Stuck deep down below especially Homer, who is literally stuck in a tunnel because of his girth , Lisa begins to tell him a story. Then, in that story, Mr. Burns starts telling a story. This is an episode that rests on its complexity, and the structure is simultaneously silly and beautiful.
A key episode, it seems, as it would also kick off the Sideshow Bob story line that would result in our No. Sensitively, of course. The Simpsons is an animated family sitcom, and the animated family is the Simpsons.
The episode begins with a trip to a candy convention, where Homer steals a rare gummy. Krusty has subcontracted everything in this lakeside hellpit to bureaucratic underling Mr. Black, who, in turn, delegates to thuggish enforcers Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney. None are. Think Go and Run Lola Run , but with poor grammar, fake addresses, thumbless buffoons, and hillbillies picking up hitchhikers.
Homer grows sick of paying a ridiculous amount of money to see a movie only to be bombarded by 20 minutes of deceptive commercials and trailers before the film even begins, so he begins downloading them illegally online. The most shocking thing about it in a good way is how funny the show can still be this late in the game.
The world needs laughter, so Krusty makes the cut, as do religious gossips the Lovejoys. The rest soon join. When we talk about The Simpsons at its best, we talk about maximizing the space of television, including as many jokes, ideas, and parodies as the space can hold, and this episode achieves that sort of density, covering eight different types of Halloween.
No show has ever done big and small storytelling concurrently as well as The Simpsons and this is a masterful example. Got that? In the episode, Homer is introduced to Mindy, a new female co-worker who happens to be his perfect match. Beyond Mindy, the episode succeeds in not selling Homer out, by letting him honestly feel the temptation. For the generation of viewers who first caught The Simpsons when they were youngest, a million cultural referents were planted in their brains, just waiting to burst forth.
Jekyll and Mr. Of course, though, the reason everyone remembers this episode is because of the song. When Homer buys a giant plow following the Springfield Auto Show, he finds himself making money hand over plow by clearing snow from driveways and streets.
Then Barney buys a bigger truck, and the two become rivals. That name again is Mr. The year is When a Lego episode was first announced, it was hard not to be skeptical, given how much it felt like a shameless promotional tie-in. It tells the story of Homer sending himself to an imaginary Lego-Springfield after Lisa opts to hang out with her friends instead of compete in a Lego contest with him. Behind all the Lego bells and Lego whistles is an episode of television about the fundamental experience of being a parent and watching your child grow up.
The first half, the finale of season six, effectively set up the fact that literally every resident of Springfield would have a motive to shoot Mr.
Burns, who crossed the line between everyday villainy to cartoonish supervillainy by stealing oil from the elementary school and then blocking out the sun. In the season-seven premiere, Lisa worked with Chief Wiggum to find the culprit, parodying Twin Peaks along the way.
The show wanted to create an event around its season-six cliff-hanger, and it did just that. Fans spent the summer debating this question, trying to win the contest for guessing the correct person and logging on to the newly created Springfield.
It was a surprisingly good mystery with a perfectly Simpsonian ending. Origin stories are not new. But here, at least, was a meaningful one. Homer, a regular there, sees her walk in and falls in love at first sight. He can occasionally be a decent guy, so long as he has his Bobo. As much as it pains him to reject the offer, Homer has to, because he can see how much his daughter loves the stuffed animal. The Simpsons is a generous show — allowing viewers the opportunity to empathize with so many characters.
Here, Burns gets his day. When a heat wave descends upon Springfield, the Simpsons buy a pool, immediately making Bart and Lisa the most popular kids in town. I think he broke his leg. He retreats to his room and Lisa gives him her telescope with which to pass the time. He observes a neighbor commit a terrible act. But layer the word regicide on top of that reference, and it remains funny for the rest of days.
Mayor Quimby is impressed by the act of heroism, and he hires Homer as his personal bodyguard. Quimby does, but Fat Tony is quickly freed, and he tries to kill the man who sent him away … at a dinner-theater production of Guys and Dolls starring Mark Hamill.
Except for that. And the killer robots. Marge wants to go on a nice, peaceful vacation with the family, but Bart and Lisa have other bird-sanctuary-less ideas. Things start off well enough, but the Simpsons gene eventually kicks in, and Bart and Homer are arrested for various indiscretions, and a gang of Itchy and Scratchy robots are ready to kill.
Our list of probably gives Marge the shortest shrift, but in this episode, we encounter her neuroses head-on. After Homer stops Bart from trying to jump over Springfield Gorge on his skateboard, he accidentally finds himself zooming down the ramp instead.
Homer falls for a comically long, violent time. Finally, he is airlifted and safely placed inside an ambulance, only for the ambulance to instantly crash into a tree and for his gurney to roll out the back. Homer tumbles down the Gorge the same way, with the same painful sounds. Producers fiddle with shows all the time. They change characters, drop others, and push some into the background.
Homer struts around Springfield for the next week, taking advantage of his unearned fame, but in the next episode, Cool Homer is turned into Bumbling Sidekick Homer. Burns brings in nine professional baseball players to act as ringers. This episode is a Trojan horse — hiding an emotional story inside a visually sumptuous package. To protect himself, Mayor Quimby passes the blame along to someone else: illegal immigrants. We do.
From then on, everything goes great for Homer until he realizes something: He wants to lose. Periodically, especially in later seasons, The Simpsons takes on an issue of the day and nails it. He then spends the rest of the episode trying to prevent Bart from becoming gay in the most hilariously inept ways. Most memorably, he takes Bart to a very gay steel mill. The reason the episode works so well is because Homer makes the perfect patsy, of sorts.
He takes incorrect stances to such extremes that they reveal the absurdity of the position even in the most minor sense. There are two types of college students, jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time.
You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. They need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use.
Which had serious pacing problems. This is the biggest frame-up since OJ! Wait a minute. Blood in the Bronco. The cuts on his hands. Those Jay Leno monologues.
Oh my god, he did it! You ruined your father. You crippled your family. And baldness is hereditary! Everybody wears white shirts. Despite Maggie being so young she is unable to talk, Homer has let her get away with a lot. Beyond the countless times he has lost her or ignored her obvious gifts, he has also failed to stop her undertaking some truly whacky tasks for a child. She literally shot Mr.
The Simpsons are known for creating some of the best hits in cartoon musical history. Throughout The Simpsons , Lisa is consistently shown as a genius with an impressive IQ and ideas way beyond her humble eight years.
Arguably his worst treatment of Lisa came when his own lack of intelligence was shown to be because of a crayon in his brain. He forms a great new bond with his intelligent daughter before sacrificing it all by shoving the crayon straight back up.
Remember that time that Homer went off with a woman from his work and genuinely thought he had to have sex with her? Remember that other time when he went to Las Vegas with Ned and got married and never told Marge? We know Homer cares deeply for Marge, but he has really put her in some tough situations over the years.
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