(originally aired November 4, 1993)
Marge is a woman with a lot of gumption, she just needs someone to get it out of her. That’s why I wish Ruth Powers had become more of a regular character, like a Kelsey Grammar role where she’d come back every season or so as Marge’s wildfire friend who’d drag her on another adventure. This also is inadvertently a Homer/Marge relationship show, but not in the overdone way implying their marriage is in trouble. It’s partly based in miscommunication, and Homer’s unconscious dependency on Marge as a friend and a life partner. I appreciated the episode’s efforts to not make things lazy right from the start: Marge gets tickets to the ballet, and while Homer isn’t thrilled about it (especially after finding out there are no bears riding in tiny cars involved,) he is still ready to fulfill his promise to his wife. As always, fate smacks Homer in the face when their night out is thwarted after getting his arms trapped in two vending machines (in a spectacular sequence.) As a result, Marge takes Ruth, where they quickly form a bond and have a swell evening, with more to come.

Obviously this episode is a Thelma and Louise parody, not that it matters much. I haven’t seen the movie, but I know enough about it to understand what they’re getting at, and in that frame of mind, the episode still works. It’s not just blatant disconnected references, it’s weaving our characters into this familiar story. Around that we have the much more interesting story of Homer wandering aimlessly about town, trying to occupy his time. He’s a man who willfully tethered himself to Marge and his family, and despite his occasionally bombastic behavior, they’re who he cares about most. Without Marge, he’s lost, and he knows it. It’s intriguing to see our protagonist, who’s usually at the forefront of a story in control, not really knowing what to do with himself. Also around this we have some genius Lionel Hutz material, who sinks to a new low as Bart and Lisa’s babysitter, bitterly grumbling watching a legal procedural with the kids (“Oh, sure, like lawyers work in big skyscrapers and have secretaries. Look at him! He’s wearing a belt! That’s Hollywood for ya.”)

