(originally aired March 16, 1997)
Springfield is a really boozy town if you look at it. So just like depriving our main character of beer in “Duffless,” this episode depletes the entire city limits of alcohol. It all starts with an over-exuberant St. Patrick’s Day parade, where in the midst of the calamitous celebration to Lady Liquor, Bart accidentally gets drunk in the most preposterous of ways. The footage of a shitfaced ten-year-old makes waves of outrage to the moralizing busybodies of Springfield, who demand that the town enact prohibition. Upon discovering there’s already an unenforced two-hundred-year-old law on the books banning alcohol, Quimby puts it into effect, making the entire town dry as a bone. Now, not only does this throw the title of the episode into question, wouldn’t the twenty-first Amendment supersede this law? But ’tis a minor quibble. I’m sure Quimby is clueless of it, and any of the town’s drunks who could have protested with this argument are just as in the dark.

Within no time, Moe’s becomes a hush-hush speakeasy under the new guise of “Moe’s Pet Shop.” It’s quickly discovered by the aforementioned busybodies, and upon seeing Wiggum graciously partake in its wears, they make further demands to Quimby to bring in an actually competent law enforcer. Enter Rex Banner, a smart suited fed straight out of the 1930s, who outs Wiggum and boots the booze bootleggers. Banner is voiced by Dave Thomas, a Canadian comedian who gives a great old timey performance (“Listen, rummy, I’m gonna say it plain and simple. Where’d you pinch the hooch? Is some blind tiger jerking suds on the side?”) With supply cut off, Homer steps up with a plan, unearthing the dozens of buried beer barrels and swindling them into Moe’s himself, through an admittedly clever plan involving hollowed out bowling balls and an elaborate piping system. I’ll accept that someone as dim as Homer could come up with this idea (even Marge is impressed), but that he actually efficiently constructed it and put it into action? I dunno, but it’s not incredibly bothersome.

There’s a lot good about this show, but some parts don’t exactly fit right with me. I like Homer’s bravado attitude upon being dubbed the Beer Baron, and upon running out of supplies, he starts brewing his own liquor instead, with dozens of basement bathtubs all on the brink of explosion. Marge discovers Homer’s operation, and is unusually supportive of it. I could see her thinking the law is silly, but I don’t think she would support Homer in something like this. There’s also the matter of Rex Banner, who’s tough as nails, but also kind of ineffective, unable to apprehend Homer even with him right under his nose. But I’m not a fan of his expulsion by catapult, even though it never really bothered me until now. As one commenter astutely pointed out, this season is full of one-off characters getting killed, but I guess there’s a certain finesse you need to have to pull it off. Shary Bobbins was a cruel ironic joke at the last second of the show, the undoing of Frank Grimes is something the whole episode is building towards, but here, Banner is hoisted out merely for convenience only. It gives the ending a sourness that doesn’t feel necessary. But despite that, I like the overall story, and there’s a lot of great funny bits in here, so in light of the cruel, cruel death of Mr. Banner, this show gets a pass.

Tidbits and Quotes
– All the St. Paddy’s Day at the beginning is great, from Bart’s fatal mistake of not wearing green (“No one’s pinching his legs!”), Moe booting out the designated drivers (“I got no room for cheapskates,”) the Irish cops float, Marge’s green hair, and Kent Brockman’s shock at seeing the parade descend into drunken disorder (“All this drinking, violence, destruction of property. Are these the things we think of when we think of the Irish?”)
– Drunk Bart is pretty disconcerting and hilarious at the same time. I like his friends cheering him on, and Brockman’s cold echo of his drunk statements (“‘What are you looking at?’: the innocent words of a drunken child. Well, I’ll tell you what we’re looking at, young man. A town gone mad. A town whose very conscious was washed away in a tide of beer and green vomit.”)
– Marge feels she’s the worst mother in the world for what happened with Bart, and Homer assures her she’s not, citing “that freezer lady in Georgia.” Anyone want to shine light on what this is a reference to?
