Episode title: “The City of New York vs Homer Simpson”
Season: 9
Year: 1997
Writer(s): Ian Maxtone-Graham
Main character(s): Homer
Supporting characters: Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Barney, Lenny, Carl, Moe, Larry (?), Duffman
Cameo(s)/Caricature(s)/Guest voice(s): Woody Allen, Alfred E. Neuman, Robert Downey Jr.
Location: Springfield and New York
Couch Gag: The Simpsons as the Harlem Globetrotters. Meh.
PCRS: Reference is made to ZZ Top (I don’t count them as a caricature here, because Bart mistakes three bearded Jews for the band), the musical piece “The Entertainer”, from the movie The Sting, plays during Homer’s relating of his previous encounter with New York, there’s a mention too of CHUD (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers), possibly presaging the mutants who live under New New York in
Futurama.
Musical numbers (if any): “You’re Checkin’ in”
Basic story line: The Simpsons go to New York to recover Homer’s car.
Subplot (if any): None
Favourite quote: “Once the sun goes down all the weirdos turn crazy!”
Funniest moment: So many, but I like Homer’s mad dash up the South Tower, in desperate need of the loo, only to find it out of order and having to go into the North Tower. The resultant sound of relief as he, um, relieves himself is the icing on the cake.
Synopsis: After, to his horror, Barney is chosen by lot to be the designated driver, and misses out on the mobile Duff party, he for some reason drives to New York, where again for some reason he leaves Homer’s car, and it must be retrieved, so the Simpsons are going to New York! Homer hates the idea, having had a bad experience there when he was younger, but Marge has a whole day planned out. So while Homer goes to pay his fine and get his car back, the rest of the family head off to see the sights. A scene that was, understandably, removed from the episode after 2001 is a pretty funny one, where two guys argue back and forth from each of the World Trade Centre towers, and in fact I think the scenes also of Homer going into Tower One to use the facilities after he’s drank too much Crab Juice, and finding the toilet out of order and then having to go across the road to Tower Two, were also cut. Sad really. The Simpsons captured a moment in time, which four years later could never be repeated or reproduced.
Having missed the cop, who was to remove the clamp (or boot, as I guess you Americans call it) Homer decides he has no alternative but to, um, try to drive his car, with the thing attached. This, of course, hardly works. He gets so far before he has an idea. Going up to a roadcrew, he tells the guy operating the jackhammer that the boss has fired him, then as that guy goes storming off, he takes the jackhammer and, with much damage to his car (and a lot of applause from New Yorkers) he finally knocks the thing off. His car now a total wreck, he heads for Central Park, where Marge and the rest of the family are finishing up their lovely day out in New York.
Bart, having ditched the women, comes across the offices of
Mad Magazine, but is disappointed when it doesn’t live up to his expectations. As he’s about to leave the office door opens though, and all manner of crazy stuff happens. Meeting back up with the ladies, he heads with them to a Broadway Show, and later to Chinatown and Little Italy. Eventually, relaxing after having had a much better day than Homer has had, they are picked up by an angry Homer in a shell of a car, and begin the journey home, behind a garbage truck, which keeps losing its load and, without a windscreen now on his car, the refuse keeps impacting on Homer, reinforcing his desire never to set foot in New York again.
Quotes:
Moe: “The Springfield Police have told me that 91% of traffic accidents are caused by you six guys.” (High fives all round)
Crowd: “Chug! Chug! Chug!”
Barney: “I… can’t! I’m - the
designated driver!”
(Silence)
Duffman (deadpan): “Yeah that’s, uh, swell. Duff wholeheartedly supports the designated driver campaign.”
Lenny: “Let’s go to the girlschool!”
Carl: “No! Playboy mansion!”
Homer: “Shut up! It’s my car and I say we’re going to the lost city of gold.”
Barney: “That’s just drunk talk! Sweet, beautiful drunk talk…”
Lisa: “Dad, you got a letter from the City of New York!”
Homer: “Throw it away! Nothing good has ever come out of New York City!”
Homer: “Once the sun goes down all the weirdos turn crazy!”
Bart (from the head of the Statue of Liberty): “Hey immigrants! Beat it! Country’s full!”
Captain on ship: “Okay folks, you heard the lady. Back into the hold. We’ll try Canada.”
(Chorus of groans).
Homer: “I’m getting out of this town alive if it kills me!”
Bart: “Excuse me, ma’am, is this
Mad Magazine?”
Receptionist: “No, it’s
Mademoiselle Magazine: we’re buying our sign on the installment plan!”
Bart: “I’m Bart Simpson, my father has a subscription. I’d like the grand tour please.”
Receptionist (sighing): “Listen, kid, you probably think lots of crazy stuff goes in in there, but this is just a place of business.”
Judge (in
Kicking it): “I should put you away where you can’t kill or maim us, but this is LA, and you’re rich and famous!”
