After the plant cuts health care benefits again (although this time, only for the employees' children), Marge turns to buying healing crystals as a cheaper solution for Bart's ADD, but when they work (a little too well for Lisa's liking), she goes into the crystal selling business.
This episode provides examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: How Lisa sneaks in to Bart's class to find out his secret.
- Bait-and-Switch: Homer used the phrase "A Confederacy of Dunces" to describe the membership of his book club, not to say what book they're reading (Lenny and Carl didn't even get through the title of their actual selection, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).
- Bland-Name Product:
- "Banana Republican" is a parody of Banana Republic.
- "Foot Clocker" is a parody of Foot Locker.
- "H&MM?" is a parody of H&M.
- "Truck Nuts R Us" is a parody of Toys "R" Us.
- Continuity Nod:
- Bart still takes Focusyn.
- Ned still teaches Bart's class following the previous season's "Left Behind."
- The coyote from "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" appears in the Fantasy Sequence halfway through the episode.
- When Bart is flashing back to incidents in his life where Marge has helped him, we get to see how he survived after Homer threw him into the zoo's lion enclosure in "A Tree Grows in Springfield": Marge fought the lions off with a whip and a chair.
- Cult: The original owner of FAO Quartz joins one but then flees from it the moment Marge goes to see how she's doing (they gave great massages, but everything else was horrible).
- Hidden Depths: Half-Witted Hillbilly Cletus Spuckler learned Swedish so that he could read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in its original language.
- Househusband: Homer instantly becomes a parody of a Housewife when Marge starts her own business, taking up aerobics, running a book club, and putting curlers in his two hairs. He never actually quit the power plant and gets calls asking for him all week, which comes in handy when Marge decides she's done with her new job just as Homer's embarking on the next logical step in the housewife's career, deciding to get a job.
- Impact Silhouette: This episode's Couch Gag has Homer making one in the backdrop.
- Laborious Laziness: Bart's secret to good grades really does involve the crystal Marge gave him: he's been using it as a magnifying lens to read cheat sheets copied onto posters in the classroom while Milhouse keeps Ned distracted.
- Offscreen Teleportation: One of the side effects of Bart's cheaper medicine involves him suddenly disappearing to a different point in the room the moment Marge takes her eyes off him for a second.
- Reflexive Response: When Marge tells Bart she's found a new solution for his ADHD, Bart opens his mouth and gulps as though she's giving him a pill, causing her to worry that she has him too well-trained.
- Sequential Symptom Syndrome: After Marge gives Bart a cheaper ADHD medicine, Lisa shows her an internet video in which a doctor warns about the dangers of this medicine. As the doctor lists off the side effects, Bart immediately experiences every single one of them.
- Shout-Out: The episode's title is a reference to the 1968 song "Crystal Blue Persuasion".
- Homer's book club read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
- Carl refers to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
- Spoofs "R" Us: When Marge says she doesn't belong with all the other legitimate businesses, one of the stores shown is "Truck Nuts "R" Us".
- Suppository Gag: When Marge tells Bart she found a new way to treat his ADHD, Bart first assumes it's another pill. When Marge says it's not, he concludes it's a suppository and immediately moons her to take the medicine.
