YMMV / The Simpsons S9 E1 "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"

• Catharsis Factor: Seeing Homer steal a jackhammer and use it to violently destroy the boot on his car is rather satisfying after the humiliation he has endured to this point. The damage it does to his car almost seems Worth It.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Khlav Kalash man has one scene, but he left an impression for his dialogue.
• Franchise Original Sin: A holdover from Season 8, Homer's Jerkass behavior in this episode may have begun his eventual Flanderization. It does work here, however, since Homer goes through such a Trauma Conga Line throughout the episode that he's still fairly sympathetic. Later episodes would make Homer even more of a jerk, but without the sympathy or even the over-the-top behavior that makes his characterization work in this episode.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The episode becomes this in light of the 9/11 attacks. The line "they stick all the jerks in Tower One" is one the writer would regret.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Barney greatly struggles with being the designated driver in this episode. Two seasons later, he becomes sober of his own accord, meaning he had the strength within him to kick the habit all along.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When at MAD Magazine headquarters, Bart sees Alfred E. Newman^note The MAD Magazine mascot talk about a spoof called "The New Kids on the Blecch". Three-and-a-half years later, we got an episode with the exact same name.
• Jerkass Woobie: While this episode portrays Homer very unpleasantly and marked the point in the show where he would become Flanderized into an unrepentant Jerkass, his behavior is pretty understandable here because he has a really rotten time in New York.
• Memetic Mutation: No meme, only Khlav Kalash.^note The Khlav Kalash man’s dialogue became a meme format.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Bart "displaying" that he was born without tastebuds by licking a pole in a NYC subway car. Even he admitted that he was way in over his head with that stunt.
  • Homer behind the open garbage truck, especially when the bag of used medical equipment bursts onto his face.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Khlav Kalash man.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The scenes at the World Trade Center towers have dated the episode to pre-9/11. Less obviously, so has the scene where Marge and the kids go up into the Statue of Liberty: the statue itself has been closed to the public since the attacks.
  • The joke where Bart visits the headquarters for Mad magazine and the receptionist jokingly says "No this is Mademoiselle, we're buying our sign off the installment plan". Both magazines have now gone out of print since the episode's airing with Mademoiselle ending in 2001 and Mad ending in 2019.
  • As punishment for his car being left in New York City, Homer's car will be thrown into the East River, which was known for its parasitic and hazardous conditions in 1997. Nowadays, the river has been cleaned up considerably and ironically enough, it would be far worse to throw it into the Hudson River, whose quality has severely declined in the years since this episode first aired.
• Values Resonance: The Betty Ford Clinic musical about celebrities going to rehab for their erratic, criminal behavior is still relevant today, thanks to the likes of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan (who actually did check into Betty Ford), Charlie Sheen, Amanda Bynes, Tara Reid, Paris Hilton, and others getting the same treatment.
• Woolseyism: In the German dub, Bart thinks the rabbis are the last three members of The Beatles, rather than ZZ Top. This also puts it into the "Unintentional Period Piece" section above following George Harrison's death in 2001.

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