Original airdate: October 4, 2020

The premise: Homer and Marge’s squabbling at a museum prompts a curator to regale them with the tale of the Roman Obeseus, an ambitious slave who rose to greater and greater stations in life at the urgings of his power hungry wife.

The reaction: The non-Treehouse of Horror trilogy episodes are always pretty dull to me, even the earliest examples like “Bibles Stories” and “Tall Tales.” I just don’t really care that much about seeing these characters in fantasy scenarios, and it especially grows tiresome when it’s the length of the entire episode. I felt the same way here as I did with the season premiere a few years back “The Serfsons,” where despite the extra amount of work by the animation team to create a new reality for one episode, I’m just left wondering what I’m supposed to get out of it. Who cares about Homer and Marge’s Roman analogues? The episode certainly didn’t make me care. The fantasy is prompted by Marge complaining about Homer not going to a training seminar at work, rightfully upset that he’s been stuck in the same job for a decade and wishing he had greater ambition to better financially care for his family. An eavesdropping museum curator relates their argument to the famous Roman Obeseus (Homer), a slave-turned-gladiator who ends up impregnating, later marrying his master’s daughter Marjora (Marge). Through the episode, Marge acts as the worm in Homer’s ear, getting him to expand his business, become senator by killing one to earn himself a seat, and later taking it upon herself to murder the emperor, only to place their son Bartigula (Bart) in his place after Homer balks at her power-hungry ways. Marge is basically playing the Lady MacBeth role, a woman using her husband to commit awful deeds to advance herself, a dynamic we’ve already seen over a decade ago in season 20’s “Four Great Women and a Manicure” where Marge urged Homer to kill all the other actors so he could take the lead in a “MacBeth” play. The twist in that segment was sort of fresh, but here it’s just played straight in a new setting, and it’s just boring, as we see Homer and Marge rise to a new status, Marge gets greedy, and then they rise again, repeat. Also, this is supposed to be a story reflecting modern day Homer and Marge’s disagreement, so Marge wishing Homer take his job more seriously for the sake of the family’s financial security is mirrored with Marjora manipulating and murdering people to seek the highest position of power in the country. In the end, the Simpson family squabble about the moral of the story, leaving the curator to lament with the final line, “When will humanity ever learn to stop letting stupid people into museums?” But honestly, what’s the point of these episodes? Do people really like them? They feel like such pointless exercises, especially in this case given they’re redoing a story they already did over ten years ago, and in a third of the time.

Three items of note:
– One of Obeseus’ slaves, Carl has a couple lines in the third act, but he’s performed by Hank Azaria. This episode is actually right before “Undercover Burns” in production order, so maybe that’s when they made the official change, and I guess they didn’t feel like paying Alex Désert to loop a few lines.
– When Obeseus’ family moves to the richer side of Rome, we are treated to a musical montage set to the theme from The Jeffersons sung in Latin, complete with on-screen lyrics. It took me a couple lines to even get what they were going for. The Jeffersons has been off the air for 35 years now, and we’re doing a reference to it now? But I feel like I always make the same point when talking about the show’s approach to pop culture parodies. I complain if the reference is too dated and irrelevant, but in the case of something like The Avengers or Succession, it’s still coming too late after the Internet or other media content with quicker production cycles have gotten in all of their jokes on the subject. But regardless of all of that, these jokes would still work if they were funny, and the majority of the time, they’re not. Of course, this is all subjective, but what’s the big joke here? That they rewrote the lyrics to the song in Latin? Are there other jokes in there that I’d have to translate the words to find out? Who cares?
– Bartigula’s ruthless reign as emperor contains obvious allegories to Donald Trump’s presidency, with him stoking xenophobia, putting up a wall, refusing to cede power and some pretty obvious on-the-nose dialogue (“He’s just an entitled little psycho! Society must come to its sense and overthrow this madman!”) I mean, it’s not like Trump is the first leader in history to do these sorts of things, to be fair, but it’s all very clear what they’re doing. It reminded me of those short digital Trump shorts they’ve been putting out over the last three years or so. I’ve only seen two of them, and they are maybe the worst content this show’s ever produced. In addition to being poorly animated, as I assume most if not all of their production is done stateside, it’s on the level of Saturday Night Live-grade putrid neoliberal “satire” where it’s all just the most simplistic, softball jabs at Trump that every other late night show or other venues have been beating to death. I’m sure there’ll be some kind of election-related cold open before whatever episode airs November 1st, and I can’t wait to cringe myself out of existence watching it.

1. Kamp Krusty

• Bart’s locker combination 36-24-36 is yet another entry on the long, long list of jokes that flew by me as a kid. Also, the design of his filthy locker is just wonderful. I feel like this is an unintentional callback, but you can see his science experiment potato from “Dead Putting Society” in there.
  
• “Here are your final report cards. I have nothing left to say to any of you, so if nobody minds, let’s just quietly run out the clock.”
• My first go-around writing this blog was right when I finished college, where up to that point, the concept of summer vacation as a student was still fresh in my head. Now, almost ten years later, as the idea of summer break becomes even more of a distant and wistful memory, the big countdown to the final bell letting school out feels so pure, truly capturing the absolute joy of those wonderful three months every year where you could just do absolutely fuck all as a kid.
• Krusty slapping his cheek in astonishment at the fat kid’s magic transformation always makes me laugh. The single cheek slap has been used to hysterical effect two other times I can recall, once in a Troy McClure infomercial, and the other from Patty & Selma (“Five cents off wax paper.”)
• We set up the “conflict” that Bart’s bad grades might keep him from Kamp Krusty, but I love that not only is that concern eliminated by Homer immediately by the end of act one, but we get it through not one, but two solid jokes (“Now Bart, we made this deal because I thought it would help you get good grades. And you didn’t. But why should you pay for my mistake?” “You mean I can go?” “Yeah. I didn’t want you hangin’ around all summer anyway.”) These days, even dialogue that moves the story along is filled with great, memorable lines.
• “Image Enhancement Camp” (“Spare me your euphemisms! It’s fat camp for Daddy’s chubby little secret!”)
• “Gentlemen, to evil.”
  
• “I feel like I’m gonna die, Bart.” “We’re all gonna die, Lis.” “I meant soon.” “So did I.” I love this exchange so much, and it’s a great example of dialogue I feel wouldn’t really fly with live-action sitcom kids.
• Krusty enjoying his strawberries at Wimbledon is another heavily memed frame in the shitposting community. It’s especially great when paired with Darryl Strawberry.
  
• “We want Krunchy! We want Krunchy!”
• It’s great that they gave Krusty three identifying marks on his body for the purposes of the ending, but outside of “Bart the Fink,” have they ever been mentioned ever again? Certainly not in the other instances we see Krusty shirtless. But whatever.
• Another great shot from the writers at FOX’s excessive merchandising of the show (“How could you, Krusty? I’d never lend my name to an inferior product.”)

2. A Streetcar Named Marge

• I love the dissonance of the beauty pageant contestants earnestly singing “Seventeen.” It actually bookends really nicely with the final song of the play, “You Can Always Depend on the Kindness of Strangers,” another upbeat number that humorously clashes with its context.
• One of the many times we see Bart and Lisa on the couch in the opening, we see them lying down kicking their legs back and forth against each other. This is another one of those incredibly sweet, human acting touches. They could have just been sitting there normally, but someone decided to have them doing this, and considering they’re little kids who’ve been watching a beauty pageant for a few hours, it makes perfect sense they’d be a little restless on the couch.
  
