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Recap / The Simpsons S 13 E 5 The Blunder Years

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Original air date: 12/9/2001

Production code: CABF-21

Homer is hypnotized into remembering a traumatic experience that may have something to do with the death of Smithers' father.

Last episode (broadcast-wise) under Mike Scully's tenure.

Tropes:

  • Actually Pretty Funny: When Homer and Bart pranked Marge into thinking the handsome man on Burly paper towels was coming to dinner, it was really Barney in his underwear, leaving Marge angry and humiliated. Feeling guilty, Homer takes the family all out to a posh dinner and Marge admits that the prank was actually funny because not only didn't anything catch fire, but it was one of the few pranks they've pulled in so far that wasn’t harmful in any way.
  • Brick Joke: The episode starts with Marge obsessed with Mr. Burly paper towels and how ultra-absorbent they are. When they go to search for the corpse Lisa mentions they will never find it with so much water, so Marge happily throws all her Mr. Burly paper towels, which immediatly drain the lake.
  • The Cameo: Homer tries to fantasize about Paul Newman, but even his own imagination turns him down.
    Paul Newman: Homer, I'll tell you what I told Redford: "It ain't gonna happen."
  • Clip Show: After drinking some tea to calm his mentality, Homer begins reminiscing the time that he jumped over Springfield Gorge, which dissolves into the clip from "Bart The Daredevil", until Lisa says, "Dad, everyone's tired of that story," in reference to the fact that that clip has been shown on pretty much every single Simpsons clip show and behind-the-scenes documentary.
  • Epic Fail: When Homer tries to fantasize about Mama Celeste and Paul Newman, his own fantasy turns him down.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Burns genuinely considered Smithers Sr. a friend and mourns his death.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Burns thought going into the core was dangerous for Smithers Sr. even after he'd been told why Smithers Sr. has to go into the core. He was even genuinely saddened by Smithers Sr.’s death to the point that he had to lie to Smithers Jr. about the truth of his father.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Burns says this while witnessing Smithers Sr.'s death following the shutdown process.
    Burns: Look at your heroic daddy in there. Making funny faces, falling to the floor, shedding his hair...lying perfectly still...oh dear.
  • Free-Range Children: Homer and his friends when they were twelve.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • Burns' cover story for the death of Smithers' father (killed by Amazons) is implied to be the reason behind Smithers' homosexuality. At the very least it explains his freak out in the precedent episode when he was at a strip club.
    • According to Homer, the trauma of discovering Smithers Sr.'s decaying corpse is the cause of everything wrong in his life, including his "occasional" overeating and his fear of corpses.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Waylon Smithers Sr. went into the power plant's core to prevent a nuclear meltdown, knowing it would cost him his life.
  • Incest Subtext: Smithers' unsubtle infatuation with Burns takes on this trope with the reveal that he's not only known his boss since he was a baby, but also sees Burns as a surrogate father figure.
  • Inopportune Voice Cracking: Happens when 12-year-old Homer reacts to seeing Smithers Sr.'s decaying corpse; he starts constantly screaming in his high-pitched voice, but his voice suddenly deepens during one of the screams from puberty.
  • Logo Joke: This was one of the episodes that repeated characters' lines for the Gracie Films logo—in this case, Homer's screams of terror, which carry into the 20th Century Fox logo.
  • Magical Security Cam: Apparently there was a security camera inside the core.
  • "Mister Sandman" Sequence: Parodied when the kids harmonize on "Mister Sandman" itself, even though the song is too old for the flashback time period.
  • Mood Whiplash: Things start off normal with Homer at a club being hypnotized into being other people. Then he remembers an experience from his youth and starts screaming uncontrollably.
  • Noodle Implements: Moe's clues are: an used band-aid, a number six that could be a nine, gravel and an eggshell that he believes could be a mouse's helmet. Moe claims the mouse's reaction made him concerned and that, without the band-aid, the other clues make no sense.
  • Not Me This Time: The sewer tunnel leads into Burn's office, so everyone assumes he committed a murder. Surprisingly, Burns is completely innocent and had the corpse thrown in the tunnel to create a cover-up for its own sake.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Burns pleads with Smithers Sr. to not go into the core because it's incredibly dangerous, which is amazing considering how he's usually downright amused by the suffering of his employees. Burns also feels guilty about never telling Smithers about his dad's death because he wasn't sure how to break the news. He didn't lie when he said his Smithers Sr. was his friend.
  • Overly Long Gag: Homer's constant screaming throughout the end of the first chapter and the beginning of the second chapter while doing mundane things like paying the valet and brushing his teeth.
  • Poking Dead Things with a Stick: Played With. As Homer gets to the root cause of a traumatic childhood experience, he recalls his younger self crawling into a drainage pipe at a muddy quarry to find out what's clogging it. Young Homer pokes at the clog with a stick without knowing what it is, and when the pipe is unclogged, the water flushes him back out, and he discovers to his horror that the clog was a dead, decaying body.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: Inside the sewer pipe where the body was disposed through, Lisa is horrified to see a big dead rat floating in the water. While Homer is opening up a hatch door, another big rat (a live one) is seen standing on Bart's right shoulder, though Bart doesn't mind as the rat turns out to be quite friendly to him.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • Smithers is shown as a baby around the time Homer was a teenager, but other episodes including "Bart Star" and "Bye Bye Nerdie" showed Homer and Smithers in school together. Though considering the advanced state of decay for Smithers Sr.'s corpse, it's likely he died years ago.
    • In "Bart After Dark", Smithers explains to Burns that his parents insisted he give the Maison Derrieré a try, yet here we see Smithers was orphaned long before.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Waylon Sr. sacrificing himself by manually shutting down the nuclear core mirrors Spock's death scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
    • In the chalkboard gag, Bart writes "I am not Charlie Brown on acid", which is how some critics described South Park.
    • When the Simpsons pass by the hypnotist getting his mail, he does Johnny Carson's "Carnac the Magnificent" routine.
  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Homer's mind repressed the memory of finding the body because of how traumatic it was for him. Once the memory is uncovered, he screams continuously for hours.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: To Stand by Me.

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