Mine’s gotta be Marge on the Lam. It’s got Ballet as bears driving little cars, it’s got Homer about to have his arms sawed off cause he didn’t let go of soda, it’s got good waffles sticking together, it’s got moonshine straight from your own still, it’s got ghost cars, it’s got Miguel Sanchez, it’s got Sunshine and Lollypops and Raibows, it’s got precious antique cans, it’s got suspects in a…red car who are passing directly beneath the earth’s sun…now. it’s hilarious and really encapsulates season 5s ‘fuck it, we ball’ attitude.
That’s be an underrated fave for sure, I’ve never heard that as anyone’s favorite. Could you elaborate? I’m legit curious, this is a New Opinion for me
Barney ratting out Homer for drunk driving to the cops before drunkenly running over Chief Wiggum is always hysterical to me.
Alcohol has ruined my life. I’m 31 years old.
I remember from the commentary that they had a lot of network pushback on it because beer commercials and ad money. They could dunk on tobacco cause they can’t advertise on TV, as much as they wanted but booze criticism always had pushback
That honestly makes sense. They got away with a lot, it’s amazing watching it now.
Fox needed them DESPERATELY cause they were a new network when they hit big and they got a no studio notes deal. Futurama didn’t get the same from fox.
Damn, that’s awesome! I didn’t know that. They got so lucky. Honestly, Fox was slop at the time.
I wonder how many of the anti-Fox jokes were genuine. I always figured they were self-humbling jokes that Fox allowed but maybe they were actual jabs.
Genuine but really permitted. They got Rupert Murdoch on and had him refer to himself as a billionaire tyrant bit also he owned Fox, so it was never outside of what the overseers allowed but they allowed any Fox bashing quite well from what I heard from the dvd commentaries from dvds released by fox but a lot of people kn them weren’t under contract anymore and they didn’t pay as much attention to commentary content in the early dvd days when the classico seasons came out. So it does seem like Fox at the time was totally fine with it as long as the money came in, Disney seems way less willing to allow that.
Nostalgia plays a factor but it hit the right beats for me: Lisa’s science project sabotage by Bart who then becomes the subject (“is my brother dumber than a hamster?”), Homer’s escape from the power plant to go to the Duff Brewery (“if the plant ye wish to flee, go to sector 7-B.”) then him getting caught after leaving the brewery (Chief Wiggum is in a beer stein costume, gets hit by Barney’s car and Wiggum rolls away saying “weeeee!” then hits a tree and bursts into flames for no reason), and the way it ends is wholesome with Homer and Marge riding a bicycle into the sunset singing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.
Things exploding when they shouldn’t is low-key one of my fave running gags. Molemans car bumps into a tree at a snails pace? Explodes. Wiggum as a beer Stein? Explodes. A man’s appendix that’s about to burst? Explodes. Corn flakes + milk? Burns. A model rocket hitting a model comet? Explodes and ignites a model of Moe’s Tavern. Pop rocks and soda at a candy convention? Explodes into a fireball.
I love those types of gags