• Llewellyn Sinclair is my favorite Jon Lovitz performance in the series, hands down. His bravado, his heightened sense of passion and importance laid upon this community play of a ridiculous musical performed by complete amateurs, Sinclair gives his absolute all, as does Lovitz to this boisterous and forceful character. Almost all of his lines are so memorable (“Mrs. Simpson, if you set out to push the bile to the tip of my throat, mission accomplished!”) And that wardrobe!
  
• It’s never addressed, but it’s a great touch that we see several bullet wounds in Apu’s chest when he’s shirtless.
• The scene of Homer asking Marge in bed about coming to the play is the quintessential example of writing Homer callously insensitive, but still genuine. He’s pretty rude to Marge through the whole episode, which of course is the point, but his actions are always born out of either obliviousness or stupidity (or oftentimes both). He openly admits he’s never had an interest in any of Marge’s “kooky projects” (“The painting class, the first aid course, the whole Lamaze thing…”), but when pressed as to why he never told her that, he earnestly replies, “You know I’d never say anything to hurt your feelings.” It’s a tremendous line, but it also perfectly exemplifies Homer: he doesn’t know what he’s saying and doing is hurtful, and it’s incredibly clear to the audience that we know that. Later characterizations of Homer would depict him being too self-aware of the irritation or hurt his actions cause his wife and kids, despite continuing to do them anyway, and the tone would be much more sour and harder to swallow.
• Ayn Rand’s School for Tots is a great set piece (the sign “Helping is Futile” is a particularly brilliant touch.) Watching Maggie’s great pacifier liberation made me think back to the “Longest Daycare” short that took place in the same location, and to a lesser extent, the more recent “Playdate with Destiny.” All three are extended nonverbal stories featuring Maggie, but within this episode, it’s an enjoyable little side story that doesn’t overstay its welcome, is filled with good jokes and actually feels like it’s about something important. As silly as it may be, the babies recovering their confiscated pacifiers as a story definitely holds more narrative weight than Maggie saving a caterpillar or her little playground romance or whatever. Those theatrical shorts are just so treacly and empty-feeling, especially “Playdate.”
• Herman is inexplicably in the chorus of the musical, and it’s a great touch that in the opening number, at one point as the cast is gesturing to the audience with their right hands, we see Herman perfectly mimic them, just with no arm to do it with.
• “Oh, Streetcar!” is fucking brilliant. I’m sure I gushed about it enough in my initial review, but I just love it so much. The Planet of the Apes musical is a close second, but “Streetcar” has more songs, the added charm of seeing our favorite Springfielders act and sing their hearts out, and the added narrative dissonance of making a bright and peppy musical out of such a dark story, most evident in the final number, which is just so, so, soooo goddamn good.

3. Homer the Heretic

• I love the gleeful enthusiasm Homer gets out of being able to freely swear in the house (“You bet your sweet… ass!”)
• The animation in this episode is really outstanding. Even from the start, there were so many great moments that felt like they had extra care put into them, and the way the characters moved and reacted seemed even more pronounced than usual. Homer assembling his special “moon waffles” is a particularly lovely piece of animation.
  
• Homer mispronouncing “These Things I Believe” as “This” when he’s looking right at the record jacket is so great, as is Bill’s hushed, “Can we accept that?” before awarding him the winner.
• The “Stand By” card for the Public Affairs show might be the best one of the entire series.
  
• I love that act two starts with Marge attempting to scrape the remnants of Homer’s indulgent breakfast off the waffle iron. These little callbacks are great because they make the world feel more tangible, where a character’s actions feel more “real” because we see the outcome. It also adds an extra layer of frustration on top of Marge’s already frazzled state at her husband rejecting his faith. And on top of that, it shows the downside to Homer’s newfound hedonism, that it’s all fun and games until someone has to clean up the mess afterwards. All of this communicated by the first five seconds of act two.
• “And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we’re just making God madder and madder!” I feel like this line was one of the early instigators of my future agnosticism.
• God having five fingers was a touch I always enjoyed as a kid, but what are the implications of this? If He made the Simpsons in His own image, why would he leave off a finger? Or is this God actually the real God, visiting his animated creations? But then why would he be yellow? Of course, then we have to remember that this is just God as represented in Homer’s dream, which only raises further questions about his appearance. It’s just interesting to think about. I also love that Harry Shearer voices both God and Satan. And Hitler.
• I’ve always loved that the thing that cinches Homer’s rejection of faith after Marge pleads with him for one last time is “Coming up next: make your own ladder.” The most banal thing ever that Homer should have next to no interest in.
• I don’t know if I ever really processed that the Kwik-E-Mart “employee lounge” Apu refers to is just a dingy old closet. I guess I was always focused on Homer reacting to Ganeesha and didn’t really register that as a joke. Is that just me? Another example of how jam-packed these scripts were back then, without ever feeling bloated.
• I previously gushed about how pretty the fire in “Flaming Moe’s” looked, and the third act with the Simpson house on fire just turns that up to eleven. The whole episode looks amazing, but the ending is really gorgeous. Ned saving Homer from the ravaging flames is actually pretty intense given how amazing everything looks. But the best moment, of course, is Homer being shoved off the second story and bouncing back through the window. The gag is executed just perfectly, and I loved Ned’s “Okay…” In one word, Harry Shearer perfectly communicates his discouragement, but it’s clear he’s not giving up.
  
• My one criticism of the episode is that after Homer is saved from the burning house, we don’t really need the four or five joke moments with the firefighters, the insurance agent, Kent Brockman and such. We already had the emotional climax of Homer’s story, and then we have to go through a bunch of disconnected gags to get to the final resolution.

4. Lisa the Beauty Queen

• Skinner beating the snot out of vulturous Disney lawyers is another example of both how much better Skinner was when he had a spine, and of how truly bizarre it is this show is now streaming on Disney+. What once was mocking Disney’s brutal stranglehold on copyright law is now owned by that very company.
• I love that Milhouse is inexplicably wearing a scout’s uniform before he goes into Jimbo’s Spookhouse. I don’t know if it’s a remnant of a cut scene, but it makes him look even more naive and impressionable at the start, which strengthens the joke.
• “If I could gouge out somebody else’s eyes and shove them into my sockets I would, but to me, she’s beautiful!” This episode is another crowning example on how best to write Homer: entering Lisa into the beauty pageant is maybe the worst thing he could have done for her (and telling her he submitted the caricature with the application is like pouring salt into the wound), but Homer’s intentions are 100% genuine.
• Child beauty pageants really are perverse and bizarre. This episode felt really ahead of its time, given ensuing hit shows like Toddlers & Tiaras and Dance Moms.
• “Taping your swimsuit to your butt, petroleum jelly on your teeth for that frictionless smile, and the ancient art of padding.” Bart’s extensive knowledge of beauty pageants is a bit odd, but as a curious little boy starting to get interested in girls, I guess I’ll buy that he’s interested in watching pageants (he literally watched one two episodes ago.) His adeptness of walking in heels is another story…
• “My name is Lisa Simpson, and I want to be Li’l Miss Springfield so I can make our town a better place!” “Yeah! Clean up this stinkhole!”
• Introducing her dance act, Lisa talks about how some folks think being patriotic is uncool, “real Melvin.” What the hell is that expression? Google searching it, the first hit is someone asking the same question, referring to this episode, and then several different posts about guys named Melvin. Has anybody heard this saying? Anyway, I’ve always loved the frantic animation of Lisa dancing.
  
