Larry the barfly is dead, and feeling guilty for never getting to really know him, Homer, Moe, Lenny and Carl go on a journey to scatter his ashes at Serenity Falls.
Larry's funeral has a light attendance, with the only people there being Homer, Marge, Moe, Lenny, Carl, and Larry's mother. Bart and Lisa were also in attendance, but they left to crash the other funerals at the home. Reverend Lovejoy gives Homer's eulogy before being told he's got the wrong sad balding drunk, and he steps aside to let Larry's mother speak. She wants to hear memories of her son from his best friends, the fellows at Moe's. But the four of them are at a loss for words, they never really knew him. After a prompt from Larry's mom, they make up a story about going fishing with Larry. Marge calls the boys out for never taking the time to know Larry, but Moe defends himself for saying they came, unlike Barney, who was busy making a well for a village in Nicaragua. Homer says Larry just never fit in with them, they're a group of four, like the Sex and the City women. Marge is unmoved, all Larry wanted was a connection, and yet none of the men never reached out and he died alone among the barflies.
The four are feeling remorseful, particularly Lenny because Marge is disappointed because she thought he was the sensitive one. Larry's mom presents the men with a book from Larry's room, and inside the book is a drawing of the five of them, "Moe's Bros", gathered at "my special place", a pristine waterfall that Carl recognizes as Serenity Falls. Lenny gets the idea to take Larry's ashes there, because it's the sensitive thing to do. The four, no, five of them are on the move with Moe at the wheel, but with death on their minds, the non-driving non-dead members of "Moe's Bros" get out their flasks and drink.
After a day of driving, Moe's Bros check into a motel. Lenny leaves a light on for Larry's ghost, but Carl can't sleep with the light shining off of the urn. The four discuss the afterlife, with Lenny believing in ghosts, Carl believing in reincarnation, Moe believing in nothingness, and Homer believing in heaven. Wanting to spare Larry's ghost of the argument, Lenny takes the urn into the bathroom.
The next morning, Homer accidentally knocks over the urn with a yawn and a stretch, spilling Larry's ashes... and some blue gemstones? Homer hurriedly tries to get everything back into the urn, but Moe comes in and sees the gemstones, which he identifies as sapphires. Moe theorizes Larry has been smuggling gemstones in his rectum, and that's why they're among his ashes. But the sapphires are theirs now, they're rich! Homer wants to tell Lenny and Carl about the sapphires, but Moe talks him out of it, because they need the money more.
Back on the road with Lenny at the wheel, Carl notices this isn't the right road. Lenny is taking the scenic route so Larry could appreciate the wildflowers, but Carl doesn't want to waste time, because he and Naima have a concert date and he doesn't want her to be left alone with her performing ex, Kool of Kool & the Gang. Carl grabs the wheel, and as the van swerves, Larry's urn gets knocked about. Moe slams on the brakes, not wanting to lose the sapphires. Lenny and Carl simmer down, with Carl agreeing with whatever route Lenny wants to take. Lenny floors it, and the inertia sends the urn out the back doors of the van, spilling open, leaving the sapphires available for all to see. Moe claims it was Homer's idea to keep the sapphires secret, but before Homer violently react to the lie, they're interrupted by a sheriff, who takes the urn and the sapphires and arrests the four for jewel smuggling.
Locked in the "frunk" of the sheriff's electric car, the four bicker, and not just over this betrayal, but over other incidents. They nudge eachother as best they could while stuck in a front trunk, then they realize this is a dysfunctional friend group when sober. Why would Larry want to be one of them? Then they overhear a phone call. The "sheriff" is one of Fat Tony's hired goons, Mickey No-Loose-Ends. Fat Tony wants to spare them, but when you hire someone with the nickname "No-Loose-Ends"... Carl adopts Lenny's belief in ghosts, Lenny fears Moe's nothingness, and Moe makes a prayer so he can get into Homer's heaven. Homer, however, after bemoaning what he might reincarnate into based on Carl's beliefs, feels something underneath him. A flare gun!
