YMMV / The Simpsons S6 E9 "Homer Badman"

• Alternative Joke Interpretation: When the news claims Homer "sleeps nude in an oxygen tent he believes gives him sexual powers", Homer decries this as a half-truth. Which half is true, that Homer sleeps nude or that he believes oxygen tents give people sexual powers?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Many tactics used by Rock Bottom, such as camping outside people's homes, were really used by Hard Copy and are not exaggerated jokes done by the Simpsons writers.
  • Homer mentions Grampa sending a postcard from Florida of an alligator biting a woman's bottom. They◊ actually◊ exist◊.^note The specific image on the last link was later parodied in Maximum Homerdrive with the caption "Wish you were her".
• Crosses the Line Twice: Homer being falsely accused of sexual harassment over a misunderstanding and having his life ruined in a mass media storm because of it (with even his own family hesitant to support him) is heart-breaking. The reporters' using Manipulative Editing to make Homer look like a crazed maniac (like someone out of a Youtube Poop before it was even a thing), claiming that Homer "sleeps nude in an oxygen tent he believes gives him sexual powers" (which Homer indignantly claims is a half-truth), and speculating that Marge put the cat out "possibly because it was being sexually harassed [by Homer]" is so absurdly unbelievable that the episode goes straight into Black Comedy satire territory. The resulting Lifetime Movie of the Week dramatizing the incident depicting Homer as an Ax-Crazy Card-Carrying Villain is the cherry on top of it all.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Homer's plan to move under the sea and Marge's assumption that it won't happen becomes funnier after "Future Drama", in which Homer is living in a house under the sea.
  • Viewers have noted that Rock Bottom's editing of their interview with Homer is similar to a YouTube Poop, namely that Manipulative Editing is used to make Homer say something dirtier than what he said in canon.
  • The babysitter has a copy of "Disemboweler IV, the game where "condemned criminals dig at each other with rusty hooks". A few months later, Mortal Kombat 3 released and introduced Kabal, a criminal who attacks others with giant hooks.
  • Abe Simpson has an American flag with only 49 stars, since he doesn't recognize Missouri and states that he'll be "dead in the cold, cold ground" before he recognizes it. In a later episode, Abe would embark on a road trip to Missouri to win back an ex-girlfriend.
• Jerkass Woobie: As much of an asshole as he is, Homer is undeservedly put through hell by the producers of Rock Bottom and the ensuing mass media storm.
• Memetic Molester: Homer drooling lustfully at the Venus gummy candy on Ashley's behind, before making a grab for it... even though that is exactly what Homer is clearly wanting (the candy), not to satisfy a sexual desire.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The scene where Marge notices there's only 49 stars on the American flag Abe provided, to which he replies, "I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri." Often used with the name of the state changed to comment on a political event or just express distaste.
  • The line "Dramatization: May Not Have Happened" has taken on a life of its own when referring to dramatized events. (To a lesser extent, the whole scene in general tends to get callbacks when referring to Manipulative Editing.)
• Misaimed Fandom: Many people believe that this episode exists to make fun of feminists and people who accuse others of sexual assault, when really, it's about how the media sensationalizes its stories (usually those involved around women getting murdered or being the victims of sexual misconduct by a man). The actual feminist involved is among the few who immediately accepts the truth and apologises when it's unveiled, demonstrates a decent level of competence at her job, and seems to have had just cause to think Homer was grabbing her butt.
• One-Scene Wonder: Ben, the grizzly bear talk show host used as a Take That! towards the genre and the low bar of anyone receiving their own show. In his brief time, he only "answered" a single statement from the audience, raided the snack table, and then fell on the audience after being tranquilized by his control team.
• Signature Scene: Homer's "Interview" on Rock Bottom is widely cited as one of the show's funniest and most quotable pieces of satire.
• Strawman Has a Point: Even if Homer didn't mean anything by it, reaching to grab something off of someone's butt without asking for permission first is never a good idea, especially if you're an older man and the other person is a younger woman. Homer continuing to drool lustfully even as Ashley turns around in shock, then saying "thank you" as she flees in horror, makes him look even worse out of context.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The audience is supposed to feel bad for Homer because of the mass media storm he's put through in the episode. Not everyone is inclined to feel that way, due to the fact that A) grabbing candy that's stuck to someone's butt is a bad idea because of the way it can come across to the other person (something that he didn't think through), and B) the candy wouldn't have been stuck to the woman's butt in the first place if Homer hadn't stolen it. Even worse, when Homer's name is cleared at the end of the episode by Willie (who is in hot water for filming people without their consent), he buys into the same Blatant Lies the media used against him, even saying that he's learned nothing from the whole experience, making Homer more deserving of the ordeal than the episode tries to make out.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Fox Night at the Movies ^note Which stopped sometime in the early 2000s, Sally Jessy Raphael (and talk shows in general), Dennis Franz ^note Who retired from acting in 2005 and Hard Copy spoof Rock Bottom? Yeah, this episode was a representation of the '90s.
• Values Resonance:
  • Much like Network, the episode is still considered a spot-on satire against how scandals (particularly sexual ones) are sensationalized by the media in this day and age, despite being a cartoon from 1994. The writers acknowledged this in the DVD Commentary, even arguing that things have gotten worse since this episode originally aired.
  • Marge gives an intended Spoof Aesop that "as long as everyone keeps filming one another, justice will be done." This was a joke at the time, because the technology simply didn't allow for it and therefore a person being exonerated by a random bystander filming the event was an absurd Deus ex Machina. However, many people these days consider it a simple true statement; the vastly-increased availability of video cameras and smartphones has led to it being far more likely that a random person can whip out a camera and capture events that would otherwise be hearsay or unreliable witness testimony in full detail, and that evidence can often be a major clinching factor in court. Even 2007's The Simpsons Movie made this a plot point, with Comic Book Guy filming Grampa Simpson's "EEPA" breakdown during the church scene.
  • This episode takes on a whole new light in the 2020s with the rise of modern social media pile-ons and "cancel culture". While the episode's focus at the time was on the sensationalization and harassment of people by tabloid news, now ordinary people can do the exact same thing to their targets on social media. People attacked by social media pile-ons have suffered everything from depression to bankruptcy to even potentially committing suicide due to the abuse, doxxing and lies told about them. The victims of these attacks are often targeted for simply telling the wrong kind of joke, criticizing a piece of media or even being Wrongly Accused when they're mistaken for someone else who actually did something.

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