• Not just any show can make an eight-year-old girl getting struck by lightning funny, but this show finds a way (“Doctor, what is Amber’s condition?” “Oh, she’ll be fine. In fact, she already won the Little Miss Intensive Care pageant.”)
• “Love that chewing gum walk.” “Very Wrigley!” Bless these two little perverts.
  
• Tremendous poster design. I also never noticed that when Lisa looks out horrified at the crowd of smoking children holding cigarettes, there’s a pregnant woman smoking too. It goes by really quick, but I’m surprised they got away with that.
  
• Invigorated, Lisa pledges to use her newfound powers to expose society’s ills, from dog napping to cigarettes. Her example of dog napping always struck me as odd. Thinking of indiscretions that would be of interest to children, and not major enough that she could actually do something about, I guess it sort of makes sense.
• I feel I have the opposite issue with this ending as I did with “Homer the Heretic,” it wraps up too quickly. I could have gone for one or two more scenes of Lisa as Li’l Miss Springfield trying to make a difference before we get to Quimby desperately trying to silence her.

5. Treehouse of Horror III

• Now that we’re at our third Halloween special, the warning at the open feels appropriately snarky, like you should know what you’re getting yourselves into by now and we don’t care if you get upset by it. Swapping Marge for Homer feels like the right move (“You see, there are some cry babies out there, religious types mostly, who might be offended. If you are one of them, I advise you to turn off your set now.”)
• The famous “That’s good” ”That’s bad” back-and-forth always feels off to me just because the lip sync is all wrong, since the bit was clearly written after the animation was completed and they retrofit the shots as best they could to match. I can forgive when they do this for a one-off line, but for an entire exchange, it just looks too weird.
• The evil shopkeeper gives Homer the Krusty doll loose, but when he gifts it to Bart, we see that it’s in its original packaging! Boy, I hope somebody was fired for that blunder.
• “And in environmental news, scientists have announced that Springfield’s air is now only dangerous to children and the elderly.”
• “There goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality.” It’s hard hearing this line not thinking about Patty’s eventual reveal as a lesbian, but I think it functions a lot better considering we know her at this point to be non-romantic, with the line acting as a swearing off of men rather than her sexuality. I wonder if someone on staff in the 2000s recalled this line and was like, “Hey! I know who we can make gay!” I’d rather not remember that episode any further though…
• Ah, nothing beats getting a perfectly looping gif.
  
• “King Homer” is a really beautiful segment, with great visual cues taken from the classic film. Speaking of cues, Alf Clausen’s music is just lovely as well. There’s a lot of great animated moments, but my particular favorite is when King Homer busts out of his torso chain, with his huge belly bulging out to break the lock. It goes by so quick but feels so wonderfully cartoony.
  
• “Wow! Look at the size of that platform!” never fails to make me laugh.
• “He’s not dead!” “No, but his career is. I remember when Al Jolson ran amok at the Winter Garden and climbed the Chrysler building. After that, he couldn’t get arrested in this town.”
• “Find Waldo Yet Again.” I love the little kid standing and pointing at him. For some reason, he reminds me of a Life in Hell drawing.
  
• Great Easter eggs in the pet cemetery featuring headstones of the numerous primetime animated shows that tried to ape off the show’s early success, all failing within one year on the air (Capitol Critters, Fish Police, Family Dog). I’m sure they’re all awful, but I’d be curious to watch at least one episode of these shows one day. Family Dog was actually created by Brad Bird, who I imagine took this jab with good humor. The Wikipedia page for the show intrigues me more. Here’s one choice quote, “Delayed for years and panned by critics, the show has been called one of the biggest fiascos in television animation history, on both a creative and commercial level, in spite (but, in many ways, because of) the high-powered talent behind the project.”
• Mrs. Krabappel is oddly one of the first zombies shown in the crowd at the school, and the very first one that Homer shoots dead. I imagine Bart had no complaints.
• “Excuse me, I’m John Smith.” “John Smith, 1882?” “My mistake!”

Original airdate: September 27, 2020

The premise: Discouraged when he discovers his employees don’t like him, Mr. Burns goes undercover in the plant as an average Joe named Fred thanks to a robotic body suit, and ends up reveling in his newfound friendship with Homer and his chums.

The reaction: Any episode featuring Mr. Burns actually caring about what normal people think about him is a non-starter for me. The man relishes in being in an elevated position from lowly commoners, barely treating them like fellow human beings. Despite that, I think it’s possible to craft a story that believably shows Burns appealing for actual human connection, but from “Monty Can’t Buy Me Love” to this latest outing, these episodes ain’t it, chief. The inciting incident setting Burns off is finding unflattering graffiti of himself in the dirty men’s bathroom, which shocks him (“They hate me!” he gasps). To rectify this, he does what any normal person would do: put on an expensive robotic suit and ingratiate himself within the plant, posing as normal employee Fred Kranepool. Homer, Lenny and Carl quickly take a liking to him, and Burns quickly finds himself swept up in the new sensation known as friendship. But as usual with this show, none of it actually feels impactful. The guys become best buddies with Fred because that needs to happen for the story to continue, not for anything he really does to connect with them. But I guess that’s not the point, it’s about Burns experiencing friendship for the first time, which we see mostly over a montage, and then through turning the plant into a worker’s paradise, with health benefits, lunchroom options and extraneous benefits abound, running the company at the brink of bankruptcy, much to Smithers’ chagrin. Like I said before, an episode where Burns learns to be a decent person might work in another context. Perhaps he hears that creating a more comfortable work environment leads to happier workers, leading to greater efficiency, so Burns becomes more personable and giving only because the plant will be more profitable, but then grapples with having actual human emotion for once. Instead, Burns loses himself in his alter ego (“There is no Mr. Burns. Only Fred!“) and ends up having to battle with its fractured exoskeleton like out of a Terminator movie or something. It’s pretty darn stupid. In the end, Burns still laments, “Why can’t I be loved and feared?,” but I still don’t buy it. Again, Burns wakes up with a smile on his face each and every morning because he’s in a position of ultimate power above the average man. It’s a core part of his character’s DNA, and if you’re going to tweak it, you need to give me a compelling motivation, not because he saw some scribblings on the bathroom stall that made him go cry cry. A sad whimper of a premiere.

Three items of note:
– Over the summer it was announced that the show would no longer use white actors to portray non-white characters, so here in the season premiere, we have our first replacement, Alex Désert as the new voice of Carl. It’s not perfect, but he definitely captures the basic essence of the character, and presumably will get even stronger as he makes more and more appearances. I don’t really want to talk a whole bunch about the larger issue of performers voicing outside their own races, but just like the Apu “controversy,” this whole thing shines a strong light on this series being really out-of-place still being around in 2020. I’d see people making lists of characters needing to be recast, and they were either incredibly short or padded with characters we haven’t seen in over a decade. Of the hundred or so majority recurring characters on this series, maybe seven of them are non-white? And that makes perfect sense, this is a show from the 1990s that’s still creaking and scraping along three decades later. I guess recasting is a nice gesture… I guess? But at this point, in season 32, really, what does it matter? Outside of maybe Apu, the other major POC characters are secondary at best, and they don’t appear all that often, would it matter that much if Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer just kept doing the voices? For brand new shows like Big Mouth or Central Park having main black characters voiced by white actors, I get the problem, but in this case, it feels a bit more pointless, just because The Simpsons is an ancient dinosaur that no one really cares about outside of the few diehard fans still clinging to this show until the end, and dopes like me that have blogs bitching and complaining about it.
– Speaking of voices, I got incredibly sad hearing Marge speak for the first time. Julie Kavner’s voice has been on the downward spiral, but she just sounds so grated and tired here. I don’t know if this is a result of her recording from home rather than a studio, or maybe it feels “worse” because I’ve been watching the first couple seasons of the show lately, but it’s just a real bummer to hear. Having just turned 70 this year, Kavner’s been an absolute trooper through the entire series, and presumably she’s still in pretty good shape for her age, but Marge really is sounding more and more like her mother with each passing season.
– Mr. Burns finally breaks from his Fred character due to Lenny openly mocking and insulting Burns in front of him, but there’s two issues with this. First, in all the time they’ve all spent together paling around, there’s no way the guys haven’t shit talked the boss in front of their new “friend.” Second, this all happens after Burns has given the employees everything they’ve ever asked for and more, so Lenny and everyone else should be loving him at this point.

