YMMV / The Simpsons S 11 E 18 Days Of Wine And Dohses

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Bart's cruelty towards Milhouse at the beginning of the episode is probably due to him having not forgotten the latter's mistreatment to him and his soul in "Bart Sells His Soul"
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Homer goes to the Kwik-E-Mart and asks Apu for "those potato chips that give you diarrhea". Apu then returns with bags of what appear to be ordinary Ruffles. This was based on a real-life product known as Lay's WOW Chips introduced a couple years before the episode aired, which famously contained the chemical olestra, a known stool loosener.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Moe realizes Barney actually wants to go sober, he says "To stay afloat, this bar's going to have to go queer", with a customer saying "You mean it's not? (groans) Wrong again, 'Gay Guide to Springfield'." In season 22's "Flaming Moe", Moe actually turns the tavern into a gay bar.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: As Dead Homer Society surmised, prior episodes (most notably, "Mr. Plow", "Deep Space Homer", and "A Star Is Burns") had already shown Barney's personality when off the bottle—namely, he's actually extremely confident, artistic, skillful, and intelligent, almost to the level of being The Ace, but he'd just rather be drunk. Bringing in that take on Barney on a more permanent basis could have been interesting, but he's instead mostly written as a powerless, weak-willed Straw Loser who can't survive without alcohol (and ends up getting hooked on coffee that may or may not have been spiked with alcohol).