– When the fun police of Springfield demand prohibition, I love the responses from Quimby (“It tastes great, makes women appear more attractive, and makes a person virtually invulnerable to criticism.”) and from Wiggum (“All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have either been drunk or on cocaine.”)
– We get a quick look at Dr. Hibbert’s wife Bernice’s latent alcoholism. We don’t hear, or see, much from her, but perhaps there’s a reason.
– A wonderful call-back between acts: at the end of the first act, we see a newspaper sub-headline dovetailing the prohibition main story, “Bums Threaten to Leave Town.” Then at the start of act two, we see “Bums Extend Deadline.”
– Great bit with the CEO of Duff insisting that customers will stick with the brand now that it must release a non-alcoholic brew. Minutes later, the company is out of business (“Well, that’s the end of me.”)
– The animation of the partying at Moe’s is crazy. Wiggum dances with Princess Kashmir, with a tube top and breasts that laugh in the face of gravity. This leads to a great moment where Helen Lovejoy gets increasingly horrified when a tipsy Wiggum walks closer to her, and in a line delivery that you can hear shook the walls of the recording booth, she screams, “PERVERT!!!”
– Rex Banner’s brick wall in the middle of the highway with cars crashing and piling up is pretty dumb, but the reaction shot of him pleased with his work as jagged metal flies around by him is great. I also love his warming up to, but ultimate denial of Fat Tony’s bribes (“Okay. You win. From now on, we’ll stick to smuggling heroin.” “See that you do!”)
– The chase scene between Homer and Banner is kind of silly, but the over-the-top music helps it. The jangly ragtime number sort of fits the era Banner walked out of.
– Moe tells Barney a bowling ball beer’s gonna cost him a pretty penny (“Forty-five bucks?! This better be the best tasting beer in the world!”) Sip. “You got lucky!”
– I love how ruthless Banner is, smashing through the diner window to accost Barney. Then later we get the great scene with Moe’s safety switch, rotating the bar and stools for bird cages and aquariums to keep up his pet shop ruse (“What kind of pet shop is filled with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1 am?” “Uhh… the best damn pet shop in town!”) Banner is suspect, but leaves with a warning (“Baby turtles and alligators may seem like a cute idea for a pet, but they grow up.”) Moe changes his bar back, only to find Barney had rotated as well (“Wow, those gears down there really hurt!”)
– Homer and Bart’s beer brewing operation hits a snag when the stills start exploding. I love their scream in shock at the first one, and Homer’s cover to Marge (“I think it must have been that bean I had for dinner.”) Bean, singular.
– Great moment where Banner insists the “Beer Baron” was a concoction of the media, and that the very concept of such a person is laughable. He attempts to laugh to demonstrate, but is physically unable to (“Well, you all know what laughter sounds like!”)
– Upon being released, Quimby asks Homer how long it will take to get alcohol back to Springfield, but he insists he’s done with the business. Fat Tony swoops in, insisting it’ll take four minutes. Five minutes later, the town’s full of liquor again, giving us the classic final line from Homer: “To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

(originally aired February 16, 1997)
Honest depictions of gay people on TV have been slowly emerging in the last ten to fifteen years, but if you think back to when this episode aired, they weren’t very prevalent at all. Then again, I was a kid and don’t remember too well, so someone out there can confirm or deny this. But Wikipedia informs me Will & Grace was still a year away, and Ellen DeGeneres had come out the month this aired, and later on her TV show (that then tanked.) The Simpsons seems to have been ahead of the curve, but not in a self-righteous way, just in that they thought it would a fruitful topic to explore. It’s an interesting episode set when America was still very iffy about homosexuality. …well, iffy-er. The Simpson family finds themselves a new friend in John, the eccentric owner of a local antiques store. However, despite the incredibly obvious signs, Homer is absolutely shocked to discover that he’s gay, and wishes to cut off all ties with him. The rest of the family continues spending time with John, and Homer begins to fear that “the gay” will rub off on Bart. To combat this, he, Moe and Barney arrange a hunting trip so that Bart can shoot a helpless innocent animal to prove his manly manhood.