Original air date: 2/10/2002 (produced in 2001)
Production code: DABF-04
Artie Ziff, now a tech billionaire, returns and offers Homer a million dollars if he agrees to spend a weekend with Marge so Homer can get money for an operation to help him stop snoring.
Tropes:
- Accidentally Real Fake Address: After angrily leaving Artie Ziff's party, Marge tells the cab driver to send the bill to "Baron Von Kiss-a-lot", in reference to Artie's inappropriate advances towards her. However, the bill, instead of being sent to Artie, is shown in a Cutaway Gag to be sent to a literal baron of the same name with, naturally, Gag Lips.
- Bait-and-Switch: During the oil rig fire:"This is how Faceless Joe lost his legs!"
- Blatant Lies: Homer opens up his farewell video to Marge by saying that if she's watching this, then that means he finally figured out how to work the camera. The end of the video reveals that he didn't and got Bart to do it for him instead.
- Book Ends: Invoked when Homer muses that he will leave the world as he entered it; "kicking, screaming and torn away from the woman I love!"
- Comically Missing the Point: When Homer sees Marge and Artie at the prom Artie made, he's worried that Marge getting together with Artie will mean he'll never be born.
- Compressed Vice: While it's been said before that Homer does annoying noises when he sleeps, his capacity of snoring so loud that he requires mechanical assistance (or an operation) to have it muted otherwise nobody (let alone Marge) will be able to sleep appears in this episode only.
- Continuity Nod:
- Marge has a Flashback to Artie's molestation of her when Patty and Selma bring up how he took her to the prom.
- Homer uses a Funzo doll in his goodbye video.
- Grandpa, misunderstanding the situation of Homer's leaving, believes everyone's talking about him bowling a 300 game. Marge points out that happened a year and a half ago.
- Death Seeker: Homer becomes this when he thinks Marge has fallen for Artie, leaving town to take a dangerous job on an oil rig that he believes will kill him.
- Disaster Dominoes: The action of the climax occurs because Homer and Lenny are working on a West Springfield oil rig and decide to celebrate by raising their safety goggles to the sky. The sun's refraction shines through them and sets a nearby ant on fire, which then jumps into its mound and sets the rest of the colony on fire, then they decide to cool off by jumping into an oil puddle, igniting it. Cue the two of them being surrounded by the entire well being an inferno.
- Driven to Suicide: Once Homer thinks that Marge and Artie are together, he decides to go work on the West Springfield oil fields, which are an extremely Dangerous Workplace. Lenny comes with him too.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Moe responds to Homer's woes about Artie by jokingly suggesting that he's doing Marge at that very moment. Homer just breaks down crying further and Lenny shoots him a Death Glare.
- Entendre Failure: When Marge arrives home via taxi after her evening with Artie goes sour, she instructs the driver to send the cab fare bill to "Baron Von Kiss-a-lot". However, that driver happens to be the Wise Guy, who proceeds to send the bill to a literal baron with Gag Lips.
- Face Death with Dignity: Lenny is ridiculously calm in the face of death by fire, calling it the circle of life.
- Fell Asleep Driving: Marge, who is losing sleep over Homer's snoring, is attempting to drive Bart, Lisa and Milhouse to school, when she suddenly falls out of the car and gets some rest, leaving the children to try and drive her car instead.
- Guilty Pleasures: Comic Book Guy at the beginning of the episode:"Oh, Jar Jar, everybody hates you but me."
- HA HA HA—No: After Homer suggests Dr. Hibbert perform his snoring surgery for free, Hibbert chuckles good-heartedly — then tells Homer to Get Out!.
- Hook Hand: Exaggerated: all of the veteran oil rig workers have hook hands, but one somehow has a hook head.
- Homoerotic Subtext: While there are similar
Ho Yay moments other times as well, this episode is heavy on the "gay couple" jokes about Lenny and Carl, or at least heavily implies that Lenny is in love with Carl. - Honor Before Reason: After all of the antics in the episode, Marge refuses Artie's agreed-upon payment of a million dollars because she doesn't thinks it's right, even if she probably didn't expected him to continue to be such a sleaze after so many years. She does accepts a snore-masking device from him at some point afterwards, but it was something much worse for her to accept because it has a Spy Cam for Artie to stalk her with.
- Inventor of the Mundane: The episode reveals that Artie made a killing in the tech department and his most recent (and profitable) invention is a gadget that makes modem noises come off like music. The episode ends with him sending Marge a mask that turns snoring into music... but then Marge discovers that it also has a camera for him to stalk her with.
