There’s a brief moment in this episode, where Homer is asked by Marge if he drinks to escape reality, and Homer imagines himself really buff and making his pecs dance. I really like those little moments where we see the really weird world that is the inside of Homer’s mind.
Oh yeah, and in this episode, he temporarily gives up drinking.
This episode of The Simpsons is named after a movie where a woman is forced by Nazis to choose which of her two children will be immediately killed.
Nothing that happens in this episode is anywhere near as depressingly awful as that.
What’s the best way to treat a major guest star like Elizabeth Taylor?
Give her a single word at the end of an episode that came out of a baby’s mouth.
Selma Bouvier does not want to die alone. We got a sense of that when Principal Skinner was courting her more hostile sister Patty, but Selma makes plenty of bad romantic decisions entirely on her own.
That title is so The Simpsons. Give us a main plot about Marge needing a break but name the episode after Homer.
Oh, and the only reason this goes live on a Saturday was due to A) I write these well in advance and 2) we had special content on April Fool’s Day, so there’s that.
When I first saw this particular episode, I thought the writers were riffing on Jessica McClure, who as a baby fell down a well and became a media sensation until her rescue.
Then years later I learned the real inspiration was a dark Billy Wilder comedy starring Kirk Douglas called Ace in the Hole. That’s actually a pretty good movie, and a lesser-known film from Wilder. But that’s not important right now.
While the Halloween episodes have become an annual tradition, early seasons attempted an annual flashback episode. While the flashback does still find use today, the early ones were used to fill in blanks for the family’s past, such as the meeting of Marge and Homer, and the marriage listed above.
The marriage, it should be noted, is Bart’s fault. Sort of.
What? Another Homer episode? Well, if that’s the way it is…
Work sucks, especially if the object of your efforts doesn’t really last too long. That’s the lesson Bart learns in this particular episode.
Continue reading Simpsons Did It!: “Three Men And A Comic Book”
Up until this point, Marge’s sisters Patty and Selma seem to have been fairly interchangeable.
That will change now.
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