YMMV / The Simpsons S 7 E 7 King Size Homer

• Alternative Joke Interpretation:
  • When Homer wants to gain weight so that he'll be obese and therefore get on workers' compensation, Dr. Nick suggests that he gain the weight with a combination of overeating and "assal horizontology". Does this mean lying down or reclining, or is he saying that Homer's posterior will spread out when he gets fat?
  • At the beginning, when Mr. Burns is coaching his employees, he says that he wants to see more Teddy Roosevelts and less Franklin Roosevelts. Was Mr. Burns getting the two mixed up (as Teddy Roosevelt was obese, while Franklin was not), or was he referring to the fact that Franklin Roosevelt was physically disabled?
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Marge forces Homer into having a conversation about his recent weight gain by tricking him into thinking she baked him a cake. Twelve years later, another person would be suckered into doing some unpleasant things for a cake that wasn't there, and a massive meme would be born from it.
    Homer: And where's that cake?
    Marge: There's no cake.
    Homer: (disappointed) Oh.
  • The absurd steps Homer takes to be allowed to work from home, because the late part of The New '10s started to see an increase of working from home, culminating in a massive boom in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic made it almost mandatory in multiple work fields.
  • After Homer becomes obese enough to be able to work from home, Bart has an Imagine Spot where he's even fatter than Homer, bed-bound, and washes himself with a rag on a stick (with several reporters witnessing this). Enter My 600 Lb Life, an entire TV show more-or-less based on people like this version of Bart.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Homer wrapping his cape around himself and leaving in a huff.^ExplanationUsed as a reaction image for rage quitting or making fun of dubious "intellectuals" getting angry.
  • Homer reading the Am I Disabled? book.^ExplanationUsed as a form of Take That!, or sometimes even Self-Deprecation.
  • "Where's the 'Any' key?" ^ExplanationUpon being prompted to press "any key" on this computer, Homer interprets this as an instruction to press the "Any Key".
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • While it can be chalked up to Homer being dumb, the gag about him not knowing how to use a keyboard only really works in the mid-90s, when computers weren't yet mainstream. Nowadays, almost everyone uses computers in their daily lives.
  • Homer believes that pressing the Tab key on the keyboard will order a can of Tab. Tab (the soft drink, not the computer key) faded into obscurity during the 21st century and was discontinued in 2020, so younger viewers may not understand what Homer is trying to do.
  • When Homer's work ruins a farmer's crops, the framer grouses about Paul Newman wanting his legs broke. The joke has become even more dated with Paul Newman's death in 2008.
  • Marge tells Homer that making himself morbidly obese to get that work-from-home computer job is a bad idea. While that kind of weight gain is still dangerous, work-from-home jobs have become much more common in the 2010s and 2020s, to the point that Homer wouldn't even need to be declared legally disabled to work from home in this day in age.
  • Homer's workstation running on a command-line interface was definitely possible though increasingly unlikely in 1995, and unheard of in present day.
• Values Resonance: In this episode, Homer wants to work at home instead of going to the Nuclear Power Plant day after day (albeit mainly to avoid having to go through Mr. Burns's daily 10-minute calisthenics exercises). Working at home has become more commonplace thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Notably, Lisa and Marge aren't bothered by the idea of Homer working at home, but by the way he’s doing it (by abusing a program intended to help the physically-disabled who legitimately can’t work, and is pushing himself past his already-obese state and endangering his health in the process to qualify for the program).

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