Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Recap / TheSimpsonsS15E14TheZiffWhoCameToDinner

Go To

1'''Original air date:''' 3/14/2004 ''(produced in 2003)''
2
3'''Production code:''' FABF-08
4
5The Simpsons go on a late-night attic search after Bart and Lisa (who are traumatized by a horror flick Homer let them watch) begin hearing voices--and find Marge's ex-prom date Artie Ziff, who's on the run for cheating the shareholders of his company.
6----
7!! Tropes:
8* ArtisticLicenceLaw: At the end, Homer is allowed to put the time he spent in prison towards a future offence, which he does by punching the prison guard in the stomach. This would ''not'' happen in real life. For one thing, the concept of "putting time you spent in prison towards a future offence because you were wrongly convicted for the crime you were imprisoned for" is untrue in real life (there ''are'' certain WrongfulAccusationInsurance laws, but they don't work like this). For another, assaulting a prison guard (or stealing a car, the other option Homer had) can get you imprisoned for years, and Homer was implied to only be in prison for a few days (or weeks at the absolute most).
9* BadBadActing: Lenny in the horror movie combines this with a bit of DullSurprise as he tries to remember his lines.
10* BolivianArmyEnding: The final scene of the episode is Artie pissing off all of the inmates at the prison by squirting water in their faces and extinguishing their cigarettes. Marge makes it pretty clear that she doesn't expect Ziff to survive the beatdown to come.
11-->'''Marge:''' Kids, I think you better take your last look at "Uncle Artie".
12** [[spoiler: Averted, given Artie appears alive and well in Season 31's "Hail to the Teeth".]]
13* ContinuityNod: [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E2AStreetcarNamedMarge Llewellyn Sinclair]], [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS2E18BrushWithGreatness Professor Lombardo]], [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E5HomerDefined Aristotle Amadopolis]] and [[WesternAnimation/TheCritic Jay]] [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E18AStarIsBurns Sherman]], all characters previously voiced by Lovitz, appear at Moe's.
14--> '''All:''' Hello, handsome!\
15'''Artie:''' Hello... losers.
16* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Marge asks Artie if he ever thinks of anyone but himself. Cue ImagineSpot of several can-can dancers with his face doing the dance in his honor as an audience of Arties applauds them.
17* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Ziff. He runs his company into the ground (although in his defence it was mostly the dot-com bubble bursting) and then manages to swindle Homer into becoming CEO so the IRS will arrest him instead of Artie.
18* DeliberateValuesDissonance: While investigating the noise in the attic, Homer finds an issue of Newsweek from 1986, with the front page reading "Why America Loves Saddam Hussein," and shows Uncle Sam and Hussein lovingly looking at each other while sharing a milkshake.
19* DoppelgangerCrossover: Homer introduces Ziff to other characters voiced by Creator/JonLovitz including Jay Sherman from ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic''. Ziff calls them all losers.
20* EveryoneHasStandards: Bart, the kid who would gladly sneak into horror movies, is terrified by ''The Re-Deadening''.
21* EverythingIsRacist:
22--> '''Marge:''' My husband's going to jail and it's all your fault! Do you know ''why'' no one likes you?\
23'''Artie:''' Antisemitism?
24* EyeScream: Continuing a RunningGag with Lenny, his movie character loses his eyes to an evil doll.
25--> '''Lenny:''' The buttons look like they're sewn to my eyes, but they're really held on with hot wax.
26* HatedByAll: Artie. Everyone in the courtroom galleries during the trial is glaring at him, well aware of what he did to Homer.
27* HeelRealization: After Marge calls Artie out on his behavior, saying that [[ItsAllAboutMe he only ever thinks of himself]].
28--> '''Artie''': [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone My God, she's right!]]
29* HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: When in prison, Homer admits that he enjoys strangling Bart, and starts to cry from the fact that Bart will be an adult when his father is out, too old to be choked.
30* HouseSquatting: After hearing weird sounds on the attic, the Simpsons go check and find out that Artie has been living inside of the house without their knowledge for months, surviving by feeding off the attic's mold.
31* InformedJudaism: The only time throughout all of his appearances in which we obtain information that Artie Ziff is Jewish is his blunt ComicallyMissingThePoint question of "anti-Semitism" when Marge asks him if he knows why everybody hates him as a preface to a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.
32* ItsAllAboutMe: Artie Ziff before Marge calls him out on it. His ImagineSpot just before his HeelRealization is a chorus of Artie's singing "Artie, Artie, Artie, Artie, Artie" as an audience consisting of more Arties applauds them.
33* IWasQuiteALooker: Back in TheSeventies, Artie was a slim young man with a very nice "Jew-fro". In his middle age, he's gotten pudgier and his hairline is receding.
34* {{Jerkass}}:
35** Artie Ziff. He breaks into Homer and Marge's house, squats in their attic and tricks Homer into becoming majority shareholder of [=ZiffCorp=] so he'll be arrested for Artie's crimes. And once in prison, he sprays water into the faces of fellow inmates to put out their cigarettes (because of all the hazards of smoking, you see).... that is something that would be enraging even if not done to a convicted felon (and it's made pretty clear that he is about to be pummeled before the credits start running).