19. Dog of Death

• The writing of the lottery commercial is absolute genius; “Why don’t you win the lottery too!” is the perfect manipulative call to action, unfazed by the presumably legally required disclaimer admitting the astronomical odds of winning.
• Homer’s lotto fever gives us two hilariously delivered lines: first his slow build in breaking the news to Marge (“I have a feeling… that we may win… the lottery!!”) and later him yelling at Abe after he says he “knew” they wouldn’t win (“Why did you keep it a secret?!”)
• Great newspaper subheadline: President, Rock Star to Swap Wives.
• ALL HAIL KING HOMER.
  
• It feels very appropriate for the world of this show that the rich get richer when Kent Brockman wins the lottery, and on the flipside of this, we see the lottery commission’s gift to Springfield’s public schools: one eraser. Skinner is rightfully pissed and rants to camera before getting cut off. Again, Skinner is much funnier as an authoritarian dork than a spineless wuss.
• I don’t remember seeing this episode televised, but that first act break cutting to black on a shot of a motionless Santa’s Little Helper is pretty damn harrowing. When we come back, Bart immediately assures, “He’s not dead,” but I can imagine that being a slightly worrying few minutes of commercials.
• It’s not callous enough that the overly passionate vet tosses the recently deceased bright pink hamster in a waste basket, but it’s got a little basketball hoop attached to it. Fantastic.
• There’s two great acting moments in the scene where Homer is talking about the wonders of Doggie Heaven. Bart isn’t following why his father is waxing on about this at first, but when he finally asks if this has something to do with Santa’s Little Helper, we see Lisa in the background make an exasperated expression, clearly pitying her brother being slow on the uptake. A few moments later, Bart is very distressed at the dawning reality of losing his best pal, but when he asks Homer, “You’re gonna just let him die?,” he covers the dog’s ears before he says it. What a wonderful, childlike touch.
• “Fried chicken night will now be organ meat night. Ham night will be Spam night. And pork chop night will now be chub night.”
• Of all the family members’ monetary sacrifices after Santa’s Little Helper gets his operation, Lisa’s is the most on the nose: after ending her subscription to her by-mail encyclopedias, she ends up having to do a report on Copernicus, the very subject she would have gotten in her next installment. Later, she annoyedly grumbles to the dog, “Can’t you see I’m reading a third-rate biography of Copernicus I found at the bus station?” This is one of those lines that effortlessly communicates like three jokes at once. Not only was Lisa trawling for reading material at the bus station, and not only did she actually find a biography of Copernicus, what are the absolutely unlikely odds of that, but she’s still pissed since she considers it a subpar biography. So great.
• What a great collection of family photos.
  

• Seeing LBJ hoisting the dog by the ears in the nightmare filmstrip reminded me of the absolutely extraordinary video from earlier this year of Mike Bloomberg grabbing a dog by the snout in an attempt to either pet him, or shake his… nose? I can barely even remember the details, since it feels like his presidential run happened years ago at this point. Remember those halcyon pre-pandemic days when that despicable ghoul burned through millions trying to run for President? Those were the days, man…
• Is Burns sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber a reference to the rumors of Michael Jackson doing the same? Either way, Burns’ half-hearted, slightly muffled “Release the hounds” always makes me laugh.
• “You can pet the cat.” “What’s the point?” Well said, Homer.

20. Colonel Homer

• All I can think of watching Homer squeeze his way into the compact spot is that parking lots across Los Angeles are full of super small compact spots despite the fact that barely anyone drives small cars.
• Bart and Lisa are watching the Space Mutants Down Under movie from “Principal Charming,” in a piece of clearly reused animation, as the movie screen is adorned with the Aztec Theater border.
• That is one unhappy pappy.
  
• Lenny quietly singing The Carpenters to his ball is quite a moment.
• A great blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke: right behind Lurleen in the line to record your own CD is the banjo player Homer drives by at the Spittle County line.
• Yet another of Homer’s lifelong dreams, and certainly one more believable than wanting to be a country music producer: to eat the world’s largest hoagie, with hilarious photographic evidence.
  
• “This studio has a lot of history. Buddy Holly stood on this spot in 1958 and said, ‘There is no way in hell that I’m going to record in that dump.’”
• “It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen” is an immortal line.
• After getting a chair smashed over his head at the Beer ‘N Brawl, good ol’ Yodelin’ Zeke goes on to get top billing on Yahoo! What a success story! Also, an excellent detail that we see him with head bandages from his earlier unfortunate incident.
• This whole episode has always been strange to me. Firstly, Homer’s motive: he’s moved by Lurleen’s song, but I never quite buy him having the drive to want to be her manager. Young Homer was big into Steve Miller Band and Grand Funk Railroad, but his dream was to be a country music promoter? Secondly, Homer’s complete obliviousness to Lurleen’s increasingly overt advances and Marge’s understandable discomfort with the entire situation. Yes, that’s effectively the point of the entire episode, and it lends itself to some very funny moments (“No man has ever been this nice to me without… you know… wantin’ somethin’ in return.” “Well, I was going to ask you for a glass of water, but now I feel kinda guilty about it,”) but that kind of makes act two and three feel a bit stagnant. The Homer-Marge-Lurleen dynamic doesn’t change, it just ramps up to the inevitable conclusion, and considering I’m already not really on board with Homer’s country music dreams, there’s nothing for me to hold onto.  Plus it’s muddled exactly how aware Homer is in the situation he’s created: when she meets Lurleen, Marge says to Homer, “I thought you said she was overweight,” which implies Homer lied about her attractiveness to soothe any of Marge’s potential concerns. I also just feel so terribly for Marge through the whole episode: Homer casually giving the family’s life savings over to produce Lurleen’s record creates a nightmarish scenario for her, where her family’s financial future is now directly tied to the success of a woman aiming for her husband’s heart. And again, this emotional turmoil is all in service of a lifelong dream I just don’t buy Homer being that driven toward. I dunno. There’s undoubtedly a lot of funny and memorable moments in this episode, but it always sticks out to me as one of the less stellar classic era shows.
• When Lurleen’s intentions finally permeate Homer’s thick skull, he removes himself from the equation, but not without innocently asking for his own assurance, “Just so I don’t wonder, you would’ve gone all the way with me, wouldn’t you?” The whole episode is basically about Homer being so devoted to Marge and knowing how lucky he is to be with her, but as we see with quick flashbacks, he was never really a hit with the ladies, and is just plain flabbergasted that another woman actually wants him.

