(originally aired April 29, 1993)
Whacking Day is one of those classic, long-staying Simpsons hallmarks. Mention it to even a casual fan and they’ll be able to tell you all about the questionable Springfield holiday. This is because it’s a brilliant concept, this satire of out-dated, almost barbaric local events continued to present day for the sake of remembering one’s history (the similarly themed “Weird Al” Yankovic song “Weasel Stomping Day” nails it with the perfect lyric: It’s tradition, that makes it okay.) However, as great an idea as this is, it doesn’t quite fill a whole episode. The holiday isn’t even brought up until the second act, where we have our main story of Bart being expelled and later home-schooled. I find the best episodes are the ones that are extremely focused, where everything in the entire twenty-two minutes, even if it’s an outlandish gag, is still related to the one story. Episodes like these may not reach those ranks, but are still solid stories and hilarious enough to justify themselves.

Our first act features the introduction of Superintendent Chalmers, a man even more no-nonsense than Skinner, who here is a scrambling wreck attempting to suck as much ass as he can to his superior and sweep all the troubled elements of his school under the rug, namely Bart and the other bullies. The interplay between Harry Shearer and Hank Azaria as these characters is stellar; we may not have “SKINNER!!” yet, but there’s no doubt that this is a fantastic relationship from scene one, seeing that Bart’s tormentor has one of his own. Speaking of, Bart wrecks everything, of course, and a livid Skinner expels him, leading him to become home schooled by Marge. This really takes up most of the second act, and around it are preparations for Whacking Day. We get a little bit of the history of the fabled event, and Lisa’s ever growing concerns about the ethical nature of pummeling innocent creatures to death en masse. There’s plenty of great material to be had, from Homer’s use of a long whacking stick to really excite his wife to Reverend Lovejoy bullshitting a Bible verse in a feeble attempt at justifying the holiday.

Despite my earlier criticisms, the two stories do come to a head in a manner that makes sense. Homeschooling makes Bart more studious, and through most of the second half he’s seen with his head in a book. Visiting Ye Olde Springfield, he questions the factual accuracy of Jebediah Springfield participating in the very first Whacking Day. At the climax, he manages to come up with a clever plan to lure the snakes to safety and reveals to an angry mob the sham the holiday truly is. Skinner is impressed by the applied knowledge and invites Bart back to school. It all works pretty well, and is a satisfying weaving of the two plots. They also have pretty great use of their special guest star, with Barry White’s deep bass saving the day. It turns into a bit of a music video, but hey, who can complain? Ohhhhhh baby.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The density of the deceived bullies is great, they just can’t comprehend that they’re not getting mountain bikes. Also, a small point, the shot of Skinner jumping down from high in the utility room and locking the boys in is pretty dynamic, sort of from down below but with a little skewed perspective. Classic Simpsons really had some interesting direction, something that has mostly evaporated nowadays.
– The Skinner/Chalmers scenes are just hilarious, with all of Skinner’s plans immediately backfiring. Highlighting the fawning banners, Chalmers dryly responds, “Nothing but transparent toadying.” Skinner backpedals without skipping a beat, “It was the children’s idea. I tried to stop them.” Also great is his much-too-prolonged laugh over Chalmers’s “not made of stone” quip and his cover of Ralph’s “What’s a battle?” (“So you hear ‘r’s as ‘b’s?”)
– I love positing about the lives of less-than-one-shot characters: what happened to the comely Scottish lass Willie assists? I’m sure he banged her. Then dumped her. Big Willie style.
– The tractor’s tempting of Bart, with the red tonal shift, is pretty neat, with the great chicken joke (“He’s insulting both of us!”) and a decent act break joke.
– Two great coming attractions for Eye on Springfield: The Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, where are they now? (a cemetery) and a nudist colony… for animals!
– I love the delayed reaction by Homer to Bart being expelled, and his indigence over his son becoming a cockney boot black.
– Gotta show some love for the Evil Homer scene, but the flashback crown has got to go to Abe’s WWII story, in one of the greatest, most disturbing flashbacks in series history. I crack up at Hitler’s outrage every time (“Das is nicht eine booby!”)
– Great Itchy & Scratchy, guest directed by Oliver Stone, recreating the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. I love the dramatic music and “Oh God!” immediately juxtaposed by the bouncy I&S outro music.
– Fantastic animation of Homer’s Whacking Day training, as well as some more dynamic direction, particularly the close-up shot of his mouth screaming a war cry.
– Olde Springfield Towne has a lot of great bits, like the auditions for village idiot and the story behind Fort Sensible. Marge and Bart being escorted out by security is good, but was done better in “Homer Alone.”
– Again, Barry White is fantastic. With that voice, I could listen to him for days. I love his shocked reaction about hearing exactly what the hell he’s actually in Springfield for (“Oh God, no. You people make me sick!”)
– Miss Springfield’s “Gentlemen, start your whacking!” has got to be the second dirtiest joke of the entire series, following the sperm bank sign in “Selma’s Choice.” Prove me wrong, seasons 5+.
– I love the stereotypical Irishman, who’s popped up a few times since, who appears to be in good spirits about Whacking Day’s Irish-bashing origins (“‘Tis true. I took many a lump, but ’twas all in good fun!”)
– Quimby has a great running bit of having his aide prepare pre-whacked snakes, only to hold them in triumph immediately after the masses have turned their opinions. Quimby is outraged (“I’m sick of you people! You’re nothing but a pack of fickle mush heads!”) Surprisingly, the crowd agrees (“Give us hell, Quimby!”)

