament play. However, to procure the $500 team registration fee, Homer had to get a loan from Mr. Burns. High on ether at the time of the request, now the sinister old man demands an explanation… until he has a change of heart and decides he’d actually like to join the team.

I don’t know how much I buy Burns’s chummy turn here, especially given how incredibly sudden it is. He exhibits the social awkwardness of a sheltered rich person, but without much contempt for his fellow man. I think back to “Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk,” where Burns gleefully went “slumming” at Moe’s, but still clearly talked down to these penniless layabouts known as the middle class. Here he’s just an old softie, bowling consistent gutter balls, much to the rest of the team’s chagrin. The pathetic sight of him rolling the ball and his excitement regarding it (“Look at that! All the way to the end with only one push!”) keeps the show entertaining, but something just didn’t sit right about Burns’s behavior here. His snap back to his selfish ways at the end is equally as unusual; it’s all meant for the sake of humor, as Burns explains (“Teamwork will only take you so far. Then, the truly evolved person makes that extra grab for personal glory. Now, I must discard my teammates, much like the boxer must shed roll after roll of sweaty, useless, disgusting flab before he can win the title!”) But on the whole, it just didn’t feel like Burns.

Strangely the B-story works a bit better for me. When Bart causes a riot at school with his MAD magazine shirt “Down with Homework,” the students are forced to wear uniforms, turning them into conformist zombies. Everything about the plot rings so true, from the children’s quick descent into anarchy after Bart reveals the shirt, and the faculty’s complete contempt for anything resembling an individualistic thought. The kids become empty shells of who they once were, forgetting their most basic instincts and catchphrases (“Ha… ho?”) In the end, rain turns the non-color fasted uniforms tye-dye, and the kids go on a rampage once more. Both of these stories are pretty thin, and it’s fine that they don’t really intersect at all. While I have issues with Burns in the main story, I still laughed a fair amount at some of the bowling antics and the different teams, and the school uniform story has a lot of great Skinner and Chalmers stuff. So I can’t complain that halfway through an absolutely spectacular season, I find an episode that’s merely pretty hilarious and memorable. That’s fair enough to me.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Lunchlady Doris has her final speaking role here, due to the unfortunate passing of Doris Grau. At least it’s a great appearance (as always), revealing she’s the mother of one of the seemingly endless squeaky voiced teens working low-paying jobs all over Springfield.
– Moe has a great monologue after being denied right to bowl (“You go through life, you try to be nice to people, you struggle to resist the urge to punch in the face, and for what? For some pimply little puke to treat like dirt unless you’re on a team. Well, I’m better than dirt! …well, most kinds of dirt. I mean, not that fancy store-bought dirt. That stuff’s loaded with nutrients. I can’t compete with that stuff.”)
– The plotting of the bowling story is pretty solid as is, beginning and ending with Otto playing the crane game, along with it being integral to the climax. And what is his ultimate prize? A lobster harmonica. Of the many Simpsons products I want to be real, that’s in the top 5.
– The Skinner/Chalmers stuff is so rich. Hank Azaria is hysterical as Chalmers is very slowly about to give the school a perfect 10 score (“I’ll just write the zero first… now, a vertical line to indicate the one…”) Then of course he’s trampled by a herd of out-of-control kids. This leads to an equally hilarious bit with another Vietnam story from Skinner: a distraction by MAD Magazine caused his platoon to be captured, and he recalls his days in a POW camp surviving on just a thin stew. His personal torment comes not from that, but his inability to recreate the stew here in the States.
– The early Burns stuff is great, with his hallucinations of Homer as the Pillsbury Dough Boy (“I owe my robust physique to your tubes of triple-bleached goo!”) and supposed murder of Hans Moleman, who he believes to be the Lucky Charms leprechaun and tries to extract his gold with a power drill. Also funny later is when he expresses shock over his bowling payment, then finds it was for his boweling (“Remember that month you didn’t do it?” “Yes… that was unpleasant for all concerned.”) And then he expresses shock over the actual bowling payment.
– All the different teams are great, from the Stereotypes, consisting of Luigi, Willie, Cletus and Captain McAllister (Apu muses, “They begged me to join their team! Begged me!”) and the Homewreckers, consisting of Lurleen Lumpkin, Princess Kashmir, Mindy Simmons and Jacques. Considering Homer’s relationship with those ladies, I suppose that game must have been slightly awkward. Also fabulous is the police force team, with Wiggum, Eddie, Lou and Snake. Wiggum uncuffs Snake to go bowl, who then proceeds to run off.
– Bart complains to his mother the new uniforms suck. Marge wonders where he could have picked up such language. Pan over to Homer on the phone (“Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I’ve seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.”) Marge scolds him, so Homer hangs up (“I gotta go, my damn wiener kids are listening.”)
– There’s a lot of great Moe lines in this, from his reaction to Bumblebee Man’s taunt “Buenos noches, senoritas!” (“What’d he say? Was that about me?”) to his displeasure at Burns (“Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.”)
– Great exuberant reading of Milhouse’s “I’m freaking out!!” and final joke of the story of Skinner realizing his mother’s dress will react similarly, running off, with Chalmers following, commenting, “Now this I gotta see.” Wasn’t there a future episode showing Chalmers had an interest in Skinner’s mother? I don’t remember. Plus it was a post-classic era episode, so who cares.
– I love Homer’s stolen Oscar from, of all people, Don Ameche, and the timing and staging of the joke where he attempts to flush it multiple times off screen, followed by a pathetic “Maaaaarge, someone broke the toilet!”
– Great bit with Moe attempting to hobble Burns with a crowbar but he actually ends up fixing his gimp knee (“That precision assault popped it back into place. Thank you, masked stranger!”)