- Ignored Aesop: After the whole episode should have made Artie learn that family is more important than money he instead gloats that he's happy to be incredibly rich and flies off to continue to stalk Marge.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
- Artie helping save Homer when he's about to die on an oil rig and admitting defeat to Homer. Somewhat subverted by the anti-snoring device having a camera and having anti-Homer messages.
- When Homer thinks Marge wants to be with Artie, he decides to simply get out of the way and just kill himself (indirectly, by getting a dangerous job).
- Jerkass:
- Artie Ziff. He offers Marge and Homer a million dollars to have Marge stay with him for the weekend and says that he won't try anything funny and then tries to anyway and then it's implied that he's spying on her through a camera in the mouthpiece that helps with Homer's snoring.
- Patty and Selma, who send an email to Artie Ziff by claiming to be Marge saying she wants to have sex with him.
- Loud Sleeper Gag: Homer's intense snoring (which he eventually also does while still awake and standing upright) is making life miserable for Marge, which kicks off the plot. There is a surgery that would correct it, but the family can't afford it. Enter Marge's high school Stalker with a Crush, Artie Ziff, now a tech billionaire, who offers the family $1 million if Marge will spend a weekend with him.
- Mailbox Baseball: A variation; in a brief scene, Dr. Hibbert is seen smashing mailboxes with his golf club from the passenger seat of a convertible car, all set to the song "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
- Not What It Looks Like: Artie, who has recreated his and Marge's prom night in a failed effort to impress her, proves he hasn't changed at all since that fateful prom when he lunges at Marge for a Forceful Kiss. Homer, watching from a skylight, sees just enough of this interaction to think it's mutual and immediately skips town to take a suicidally risky job.
- One-Track-Minded Artist: Artie Ziff has a room filled with paintings about Marge, with whom he tried to get it on with at the prom many years ago.Artie: A note from Marge Simpson? Well, isn't that a coincidence. I was just thinking about her... for the last 20 years!
- Parodies for Dummies: In the final act, when the rest of the Simpsons are trying to find where Homer went, Lisa gets off the phone with the Springfield Public Library and says that they told her Homer took several books in oil drilling and one called "Dying for Dummies".
- Pet the Dog: Artie admits to Homer that he has always had Marge's love instead of leaving him to die in the oil rig fire.
- Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: Artie Ziff (a multi-millionaire) and Homer Simpson (who can't afford even good housing, let alone an operation to get rid of his snoring).
- Shout-Out:
- When Marge leaves in the helicopter she see a message made from Homer using nothing but rocks, mirroring the famous final scene in M*A*S*H (only the message on MASH said, "Goodbye," not "Keep Your Clothes On").
- The entire episode (and the title) is a reference to the movie Indecent Proposal.
- Homer's "realization" of, "If Marge marries Artie, then I'll never be born!" is one to Back to the Future.
- Silent Offer: Dr. Hibbert writes a piece of paper how much he'd charge if Homer agreed to the operation to stop his snoring. Homer writes a counter-proposition saying "Do it for free". Dr. Hibbert doesn’t agree.
- Skewed Priorities: Bart was apparently happy to help Homer film his farewell video, but takes offence when Homer mentions he'll drop Bart and Lisa at Patty and Selma's before leaving town.Homer: I'm leaving you Marge, and the next time you see my name will be in the hobo obituaries. Don't worry about the kids; I'll drop 'em off at Patty and Selma.Bart: Patty and Selma?! Screw that!
- Stalker with a Crush: Artie Ziff. The whole plot highlights that, in 20 years, he never got over her, even using the weekend to try to recreate the dance in which he lost her and do it "right" (somehow believing that this will make her love him), and the very last gag is Marge finding out that the anti-snoring mask Ziff gave them has a camera and a speaker through which Artie can talk to her (and why does she find out? Because he sings an arrangement of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" where he gloats about this).Artie: (through microphone) He's a loser, Marge... dump him. (sung) I traveled the world and the seven seas. I AM WATCHING YOU THROUGH A CAMERA!
- Take That!: Marge and her sisters are watching BHO and Nookie in New York is followed by this.Announcer: Coming up next on BHO, it's Arli$$! (Patty and Selma scream and scramble for the remote.)
- Tempting Fate: After declining Artie's first offer to spend the weekend with her in exchange to giving Homer a million dollars, Marge decides not to go for it even if she finds Homer's loud snoring unbearable and the money could be used to cure Homer from his illness, saying she can handle it. Cue the snores getting louder in the night and Homer snoring while he's awake. She reconsiders and goes for it.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Exaggerated. Springfield is not to the east of Texas, but rather West Springfield happens to be a desert roughly the shape of Texas but three times the size of that state.