(originally aired April 15, 1993)
Not every episode needs to feature a rich, focused storyline. Here, we have two smaller scale plots running side-by-side, with nothing too extraordinary or grandiose at stake. And you know what? I still loved it. It’s almost like they’re two mini-episodes, depicting bizarre days-of-the-lives of the characters, all topped off with the fantastic “The Adventures of Ned Flanders” at the end. I always thought this show could retain its freshness with doing smaller scale stories, sometimes involving secondary characters, instead of always feeling the need to go big and brash with wacky set pieces and action sequences. Clearly the writers went the other way, though. I think the whole series could have benefited with a few episodes like this a season.

Plot the first: Bart and Lisa moonlight as Itchy & Scratchy writers under Abe Simpson’s alias. We get some great meta humor in seeing depictions of the staff writers, the “How to Write Cartoons” book by John Swartzwelder, and animation jokes about repeating backgrounds. It all comes to a head in a finale at an award show where Grampa has been nominated. We see how scathing and sharp this show can be in the matter of seconds: the “How to Buy Action Figure Man” clip, which is all of four seconds, exquisitely encapsulates all the merchandise-driven 80s cartoons and how crappy they were. Then they take a well-deserved shot at Rea & Stimpy creator John K for never finishing his goddamn work on time. Plot the second: Homer and Marge attend their high school reunion, where Homer is exposed for not having actually graduated, leading him to take a night class to get his GED. There’s lots of great stuff at the reunion with the perfect class clown type and Homer’s various trophies. The night class stuff is a bit thin, but what we see of it works, and the joke of Homer never having passed remedial science, yet he’s still a nuclear technician is enough fuel to get us through.