The car comes to a stop, and Homer tries to shoot Mickey No-Loose-Ends after he opens the frunk, but he misses and sends the car over a steep hill, teetering over a cliff. Facing a variation of the Prisoner's Dilemma, none of them wants to doom the rest by jumping out of the car alone. Their only option is to jump out together, jumping to either salvation or the afterlife. But because Homer mistook what "on three" meant, Homer is still in the frunk, going down. Meanwhile, at the top of the hill, Mickey No-Loose-Ends gets knocked out by a fallen tree that the flare set on fire. The urn rolls down the hill and over the cliff, and into the wheel well of the car, bringing it to a stop. Larry has posthumously saved Homer's life, right in front of Serenity Falls too, but Carl is disappointed that the real falls doesn't compare to Larry's picture. Then Homer realizes what Larry's "special place" really is. Larry's barstool, on the far side of the tavern, with a video screen of a pristine waterfall behind him. Carl regrets losing the sapphires, with Lenny believing they fell out of the urn, but the camera goes into x-ray mode to reveal Moe ate them so he can have them all to himself.
Tropes:
- Ashes to Crashes: Larry's urn falls open a couple of times, the first one revealing he was smuggling sapphires when he died.
- Cessation of Existence: Moe's believes the afterlife is an unimaginably empty void.Moe: Here's the deal. When you croak, it's just a sad, silent void. Nothin'. And it's not even a regular nothin', it's an absence of everything, heh? Where no matter how hard you think, you can't even imagine how nothin' it is.
- Continuity Nod: Carl mentions Naima, his girlfriend from "Carl Carlson Rides Again".
- A Death in the Limelight: Inverted in terms of order of operations. Larry gets his own episode, but he doesn't play a major role in it until after it's revealed he's dead, two and a half minutes in.
- Death Is Cheap: Ironically enough, given the theme of the episode, Alice Glick was shown to have died in "Replaceable You", but appears alive and well, complete with a speaking role, at Larry's funeral.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Larry is one of Recurring Extra. He's been present in the series since the very beginning but never had a major role beyond being a background character at Moe's. This, however, did not mean he didn't have his own life and adventures. He actually wanted to be a part of Homer's group, but could never work up the nerve to approach them and Homer's gang never really bothered to get to know him either. As it turns out, he was actually a gem smuggler working for Fat Tony this entire time.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Infamously corrupt politician Mayor Quimby says that his anti-vaxxer relative is a disappointment to the family, even by his standards.
- Exact Words: Upon being told the funeral is for "a sad, balding drunk who hung out at Moe's", Reverend Lovejoy initially assumes it's Homer's funeral.
- Flat Character: Played for Drama. Larry left so little impression on his "friends" that they had to make up a story to tell at his funeral, and feel guilty for never knowing him.
- Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Homer imagines the afterlife as this, combined with a sports bar.
- Four-Man Band: Homer, Moe, Lenny and Carl think of themselves this way, with no room for a fifth.
- Funeral Cut: After Larry falls over and Homer says he's dead, there's a cut to the funeral home.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Bart, in typical style, swinging from a coffin as it's being carried.
- Hero of Another Story: Barney isn't on the road trip because he's already busy. We cut away to see that he's just installed a well to give clean water to an impoverished village.
- Hidden Depths: Who could have guessed that a mostly silent, background character, known for being a drunk loser, could be a gem-smuggler working for Fat Tony?
- Homage: There's a parody of Eleanor Rigby about Larry, and it plays over a scene that homages that song's scene from Yellow Submarine, with rougher backgrounds in a similar coloring style, and animation at a lower frame rate.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Larry thought of himself as the fifth member of Homer, Moe, Lenny and Carl's friend group, yet none of them bothered to reach out to him and vice versa.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: When the road trip with Larry's urn begins, with death on the mind, Homer, Lenny and Carl get out the flasks.All the lonely barflies, confronting mortal dread...