The two stories collide pretty seamlessly, culminating in a big police chase. I like the tag team of Homer and Wiggum, two dimwits playing off each other. We have our big finish, toying with the infamous Thelma finale and giving the conclusions to all the characters, Dragnet style, which wraps things up quickly and sufficiently. I feel an episode like this is probably pretty underrated and unnoticed, a lot of Marge episodes feel that way, but I think this one is elevated with the flip side Homer angle, and a lot of hilarious material. It’s got heart, it’s got jokes, it got Marge out of the house, I got no complaints about this one.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I’m not really familiar with Garrison Keillor, but again, the joke still works, as it could really be any sort of soft-spoken comedian, and Homer’s aggravation of not getting the humor is great (“Stupid TV! Be more funny!”)
– Some of the best Homer bits are when he adapts a serious tone, such as his response when Marge is shocked at his enthusiasm over ballet (“Marjorie, please. I enjoy all of the meats of our cultural stew.”) And of course he imagines the ballet as a circus.
– Homer’s trials with the vending machines is a real classic moment. Again, his dedication is exemplary, managing to pull a heavy vending machine down the corridor to fulfill his promise to Marge… but he gets waylaid by another machine. I love his vision of the future of being at Maggie’s wedding with his arms still stuck (“Candy and sodas for all!”) and the solution to the problem: Homer just lets go of the cans. Also great is Homer covering his bases, providing a note to Marge written by the firemen (“Mrs. Simpson, while we were rescuing your husband, a lumberyard burned down.”) Homer is crushed (“D’oh! Lumber has a million uses!”)
– For some reason, there’s a sky box in the high school gym, specifically for the ballet, I guess.
– Homer watching Marge get ready and asking her where she’s going and when she’ll be back is a cute scene, like he’s a little kid asking his mother. Also great is his attempt to use the kids to elicit sympathy, but they only give their mother praise, much to his annoyance (“Man’s best friend indeed!”)
– Bart and Lisa provide Homer with no comfort, from Bart proposing he give a makeover to his father (“Oh, that would be delight… quiet, boy!”) and Lisa’s whip noise. Homer’s attempt to call friends proves fruitless: Lenny is preoccupied with his wife (?), we get a disturbing look at Burns’s personal life, who seems to be adapting the persona of a 50s teenage girl, and Flanders, who Homer immediately hangs up on.
– I love the scene at Sh_tkickers with the unusually polite rednecks propositioning Marge. I assume this is also a Thelma and Louise reference, but again, it works just as well as a joke in and of itself.
– My favorite bit may be the grizzled old farmer lamenting over his antique cans. Dan Castellaneta puts in a lot for a one-shot role, and it has a great payoff at the end revealing Marge had to pay fifty cents for the cans, and two thousand in punitive damages and mental anguish. Also, it seems like the farmer is the same one from much later in “Natural Born Kissers.” He has his pitchfork, but has yet to add a shotgun to it.
– The flashback to Homer and Marge’s dating life is hysterical. Homer is a madman smashing a weather machine with no real reasoning, then snaps back to Marge (“You got real purty hair…”) It turns bittersweet when present day Homer giddily prepares to take revenge on the new weather machine, but sadly observes it’s not the same without Marge.
– More disturbing insight into Wiggum’s personal life, with his homemade moonshine and his story about apparently having bought a male blowup doll.
– We also learn a bit about Marge’s murmur; as her mind puts it, it’s a way to say something reassuring but noncommittal.
– Classic bit when Ruth turns off her lights and Wiggum automatically jumps that it must be a ghost car. He and Homer is terrified.
– I love the stuff at the truck stop, pushing Marge to go back to Ruth (“I hate it when the waffles stick together.” “Sticking together’s what good waffles do.”)
– Homer’s apology to Marge is really funny (“I’m sorry I haven’t been a better husband. I’m sorry about the time I tried to make gravy in the bathtub. I’m sorry I used your wedding dress to wax the car. And I’m sorry… oh well, let’s just say I’m sorry for the whole marriage up to this point!”)
– Oh, and props again to Lionel Hutz! He’s brilliant, as usual (“As of this moment, Lionel Hutz no longer exists. Say hello to Miguel Sanchez!”)

(originally aired October 28, 1993)
The first three Halloween shows are fantastic, but number four is the first one that really knocked it out of the park. It encapsulates all that a Treehouse of Horror special should be: beautifully directed, have at least some suspense and chills, all with snarky humor throughout. These are fantasy stories, so you should be aiming to do stuff you could never do in the show proper. They should be good, damn spooky fun.

No segment better encapsulates this than our first, “The Devil vs. Homer Simpson,” if not the best Halloween short, then at least among the top 3. Impulsively wishing to sell his soul for a donut, Homer is approached by Satan himself, who is none other than Ned Flanders. I really want to know who thought of this idea, it’s absolutely brilliant. The Devil, at least in the context of making deals with unsuspecting mortals, should have this facade of niceness to him, but be menacing when necessary, so Flanders is really the perfect choice (“It’s always the one you least suspect!”) Harry Shearer makes Ned sound the part too; you believe he’s this different shade of our favorite neighbor-eeno. The entire segment looks absolutely gorgeous: the fiery vortex in the kitchen, Homer’s dizzying descent into Hell, Devil Flanders’s true form as a monstrous devil (reminiscent of Chernabog from Fantasia.) On top of all this, the show is hilarious. Homer is fortunate enough to find a small loophole in his contract and gloats about it right in Lucifer’s face. We have the infamous Jury of the Damned, including Richard Nixon, who at the time wasn’t dead yet (only six months left, Tricky Dick!) and one of Lionel Hutz’s best appearances, and since he only has about three lines, that’s saying a lot.