I really want to talk about the Ned Flanders thing at the end. Its origins were that this episode was too short and they needed something to fill thirty seconds, so they whipped this short together, sort of parodying the quick single page Archie comics that bookend the actual stories. I absolutely love it, it’s one of the best things the series has ever done. As I mentioned above, it shows how genius and impacting the series can be in such little time. The chorus singers, the title card, the classic set-up and punch, and the outro; so succinct, quick and perfect. I only wish we’d have seen more stuff like this, little skits from different characters serving as outros. But maybe it’s for the best that “Everyone Loves Ned Flanders” is one-of-a-kind; it makes it that much more special.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I love how angry Krusty gets at his special guest chef bringing up his heritage (“I don’t do the Jewish stuff on the air!”) Guess he’s gone right back to stereotypical self-loathing after his tearful on-air reconciliation with his rabbi father.
– The lackluster Itchy & Scratchy at the start is great. Shearer’s “Ow”s and Castellaneta’s Itchy giggling really make me laugh, as does their on-point, direct into the camera anti-drug message as their big finish.
– Bart’s fantasy of hijacking Santa’s sleigh at gunpoint is one of the more disturbing, but hilarious dream sequences of the series. And that includes the later one in the episode of Grampa as a beautiful belle in the old west.
– I love Bart & Lisa’s internal logic regarding rock-paper-scissors; my friend and I mimicked this basically every time we or some other friends of ours had a face-off.
– When Bart asks Grampa what his first name is, Abe’s knee-jerk reaction is perfect (“You’re making my tombstone?!”)
– Not quite sure why the I&S scripts are so long. I’d imagine a typical short would fit on one script page, two tops.
– Homer mixing up his real life with Happy Days is a subtle comment on how pop culture infuses itself into our memories. It’s also really funny.
– Dan Castellaneta subs for Jon Lovitz as Artie Ziff at the reunion, now a pompous rich guy. Oddly, his indecent proposal conversation to Homer later became an episode. I guess not so odd, since one of the writers probably re-watched this later on and thought, “Hey, that’s good enough for a show.”
– I love Homer’s sense of pride in winning so many unflattering awards, from Most Weight Gained (“I discovered a meal between breakfast and brunch”) and Least Distance Traveled to get to the reunion. Stripped of his winnings after being exposed for not graduating, Homer vows to regain his pride… and his Most Improved Odor trophy.
– Abe looks damn sharp in his new suit, and I love the explanation he gives Homer about his new job (“They pay me eight hundred dollars a week to tell a cat and mouse what to do!”) In reaction to this, Homer envisions carting his demented father off to the nut house.
– More Homer bartering with his brain in psyching himself for his final exam (“All right brain, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you. But let’s just get me through this, and I can get back to killing you with beer.”) His brain accepts these conditions.
– The plunger at the very end may be the longest possible callback, but I still love it, and it’s the perfect way to resolve the Homer story.

(originally aired April 1, 1993)
In an era where one can find any movie or TV show on the Internet in about ten seconds, clip shows are wholly unnecessary. A year or so back, The Office did a clip show and I was perplexed as to why, as I looked at my season box sets of the show next to my TV. But in 1993, not only were there no home video releases of The Simpsons (in the USA, at least, except for the first Christmas special), the show wasn’t even in syndication as it is now, so a clip show showcasing classic moments of the first three seasons wasn’t so bad of an idea. There’s no real way you can stack this episode up against the rest of the season, but for what it is, it’s pretty damn good. A lot of it is new animation, with a completely clip-free act one, and most of the clips seem to either fit naturally to the scene they’re in, or comment on the silliness of the clip show itself.

It’s April Fool’s Day, and Bart desperately wants to trick his father as he so giddily did to him. With help from an industrial paint mixer, he shakes a beer can up close to bursting, and when Homer lifts the tab, it causes an alcoholic eruption that blows the roof off the house. Ridiculous, yes, but still very funny, as Wiggum hungrily proceeds to the site on foot (Lou calls in backup: “We need pretzels, repeat, pretzels!”) At the hospital, we’re treated to an assortment of clips: X-rays of Homer’s battered skull leads to a montage of Homer getting hurt, the doctor treating Homer is revealed to be the veterinarian from “Dog of Death” so we flashback to that episode, and Marge and the kids reflect on other beloved memories of days passed. The writers seem to acknowledge their shame of having to do a clip show with two overt winks to it: after recalling an Itchy & Scratchy episode, Bart comments, “It was an amusing episode… of our lives.” Later, Grampa describes what a coma is like (“You relive long lost summers, kiss girls from high school, it’s like one of those TV shows where they show a bunch of clips from old episodes.”) Pointing out a shortcoming doesn’t excuse it, but at least they were conscious of it. Never did I feel the need to fast-forward through any clips, and darn it all if I didn’t feel for Bart expressing remorse for his prank at his father’s bedside. Only The Simpsons could achieve actual emotion during a studio-mandated clip show.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I love Homer’s childish glee in pranking his son, and his taunting when Bart vows to get him back (“You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine!”)
– Lisa’s retelling of the origins of April Fool’s Day is a classic segment, started off with a classic Homer line (“God bless those Pagans”) and a great flashback with an 11th century Simpson and Flanders family. I also like how Homer absently attempts to take credit for the story afterwards. It’s one of those jokes that only works on TV, like Lisa finished telling the story and Homer concludes it out of thin air.
– Bart spying on Homer gives him adequate hints for his ultimate prank. Opening the fridge, Homer picks up a beer and comments to no one, “Ah, my one weakness. My Achilles heel, if you will.” He then drops the can and picks it up (“It’s a good thing that beer wasn’t shaken up any more, or I’d have looked quite the fool. The April Fool, as it were.”) I still use that line whenever I’ve done something quite foolish.
– Another sign that an added effort was put into this show: additional animation to the climax of “Bart the Daredevil” where we actually see Homer falling down the gorge a second time, getting hit on the head with the gurney rather than the skateboard.
– It’s a bit pedantic, but I don’t like that they used a clip from “Treehouse of Horror” as one of Marge’s memories, since it technically wasn’t canon. Then again, a later clip show will actually have Kang and Kodos show up in the regular universe, so I guess I should save my bitching ’till then.
– Great One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest parody as Barney, shocked in hearing Homer’s instinctual resistance to beer, smothers him, throws a water fountain through the window and takes off like the Chief. Moe reacts, “He really needs a girlfriend.”
– I just wrote that the music in “Last Exit to Springfield” was my absolute favorite, but the music for Land of Chocolate, which we see in a clip here, comes in a very close second. They’re both very similar instrumentally though so it may be a dead heat.
– Great “D’oh!” montage, but some clips are reused twice. At this point, you could do a “D’oh!” montage that could probably take up a 22-minute show.
– I like the end where Homer attempts one last prank, but the joke’s on him. And the great line, “Me lose brain? Uh-oh!” Followed by laughter.