Homer: “Brain, how can I ever thank you?”
Homer’s brain: “Just don’t bump me on your way out of the car.”
Homer (bumping head): “Sorry.”
Homer: “We’re getting out of here, Marge. Throw the kids, trust me. No time for the baby!”
Best scenes:
Homer, on seeing his car clamped, screams. Then screams again when he sees all the tickets on it. Then he looks up, sees a sign which says NO SCREAMING: FIFTY DOLLAR FINE. And screams again.
As he relates the tale of his previous time in New York, the rampant thievery he’s exposed to is both hilarious and, I guess, insulting to New Yorkers. Even the birds are in on it!
Unable to leave the car, but hungry, Homer tries to stretch his body to reach the cafe across the street. He even picks up a stick to help him. “Almost… there…!”
As he tries desperately to hold it in, Homer sees a bus with a sign for Flushing Meadows. Cue a daydream where he is cavorting in a meadow full of toilets!
Homer killing the boot!
Homer doing a Ben-Hur with Jimmy, the carriage-driver in Central Park.
Comments: Someone wrote that this is an episode with no actual plot, more a string of sight-gags and vignettes, and I would agree, but in a perhaps more positive way. I don’t think the story here needed a true narrative - I mean, there is a basic one, centring around Homer trying to get his car out of impound in New York - and is better for the sort of scattergun approach used to it. Even so, the gags and vignettes all make sense, and link together to form a sort of narrative, so there is that. Homer wouldn’t have had to run into the WTC if he hadn’t drank all that Crab Juice, and he wouldn’t have drank all that Crab Juice if he hadn’t had to wait for the cop, and so on. So, Homer’s vignettes, at least, do form a narrative of their own, or at least follow a basic idea for a plot. That of the rest of the family, true, go a little off the reservation, based as they are on a sort of sight-seeing tour of New York, but in doing so the writer manages to convey a humorous and yet pretty accurate picture of the city.
This is, I think, the only episode where, the title containing “vs”, the character comes second. You have, for instance, “Homer vs The Eighteenth Amendment”, “Homer vs Dignity”, “Grandpa vs Sexual Inadequacy”, “Marge vs The Monorail” and so on; the character is always first. In putting Homer second here, it seems to me (yes I’m sure I’m reading too much into it, go sue me) that it’s the City of New York taking on Homer Simpson, not the other way around, and in general, I think Homer wins. He gets out of New York with his car (albeit a wreck) without paying the fine, he “defeats” the Twin Towers by holding it in till he can triumphantly get to the toilet, despite having to go from one tower to the other, and to the delight of New Yorkers, he kills the boot that was on his car. You can say possibly that New York does all it can to defeat him, but in the end he’s triumphant, even if it is a slightly pyrrhic victory.
I think this is the first, and possibly only time The Simpsons satirised an American city - they’ve done other countries, but New York stands, I think, as the single home city they have taken on (with perhaps the exception of “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington”, which hasn’t got the same level of detail about the city) and it doesn’t seem to have lost them any fans, particularly any New Yorkers, who are, after all, famously critical about their own city. Most probably nodded and clapped at many of the scenes. It’s interesting, and lucky, that they decided to do this when they did, as had they left it till after 9/11 it would have to have been seen as in poor taste, and they would have had to use another location for obvious reasons.
While the family play their part, they are sort of secondary here, and it’s Homer and his hatred of New York and his determination not to be beaten by the city that really drives the episode and makes it work so well. Arriving, Homer is quietly angry and apprehensive, hostile to the city. By the time they leave, he is darkly fuming, on the verge of exploding, and if anything hates New York more than he did before they got there, so his view of the city has been, to him, justified. It’s also hilarious how different the experience of the rest of the family has been: looking back out the - smashed - rear window of the car, Lisa remarks “What a magical day!” while to Homer his visit to the Big Apple has been nothing but a nightmare. To his credit, he keeps his temper when Lisa asks if they can come back again.
I also find it weirdly satisfying that Homer jumps the queue at the North Tower, acting, I guess, like a typical New Yorker, who are not famed for their politeness or patience, and also that he gets his comeuppance for such rude and belligerent behaviour when he gets there and the toilets are out of order. The exchange between the two guys in opposite towers underlines the combative nature of New Yorkers, while the ticker that young Homer sees when he first comes to the city, telling him crime is up nine million percent, looks back to a time when New York was a real problem city, and nobody ever thought it would be anything more than a huge slum.
Rating: There’s no point in rating these are I normally do, as every episode which qualifies as a classic is going to be by definition next to perfect, so I’m using a system of Gold (for really good but has the odd flaw or thing I don’t like), Platinum (for almost perfect if it wasn’t just for…)
And Double Platinum (perfect in every way).
This gets
Double Platinum. Nothing bad to say about it at all.