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Homer’s exaggerated intolerance in this episode. On one hand, it comes from an understandable place. Homer is representative of the average American man (at the time, at least), who assumes the worst about gays because they’ve never met any, or are just too oblivious to acknowledge those who are. Homer’s as oblivious as they come, and the fact that John maybe, just maybe might bat for the other team didn’t even occur to him (I feel like in “Simpson and Delilah,” even after Karl kisses him, I bet Homer didn’t even think he was gay). Once Marge spills the beans to him, Homer flips out and spends the rest of the episode being completely (and hilariously) irrational (“Think of the property values! Now we can never say only straight people have been in this house!”) On that note, the allegedly telltale signs that Bart may be turning are just as ridiculous: picking pink snack treats over traditional chocolate (which is absurd since nobody likes Snoballs. Nobody), wearing Hawaiian shirts, and dancing to Betty Everett in a wig. Everything is ramped up to such an high level that it becomes absurdist, just as homophobia is in real life. But toward the end when Moe and Barney add more slightly realistic bigotry to the fire, it becomes a bit more depressing. Yes, their anti-gay viewpoints are played for laughs, but there really are assholes who think this stuff for real. The episode mostly avoids villifying Homer for his ignorant viewpoints, but there are one or two scenes that don’t quite pull it off.

John Waters plays John, who seems to just be playing himself, or at least how I imagine him to be from interviews and the like. He’s a wonderful one-off character, and the perfect foil for Homer’s battle of the sexual orientations. He plays off Homer’s accusations with gentle good humor, as I’m sure he’s dealt with hundreds of small-minded fellows just like him in the past. I also like how Bart becomes critical to the plot midway through, just getting dragged around by his father to various places without knowing why. The kicker, of course, is his critique about hunting, “Something about a bunch of guys alone together in the woods… seems kinda gay.” Also, despite the thick-headedness of his crusade, I did feel a little bad for Homer believing he’d failed as a parent, wishing he’d spent more time with his son to avert this “tragedy.” Even when he’s absolutely terribly misguided, there’s something about Homer’s earnesty that ellicts a positive response from me. John ends up saving Homer and Bart from some dangerous reindeer, which gives Homer newfound respect for the man. John sums up the message perfectly (“I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you’d be set.”) Although in terms of general viewpoints on gays, this is as relevant then as it is now fifteen years later, this is a real great episode, with a lot of laughs, an excellent performance by John Waters, and it ends up having a heart even alongside all of the hilarious bigotry.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The episode starts with Bart’s antics slapping the family with a $900 gas bill. They resort to selling an antiquity of Marge’s, which leads them to meet John… then the money issue is never brought up again. It’s a bit of a hanging plot thread. I dunno, maybe while visiting the Simpson house, John could have found some little knick knack that was unknowingly worth a pretty penny and bought it, which would get him in the family’s good graces even more. Just a thought.
– Nice campaign buttons at the antique store (“Quayle Can’t Fayle,” “Click for Dick”) and Skinner’s desire to find some non-partisan ones (“Don’t you have any neutral ones? ‘May the better man win’? ‘Let’s have a good, clean election’? That sort of thing?”) Also, a really minor point, but in the next scene, we focus on Bart and Lisa, and we see Skinner leaving the store in the background. Stuff like that makes things feel more cohesive, that each scene leads into the other, in that they weren’t separately and thoughtlessly produced.
– I love Homer’s strange defensiveness at John’s chiding of Jackie O’s poor crossword abilities (“Give her a break! Her husband was killed!”)
– That Johnny Reb liquor bottle is actually a pretty neat item. I like the cavalier way John just unscrews the top and drinks whatever contents may be inside (“That’ll make your bull run!”) Marge is understandably crestfallen over the exposure of her fradulent family heirloom (“I guess it’ll always be a monument to Grandma’s secret drinking problem.”)
– I love Homer’s confusion and inability to comprehend John’s love of camp, or even what camp is (“The tragically ludicrous?  The ludicrously tragic?” “Oh, yeah. Like when a clown dies.” “Well, sort of.”) Also, nice touch that Homer gave his Pin Pals shirt to Goodwill. At least he didn’t bury it like the Dancin’ Homer outfit.
