Bart begins smoking to impress Milhouse's cousin Annika. Meanwhile, the rest of the family learn about Grampa's days in the U.S. Air Force.
Tropes:
- Been There, Shaped History: According to Abe, after taking a joyride in an Air Force plane, he hitched a ride back to the base with Jack Kerouac, who handed him the final draft of On the Road with instructions to mail it to his publisher, along with the "rambling, repetitive first draft" with instructions to destroy it. The finished version got sucked into the turbine of a passing jet and Abe just mailed the first draft, which he cites as the reason Kerouac became The Alcoholic.
- Be Yourself: Abe, who worked at an air force base moving turtles off the runway, successfully flew a plane for a brief, shining moment and was thereby able to impress Mona enough to make her take an interest in him—despite the fact that she liked nothing else about him. He warns Bart that even though taking inadvisable actions to impress girls could actually work, the consequences of using posturing as the basis for a relationship aren't worth it. This causes Bart to realize that, if he's honest with himself, he doesn't really like Annika, so it's not worth trying to impress her by mimicking her interests.
- Canon Character All Along: Abe tells a story about a cocktail waitress he met on his air force base, who was nicknamed "Sunny" by the men working there, and whose face we don't see throughout his flashback—until the end, when she's revealed to be Mona Simpson, his eventual wife and Homer's mother.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Homer's actions throughout this episode result in so, each coming down on him. Sabotaging kids' birthdays? Government goons force him to host the next one in town. Browbeating his father as he usually does? The latter's military buddies beat him up and force the two to spend time with each other.
- Casting Gag: Dutch actress and singer Carice van Houten plays Milhouse van Houten's cousin.
- Comically Missing the Point: Subverted. When he hears about Bart's attempts to impress Annika, Abe tells Bart a story about how he used a grand gesture to win over Mona, who would become Homer's mother and Bart's grandmother—his point being that stunting to impress girls is a bad idea, since pretending to be someone you're not could blind a girl to the fact that you're completely wrong for each other. Bart appears to only hear the part about how Abe got the girl and sprints to the airport to see Annika off—but he actually wants to tell her that he thought it over and realized he doesn't care for her personality, meaning he understood the story perfectly.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As punishment for Homer ruining so many children's birthday parties, the Big Birthday people threaten to blacklist the Simpsons from ever having another birthday ever again. Not just another birthday party, but another birthday, period.
- Doppelgänger Dating: Annika gets a Feet-First Introduction and Bart's perfectly content to end at her neck, but keeps going and finds that she's the spitting image of Milhouse, who then introduces her as his cousin. Further awkwardness is caused when Annika gives Bart a Headbutt of Love with her prominent nose touching his.
Bart: Oh, that felt so good.
Milhouse: Now you know what nuzzling me would be like.
Bart: ...Now not so good.
- Elder Abuse: Abe's old air force buddies decide to teach Homer a lesson for the way he treats his dad and a veteran. Unaware that Homer treats his father as such because he was a lousy parent.
- Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: Bart and Milhouse put out Rod's birthday candles before he can blow them out, causing Rod to exclaim that he'll never get to grow up and marry Ned.
- Gone Horribly Right: Abe's attempt to impress Mona succeeded. As we've already seen in prior episodes, it probably shouldn't have.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Deconstructed. Abe used one of these to win Mona and understands from bitter experience that a relationship built on nothing but such a gesture can't be sustained—particularly when the gesture's only attractive because it's completely uncharacteristic of the person who did it.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Doing dumb, dangerous stuff to impress a girl works—but only in the short term. Actual compatibility is what keeps a relationship together.
- Insane Troll Logic: How do you get kids to stop parents from bankrupting themselves for their kids' birthday parties? Why, ruin every kid's party in town, of course.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Horrible as it may be going around ruining children's birthdays, Marge agrees with Homer that children's birthdays are far too expensive and elaborate nowadays.
- Kissing Cousins: Milhouse confirms that his parents are in fact cousins, he even has a lizard tongue due to the inbreeding.
- Multiple-Choice Past: In this episode, Grampa was in the U.S. Air Force. As lampshaded by Bart and Lisa, other episodes described him as either a former Army soldier or a former Navy soldier. Gramps then comments that this kind of confusion was usual back in his days in the Marine Corps.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: The idea of never having birthdays ever again makes Bart and Lisa fear they'll always have the same age.
- Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: One of Abe's friends compares Homer's treatment of him to how they treated Prisoners of War whenever the Red Cross wasn't looking.
- Race for Your Love: Subverted, Bart appears to be running to the airport to confess to Annika that he loves her but he actually says she was just okay and not really worth all the effort he was going through, and he really felt the need to tell her that.
- Recursive Canon: Homer mentions Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play in his incredibly long list of stories featuring futuristic dystopias. In other words, in the world of The Simpsons, there exists a play about post-apocalyptic survivors reenacting their favorite Simpsons episodes, which implies The Simpsons show exists within The Simpsons show.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Abe spend way too long in the bathroom at the movie theater because he somehow thought that the mirror was the movie.
- Sins of Our Fathers: When Homer sabotages the extravagant parties other parents prepared for their kids, the heads of the party industry retaliate by threatening to deny any sort of entertainment for his kids' birthday parties.
- Take That!: Parties are the only remaining industry in America.