(originally aired March 11, 1993)
What is the greatest Simpsons episode ever? Completely subjective of course, but a few select episode have become notorious for being always being near the top of “best-of” lists by a variety of sources. “Last Exit to Springfield” seems to pop up the most: it was named best episode ever by an Entertainment Weekly piece, along with many other journals and Internet bloggers. Years back when I read the EW piece, I was a bit surprised at their #1 pick. “Last Exit” was not an episode that really stuck out for me. Re-watching it now, I can certainly see why people revere it so much. It contains the best of all of the show’s greatest elements: a tight, rich plot, lots of great ridiculous gags and parodies, and some interesting character stuff sprinkled in. Some people might feel the need to nitpick at such a highly regarded episode, but why bother? It’s a fantastic episode that shows just how damn great the show can be.

The story’s pretty easy to surmise: Burns hopes to cut his workers’s dental plan, causing Homer to unwittingly step up as head of the union, later resulting in a plant-wide strike. One thing I love about this episode is how focused it is, how every element is tied into the plot. The McBain opening scene is hilarious on its own, but Mendoza’s cartoonish villainy is purposely mirrored to Burns. The bits with Lisa and the dentist are all connected since that’s what drives the main story. Episodes like these feel like they have more weight; there are still a fair share of wacky gags, but they all serve a purpose as the story moves along. Also great is our hero Homer, after rousing up enough enthusiasm to become union leader to begin with, seems to absent-mindedly ride the rest of the story out. Burns raises him to a superior level as Homer fights with his own mind. Any attempt by Burns to reach Homer is completely futile as the lovable oaf has no idea what he’s doing. Burns underestimates Homer, but for all the wrong reasons, and it’s not until the end when he finally realizes that.