“Terror at 5 1/2 Feet” is the weakest of the two, but that’s only because it’s sandwiched between two powerhouses. It’s pretty great though; like the famous Twilight Zone short, Bart becomes increasingly paranoid that a gremlin is dismantling the school bus from the outside. Even in such a small environment, the direction remains just as intense, with appropriate flashes of lightning and dramatic angles and push-ins toward the window where the monster may or may not be wrecking havoc. There’s particularly great animation on Bart as he becomes a twitchy, unhinged mess over the situation, especially when he desperately tries to get his beloved friend Milhouse to believe his ravings. I also love that they retained elements of the source material even though it makes no sense, like the airplane window shade and the pressurized cabin. I also think this is the first appearance of Uter, the giddy German exchange student (just in time for him to be eaten in next year’s Halloween show.) In the end, Bart is proven right, but to Skinner, that don’t matter (“Right or wrong, your behavior was still disruptive, young man. Perhaps spending the remainder of your life in a madhouse will teach you some manners.”) Sometimes the best way to end one of these shorts is with a punch in the face. Or someone get decapitated (“Hidely-ho, Bart!”)

“Bart Simpson’s Dracula” is pretty much just as masterful as the first segment. Mr. Burns lures the Simpsons into his spooky castle, clearly nothing suspicious, and Bart and Lisa discover he is in fact a vampire. Again, the direction is spectacular; almost every shot in the episode feels dynamic and suspense-building. It also may be the funniest segment, a lot due to everyone’s complete obliviousness to Burns being a vampire, despite increasingly glaring clues (“Dad, this is blood!” “Correction: free blood!”) A lot of the greatness of these segments is managing to keep the dramatic aspect of the stories going while cramming in as many jokes as possible. Bart smashing through Lisa’s window and going to bite her is kind of intense, but it’s put between a whole mess of jokes. In the end, Homer kills Burns (first staking his groin, then his heart), but it turns out he wasn’t the head vampire. Marge was, and the entire family except for Lisa are vampires too. Right before they go into the kill, the show inexplicably ends with an homage to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Why? No reason. Simple holiday mix-up. It’s an unbelievable show, one that all future Halloween specials are now forced to live up to.