– John is in heaven with the garish decore of the Simpson house, which is sort of a critique on the perpetually retro look of the show (“Pearls on a little girl? It’s a fairy tale!”)
– Great act break where Marge attempts to get Homer to realize John’s true colors (“Didn’t John seem a little… festive to you?” “Couldn’t agree more. Happy as a clam.” “He prefers the company of men!” “Who doesn’t?”)
– Homer’s upset that John, according to him, should have acted more gay so it would be obvious to him (how much more did he need?), giving us this classic line (“I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexual flaming!”)
– As per any homophobe, Homer’s internal logic is full of holes. The only people who wear Hawaiian shirts are gays and big fat party animals, so it’s okay if he wears one. Later, he gleefully hums the “Shoop Shoop Song,” but is horrified to find Bart dancing to it. There’s so many instances of Homer acting effeminate in the past, the list would go on forever, so there’s so much delicious irony laced in this episode.
– When John confronts him, Homer gets more vehement. Only someone as lovable as Homer can make an ignorant hate speech hilarious (“They’re embarrassing America. They turned the Navy into a floating joke. They ruined all our best names like Bruce, and Lance, and Julian. Those were the toughest names we had!”) He also takes displeasure of John using the word ‘queer’ (“That’s our word for making fun of you! We need it!:)
– Homer’s mission to straighten Bart out (ha ha ha) is fantastic: first he sits him in front of a cigarette billboard featuring two sexy ladies having a pillow fight for two hours, with not-so-effective results. Bart feels like he wants a smoke afterwards. which Homer thinks is a good start until Bart mentions he’d like “anything slim.” Then we have the steel mill scene which… words cannot properly explain the brilliance that unfolds. It’s one of the best scenes in show history just because it’s off-the-wall crazy bonkers insane (“You’re all sick!!” “Oh, be nice!”) My best friend in high school put “We work hard, we play hard” as one of his senior quotes (attributed to “Anonymous Steel Mill Worker,”) and I am forever respectful for him for it. I also love how it carries into the start of the third act. Homer finishes his story at Moe’s (“…and the entire steel mill was gay.”) If you were just tuning in, what the hell would you have thought happened before the commercial break?
– When their hunting trip proves futile, Moe tries to cheer Homer up, that maybe they can try taking Lisa out hunting and make her a man. Homer says she wouldn’t since she’s a vegetarian. Moe is dumbstruck (“You and Marge ain’t cousins, are you?”)
– I love John’s explanation for why the reindeer fled his mechanical Santa (“Well the sound is just brutal, and I figured reindeer would naturally be afraid of their cruel master Santa Claus. I mean, wouldn’t you be?”)
– One of the best endings of the series: spending the whole episode in the dark, Bart is stunned that his father thinks he’s gay. Cut to C&C Music Factory as John’s car drives off into the night. Then we get the final message: “Dedicated to The Steelworkers of America. Keep Reaching For That Rainbow!” Incredible.

(originally aired February 9, 1997)
This is a ridiculously meta, self-aware episode, and I love it for some of the same reasons that I don’t. It’s conflicting, but I appreciate most of what’s being done. It lambasts market research, bonehead executives who blindly follow said research, critical dog-piling, and a disturbing late-90s trend that John K. scornfully referred to as “tude.” But let’s just get into it: ratings show that “Itchy & Scratchy” isn’t pulling in the viewers anymore, so the head honchos formulate a new idea to introduce a new character to shape things up, and promote the hell out of him. Said character is Poochie the dog, a hip, rapping surfer who takes no guff from no one. After chewing out the director, Homer finds himself hired to do the voice of Poochie, something he takes with an unusual sense of pride. The tide turns after the new episode airs and is met with unanimous hatred from hardcore fans and critics alike. Not even an impassioned speech from Homer can stop the I & S folks from abruptly killing off the Pooch and give the people what they want: the same cat & mouse formula they’ve had for the last eight years.