There’s parodies galore in this episode, sometimes piling up two or three in a row. We have Homer imagining himself in The Godfather Part II (“That’s-ah nice-ah donut”), Lisa’s legally distinguishable Yellow Submarine hallucination, immediately followed by the scene from Batman where Joker smashes the mirror, and the ending with Burns standing in for the Grinch, and Smithers as poor Max (in a wonderfully animated sequence). There’s absolutely classic gags as well: a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters, “Dental plan!” “Lisa needs braces,” Grampa’s rambling story about onion belts, Homer thinking Burns is making a pass at him, the list goes on. I don’t know how high up this show would rank in my favorites list, but it certainly is one of the best of this season. It’s an absolute classic in every sense of the word: satirical, sincere, and of course hilarious.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Springfield, 1909 flashback is fantastic: in sepia tone, we see Grandpa Burns haranguing a poor urchin workers for attempting to pocket six atoms, with young Monty Burns with lolly in tow. The squeaky voiced wage slave protests (“You can’t treat the working man this way. One day, we’ll form a union and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we’ll go too far, and get corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!”) It’s one of those classic Simpsons lines that tells so much in so little.
– I really like how the story really occurs through happenstance. Burns just wants petty revenge against the unions and picks to cut the dental plan at random. If he’d chosen anything else, Homer wouldn’t have felt the need to protest, and there’d be no episode. But that’s how life works sometimes: the biggest events are triggered by the smallest decisions.
– Painless Dentistry (formerly Painful Dentistry) is a great set-piece, with the most vindictive dentist you’ve ever seen, armed with his greatest asset: “The Big Book of British Smiles.” The best bits include him loudly calling Marge a liar as she tries to cover up Maggie’s pacifier sucking (followed by the baby sucking on a giant tooth as substitute), his virtual depictions of future Lisas with ghastly teeth, and his terrifying words to Lisa before going under (“The first thing I’ll be doing is chiseling some teeth out of your jaw bone. Hold still while I gas you!”)
– At this point, the joke of Burns not knowing who Homer is had run its course, so here we have Smithers trying to remind him by mentioning the numerous memorable encounters he’s had with the man. Burns still runs a blank.
– An easy joke, but still hilarious: Homer mentions how he’ll have to be a good negotiator, then Bart bilks him out of his crummy danish in exchange for a delicious doorstop.
– We not only get one great Burns monologue, where Homer confuses his negotiation tactics as a romantic advance, but two, the next one tormenting Homer’s need to take a piss. Being in Burns’s leaky basement (which he should really stop ending his tours in) and spilling some of his coffee doesn’t help. The ending of the scene is just fantastic, where Homer dodges Burns’s question about finding the bathroom, obviously having just urinated in a random room out of desperation.
– I love the school photographer’s overreaction to Lisa’s antiquated braces (“There is no God!”)
– The sequence of Burns and Smithers running the plant is one of my favorites in the entire series, and the music over it is definitely my favorite piece of music ever done on the show. I remember in a much, much later episode, it was used again in a much, much poorer Burns and Smithers montage, and I was infuriated that they brought it back in such a shoddy way.
– This episode’s phenomenal, but it contains the first of many wasted, superfluous guest stars in Dr. Joyce Brothers, who has one line (“I brought my own mic!”) I don’t know if they had other material for her that they cut, but it was kind of quick and random. Thankfully, the Smartline segment is hilarious anyway, with the producers instructing Kent to not talk to Homer and allowing Burns his self-proclaimed opening tirade.
– I love the Get Smart montage of Burns and Smithers getting to the main power grid, only to have a ramshackle screen door already there. Burns cutting power to the town is a pretty dramatic scene (“Goodbye, Springfield! From hell’s heart, I stab at thee!”)

(originally aired February 18, 1993)
Homer is our lovable every man, a creature of habit, and due to this and the inelastic status quo, episodes like these are going to feel slightly disingenuous. Just as we know he’s going to continue stuffing his face with donuts following his triple bypass, we know that despite the sweet ending of this show, Homer will be back to getting blazing drunk by next week. Despite its title, Homer’s month-long alcoholic abstinence is really only in the final act; beforehand we have a lot of fun at the Duff brewery, witness the fallout of Homer’s semi-drunken behavior, and follow along a nice B-plot involving Lisa’s revenge on her brother for the school science fair. It might not have the tightest story, but this episode is still memorable in its aim and high proponent of laughs.

Homer ditches the power plant to take a day trip with Barney to the Duff Brewery. The brewery gives us a lot of fantastic material: we see the old limited animation Duff commercials from the 50s, as well as Kennedy and Nixon’s endorsements of the beer, each with varying levels of audience approval (Homer voices his disdain toward Nixon: “The man never drank a Duff in his life.”) Homer chooses to drive a perpetually drunk Barney, but is pulled over by the cops. He passes a drunk test, but an outburst from Barney gets him to take the breathalyzer and fail. As unsettling as it may have been, I think the episode could have had more weight if Homer had been extremely drunk, as it would greater illuminate his problem and Marge’s insistence that he quit. Homer displayed somewhat of a sense of responsibility in refusing to let Barney drive, and while he was still above the legal limit, he seemed to be coherent enough. I felt bad for Homer, when I should have felt bad about him.

