Trollheart

I was recently challenged, in the wake of my Trollheart’s Treehouse of Horror journal, to review every episode of The Simpsons, a task beyond even my Herculean ambitions. But there’s no doubt that there are many, many episodes that deserve to go down as classics in the series, and in this new journal I’ll be taking a look at some of my favourites. I’ll be running a synopsis, pointing out the best bits, best lines, jokes, musical numbers, PCRs (Pop Culture References) and so on, and as usual, rating them on a sliding scale.

Feel free to join in, or just sit back and relive some of the classic moments from a series that has been going so long now that some of you may not even have been born when it began to be screened, and which has now passed into everyday usage and is a part of human culture, so much so that episodes are even preserved in the Library of Congress, maybe. If there’s one criticism I have of the show, like most people, it’s that it began to slide badly in about its sixteenth or seventeenth season, and though I kind of stopped watching around then, the few episodes I did catch did not make me regret stopping. Hard, of course, to maintain the kind of quality The Simpsons has managed over more than three decades, so I don’t necessarily hold that against them. However it does mean that it’s therefore very unlikely any of the classic episodes will come from the later seasons, and more often than not, we’ll be looking at quite early ones. I think the “golden age” of The Simpsons, if you will, ranges from season one to about season ten, and it’s probably going to be from that period I’ll be pulling most of the episodes.

All right, all right, Homer: we’ll get this show on the road, before you lose it!

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

GD

You just reminded me that Simpsons is stil running and now I'm sad

Looking forward to the journal though!

__________________
lasty|rate-y music-y

Trollheart

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.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Episode title: “Deep Space Homer”
Season: 5
Year: 1994
Writer(s): David Mirkin
Main character(s): Homer, Barney
Supporting characters: Marge, Lisa, Bart, Maggie, Grandpa, Patti. Selma, Kent Brockman, Lenny, Carl, Charlie
Cameo(s)/Caricature(s)/Guest voice(s): James Taylor, Buzz Aldrin
Location: Springfield, Cape Canaveral and Outer Space
Couch Gag: The couch is already taken up by John Goodman. Yeah. Right.
PCRS: Popeye, Star Trek combat scene, This Island Earth, Golden Grahams(?), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Richard Nixon, Deep Space 9, The Beverly Hillbillies for some reason, Alien
Basic story line: As interest in the space shuttle programme wanes, a desperate NASA panders to the lowest common denominator and Homer is chosen, alongside Barney, to go into space. It does not go well.
Subplot (if any): None
Favourite quote: Kent Brockman (about the ants): “One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them. The ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords.”
Funniest moment: Has to be the insect overlords, above, and also below.
Synopsis: Having been passed over time and time again for the Worker of the Week Award, Homer is sure he will be chosen this time, as everyone else has already won the award. However, he is furious to be pipped to the award by… an inanimate carbon rod! Meanwhile, NASA are upset that nobody is watching their boring space launches, and consider the idea of sending an “ordinary Joe” into space. Well, they don’t come much more ordinary than Homer! So when he calls NASA to complain about their launches, they trace the call to Moe’s, and due to a mixup end up taking Barney first, then Homer, to Cape Canaveral to train as astronauts.

In the end, Barney is chosen, but having been denied alcohol for the entire training programme he now goes on a binge and is disqualified, leaving Homer as the backup. As he prepares to go into space, Homer worries about what he is doing, but Marge tells him she has faith in him. In space, Homer causes havoc by opening a bag of crisps that then float around in the zero-gravity environment. The real astronauts (including Buzz “Second comes right after first!” Aldrin) worry that the crisps will clog up the instruments, but Homer floats along eating them, which is fine until he crashes into a tank of ants, who have been brought aboard by the mission. With the ants free, everything goes to Hell.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, NASA have for some reason got James Taylor to drop by to serenade the guys, and when he hears of the disaster he suggests the astronauts blow the hatch, releasing the ants into space. As they prepare to do so, Earth gets its first look inside the shuttle and an ant drifts past the camera, making it appear huge. Kent Brockman immediately jumps to the logical conclusion that the shuttle has been taken over by giant super-intelligent ants, and asserts his fealty to them. Later of course he has to take this back, much embarrassed.

Taylor’s idea works, but Homer lets go of his support too soon, before the hatch is closed, and grabbing the handle to stop himself being dragged out into space he breaks it, just as the others seal the hatch. However, now that the handle is broken the hatch will not be properly protected against the burn on re-entry. The other astronaut (not Aldrin) attacks Homer but he grabs an inanimate carbon rod to hit him with, and it gets jammed in the lock, thereby providing a makeshift seal as the shuttle begins its descent into Earth’s atmosphere. After a dangerous descent, the craft makes it back home, crashing into a building hosting a convention of ... news reporters! Homer is hailed as a hero for jury-rigging the hatch, but if he thought he was going to be famous, he’s disappointed as it is in fact the inanimate carbon rod that gets the ticker-tape parade.


Quotes:

Security guards, watching X-Ray screen as employees go through: “Clean. Clean. Pistol. Uzi. Two kids posing as an adult. Oh, hey Homer!” (Homer’s skeleton shown as a Neanderthal).

Burns: “Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey to whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya.” (Silence. Smithers whispers in his ear) “What? Oh and, by that I mean of course, it’s time for the Worker of the Week Award!”

Scientist: “Sir, we’ve run into a serious problem with the mission. These Nielsen ratings are the lowest ever!”
General: “Oh my God! We’ve been beaten by… A Connie Chung Christmas!”

Reporter: “Question for the barbeque chef: don’t you think there is an inherent danger in sending under-qualified civilians into outer space?”
Homer: “The only danger is if they send us to that terrible Planet of the Apes.” (Pauses. Thinks.) “Wait a minute: Statue of Liberty? That was our planet! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you to Hell!”