Tidbits and Quotes
-This episode has the very last wrap-around framing device for a Halloween show, and it’s a great one, with Bart posing as a sub for Rod Serling in Night Gallery. Marge puts in her traditional Halloween warning, and we’re treated to many parodies of famous paintings, from the obvious (Lisa as Munch’s “The Scream”) to a bit more obscure (Homer in Jacques-Louise David’s “Death of Marat” holding a grocery list instead of a dying note.) Sweet, sweet candy for those who have taken their share of art history courses.
– I love the donut fashion show dream opening of the first segment, and the reveal that Homer seems to have dozed off while standing up in the break room. Narcolepsy? Also great is his anger toward his past self for having eaten his emergency donut (“Bastard! He’s always one step ahead!”)
– The genius of dim-witted Homer: he appears to have outsmarted the Devil, since if he doesn’t finish the forbidden donut, he’s in the clear. Throw out the donut, toss it in a woodchipper, chuck it in the ocean. Nope. He puts it in the fridge, albeit with warning post-its, but a sleepwalking Homer eats it anyway.
– Bart and Devil Flanders’s nonchalant greetings to each other is great. As is Flanders’s annoyance at Lisa’s insistence on a fair trial (“Oh, you Americans with your due process and fair trials. This is always so much easier in Mexico.”)
– The Hell sequence is brilliant, and I only wish we saw more. Homer getting chopped to bits is pretty brutal, but hilarious nonetheless.
– As mentioned, Lionel Hutz is absolutely hysterical, showing up in the Simpson house combing his hair with a fork (“I watched Matlock in a bar last night. The sound wasn’t on, but I think I got the gist of it.”) Later, he backs himself into a corner by defining a contract as unbreakable, then runs off to the bathroom. When Marge checks on him later on, Hutz has already taken off, the window wide open with wind blowing through.
– Strangely enough, Blackbeard steals the show amongst the jurors, from being forced to sit in a high chair (“This chair be high, says I!”) and being exposed as illiterate (“‘Tis true. My debauchery was my way of compensatin’!”)
– Great twist ending regarding the wedding photo, and of course, spectacular big finish with Donut Head Homer.
– I love the half-assed Krusty trading cards: Krusty visits relatives in Annapolis, Maryland, Krusty poses for trading card photo.
– Again, at this point I might as well just run off all the great jokes: Skinner on the bus (“I’m riding the bus today because Mother hid my car keys to punish me for talking to a woman on the phone. She was right to do it,”) Otto running Moleman’s AMC Gremlin off the road, which comes to a stop before a tree, and then violently explodes, Ralph saying “You’re deceptive,” Kang’s Charles Nelson Reilly nervous murmur finding a gremlin is dismantling their ship, “Now I’ve gotten word that a child is using his imagination, and I’ve come to put a stop to it,” “Me mule wouldn’t work in the mud. So I had to put seventeen bullets in ‘er!” Homer driving by during the climax with all his stolen marina goods, and Nelson’s well-timed “Ha-ha!” as Bart is being hauled off.
– As I said, everyone is incredibly dense regarding Burns being a vampire: the police destroying the Egyptian wing of the museum, the Simpsons being told to wash their necks (Homer proudly holds up a filth-ridden rag), and Burns flat-out admitting his plans over the intercom accidentally (“Oh, son-of-a-bi-“) Also, great animation with Burns’s shadow’s independent movements. A lot of the acting is so great, through the whole show, but the third act has a lot of it. Every character is so full of life, so animated, if you will.
– This is getting too long, it happens when the episode is so great. Let’s finish this off: Yes, I Am A Vampire, with forward by Steve Allen, Bart’s Three Stooges impersonations, the effects of Homer’s drinking (“Now let’s go back to that… building… thingy, where our beds and TV… is,”) Abe wanting to stake Bart before realizing he’s a vampire, “Kill my boss? Do I dare to live out the American dream?,” “Super fun happy slide!” (with Homer’s excited elbow movements), and Burns coming back alive briefly just to fire Homer before expiring.

(originally aired October 14, 1993)
So we follow the bonkers “Cape Feare” with an episode just as crazy. It’s pretty jarring how nutty the series got so quickly. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for fans to return in the fall to find that their beloved show had gone insane. I was surprised to find this episode is pretty polarizing, with some thinking Homer’s characterization was pushed too far, and some others believing this to be the first appearance of the dreaded “Jerkass Homer.” I am not in this belief at all; this is one of the most memorable and hilarious episodes the series has to offer. The entire episode is a weird send-up of Animal House-style movies, but through our main character’s eyes. Homer’s seemingly cruel actions are only done out of delusion. This is a man so reliant on TV that it shapes his reality, to the point that he thinks his college antics are redeemable and his hatred of the dean is acceptable, despite him actually being a pretty swell guy. He is misguided in his efforts, but never overtly malicious. It’s a parody about a man attempting to live a parody.

Before we hit campus, we get a brilliant opening with a safety commission paying a surprise visit to the power plant. Homer’s complete incompetence is quickly exposed, leading him to be forced to pass Remedial Physics 101 at Springfield University in order to keep his job. Things are crazy right off the bat as Homer manages to create a meltdown in the simulator (even though there was no nuclear material in the truck), and easily shakes off his radioactive green glow when he hears it’s lunchtime. Despite the madcap elements of this show, it stays pretty focused and has a brisk pace. By act two, Burns has gotten Homer into college, and upon setting foot on campus, he believes he’s in a college movie, berating “nerds” and begrudging the affable Dean Peterson. His attitude turns a bit when he gets friendly with his geeky tutors, and attempts to enlist them in wacky college hijinks, all of which go awry.

