Original air date: 1/14/2001 (produced in 2000)
Production code: CABF-05
After visiting a prison rodeo, Marge volunteers to teach convicts how to be artists and befriends a prisoner Jack (guest star Michael Keaton) who has artistic potential, but is extremely manipulative. Meanwhile, Homer suffers a back injury, visits a chiropractor, and later uses a trash can to fix people's spines.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Jack's a convict with a history of violence and fierce temper. He's also very friendly when he's mellow, appreciates all that Marge does for him, and Apu even claims he was polite after Jack shot him.
- Bait-and-Switch: After being sent to the infirmary due to injuring his back in the prison rodeo, Homer tells Marge (who asked how he's feeling) that he can't complain. He then pointed to a large sign on the wall that says "No Complaining". But once the Warden explains that the rule only applies to inmates, he begins to loudly complain about it and how unsatisfying his job is.
- Blatant Lies: Jack lies to Marge about not burning the mural. She believes him, but moments later he sets Skinner's car on fire and Marge sees it. When Marge confronts him, he admits to having burnt the mural, but denies having set the car on fire.
- The Bore: More evidence that Skinner aims to take anything fun out of being in school because he has no idea of what interests kids—he gets on Jack's case because he dislikes the original (that has both Panthera Awesome and Brawn Hilda, and makes everybody else who sees it feel ecstatic) and he says it's because it's "too exciting and improper" for a school (his own suggestion definitely would fit better on a kindergarten, if one feels generous, and even Ned Flanders isn't willing to be that generous), he switches food around in the weekly lunch plan because he thinks kids are getting too excited when they get it on Thursdays and he completely kills a joke about the Superintendent on the unveiling because he says it wrongly and tries to recover by explaining it.
- Brick Joke: When Marge is baking a cake for the warden in an attempt to help Jack get parole, she agrees to let Bart have a piece, but only if he finishes his ice cream, which he struggles to do. Later, when she's making cupcakes for Skinner in order to bribe him into letting Jack paint the mural, she gives one to Jack, but only if he finishes his ice cream, which he struggles to do. This makes Marge wonder why no one seems to like them.
- Bullying a Dragon: Skinner pisses off an ex-convict with a history of violence and a preference for arson with his imbecilic decisions and refusal to take the blame for them when they fail. It's probably a good thing that Jack decides to only set Skinner's things ablaze.
- The Cameo: Sideshow Bob is seen in the prison infirmary with his face and hair all wrapped up in bandages.
- Can't You Read the Sign?: After Homer's accident in the rodeo, Marge asks how he's doing. He replies that he can't complain...before pointing to a sign that says "No Complaining". When the doctor points out it only applies to the prisoners, Homer begins complaining about his back and his life in general.
- Chaos Architecture: Marge looks out the kitchen window and sees both the prison and the school from the same view.
- Disproportionate Retribution: After Skinner made him both change the original mural and blamed him for the failure of the new one, Jack set fire to the school.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Principal Skinner's scheduling of the school's lunch menu is an obvious jab at how network executives schedule TV shows
. - Downer Ending:
- For all of Marge's efforts to help reform Jack, he still goes back to prison after betraying her trust.
- It also applies to Homer's lucrative chiropractor business being sabotaged by rival doctors with him unable to do a thing about it. His plot even references the downer ending of Chinatown.
- Everyone Has Standards: Ned Flanders is one of the strongest Moral Guardians on the show, but even he thinks that the mural's design is too Sickeningly Sweet.
- Eye Contact as Proof: Marge asks Jack to look her in the eye and say he didn't set the mural on fire. He does, and very convincingly too—but she later finds out he actually did it.
- Face Palm: Marge covers her face with her hand when she sees Jack setting Skinner's car on fire.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Inverted. After learning that Jack is in prison for robbing the Kwik-E-Mart and shooting Apu, Marge mentions to him that so many people have shot Apu that the sentence is now down to a $50 fine.
- Foreshadowing: After her first day working at the prison, Marge tells Bart that Sideshow Bob sends his regards and that he's looking forward to seeing Bart real soon.Bart: (chuckling) Oh, that Bob!
- Hypocrite: Skinner. On top of everything else he does during the episode that he refuses to take any faults about, he casually mentions that Jack's attempt to burn the school would have failed because it's full of asbestos.
- Implausible Deniability: Crossing over with Suspiciously Specific Denial: After Jack tries to set fire to the school, Marge finds him and he denies having done that. At the time, Marge and maybe the audience believes him, and so Marge tries to help him get away - but Jack wastes it by setting Skinner's car on fire in front of everybody. As he's arrested, he then admits to Marge that he tried to set the school on fire but denies setting the car on fire.Marge: You crumb bum! You looked me right in the eye and lied to me!
Jack: Marge, this is the God's truth. I burned the mural, but I did not burn Skinner's car.