Bart: “Wow! My father an astronaut! I feel so full of… what’s the opposite of shame?”
Marge: “Pride?”
Bart: “No, not that far from shame.”
Homer: “Less shame?”
Bart: “Yeah.”

NASA guy (as Barney and Homer fight, Star Trek-style): “I wager four hundred quatloos on the newcomer.”

General: “Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon!”
Aldrin: “Second comes right after first!”

General: “Gentlemen, you’ve both worked very hard, and in a way you’re both winners. But in a more accurate way, Barney is the winner.”

General: “Well, Homer, I guess you’re the winner by default.”
Homer: “Default! Woo hoo! The two sweetest words in the English language!”

Marge: “When you don’t take an opportunity you can end up regretting it for the rest of your life.”
Homer: “You’re right, Marge. Just like the time I could have met Mister T at the mall. All day long I kept saying, I’ll go a little later, I’ll go a little later. And when I finally got there, they told me he had just left. And when I asked the mall guy if he would ever come back again, he said he didn’t know.”

NASA announcer: “Three, two, one.. Make rocket go now.”

Bart: “Go, dad, go!”
Lisa: “How doth the hero, strong and brave, a celestial path in the heavens pave.”
Family: “Huh?”
Lisa (deadpan): “Go, dad, go.”

Ant: “Protect the Queen!”
Other Ant: “Which one’s the Queen?”
Third Ant: “I’m the Queen!”
First Ant: “No you’re not!”

Kent Brockman: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just lost the picture but what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The shuttle has been taken over - conquered if you will - by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to say from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earthmen or merely enslave them, but one thing is certain: there is no stopping them. The ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. Like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I can be useful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”

Homer: “Wow! Former president James Taylor!”

James Taylor (singing): “Talkin’ about times to come. Sweet dreams and flying machines, in pieces on the groun - uh, sweet dreams and flying machines flying safely through the air.”

Homer: “Now I’ll bust that pretty face!” (Raises bar, gets stuck in lock). “Aw, stupid bar!”
Aldrin: “Wait, Homer. If that bar holds we might just make it back to Earth!”
Homer: “Oh yeah.” (Pulling at bar) “I’ll bash you good!”

Kent: “Well, this reporter may have been a little hasty earlier. Like to reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. May not be perfect, but it’s the best government we have. For now.”

Dan Rather (I think): “How did you solve the door dilemma?”
Aldrin: “Homer Simpson is the real hero. He jury-rigged the door closed using this.”
Reporter: “Hey what is that?”
Other reporter: “It’s an inanimate carbon rod!”

Homer: “Yeah, maybe I do have the right - what is that stuff?”


Best scenes:

Bart writes INSERT BRAIN HERE on the back of Homer’s head, and he tries to see it, but of course can’t, ending up turning in circles on the floor like a dog chasing its tail.

Homer does his best Charlton Heston as he finally gets the end of Planet of the Apes.

Flying around on the zero-gravity-device-training-thing (sorry for getting all technical on you, but if something’s worth doing…) Homer’s face is so compressed by the extra G’s that he turns into Popeye.

Barney, drunk on champagne after being chosen over Homer, steals a jet pack but it cuts out and he plunges to the ground. He hits the roof - the hard roof - of a pillow factory and when he falls to the ground is run over by a truckfull of marshmallows!

The shuttle on re-entry crashes into the roof of a building hosting a news reporters’ conference.

The front page of Time Magazine shows an inanimate carbon rod, with the blurb “In rod we trust”.

The further parody of 2001 at the very end. Bart writes HERO on his father’s head, throws up the crayon into the air. Tracking shot follows it up, into space, where it becomes a FOX TV satellite which then bounces off the head of the Homer Starchild in the bubble orbiting Earth.

Trivia: You know, I think I might be right in saying this is the only time there’s been a scene taken place inside Moe’s Tavern where Moe has not been seen or heard. He simply is not shown.


Greetings. I have been seconded from the Treehouse of Horror journal, as it seems I was neded here. For those of you who may not know me, I am the Nit-Picker, and I treat everything as real, no matter the circumstances. I adore logic and good writing, and if there’s a hole to be found in a plot, you can rely on me to locate it. I hunt down such things as logical inconsistencies, bad research, and while there are some who accuse me of trying to ruin everything for everyone, I am merely the humble tool of accuracy. You may not like me - most do not - but you cannot refute the logic I bring to the often chaotic world of television writing.

And I have much to say about this episode.

First of all, when the NASA guys approach Barney they’re behind him so all he hears is voices. Yet when they ask him if he “wants to get higher than he ever has” he immediately understands that they are referring to his training to become an astronaut. How? The guy’s a drunk, who probably struggles to tie his shoes in the morning. How can he make such sense out of what is, on the surface, a remark that could be taken so many other ways?

I realise of course that it’s one of the most-loved scenes in the whole series, but when Kent Brockman says “We’re about to get our first shots from inside the spacecraft”, the only way this could be arranged, surely, is if the crew, or at least one of them, uses a camera to broadcast back to Earth. But all are tied up in the unfolding disaster, and it’s highly risible to me to think that any of the three - really, discount Homer; any of the two - could be bothered or able to contend with such a trivial matter. So how does the interior of the craft get broadcast on TV, leading to the hilarious misinterpretation of the ants?

If you hold a carbon rod, surely you’re going to suffer radioactive poisoning? Yet Burns holds one up, and later one is in an open-top car parading down the street in a ticker-tape parade!

How is Homer able not only to get through to NASA, but also to the control room? And later, to the Oval Office? With one phone call?

Rating: A++

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018