The number of laugh-out-loud moments in this episode are staggering: guarding the plant bee, the professor dropping his notes, Homer’s “prank” call to the dean, Snake posing as a wallet inspector, “Curly, straight!,” it just goes on and on. It bears a lighter tone than the equally wacky “Cape Feare,” but is still pretty ridiculous overall. However, as different as it is from a season 3 episode, it still feels very true to the show. Characterizations can wax and wane depending on the circumstances; here, Homer’s misguided delusions based upon old college movies lead him to become a bombastic lout. His behavior may emulate what “normal” Homer would do in a season 11 episode, but here, it’s done with a purpose. This is a definitive classic, and one of the funniest episodes of the series.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer seems so focused on such an asinine task of watching the bee, and it’s hilarious watching him freak out about screwing it up. Smithers’s “I’m afraid he couldn’t bee here,” is fantastic, as is the classic Homer line, “The bee bit my bottom! Now my bottom’s big!” Also to note, this episode has some pretty exaggerated animation, particularly with Homer running down the corridor and his exaggerated posterior welt. There’s a lot of great “off-model” moments in this episode that really get out a lot of character and emotion. You’ll see none of that nowadays.
– Burns’s bribery technique being reminiscent to giving away game show prizes is a great moment, as is one of the inspector’s enthusiastic response to it (“The box! The box!”) Also great is when the other inspector lectures Burns that he can’t just throw money at a problem to make it go away, Mayor Quimby, donning a fur coat with a giant ‘$5000’ price tag on it, comes into frame to deliver the punchline (“Gentlemen, I’ve decided there will be no investigation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go away.”) The outro to the scene is wonderful too, the great line reading from Burns (“I have a feeling you’ll be dropping the charges,”) and his quiet chagrin about the painters having moved his desk. Every scene in this show is brilliant, I’m going to try to not list every single joke here…
– I really want to read Homer’s application essay based upon how it ends (“It was the most I every threw up and it changed my life forever.”) Also, great photo of him scarfing down a birthday cake, complete with red eye. I love the admissions officer’s disturbed reaction (“Reading his essay would only waste valuable seconds.”)
– The “School of Hard Knockers” movie is one of the best moments of the entire series, one I quote endlessly with friends (“Mr. President!!“). It’s a pitch perfect parody of college movies.
– Burns appealing to the Springfield U council is such a fantastic scene, starting from his incredibly imposing chair, to one of the best uses of Burns’s total lack of strength as he feebly “attacks” one of his fellow councilmen with a bat. I love the man’s little “Stop that” in-between his sentence. Upon collapsing, an exhausted Burns orders Smithers, “Dismember the corpse and send his widow a corsage.”
– And so, the GED Homer worked so hard to get a mere six episodes ago goes up in flames. At least we got a classic line out of it (“I am so smart! S-M-R-T! …I mean, S-M-A-R-T!”)
– The start of Homer’s first class is an absolutely classic scene. The instructor’s clever joke (“Out with the old, in with the nucleus”) is completely lost to Homer, but him accidentally dropping his notes kills Homer, in one of Dan Castellaneta’s greatest performances.
– I love the stupid joke involving Homer stealing cinder blocks from a construction site to use for his faux college dorm, only to have inadvertently thwarted the building of a children’s hospital. It’d be cruel if it weren’t so dumb. And funny.
– The nerds are really great characters, I wish they could have found some way to bring them back more. When one tells Homer he needs to memorize the periodic table, Homer dismissively claims he’ll just write it on his hand. Another nerd scoffs (“Including all known lanthanides and actinides? Good luck!”)
– Homer’s prank game plan is another classic line (“We roll him up in a carpet and throw him off a bridge!”) More great animation of the motion wipe on the angry Sir Oinks-a-Lot biting Homer. Plus we get the great Dean line (“That sounded like a pig fainting!”) and a great, quick guest appearance from Richard Nixon, who apparently is one of the pig’s “very powerful friends” (“Oh, you’ll pay. Don’t think you won’t pay!”)
– Another classic scene of the Itchy & Scratchy short “Burning Down the Mouse,” where Scratchy seemingly has finally got Itchy right where he wants him: in front of piles of explosives. However, before the big finale, one of the nerds unplugs the TV. Bart and Lisa are horrified. Upon getting it back on, the cartoon is over. Krusty serves to dig the knife even deeper for Bart and Lisa, having just missed history being made forever (“WOAH!! They’ll never let us show that again! Not in a million years!!”)
– I love how even Marge, who’s pretty much a saint in putting up with her husband’s antics, can’t even defend him in the last act (“I want those geeks out of my house.”) To get the nerds back into college, Homer devises that they pull off a zany scheme. Now, here is a perfect example of the distinction between Homers. He’s only of the mindset that a zany scheme will work because he’s trying to emulate similar situations from TV. In later years, Homer will just come up with something stupid off the cuff with no reference to anything. There’s a difference.
– I don’t know why, but I love Homer’s master plan for passing the final exam (“During the exam, I’ll hide under some coats, and hope that somehow everything will work out.”)
– The montage of Homer studying is wonderful. In later episodes, they’d use a montage every single episode (sometimes twice) just to kill time or move the story along, but this montage is memorable, funny and used effectively. The animation of Homer turning in his exam is wonderful; each action is clearly thought out and looks so fun. Homer is truly alive. And of course, the final result: Homer fails anyway.
– I love the end credits images of Homer’s second run of college played over “Louie Louie” (what else?)