Marge: I just SAW you! - Indy Hat Roll: The two investors who expressed interest in buying Homer's trash can leave by narrowly sliding under the closing garage door. This makes Homer and Moe realize they were actually out-of-business chiropractors—nobody else can bend like that.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Jack assures Marge that he wasn't the one that set the mural on fire (and he's convincing enough that Marge tries to buy him time to run away—and at the time the audience may also believe him). The ten seconds she bought him were all that he needed for him to set Skinner's car on fire (and then say that it isn't his fault).
- Irony:Dr. Steve: Simpson! You're not a licensed chiropractor, and you're stealing patients from me and from Dr. Steffi.
Homer: Boy, talk about irony. The AMA tries to drive you guys out of business, now you're doing the same to me. Think about the irony.
Dr. Steve: [grabbing Homer by the collar] You've been warned. Stop chiropracting.
Homer: [choking] Not unless you think about the irony. - Jerkass Has a Point: Even though he was being an ass about it, Skinner was justified in not being happy with Jack ignoring his original design for the wall mural. Even if his design sucked, he had commissioned a specific piece and given a design for Jack to follow, which he completely ignored at the expense of the school's time and materials. However, as seen under Never My Fault, this is negated.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Skinner pushing Jack around over the mural not only results in the school nearly getting burned down, but his car being set ablaze. Applies to Jack as well, who gets arrested for doing so.
- Karma Houdini: The chiropractors who threatened Homer's life, destroyed his trash can and forced him out of business get away with no comeuppance. Justified, as it references the ending of Chinatown, which had a similar ending.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Marge's reaction when she mistakenly believes she killed Homer.
- Mythology Gag: Homer uses Lisa as a flag to anger a bull, but his idea of immediately using Bart to calm it down backfires when he realizes he's also wearing red and asks him where his "blue shirt" is ("I don’t have a blue shirt"). For many years Bart wore a blue shirt on official merchandise to distinguish it from the bootlegs, as well as in the Bongo comic series.
- Never My Fault:
- When the overly cutesy school mural is met with an overwhelmingly negative reception, Skinner pins the blame entirely on Jack, even though he was the one who forced Jack to paint it in the first place (and over the more heroic-looking mural he made first). He also puts the blame on his botched joke on the unveiling act on comedian Bruce Vilanch, who wrote it (Vilanch, who is in the crowd and is a professional, just says that a better comedian would have salvaged it).
- Crossing over with Suspiciously Specific Denial and Implausible Deniability, Jack sets the school and later Skinner's car on fire and denies that he was the one who did it — or rather, he denies the school, then admits to the school, but denies setting the car on fire even when it's the crime he did in front of multiple witnesses.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever Moe submitted as a draft for the mural (we don't see what he drew), Skinner is very disturbed by it.
- Jack apparently had an incident with a farm couple but never elaborated on it.
- No OSHA Compliance: Springfield Elementary is apparently full of asbestos, which can lead to severe breathing difficulties if it enters a person's system.
- Police Brutality: Chief Wiggum assures Skinner with a nudge to the ribs that if they find Jack, he'll "teach him the fine art of police brutality." Wiggum catches Jack in the end but doesn't engage in any brutality; he just bores him with his mindless conversation on their way back to prison.
- Panthera Awesome: The original mural painting for the school team Puma's Pride is a warrior woman riding a puma.
- Shout-Out:
- While the episode itself doesn't have anything to do with it, the title is wordplay on Pokémon and the word "pokey," a slang term for a prison.
- Chief Wiggum mentions watching Oz, Sex and the City, and The Sopranos. Jack only gets basic cable in prison but he likes Sports Center, which Wiggum doesn't understand.
- After the chiropractors destroy Homer's back-fixing garbage can, Moe sadly tells him: "Forget it, Homer. It's Chiro-town."
- Shown Their Work: When Dr. Hibbert, unable to do anything about Homer's back injury, gives him a chiropractor's phone number, Homer brings up the fact that medical doctors oppose chiropractors. Dr. Hibbert admits that's their official position but he actually believes chiropractors do a good work.
- Sickeningly Sweet: In-universe. Even Ned Flanders thinks Skinner's idea for the mural is too sweet.
- Special Guest: Michael Keaton as Jack Crowley, Charles Napier as the warden, Bruce Vilanch As Himself, and the late Robert Schimmel as a prisoner.
- Something We Forgot: After Marge expresses disappointment at Jack's talent being wasted while she and Homer leave, it's shown they forgot Bart and Lisa at the prison, something Lisa points out.
- Stupid Evil: Jack convinced Marge that he's innocent and convinces her to give him an opportunity to get away. He had a perfect chance to get away with his crime of destroying the mural and leaving Springfield. Instead, he decided to stay so he could burn Skinner's car down while laughing in front of everyone, including Marge herself.
- The Unreveal: The "evidence" in Marge's paper bag is never shown off thanks to Jack burning Skinner's car. Likewise Moe's pitch for the school mural is similarly never shown off, but according to Skinner, contains a very skewed take on lovemaking.