In this show, we see “Itchy & Scratchy” is a long-running, much beloved and aggressively merchandised cartoon experiencing a slight slump in popularity mostly due to its longevity. Sound familiar? The writers seem to have made this episode as a coping mechanism for their current predicament; it ain’t easy keeping a hit show fresh and afloat for so many years. There’s a lot of fantastic stuff in this episode. Lindsay Naegle, in her first appearance, is absolutely brilliant as the TV executive, attempting to spark the creative process as soullessly as possible (“I feel we should Rasta-fy him by… ten percent or so.”) As a concept, Poochie is hilarious, representative of what stuffed suits in their 50s imagine what’s “hip” and “cool” for today’s youth. I’ve suffered through many characters and entire shows with stuff like this in it (see: Rocket Power,) so Poochie rings very true to me (even more hysterical on the commentary, some writers said that their kids loved Poochie un-ironically, so I guess it worked more than they thought). He’s the perfect example of a character created by focus groups, not by a creative spark from an actual person.

For all the good stuff this episode has, there’s a vein throughout the whole thing that seems kind of petty, when we get to the third act especially. The scene with Comic Book Guy and Bart, which is basically the fans versus the writers, is pretty egregious. We get “Worst episode ever” out of CBG though, so that’s good, as he expresses his displeasure out of the Poochie show. Bart then goes on a tirade about how those poor writers have been providing hundreds of hours of entertainment for free and you owe them. Not only does it not feel right that Bart is saying this, but it’s a little too on-the-nose, don’t you think? And what does that mean, for free? We’re not paying anything, but the people involved with the show are getting good money to produce quality entertainment, so that’s what we expect when we turn on our TV sets. It’s also especially ironic that this episode is basically at the peak before the show starts its inevitable descent into horribleness. So it’s our fault, right? As Lisa says, “We should thank our lucky stars that they’re still putting on a program of this caliber after so many years.” In other words, shut up and keep watching. But in spite of all the egregious inserted messages, the episode is still sharp in its criticism of the ridiculous television process, and select jokes targeted against nerdy superfans like you and me. Ribbing is fine, “if you don’t like this, you’re ungrateful” is not.

Tidbits and Quotes
– We get some great Itchy & Scratchys here. First, Scratchy ends up bungee jumping over a volcano with his intestines thanks to Itchy, who then pours gasoline down his system so he’ll burst into flames. Then later they do the old William Tell routine, but thankfully Itchy’s arrow misses… poking a hole in the giant tank of acid Scratchy’s been standing behind.
– Great sign on Krusty’s door (“Cleaning crew: the liquor is not for you.”) It slightly confused me that Krusty is the one chewing Meyers out, since it’s not like he’s his boss. I guess it makes sense since the cartoons are killing stock on his program, but it’s just a little out of sorts since later we see the executives calling all the shots.
– Marge lets Bart and Lisa go off on their own at the mall, but tells them to be careful. So when a stranger asks them to come with him, the two kids agree whole-heartily. They’re put in a focus group for Itchy & Scratchy, which is a great scene: the totally not suspicious sneezing mirror, Ralph eating the knob (“Please refrain from tasting the knob,”) Nelson messing with Milhouse’s trigger (“They like Itchy, they like Scratchy, one kid seems to love the Speedo man,”) and Meyers’s outburst toward the kids, leading to Ralph crying and turning the knob in kind.
– The I&S writers are of course the Simpsons writers, and each of their egghead quips are quickly squashed or ignored by the executives (“We’re talking the original dog from hell.” “You mean Cerberus?”) Naegle outlines what Poochie will be (“He’s edgy, he’s ‘in your face.’ You’ve heard the expression ‘let’s get busy’? Well, this is a dog who gets ‘biz-zay’! Consistently and thoroughly.”) One of the writers (George Meyer) points out the obvious, with a price (“Excuse me, but ‘proactive’ and ‘paradigm’? Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that. …I’m fired, aren’t I?” “Oh, yes.”) Later, David Silverman (complete with a tuba in his office) is designing the character with the executives over his shoulder barking at him. His first pass looks exactly as Poochie would eventually look, but the execs aren’t sold. The artists darkens his sunglasses. Now it’s perfect.