(originally aired October 7, 1993)
This is the final episode of the fourth production season, and as I mentioned in “Marge in Chains,” a drained writing staff itching to get out the door can usually lead to some pretty wild stuff. Look no further than “Cape Feare,” one of the most ridiculous and crazy episodes to date. This series is so great that it can juggle many different tones, sometimes within the same episode. There’s no better example than “Feare;” it captures the grim, suspenseful nature of its source material, while balancing it with some really wacky slapstick humor straight out of a Looney Tunes short. The tension doesn’t yield to the comic elements, or vice versa, and the story doesn’t miss a beat in carrying us along to our conclusion. It’s not rich in satire, or emotionally driven; it’s an episode that runs on craziness, and it’s among the best of that variety.

Bart has been receiving mysterious letters written in blood threatening his life, revealed to have been written by an incarcerated Sideshow Bob. The first act sets our dual tone perfectly, in one of the best sequences of the series, where characters appear to be menacing Bart, but end their sentences completely innocuously. Ned Flanders wields razor-tipped gloves and approaches Bart (“Say your prayers, Simpson… because the schools don’t force you like they should!”) We still feel Bart’s increasing paranoia, but we laugh at how ridiculous this human behavior is, that you can completely change tone in mid-sentence. The act break, along with so many other scenes in this show, is brilliantly animated, which shows real effort that they didn’t just phone this last episode of the run in. We also establish the Cape Fear theme riff from Alf Clausen is Bob’s signature music, which would stick from here on out. “Black Widower” established Bob to be a criminal mastermind and a real threat, but “Feare” shows that the man has a side of him that is truly deranged. His methodical planning and obsession over disemboweling a ten-year-old boy is really sick, but because that boy is Bart, we can sort of understand.