36** Also, [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS2E12TheWayWeWas back in 1974]], he had [[AttemptedRape tried to force himself on Marge after the prom]].
37** Patty and Selma, but what else is new? When they find out that Artie got Homer thrown in jail, Selma has sex with Artie to celebrate.
38* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Artie loses his big-time, after three episodes in which he doesn't get what he wants (Marge) but he doesn't get anything truly bad coming at him. By the time the episode ends, he's lost all of his money and his freedom.
39* MajorityShareDictator: Played with. Ziff, having absolutely nothing else to his name, bets the company stock he owns in a poker game, which Homer wins. Then at that moment the IRS barge into the Simpson house looking for the CEO of Ziff Co... which at the time technically is Homer. He ends up being taken away with Artie (the man who actually founded, ran, and then destroyed the company) remaining untouched. Needless to say, Moe and the others aren't happy about this when they find out, and Marge even less so when she finds out.
40* MissingStepsPlan: The moment Artie Ziff told the Simpsons he was a dot-com billionaire, they already understood how he went broke.
41* NostrilShot: Lisa {{parodie|d}}s ''The Blair Witch Project''.
42-->'''Lisa:''' If I don't make it out alive, I love you, Mom and Dad. Maggie, you can have my books. And ''Bart'', I'll SeeYouInHell, you booger-eating wuss! Yeah, that's right, ''we all know!''
43* PutOnAPrisonBus: Artie Ziff gets arrested for all his schemes at the end, and this episode was his last major appearance outside of cameos and non-canon episodes until "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS31E11HailToTheTeeth Hail to the Teeth]]".
44* RageBreakingPoint: When the Simpsons suddenly hear theremin music coming from the attic:
45-->'''Homer:''' That's it. It's one thing for a ghost to terrorize my children, but quite another for him to play my theremin.
46* RecognitionFailure: Homer, believing that he's been in jail for years instead of a few weeks at most, thinks Lisa is a preteen Maggie, and Artie is a grown-up Bart.
47* RichesToRags: Artie after the bubble burst.
48* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Bart abandons Lisa in the attic when they film themselves investigating the noises.
49-->'''Lisa:''' ''(nervous laugh)'' Must be the pipes. What do you think, Bart?\
50'''Bart:''' I think you're on your own, toots!
51* SecretSquatter: Bart and Lisa are traumatized after seeing a scary movie, and they think there's a killer in the house after hearing bumps in the night. It turns out to be Artie Ziff, who had been squatting in the attic after going broke.
52* SeeYouInHell: Lisa says this to Bart during her ''Blair Witch Project'' influenced breakdown.
53-->'''Lisa''': Bart, I'll see you in hell, you booger eating wuss! That's right, we all know!
54* ShortFilm: An in-universe example happens with ''[[WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys The Wild Dingleberries Movie]]'', where the runtime is shown as 47 minutes.
55* ShoutOut:
56** The moment Lisa breaks down while she and Bart are investigating the odd noises in the attic and tells how she's sorry about things she's done to the camera she's brought along is clearly based on a similar moment in ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject''.
57** The title is one to ''Film/TheManWhoCameToDinner''.
58* SkewedPriorities: Lisa [[SocialMediaBeforeReason drops her camera]] and runs away from the odd noises in the attic, which for all she knows is something very, ''very'' dangerous, and takes a moment to go back to where the camera is lying down and [[RattlingOffLegal rattle off her home film's copyright legalese]] before [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere continuing to run away]] (''without'' the camera).
59* SocialMediaBeforeReason: Lisa brings a camcorder with her when Bart and her go see what's in the attic. She spends quite a lot of time recording what she thinks may be her last words and her video's legalese than she does running the hell away from the thing that scared her half to death.
60* StalkerWithACrush: Artie's this to Marge. After the family finds out that he's been living in their attic since he went broke, he explains that he did it because Marge is the closest thing he's ever had to true love--but Marge is quick to point out that she and Artie only had one date together and that he almost raped her on the night of their high school prom.
61* TakeThat:
62** The episode begins with the Homer attempting to take his kids, Rod and Todd to see ''[[WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys The Wild Dingleberries Movie]]'', with the descriptions of the film given by Bart and Lisa clearly being unflattering regardless of how enthusiastic they sound.
63-->'''Lisa:''' It's a movie version of a cartoon family you can see for free on TV.\
64'''Bart:''' But they stretched out the plot and added a wildebeest...from the hood!
65** One of the movie titles on the placard is ''[[Film/{{Hulk}} The Unwatchable Hulk]]''.
66* TechnologyMarchesOn: Acknowledged InUniverse. Ziff only gets as far in the story of how he became poor as to mention his business was a dot-com company before everybody interrupts him by saying "we get it".
67* TooDumbToLive: Artie didn't realize how his fellow inmates thought about his plan to save them from smoking.
68* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: We never see Rod or Todd after they see ''The Re-Deadening'', or if Ned even found out about Homer taking them to the movie in the first place.

Top