These quibbles are minor, though, as the episode is still hilarious. Homer’s “Seventeen” song is fantastic, as are the Springfield AA meetings, featuring Ned Flanders, four thousand days since his last drink (in which he made a drunken outburst defaming Ann Landers) and Hans Moleman, who reveals he is only thirty-one years old. The B-story is pretty great, where following Bart ruining Lisa’s science project, she enacts a study to determine if her brother is smarter than a hamster (of course, he is not). I like seeing Lisa defend her studies as scientific to disguise her childish sibling rivalry, and one of the most disturbing parodies ever of A Clockwork Orange where Bart reaches for the two cupcakes (topped with cherries, no less.) Homer’s sober month is a montage of wonderful sequences, culminating in what almost seems like a personal onslaught from the Duff company unto Homer. He resists, however, in favor of a bike ride for two with Marge. We know it won’t last, but at least it was fun getting there.

Tidbits and Quotes
– We open with Bart’s dream of the science fair and a slightly offensive line from Skinner (“For a school with no Asian kids, I think we put on a pretty darn good science fair.”)
– Yet another instance of Homer’s brain betraying him, as he somehow manages to mix up his inner thoughts and his spoken words, openly admitting to skip work to go to the brewery. In a bind, he screams and runs out the door at the first sign of question.
– I love Barney as the vigilant lookout as Homer escapes the plant (“Hey! That looks like Princess Di! Oh, wait, it’s just a pile of rags.”) Some would say not so funny in hindsight. I say, still hilarious.
– Great slow-mo sequence of the tomato ever so slowly exploding on Skinner’s ass. Opportunity presented itself, and Bart had no choice but to answer the call.
– Quality control is very important at Duff, as one man picks out the bum bottles containing rats and syringes, which for God knows why ended up in there in the first place. His momentary distraction lets a few questionable items go, including Hitler’s severed head.
– I love Duff’s many flavors, but especially Tartar Control Duff, which I would only hope can substitute as a toothpaste.
– Homer trying to knock out Barney is an amazing scene, particularly him repeatedly slamming his head in the car door, with an echoed “Ow!” each time. I only wish it had been dragged out a little longer before Barney conceded.
– Another instance of stuff spontaneously exploding, as Wiggum, in a beer stein costume, rolls down a hill into a tree and erupts in a fiery inferno. That’s the act break, by the way. After the commercial, he’s just fine though, though he mixes up DOA and DWI to two separate wives about their husbands. Marge is relieved to hear this difference, but Wiggum ducks out the other unfortunate wife called in.
– Twice this show Bart mimics the Three Stooges: he gives a “Sointenly!” to Lisa’s request to hold the giant tomato, and upon being shocked by an electrode-fused cupcake, he slaps his face and remarks, “Wise guy, eh?” Respect the classics, man.
– It’s a quick one, but the traffic school video is one of Troy McClure’s best appearances, if only for the great two previous titles he mentions (“Alice’s Adventures Through the Windshield Glass” and “The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot”) and the completely inappropriate (off-screen) montage of grotesque car crashes and McClure’s cheery commentary (“Here’s an appealing fellow; in fact, they’re a-peeling him off the sidewalk!”)
– The science fair has some great stuff: the psychotic over-helpful father shooing his kid away from his project, Ralph’s alcohol-fueled car (“One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me…”), and Milhouse’s lame duck Slinky. Lisa continues to urge her project is in the interest of science (her brain puts it in more layman’s terms: “That’ll learn him to bust my tomater”), but Bart bests her by stealing her hamster and creating a project of sheer showmanship, with a pinstripe suit, and pulls the rug of first prize right from under her.
– More great bits in Homer’s dry month: the rather offensive Duff commercial, realizing how boring baseball is, his shameless admission at AA (“The other day I was so desperate for a beer I snuck into the football stadium and ate the dirt under the bleachers,”) and suffering through Patty & Selma’s Tupperware party (he quietly comments, “I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.”)