Before long, the Simpsons are put in the witness protection program and relocated on a house boat. This doesn’t stop Bob, though, who follows them to their new home in Terror Lake and has a final showdown with his would-be victim. The finale is truly spectacular, where Bart uses Bob’s pride and showmanship against him, stalling for time by requesting Bob perform “The H.M.S. Pinafore” before gutting him. Bob puts on a great performance, putting together props, costumes, and ending with the British flag unfurling behind him as Bart reads a Playbill printed from God knows where. It’s a ridiculous ending, but it works completely with the established tone. A story of an escaped convict’s mission to kill a child needs some wacky relief, making Bob’s quest almost like Wile E. Coyote going after the Road Runner. He always gets thwarted in the end, be it by marching elephants, cactus patches, rakes (classic scene), and ultimately himself. As overly cartoonish as this episode is, it never quite goes far enough to feel unlike The Simpsons. Maybe not the best Bob show, but truly worth its classic status.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The “Up Late with McBain” opening is a great TV bit, from the opening announcer (wearing a clearly visible Nazi armband) to Rainier Wolfcastle’s complete inability to deliver jokes or respond to a crowd without resorting to homophobia (“Maybe you are all homosexuals too!”)
– Lisa’s pen pal letter is a classic moment(“Dear Lisa, as I write this, I am very sad. Our president has been overthrown and [voiceover changes] replaced by the benevolent general Krull. All hail Krull and his glorious new regime! Sincerely, Little Girl.”) Hank Azaria’s read for Krull is great, but this is another joke that has fantastic implications. This oppressive dictator marched into this girl’s house and seemingly killed her mid-sentence, but he had the consideration to finish and send her letter, if only to self-aggrandize himself to a foreigner. Amazing.
– I love Bob’s overuse of writing in blood: he uses it for his grocery list, and later for his further letters, at least until he passes out (his cellmate Snake comments, “Use a pen, Sideshow Bob!”)
– Moe’s backdoor shenanigans is another joke with seedy implications. Was he trying to sell these pandas on the black market? What industry does this service?
– Bob’s court case is hilarious from beginning to end. Selma attests that Bob tried to kill her, but the Blue-Haired Lawyer rebuts in revealing most everyone in the court room also wants to kill her, including Patty (“She’s always leaving the toilet seat up.”) Bob attempts to play dumb regarding Bart, but quickly lowers his voice in menace over his role in sending him to this “urine-soaked hellhole.” A parole board member takes issue with this, having not used the more appropriate “pee-pee-soaked heck hole.” Bob concedes (“Cheerfully withdrawn!”) In the best one-two punch ever, Bob reveals his tattoo “DIE BART DIE” is actually German for “THE BART THE.” Another parole board member comments, “No one who speaks German could be an evil man!” Parole is instantly granted.
– The Cape Fear parody aside, I never quite got why Bob is laughing so uproariously at an Ernest film, considering his high-minded tastes. Perhaps he was already staking out Bart and knew they were behind him? Also, why didn’t Bart and Lisa recognize Bob’s hair instantly? Nitpicking!!
– Bob in the ice cream truck is absolutely ridiculous, but I absolutely love it. The pause right after the four Simpsons were announced, then the “That is all” kills me.
– The “Hello, Mr. Thompson” sequence is amazing. I love how exhausted and fed up the two agents look after the time lapse, and how they’ve simplified the response to a smile and nod after stepping on Homer’s foot, like they’ve slowly been reformatted the simple input-response, desperate to get it through Homer’s thick skull. Homer’s loud whisper, “I think he’s talking to you,” is the perfect ending.
– As random as the finale to this show is, it’s sort of referenced early on with the Simpsons listening to Gilbert & Sullivan on the way to Terror Lake.
– Great reimagined intro with “The Thompsons,” with a nice couch gag.
– The rake scene… I do think it goes on a bit too long, though I know it was only extended to get the show to air time. I like it though; the overarching theme of the show, and a lot of Bob episodes, is that Bob may be a culturally refined genius, but he is stuck in a world where fate treats him like the kicked-about sidekick from the job he loathed so much, so getting trampled by elephants and stepping on rakes is like life’s ongoing cruel joke to him.
– Sort of like the stuff with Marge and Flanders at the beginning, Homer bursting into Bart’s room with a butcher knife, only to be revealed as him offering his son a brownie, is hysterical. Homer claims to understand Bart’s paranoia, only to be followed by “BART YOU WANNA SEE MY NEW CHAINSAW AND HOCKEY MASK?!”
– Bart kind of got away by pure luck: he bought enough time to run ashore in Springfield, but as Chief Wiggum said, “It’s a good thing you drifted by this brothel!” But with Wiggum and the other cops in bathrobes, I wonder what the boys in blue were up to… We also get the great line, “Bake ’em away, toys!”