History Recap / TheSimpsonsS2E15OhBrotherWhereArtThou

* IncompetenceInc: Powell Motors is shown to be this. The company's products don't appeal to consumers and are implied to be cheap and low quality, their marketing is so idiotic that they name new cars after very obscure (to the common man) Myth/ClassicalMythology references, the board of directors are a bunch of clueless {{Upper Class Twit}}s and Herb has an extremely bad relationship with them and with his lead engineers, especially due to being a SelfMadeMan who loathes people born into success. Things are so bad that Powell Motors is losing more and more ground to its Japanese competitors every day. Homer's car is just the final nail in the company's coffin - Herb put all his hopes on Homer's new miracle product, and he ignored his engineers' and executives' warnings about the lemon Homer was designing, since he believed anything they hated ''must'' be an improvement.

* TakeThat: The quality of the Powell Motors range (each car only having "forty bucks' worth of steel in them"), the out-of-touch nature of the executives and marketing team, and the threat of Japanese automakers are likely this, aimed at the Big Three US auto industry, which spent much of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s thoroughly BlessedWithSuck. Case in point: the episode was aired less than a year after the remains of the American Motors Corporation had been fully absorbed into Chrysler.

** Abe gets a call from Homer about Herb being a millionaire CEO and [[GenreSavvy specifically warns Homer not to touch anything or do anything involving money]] until Abe gets there. At the end of the episode, when Homer's actions have left Herb financially ruined, Abe shows up in a taxi.

* BrickJoke: Herb tells the family that his personal cook will make anything they want any time of day, leading Homer to ask hypothetical questions about making pork chops even at 4 a.m. After some family bonding scenes, we cut to Homer in the middle of the night and calling the cook.

* HypocriteHasAPoint: He has as much part in the bankrupsy of his company as Homer, leaving him to build the car and failing to manage and overlook development. On the other hand, he is right to blame Homer for going mad with power and making absurdly unproductive and expensive creative decisions, draining well above his funding after Herb specifically asked him to make a car "for the common man". Herb is as much a PointyHairedBoss as Homer proved to be, but he at least has common sense to make cars that can market to working class, and on paper wasn't wrong to assume Homer, an actual working class man who constantly has money woes, should have worked on the same logic.

-->'''Homer:''' (angrily) BART!!

-->'''Homer:''' (reluctantly) I guess he got us there.

-->'''Herb:''' (to the executies) [[SuddenlyShouting DO YOU HEAR THAT, YA MORONS?!]] This is why we're getting killed in the marketplace! Instead of listening to what they want; you're telling them what they want!

** Herb may be a MeanBoss who constantly berates and insults his staff, but he has ''some'' valid reasons for this. For starters, the executives show [[InsufferableGenius a pompous attitude]] towards Homer (and presumably other customers) by [[ViewersAreMorons telling them what they think they want]] and [[HolierThanThou acting like they know what is best]]. On the other hand, the other executives at the board meeting made a mistake of [[ViewersAreGeniuses overestimating the customer's intelligence]] by naming cars after [[Myth/ClassicalMythology somewhat obscure mythology characters]] that a common person might not be familiar with. It was quite understandable that Herb would [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech call the executives out on both mistakes]] as they were running away business by alienating and patronizing their customers.

* JerkassHasAPoint: The design team makes some valid points about fuel efficiency and automobile designs, but how they express them ultimately demeans everything. The lead designer also correctly warns Herb that Homer's ideas will harm the company, though in what is heavily implied to be a pompous tirade full of cheap knocks at Homer's intelligence and personal hygene, leading him to get ignored until it is too late.