– I like how understated Roy is, as if he’s been there the whole time. It really works, as I’m sure there’s been executives breathing down the writers necks about putting in a new hip young character that the kids will enjoy, and this is their chance to mock them for it.
– Nice back-and-forth between Homer and Bart when they learn of the Poochie audition (“Haven’t you ever listened to yourself on a tape recorder?” “I prefer to listen to Cheap Trick.”) I also like Homer’s smooth DJ voice he does on tape, and his horror at how his voice sounds played back.
– Even the hardcore stoner Otto is shocked by the I&S change (“A talking dog! What were you guys smokin’ when you came up with that?” “We were eating rotisserie chicken.”)
– Nice animation reference in June Bellamy, obviously a stand-in for June Foray, famous cartoon voice actress of Rocky the squirrel, Granny from classic Looney Tunes, and hundreds of others. It’s also great that she’s voiced by Tress MacNeille, arguably one of the biggest, most versatile voice actresses working today, who then also does the voices of Itchy & Scratchy, who are Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer respectively. I like the respectful relationship she develops with Homer (“Is this cartoon going on the air live?” “No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live, it’s a terrible strain on the animators’ wrists.”)
– Classic bit at the voice actor Q&A where one of the college nerds complains about a minute error in an episode (“In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.”) Homer is quick on the defense (“Let me ask you a question. Why would a man whose shirt says ‘Genius at Work’ spend all of his time watching a children’s cartoon show?”) The nerd shamefully withdraws his question, opening a candy bar to drown his sorrow.
– I love the massive build-up for Poochie, that it’s the greatest television event since the moon landing. I feel networks end up shooting themselves in the foot when they promote shit like this so heavily, to the level that it can’t possibly meet expectations.
– Poochie’s first episode is great, consisting of the show stopping dead in its tracks for him to do his rap and some extreme sports. I love Homer’s “Quiet, you’re missing the jokes!” then cut to Poochie biking up a ramp and dunking a basketball to extreme music. No one likes the show, not even the family can put on their game faces. Or Homer’s brain for that matter (“Oh, you don’t want to know what I really think. Now look sad and say ‘D’oh’.”)
– Nice backpedal from Naegle, the typical network executive covering her ass when her foolproof idea is a flop (“I’d attribute the product failure to fundamental shifts in our key demographic, coupled with the overall crumminess of Poochie.”) Homer has his own notes for how the show can be improved (“One, Poochie needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Poochie’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking ‘Where’s Poochie’?”)
– Homer demands the writers record his own lines to save Poochie. Bellamy reads as Itchy, “Hi, Poochie. You look like you’ve got something to say. Do you?” Homer replies as Poochie, “Yes, I certainly do.” Then he immediately switches to his regular voice, giving his little speech, a quick bit I always laugh at. And I don’t know why, since it never made much sense why Homer was so passionate about this character, but I always kind of tear up at his last-ditch plea. Maybe it’s the emotional music or something. Kinda silly (“Hello there, Itchy. I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like me and wish I would go away. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I know I can come off a little proactive, and for that I’m sorry. But if everyone could find a place in their hearts for the little dog that nobody wanted, I know we can make them laugh and cry until we grow old together.”)
– Homer vows the next Poochie episode will be “bigger than ten Super Bowls,” but he doesn’t want to oversell it, another line I use quite often. And of course, the wonderfully crummy way Poochie leaves us (“I have to go now. My planet needs me.”) They couldn’t even be bothered to animate anything, they just manually move his animation cel out of frame and out of the show forever. That’s how little they cared, or felt the audience would care, about Poochie. The Krusty show segment ends with the reveal of a sworn and signed affidavit that the character would never, ever return. Homer closes the story by summarizing his experience (“The thing is, I lost creative control of the project. And I forgot to ask for any money. Well, live and learn.”)