Homer and Marge bring the kids to their old apartment and reminisce to the young couple living there about life before marriage and children, unwittingly causing a rift between the younger couple. Kevin Pollak guest stars as Ross, Professor Thernstrom, and the manager of The Doughy Dozen Bagels.
Tropes
- Adaptational Villainy: Parodied in one of the many sequel hooks at the end of the Avengers parody seen at the beginning. Spider-Man:s Uncle Ben turns out to be the Greater-Scope Villain of the movie, having become a demon lord somehow.Uncle Ben: With great power comes NO responsibility!
- Already Met Everyone: Before they were married, Homer and Marge numbered Kirk and Luann Van Houten among their friends. This creates a Continuity Snarl when Homer and Marge are said to be the first of their social circle to have a child, with the Van Houtens still being depicted as childless while Bart is an active toddler, although Milhouse is the same age as Bart.
- As Himself: Marge as a young journalist gets to chat with conceptual artist John Baldessari.
- Awful Wedded Life: After the family's performance of untroubled happiness convinces the new owners of their old apartment not to break up, Homer congratulates Lisa on saving "two bad marriages"—a number which he hastily amends to "one" after being sharply questioned by Marge.
- Babies Make Everything Better:
- Addressed directly in the story, Homer and Marge talk of their pre-kid life with a heavy degree of romanticism, while talk of dealing with three kids treated as one disaster after another. This freaks out the couple, and the family plays up being a loving family to try and convince the wife to stay. While there is a fear of the responsibility of parenthood and raising a family, all together they help each other through the hard times.
- Lisa was actually conceived on this premise after Reverend Lovejoy convinced Marge and Homer that having a second child would solve all their problems with Bart.
- Bitch Slap: Homer receives one each from Bart and Maggie upon their learning that he chose Bart over a promising career.
- Continuity Nod:Lisa: Want to tell us how Maggie was born?Homer: We told you that story.Lisa: And how we got the dog?Homer: Found him at Christmas.Lisa: And the origin of the cat?Homer: Nobody cares.note
- Enfant Terrible: Aside from the obvious Bart, there's also Jane, subject of a PSA Reverend Lovejoy shows Homer and Marge on the evils of only children. She clotheslines a mailman with her jump rope, kicks him unconscious and slits his throat, and only continues from their in further clips. Marge also reports Bart's destruction of an art piece with a headline calling him a "terrible enfant".
- Hand Wave: At the end Abe's sperm are shown with his face and voice, but one of Jasper's sperm have snuck in. When asked about it he just says "None of your business."
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": Bart is tickled by Homer and Marge's use of the acronym "DINK," though offended that they can use such a word to describe their life situation before getting married (Dual Income, No Kids) while he can't use it to describe his "dingus."
- Hilarious in Flashback: Homer and Marge decided to have a second child upon being advised that giving Bart a sibling to play with would make him more manageable. Look how well that went. (In fairness, Lisa is a good moral influence on Bart and often supports his efforts to do the right thing, so the theory wasn't a total wash.)
- Hipster: Homer and Marge's friends used to be Turn of the Millennium hipsters. Miles and his wife are hipsters of The New '10s. Apparently the latter are more cannabis-focused.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Lisa was conceived on the fire escape in Homer and Marge's first apartment, this being their only option to avoid waking up Bart.
- A Mistake Is Born: Played Straight with Bart, as always, but Averted with Lisa. While previous episodes implied her to be an accidental conception, here she's the product of Homer and Marge's decision to give Bart a sibling.
- Only-Child Syndrome: When they go to him for counseling on how to deal with Bart, Reverend Lovejoy shows Homer and Marge a luridly scaremongering video on the subject (complete with a disclaimer asserting that Sibling Rivalry may result from the introduction of a second child in rare cases)."Jane was an only child. And science has proven that only children are lonely children and lonely children are evil children."
- Pet the Dog: Humorously Subverted. Homer spends a lot of the episode knocking "baby Bart," but it turns out that he gave up a potentially lucrative career due to the company's prejudice against its employees having children. Rather than be touched upon learning this, Bart is furious that Homer "chose [him] over money" and administers a Bitch Slap.
- Retcon: Like most Whole Episode Flashback installments after the 90s run, this one revises the Simpsons' history quite a bit beyond a mere Setting Update.
- In "I Married Marge," the episode detailing the circumstances of Bart's birth, Bart was conceived at a time when Homer held a low-paying job at a miniature golf course and Marge (herself seemingly unemployed) still lived with her parents, forcing him to scrounge for money any way he could until he finally landed his first job at the power plant, making him able to support a wife and a child just in time for Marge to give birth. Here, Homer and Marge live together on two incomes before Bart's conception, with Marge working at the Springfield Shopper and Homer inhabiting a promising role at a startup called Flashmouth—jobs they retain after Bart is born until his presence in their lives causes both jobs to be lost. The power plant is never brought up.
- Up to this point all three of the Simpson kids were unplanned, though Lisa was the only one of the three who wasn't actually conceived at an inconvenient moment. This episode has Homer and Marge deciding to have a second child on the theory that Bart's bad behavior is down to Only-Child Syndrome.
- Bart appears perfectly happy with Lisa from the moment of being introduced to her, although "Lisa's First Word" revolved around his journey to overcoming his initial reaction of Infant Sibling Jealousy-induced loathing.
- Special Edition Title: The show's standard title sequence plus Couch Gag is replaced with a musical Bill Plympton animation for based on his 1987 short Your Face.
- Speed Sex: Not wanting to wake up Bart, Homer and Marge dash out to the fire escape to conceive Lisa and back inside in seconds (Marge being concerned about blocking the fire escape in case it's actually needed).
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: Bart ruins a Jeff Koons-ish giant balloon rabbit by puncturing it with a pin and reducing it to a pile of rubber, but an identical pile of rubber with a sign reading "futility" is a smash.