21. Black Widower

•  Has anybody watched Dinosaurs recently? Does that hold up? As much of a fan I was (and still am) of the Muppets, I don’t remember ever watching it. In the commentary, Mike Reiss considers it a “character-for-character knock-off of The Simpsons,” which is why they made this joke, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
• Way back when, Dead Homer Society did an analysis about the Daytime Emmys scene as a compare-and-contrast to some garbage new episode, but also to illustrate just how many jokes this show crams into every frame. Each of the nominees is accompanied by their own visual gag: Droopy Drawers is present with a serious expression and his very attractive plus-one, Colonel Coward is overcome with nerves, Pepito the cat needs no explanation, and Suck-Up the Vacuum is apparently the busiest star of them all, unable to attend due to a previous movie commitment. It’s less than ten seconds to go through all this, and you get all of that great material, and that’s all before we see Pepito cover his eyes in shame after losing the award. It’s tremendous.
• I always laugh at the overcrowded cell scene (“Who used my chapstick?”) Kelsey Grammer’s read of “I don’t want it” when his fellow inmate hands him it back is so dripping with revulsion it’s fucking perfect.
• Bob playing the violin for the rocking conjugal trailers is yet another gag I didn’t understand until I was older.
• What a great photo.
  
• For our first dance at our wedding, I picked a cover of “Something Stupid” that was then-recently featured in a brilliant cold open on Better Call Saul. But of course I also remembered Sideshow Bob and Selma’s karaoke version of the song. Perhaps you could say it’s a questionable choice to use a song tied to two questionable TV relationships, but the Saul version is so beautiful, it was worth it.
  
• The animation during Krusty’s telethon is just so damn good, I’d just need one minute long gif to feature the whole thing. Krusty’s manic excitement over seeing the donation total, his tearful reunion with Bob, and his absolute glee in getting to kick his old sidekick repeatedly in the ass again like old times.
• “I told you, I got money. I bought stock in a mace company just before society crumbled.”
• This is my favorite Sideshow Bob episode, and with it, it’s the greatest Kelsey Grammer performance ever. How he switches from unassuming to charming to duplicitous to villainous is just fantastic. My favorite bit is his absolutely unrestrained outrage on how much he detests MacGyver. His plans for murder are already underway, but he momentarily thwarts himself due to his snobby views on pop culture because he just can’t help himself (“Just tell me you like MacGyver.” “Very well, Selma. I… I… I can’t do it! Even that car chase seemed tacked on!!”)
• Krusty fumfering about not being able to tell the pianist joke is a wonderful, almost adorable moment.
• More great Bob acting, both in vocal performance and animation, in the third act: I love how we see him visually clear his head after the explosion before he calls the front desk and acts surprised at what’s happened, and I equally love Bob’s dark reprise of “Something Stupid” as he approaches what he thinks is Selma’s torn apart corpse (“And then I went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like explooooode yooooouuu…”)
• The sequence of Bart trying over and over to get Homer to understand the plan is so funny (I love the Science Made Very Very Simple book.) It’s also great how it’s all played out in slightly washed out colors, visually denoting it being a flashback.
  
• “You can’t keep the Democrats out of the White House forever! And when they get in, I’m back on the street! With all of my criminal buddies!” It’s funny thinking back how this episode came out on the tail-end of twelve uninterrupted years of GOP leadership. Trump should use this clip in one of his campaign ads, where he could issue Bob a presidential pardon.

22. The Otto Show

• It’s still very odd that this episode features Spinal Tap, a fictional band, as if they were a real rock group. I’m sure there are other examples of fictional characters showing up on the show in “real life,” but I can’t think of any at the moment. There’s so many great bits with Spinal Tap (“Each of us bought our own soccer team, how many Hungarios can say that?” “This is a rock concert, not a… splish splash show!”) but earlier this year, I actually watched This Is Spinal Tap and got kind of bored with it after a half hour. Clearly the writers of this episode were emulating the comedic writing of the movie in writing these characters, but for some reason my brain couldn’t make the leap from this show to the original source material. I dunno. I’m not a big fan of older comedies, it seems. I just watched Groundhog Day last week and I hated it. That and Ghostbusters. Comments are open to all hate mail on this issue.
• Pretty smart shortcut on behalf of the animation team to have almost every single attendee of the concert have long, shaggy hair that covers their eyes
  
• “We salute you, our half-inflated dark lord!”
  
• Any time I hear the “Spanish Flea” music, I immediately think of Homer singing it.
• Bart’s rockstar fantasy ending with him lying in a drunken stupor backstage is so great. Just like we saw a couple episodes ago with him daydreaming growing up to be a drifter, it’s always fantastic when Bart fantasizes about an otherwise horrific future and thinks it’s cool.
• “Better fasten your seatbelts, little dudes!” “We don’t have seatbelts.” “Uhh… well, just try to go limp.” Child endangerment makes from great comedy!
  
• I love how we see Skinner stuck at the intersection still unwilling to inch his way into oncoming traffic. He’s got a five o’clock shadow, implying he and his passengers have somehow been there for several days. Equally great is him angrily snapping at a singing Ralph.
• Remember that notable Bible verse: Thy shalt not take moochers into thy hut.
• This is the longest we’ve ever had Otto in the spotlight, and we actually learn quite a bit about him. He’s a hedonist burnout, he’s a talented musician, he had overbearing parents (“The Admiral and I don’t get along,”) and he loves books written from the vampire’s point of view. The only other plot he’s prominently in I can think of was his aborted wedding in the first act of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge,” where we actually get to see his parents. Otto’s not exactly the richest character the show has in its arsenal, but there’s enough established here they could have featured him in a couple different stories going forward. Why not? Instead, the show was content to reduce him to shock jokes involving drug use once they were allowed to show bongs and other drugs on-screen. Sigh.
• Another episode with a great anti-moral: “If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.” The sentimental music as Homer and Bart have a heart-to-heart just adds to the effect.
• Homer is disgusted pulling a giant tangle of Otto hair from the sink, but you’d think he’d be used to clumps of hair down the drain given Marge’s enormous ‘do.
• How weak are the walls of the DMV that Otto can crack them with his bare fists? Or is Otto just that freaking strong? (“Does this look like something that a sponge could do?!”)
• In his triumphant return at the end of the episode, Otto runs down the Bus Stop sign and drives right through a four-way stop, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

23. Bart’s Friend Falls in Love

• The Raiders of the Lost Ark opening is probably the most extended and direct parody the show’s done so far, but despite repeating so many specific moments from the opening of the film (Bart rubbing his mouth before grabbing the jar, saving his hat before the garage closes), it creatively reframes the elements of it (such as Homer subbing in for the giant boulder and the angry natives.) And most importantly, it’s still funny separated from the source material, as I remember loving it as a kid before even knowing much of anything about Indiana Jones.
• Kimmy Robertson is great as Samantha, she’s got such a sweet and distinct voice that lends itself so well to voice over, and her timid and kind of awkward performance makes her feel like an ideal companion for a little loser like Milhouse. Best known for Twin Peaks (which I eventually really need to watch), I’ve loved her recently voicing the lead character in the indie animated series “Ollie & Scoops,” which is definitely worth a watch.
• Great detail on Bart’s F paper, an additional note by Mrs. K (Very Poor, Even For You.)
• “Fuzzy Bunny’s Guide to You-Know-What” is one of the greatest bits of the entire series, and I’m not even going to try to dissect all the reasons why. The whole concept of it is a joke, Phil Hartman gives a great performance as always (his serious, emphasis of “throbbing biological urges” always makes me laugh hard), and of course, the honeymoon scene. Not only is it scored with porno music, and since we don’t see it, your brain can fill in whatever awful thing you want as to what’s on the screen, we have the apathetic teacher of this horrified class having their childhoods simultaneously stripped from them smoking in the back of the room, flatly commenting, “She’s faking it.” Holy fuck, that’s like ten different joke layers at once. The icing on top of the cake is they repeat the porno music over the THE END card as well.
  