Their souls in need of searching, they booze it up instead... - Jeweler's Eye Loupe: Moe improvises one with a bathroom glass when examining the sapphires.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Homer, Moe, Lenny, and Carl all realize that they barely even knew who Larry was and cannot remember anything important he did or what his personality was like. Fans of the show are likely to feel the same way, because he's a Living Prop at most.
- Lonely Funeral: Larry's is attended solely by his mother, Marge, and his fellow barflies, who barely knew him.
- Low Count Gag: Moe tries betting on a football game for the first time, and bets a single dollar on one team. The rest of the game has him acting as though he bet much more than that, and he's outraged when he loses his dollar at the end.
- Mood-Swinger: Moe goes between dancing on the bar counter to being nervous repeatedly as the score of the game he bet on changes.
- Never My Fault: In classic Moe fashion, the moment Lenny and Carl find out about the sapphires, Moe tosses Homer under the bus and also takes his idea to share the spoils with the others to appear more benevolent than he isn't.
- Nice Guy: Marge identifies Lenny's defining attribute as this. Notably, not only is he the one who pushes the group into the road trip with Larry's ashes, but he's the only one not to partake in antagonizing the others as things disintegrate.
- Noodle Incident: Why exactly does Homer consider Ralph a financial burden?
- The Nothing After Death: Moe's interpretation of the afterlife is simply an unfathomable darkness.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Besides the gang from Moe's, the only other mourner at Larry's funeral is his mother.
- Portmanteau: Frunk = front + trunk.
- Prayer Is a Last Resort: When Moe is afraid he's going to die, he hopes to get into the afterlife and quickly prays to God and repents for everything wrong he's done — that God knows about, anyways.
- Prisoner's Dilemma: When Mickey No-Loose-Ends's car is perched over the cliff with the four still in the front trunk, they're faced with a variation of this situation where any one of them can jump out and doom the rest. They collectively say "No" to that and decide to jump out together. Homer is accidentally left behind because he thought the others would say "go" after the "three".
- Poking Dead Things with a Stick: Moe didn't know Larry was dead yet, but he poked him multiple times with the dry end of the mop before his death was confirmed.
- Reincarnation: Carl believes that when someone dies, their soul becomes cosmic energy and the consciousness will eventually be reborn. Fearing death in Mickey No-Loose-Ends' frunk, Homer fears he will reincarnate into a koala with an STD.
- Sixth Ranger: After realizing that Larry thought of himself as the fifth member of the friend group, Homer, Moe, Lenny and Carl (mostly Lenny) treat Larry's urn as their fifth member for their road trip.
- Take That!: One of the other funerals is for Mayor Quimby's aunt Eunice, but it's interrupted by Robert F. Quimby Jr. thinking her death was caused by vaccines, a pot-shot at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccination views.Mayor Quimby: You shut up, Robert F. Quimby Jr.! You are an embarrassment to this family, and that's saying a lot!
- Tonight, Someone Dies: As in the leadup to "Clown in the Dumps", the creators had fun with this, with showrunner Matt Selman polling his Twitter followers on who would die in the episode: Homer, Marge, Bart, or Larry the silent barfly.
- Treasure Chest Cavity: Larry was smuggling sapphires in his body (Moe theorizes in his rectum) when he died, leading to the sapphires being among Larry's ashes.
- Wham Episode: After 35 years being present since the very beginning of the series, Recurring Extra Larry The Barfly unexpectedly dies.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Marge calls out Homer and the gang for not bothering to get to know Larry, someone they had seen every day but never let be a part of their friend group.
- Your Television Hates You: After Moe makes a comment about Carl's girlfriend Naima's past relationship with Robert "Kool" Bell, he puts on the radio, and Kool & the Gang is playing.