• “Did you know that 34 million American adults are obese? Putting together that excess blubber would fill the Grand Canyon two-fifths of the way up. That may not sound impressive, but keep in mind it is a very big canyon.”
• A weird reaction watching these episodes ten years later: the Good Morning Burger looks really good, but I know if I ate that thing now, I’d get instant searing heartburn.
• Marge picturing Homer as a hostage negotiator feels like the show’s first random cutaway gag. There’s been jokes in a similar vein done previously, but those all seemed like a character recalling a memory, or showing something going on in another location. The Homer scene is born of a character thinking or dreaming about something completely unrelated to the plot, which can break up the flow of the show, but a lot of the ones the show did are really funny (the kaiju Curies from “Marge Gets A Job” come to mind.) This joke style of course would later be adopted by Family Guy, who would proceed to run it into the fucking ground.
• I’m a humongous softie, so I really like the small moment where Bart tears up a bit after storming off from Milhouse and Samantha. He’s a little brat who usually takes his friendship with Milhouse for granted, but he’s just a kid, and that brief moment humanizes him so much.
• “Let’s just say I’m a concerned prude with a lot of time on their hands.”
• What a beautiful shot. It so perfectly captures Milhouse’s broken-hearted anguish, a feeling I’m sure we can all relate to. We also get our last deep-voiced Ralph line (“It’s recess everywhere but in his heart.”)
  
• When Milhouse and Bart get into their vicious fight, I like that the Van Houtens not only do nothing to stop it, but they promptly shut the door and just go about their day as normal.
• “Disingenuous mountebanks with their subliminal chicanery! A pox on them!”
  

24. Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?

• “No eating in the tank!” “Go to hell.”
  
• “I owned Mickey Mouse massage parlors, then those Disney sleazeballs shut me down. I said, ‘I’ll change the logo, put Mickey’s pants back on!’ Some guys you just can’t reason with.” This episode is streaming now on Disney+!
• In addition to Marge’s Mr. Burns’ portrait, one day I want to have a replica of The First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence in my office.
• “This show is the biggest farce I ever saw!” “What about the Emmys?” “I stand corrected.” I thought this was a shot at a recent Emmy loss for the show, but actually, this episode aired three days before the 1992 Emmys where they lost to Will Vinton’s Claymation Easter special. The show had won the Primetime Animated Program category twice for their first two seasons. So where did this bitterness come from? Were they predicting their defeat and decided to air their sour grapes?
• “Discarded pizza boxes are an inexpensive source of cheese.” Advice I’ve kept in my back pocket ever since I first heard it. Just in case.
• I really love how Herb sings his old company jingle as a lullaby for Maggie. Also in that scene, I don’t quite understand why ominous music starts playing when he tells the baby, “You’re gonna make me rich again!” It’s not a misdirect, since there’s nothing else in the episode meant to imply that Herb has duplicitous intentions. It’s just kind of weird.
• Danny DeVito is just as good in this episode as he was the first time around. Some of his greatest lines are nonverbal, like his annoyed “Nyah!” as he takes the drinking bird off the table, and his reactive noises to Homer’s kissing him when he tells him he bought him the vibrating chair. I also love the moment at the end of act two, where Homer tells Herb he’ll front him money, but only if he forgives him and treats him like a brother, and Herb just flatly replies, “Nope.” That “Nope” is clearly taken from earlier in the episode when Herb is deciding which train car to jump on to get to Springfield. It creates an added meta layer for me, where Herb not only completely rejects Homer’s request, but he does so with a recycled line reading.
• Nancy Cartwright also is fantastic as Maggie in the third act, doing all her little noises for the translator. Her concerned noises and her giggle at Lisa’s peek-a-boo are just so damn adorable.
• It’s so funny how Herb’s baby translator is such a monumental invention, but is never seen or mentioned ever again. Surely the Simpson family would have put it to good use with Maggie, but I guess not.
• Homer’s tentative “I never really hugged a man before” is weirdly sweet and vulnerable, and I love how he slowly gets more comfortable with it, and then of course, can’t contain his excitement when Herb gives him his big surprise. That whole scene provides the perfect, most satisfying closure after the ending of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Unlike Lurleen Lumpkin or Rabbi Krustofksi, I’m really glad the show never dredged Herb back up to make a decades-later reappearance. He made a very brief cameo over the phone in a season 24-ish episode, where Homer gets Herb’s answering machine where he says he’s poor again, but it was a really quick moment you could easily ignore. And I did.
  

(Starting next week, I’ll be pushing these Revisited posts to Fridays, since we’re fast approaching the start of season 32. I CAN’T WAIT.)

13. Radio Bart

• Lisa’s dancing is some pretty fun animation, and has been gif’d hundreds of times over, but I really love the reflections of the TV off Homer’s drool coming out of his mouth.
  
• Just like the infomercial from “Saturdays of Thunder,” Homer is exactly the kind of uncritical blind consumer who would trust some garbage product being peddled on TV, as we see with him watching the Superstar Microphone commercial, where he falls hook, line and sinker for each and every marketing trick. This culminates in the great “supplies are limited” bit, where he frantically calls the number afraid their stock has run out, when we see the gigantic warehouse full of microphones.
• Anytime I need to send a birthday message to somebody, I always go for the Wall E. Weasel clip. You’re the birthday boy or girl indeed. Semi-related, there’s a great documentary on YouTube about the Rockafire Explosion, the robotic band of Showbiz Pizza, the forebearer to Chuck E. Cheese. It’s about both the creator and manufacturer of the robots’ rise and fall of their empire, and crazy devoted superfans who have bought old robots and refurbished and reprogrammed them to perform new songs in their backyard sheds. I have absolutely no nostalgic memories of any of this stuff, but I was fascinated by it all the same. Give it a watch.
• Bart bamboozling Rod and Todd as the voice of God is such a wonderful scene. It also displays a great acting challenge for voice artists to perform their character putting on a different voice and still having it sound like the same person. Nancy Cartwright does this twice, with Bart as God and as Timmy O’Toole (although the latter ends up basically a slight variation of Todd Flanders.)
• After getting a glimpse of him in “Principal Charming,” Groundskeeper Willie makes his grand return here, feeling more or less like the rough and tumble Scotsman we know him as today: taking a swig from his flash before driving his slow tractor right in the middle of traffic (“Look out, ye horse’s arse!”)
• “With this hook, and this hunk of chocolate, I’ll land your boy, and I’ll clean him for free.”
• I talked about “Old Money” and its parade of Springfieldians all after Abe’s money that we’re finally at the point where the show has gotten a decent sized pool of recognizable faces to highlight. This gets showcased once more with the “We’re Sending Our Love Down the Well” benefit song, where we see Springfield’s brightest stars out to shine. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge mix of local celebs (Krusty, Kent Brockman) and out-of-towners (Rainer Wolfcastle, the Capital City Goofball), but it’s still nice to see them all in one place for a good cause. I love Krusty talking about what they’ll do with the royalties from the song (“We’ve got to pay for promotion, shipping, distribution… you know, those limos out back, they aren’t free! Whatever’s left, we throw down the well.”)
  
• This is the first of several times the “Axel F” music from Beverly Hills Cop is used as Bart prepares to descend down the well. I always figured it was because it was from a FOX movie that they didn’t have to pay the rights for, but actually Beverly Hills Cop is from Paramount. Also, these early seasons of the show sit right in the middle of the gap between Beverly Hills Cop II and III (1987-1994), so it’s not like those movies were huge at the moment. They were probably played a lot on TV and were big on home video at the time.
• More shit I don’t think I ever noticed: among the items Homer brings Bart to toss down the well is a big fish tank along with two goldfish in a baggie of water.
• Only on this show would the emotional climax of a parent reaching their breaking point and moving heaven and Earth to save their child, would said parent do so while imitating Popeye (“That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”)
• “It’s an old fashioned hole digging! By gum, it’s been a while!”
• Continuing the trend of mocking celebrities who were nice enough to do their show, not only do they have Marge tell Sting that Bart doesn’t even listen to his music, but he gets promptly shoved aside by Homer after he finally breaks through to free Bart.

14. Lisa the Greek

• The opening with the traditionally animated rendition of primitive early-90s 3D animation is really spectacular.
  
• I love how proud Lisa is of the shoebox apartment she makes for Malibu Stacy. It also has such a great callback at the end where she rejects her piles of ill-gotten accessories and play sets in favor of her homemade toy (“It may not be pretty, but dammit, it’s honest.”)
• Similar to Marge and Lisa talking while folding laundry in “Lisa’s Substitute,” here we get them having a conversation while Marge is giving Maggie a bath in the sink, which, again, gives the characters some physical action to do and makes them feel more like real people living their lives. We also get a great final joke to the scene where Marge gets pissed that Bart drops his dirty dishes in Maggie’s bathwater.
• The extremely slow Coach’s Hotline is one of the best jokes in the whole season. The timing is just so perfect, I always laugh at how it just gets more and more drawn out by the time we get to “Cin… ci… na…… tti…”
• It’s a little strange that the dressing rooms at the Springfield Mall have cameras in them. But I guess not as strange as the squinty eyed psychos manning them grabbing their guns to presumably execute a little girl for allegedly stealing socks.
• “And when the doctor said I didn’t have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.” Probably the first sign of the real Ralph slowly coming into view.
• I love dream sequences featuring the grim futures of the Simpson children. I like to view this in the same reality as Bang-Bang Bart the stripper (“Don’t tell me what to do, sonny. I’ve been gambling since I was eight, and I’ve been hocking jewelry since I was twelve! Now gimme some chips!”)
  
• More dynamite line readings: the scorn-filled, yet exasperated tone Yearley Smith gives to “Put me down.”
• The third act has always felt kind of weird to me, with Lisa’s love of her father hinging on who wins the Super Bowl. She “knew” Washington would win (evidenced by her reaction, “I suspected as much,”) so it comes off as this weird mind game to make Homer fret and worry for an entire day. It supposes too greatly that Lisa is this football savant who can perfectly predict the outcome to every game, which might work pushed to the limit on a more absurdist show, but not so much here. But I dunno, I guess that was kind of the point.
• “Troy, made you want to do a situation comedy?” “Well, I fell in love with the script, Brent. And my recent trouble with the IRS sealed the deal!”
• Outside of the Halloween versions, we get our first variation of the ending theme, an fitting marching band version, which is just great. I had the two Simpsons CDs when I was a kid that had all the songs from the first nine seasons, which also included the different end credit remixes, and I remember those being my favorite to listen to.

15. Homer Alone

• I wonder how much of Bart, Lisa and Homer’s incessant dialogue over Marge was scripted and if the actors added in some ad-lib. Either way, I always laugh at Homer’s “Double baloney! Double baloney! Don’t forget to make it double baloney!”
• Marge shifting to one side as Homer puts the bowling ball in her hand is a deceptively simple but fantastic piece of animation.
  
• A very nice little detail that the other Nick’s has a portrait of Jacques on the wall.
• The Bill & Marty prank call is not only incredibly funny (their braying, ghoulish laughter at their poor target’s very real anguish is so great), but it’s also the perfect instigator to begin to drive Marge over the edge, such a cruel and callous “joke” presented as entertainment that would really push the woman who tried to get Itchy & Scratchy banned too far.
• As we saw in “Bart the Murderer,” I really do like the slightly more competent Wiggum, and here we see his combative back-and-forth with Mayor Quimby, a dynamic that I wish was kept around for longer. I love the attention to detail that when we cut to Quimby making his public declaration with a pardoned Marge, having come out on top in the argument, Wiggum is in the background with an annoyed look on his face.
• In addition to his sense of shame, another big factor of what makes Homer so endearing is that he knows he’s a lucky son of a bitch for having such a sweet and forgiving woman as Marge for a wife. When Marge says she’d like to take a vacation by herself, Homer immediately thinks they’re getting a divorce and begs for forgiveness. When Marge clarifies what she means, Homer is okay with it, as long as she swears that she’ll come back.
• “See? Got her on the first bounce.”
• I always liked this simple visual of Homer clasping his fingers over the family portrait leaving just himself and Maggie uncovered.
  
• “Baby Come Back” is my favorite of this season’s trilogy of inappropriate hold music jokes.
• I really like the somewhat subtle buildup that Marge’s ultimate release is being able to make decisions for herself. Arriving at Rancho Relaxo, she goes along with the in-room instructionals with Troy McClure and checks all the activities off her checklist, but her calming catharsis only finally comes when she calls up room service and makes up her own relaxing night of chocolate chip cheesecake and a bottle of Tequila.
• Wiggum’s appearance at the end also rides that line between semi-serious and comedic. He has Homer describe his missing baby before presenting Maggie behind his back with a “Bingo!” It’s very sweet, like he wanted to make a little show of it and was thrilled with himself for reuniting this father and daughter. He shifts back into work mode by telling Homer he’s up on charges of parental neglect, but after an overwhelmed Homer kisses him over and over in gratitude, Wiggum’s heart melts and he decides to let him off easy (“Just don’t do it again, you big lug.”) Really cute stuff! There’s plenty of classic moronic Wiggum quotes to come, but part of me wishes he could have stayed at this semi-competent level.
• Recalling the beginning with Homer and the kids bombarding Marge all at once with their demands, we get it again at the end with them expressing their appreciation for her (I love Homer’s desperate “Never leave again! Never leave again!”)

16. Bart the Lover

• The zinc film may have been the spark of my interest in watching old 50s and 60s instructional videos, and they pretty much nailed the parody right on the head. I don’t really know why, but I love that the handgun in the final scene fires twice, like it wasn’t enough to just show it, it actually has to fire.
• Mrs. Krabappel, who up to this point was just Bart’s irritable teacher, is completely humanized in just a few short scenes at the beginning: driving home in the rain, buying soup-for-one and desperately playing the lottery (“Still teaching?” “Let’s see… Another day at least.”) “Sugar in the gas tank. Your ex-husband strikes again” is so fucking brilliant, it’s maybe the best example of giving the audience important exposition, where it’s a great joke but in one line of dialogue we get an explanation of Krabappel’s marital status.
• Todd’s “Ow! My eyeball!” always makes me laugh. I don’t know why it’s “eyeball” and not “eye,” but that’s why it’s so funny. This is also a rare instance of showing Rod and Todd at Springfield Elementary.
• The sad, sad lives of professional yo-yo-ers. At least Sparkle seems to be mildly content.
  
• And lo, we get our very first Donald Trump reference in the series, where Homer tries to think of a person who got rich doing yo-yo tricks (he’s in “good” company with Bill Cosby in Homer’s list of candidates.)
• Mrs. Krabappel is best known for her “Ha!” but I love Marcia Wallace’s other exclamatory noises as well. When Bart responds that he would give back his yo-yo if their roles were reversed, Krabappel’s mocking “Pffft!” is so damn good. What an astounding performer Marcia Wallace was.
• This photo makes me want a spin-off featuring young Jasper.
  
• “You’ve got a date with the Xerox machine!” Bart distributing scandalous photos of his teacher to his classmates feels like it plays a little bit differently nowadays, as does the scene later with this exchange: “Alright, Bart, who’s your girlfriend?” “My teacher.”
• Watching these episodes again in 2020 is unique in revisiting certain scenes that have been made even more famous thanks to the rise of Simpsons Shitposting. Here, we have Todd Flanders’ “I don’t want any damn vegetables,” which has lent to so, so, so many great memes, the most darkly hilarious interpreting “vegetables” as comatose people, such as Todd mercy-killing the bedridden Homer from the “So It’s Come to This” clip show. It’s also the subject of this glorious Dankmus remix.
  
• Dan Castellaneta reading this postcard is one of his funniest performances of the series.
  
• “All of us pull a few boners now and then, go off half-cocked, make asses’ of ourselves… I don’t want to be hard on you…”
• It’s sweet and salty at the same time as Marge gives Homer the exception that he can curse when they snuggle.
• I’d love to hear the montage of Homer swearing uncensored. Apparently Dan Castellaneta recorded the session with the lines uncut, so it must exist somewhere. I love that he gets more incensed by Flanders getting good news more than anything else (“YOU DIRTY BA-”)
• “Three simple words: I am gay.” These lines are funny enough, but I like that Homer provides the actually serious ending line to the letter (“With a love that will echo through the ages.”)

17. Homer at the Bat

• Homer in mid-choke is another heavily rotated image, mostly used as a reaction to something grotesque or revolting. Him choking out the donut is such a quick bit of animation, but it’s just so wonderful, one of hundreds of examples of small, fun animated acting bits from the show.
  
• I always laugh at Homer’s homemade football, and at this exchange between him and Bart (“How many home runs are you gonna hit with that?” “Let’s see… We play thirty games, ten at-bats a game… three thousand.”)
• Slow motion is really laborious to do in animation, but when it comes to animating Homer’s immense girth jiggling around as he swings and hits the ball, complete with actual sloshing sound effects, I’d say it was worth it.
  
• It’s great that when Burns tells Smithers he’d like to cheat to win his bet with Amodopoulos, Smithers immediately asks him who he’d like killed.
• I’m not a baseball fan in the least, and there are definitely little in-jokes about each of the nine players sprinkled in throughout the episode, but it’s great how most of the players are given enough characterization that reads to non-fans like me and are still really funny. My favorite is probably Mike Scosia, who is thrilled to live out his dream of being a blue-collar worker (“It’s such a relief from the pressures of playing big-league ball.”) I also like how a balance is struck between showing the players being really great and our characters being in awe of them without becoming too fawning and making the episode into a puff piece for them. Darryl Strawberry is the perfect example, presenting himself as an almost superhuman athlete (hitting nine home runs in one game, leaping up hundreds of feet into the air to catch a ball), but this is only to make him stand in contrast with Homer and make him feel inadequate. I also love how he’s a humongous kiss-ass to Burns for no real reason (“Some players have a bad attitude, skip!” “They sure do, Strawberry.”)
  
• “No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you.” I un-ironically think back to this advice from time to time, how you shouldn’t strive to be “the best,” but just to be good and honest as you are, as there’ll always be someone who technically “knows” more than you.
• “What are you going to do with the million dollars, sir?” “Oh, I dunno. Throw it on the pile, I suppose.” I love this throwaway line that feels like it negates the importance of the plot, but it just makes it even better and is perfectly in line with Burns’ character. He doesn’t give a shit about the million dollars, making this bet, or making himself coach to all these pro ball players. This is rich person playtime to him and he’s treating it as such.
• Balancing nine guest stars is a lot of work, but the episode feels like it devotes ample time to all of them. Not only that, but all nine (or eight, rather) of their ridiculous tragic incidents that prevent them from playing are all incredibly memorable, even the stupider ones like Jose Canseco staying up all night carrying household appliances and furniture out of a never-ending burning building.
• “Homie, you’re good at lots of things.” “Like what?” “Like… snuggling?” “Yeah, but none of my friends can watch me.”
• The music in this episode is really great throughout, playing off the theme from The Natural in several places. Mr. Burns’ “rousing” speech to his loser players is really funny, but thanks to the music and Harry Shearer’s performance, it’s bizarrely kind of moving.
• The crazy vendor tossing peanuts everywhere is one of my favorite weird one-off jokes of the whole series. It’s so simple and strange and goes by so fast, I just love it.
• It’s great that in the ending, we have Homer winning without actually winning. He gets his hero moment as we the audience would like to see it, but as usual with him, his final success is thanks to dumb luck as he gets brained in the head and knocked unconscious.

18. Separate Vocations

• Mrs. Krabappel mentions that she has a Master’s, which is pretty impressive, and a pretty hard piece of trivia from a really quick line of dialogue.
• Milhouse the Military Strongman! I love that ‘military strongman’ was the actual occupation listed on the form.
• “The Army said I was too heavy. The police said I was too dumb.” Such an impressive line of dialogue that shoots at two different targets at the same time.
• “I’ll be frank with you, Lisa, and when I say frank, I mean, you know, devastating” is one of my favorite individual lines of the entire series. I also love Yeardley Smith’s read of “My God, they are stubby.” You can just hear the crushing realization in her voice.
• Lou talking about Mayor Quimby “polling the electorate” is yet another dirty line I’m surprised got by the censors. This establishing shot really stuck out to me: the Who’s To Know Motel with the half-lidded owl is a great design, and the Mayor’s arrogant I RULE U vanity plate.
  
• It’s such a great touch that we see the cops stop at a light by the Kwik-E-Mart and keep on driving, not noticing Snake robbing the place. The joke with Eddie talking about how being a cop isn’t all exciting car chases before immediately entering into one could have worked just as well if that were the first time we saw Snake speeding by. Instead, they layered it in early with a joke (the cops ignoring an obvious crime occurring) and built off of it.
• “Damn boxes!” is another random line my friend and I would quote to each other from time to time.
• The ending of act one is really beautiful, with the dramatic lighting and kinetic action of Snake’s car rushing toward Bart and Bart firing off the gun.
  
• Marge is really great throughout this episode in her attempting to be supportive of Lisa. Initially being understandably hurt by Lisa decrying her future as a homemaker (“I might as well be dead!” “Lisa, it’s not that bad…”), she tries to show Lisa that being a caregiver of a family can be rewarding in its own way, evidenced by her personally crafted breakfasts. This of course backfires immediately when Homer and Bart scarf them down without a moment’s thought. Later, Marge tries to lift up a despondent Lisa that she shouldn’t listen to what others say is or isn’t possible, relating it to her own memory as a kid insisting to her sisters that women can be astronauts, and that there would be colonies on the moon. Realizing her example kind of got away from her, Marge uses this as shining proof that anyone can be wrong. I feel like I rambled through the explanation a bit, but it’s a really fantastic scene.
• More great design work in the Laramie Jr. spokes-boy on the carton. That’s one cool kid.
  
• “Sure, we have order, but at what price?!”
• The library scene with the battering ram is so perfectly timed. The fact that it cuts away mid-action just as it bursts through the front door with wood shaving spraying everywhere makes it all the funnier.
• “In your pre-fascist days, you knew the giddy thrill of futile rebellion!”