Springfield's Most Wanted (aka When you think about it, it's pretty obvious...)

You've no doubt heard this story before. In the summer of 1995, The Simpsons tried their hand at their first two-part episode, and broke with tradition by rounding their sixth season off on a dramatic cliff-hanger. The episode, "Who Shot Mr Burns?" (a parody of the Dallas pop cultural milestone "Who Shot J.R.?"), saw the whole of Springfield baying for Mr Burns' blood after he steals the school's revenue, cripples a dog and erects a monstrous device above the city, obstructing sunlight and dooming the residents to eternal darkness. The first half, with debuted 21st May 1995, ended with Burns confronting an off-screen assailant in a darkened avenue, suffering a grievous (albeit non-fatal) gunshot wound and passing out upon the sundial, as the townspeople gather around his unconscious body, pondering who among them could be ruthless enough to have done such a thing. Viewers would have to wait until September to learn the answer, and in the meantime it was treated as a pretty big deal. Fox ran an official contest, "The Simpsons Mystery Sweepstakes", in which fans were encouraged to submit their best guess using the 1-800-COLLECT service and be in with a chance of winning the amazing prize of having their animated likeness featured in an episode of The Simpsons (that genuinely is an amazing prize; I'd have gone for it). The contest was heavily promoted through tie-ins with United Artists Theaters, 7-Elevens and Pepsi (smart drinks lead me to forget). Then Part Two aired in September and the culprit was revealed to be Maggie Simpson, who inadvertently fired the gun as she and Burns were tussling for possession of a lollipop. In other words, it turned out to be a whole lot of hoopla over nothing (the official contest was also somewhat of a flop, in that none of the entrants yielded the correct answer, at least not from the sample of 1,000 that Fox had selected for the final draw; the winner had to be chosen at random and paid off with a cash prize). Ingenious twist, crushing anti-climax or wonderfully glorious waste of time? That's a discussion for another occasion. For now, I want to focus on the rather baffling special that Fox aired on 17th September 1995, immediately before the premiere of "Who Shot Mr Burns?: Part Two". Entitled Springfield's Most Wanted, the special was a pastiche of another Fox show, America's Most Wanted (which The Simpsons had previously sent up in the Season 1 episode "Some Enchanted Evening"), and starred AMW host John Walsh, here fronting a faux investigation into the shooting of Mr Burns.

I noted in my defence of "Another Simpsons Clip Show" that that episode isn't too fondly-regarded by fans, but it's practically beloved compared to Springfield's Most Wanted, which is remembered broadly as an embarrassment, if it is remembered at all. Alan Siegel on The AV Club gives a particularly damning assessment when he states that the special "in hindsight feels like The Simpsons' equivalent of The Star Wars Holiday Special," although I think that may be taking it a bit far (for one thing, Springfield's Most Wanted is only one fifth the length of The Star Wars Holiday Special, and ergo considerably less of an endurance test). I fought the corner for "Another Simpsons Clip Show", so am I prepared to do the same for Springfield's Most Wanted? Not exactly. Springfield's Most Wanted is not a good or well-constructed special by any stretch, and I can see why it gave off such a bad odour when it aired back in 1995. The thing is, though, that it's such a weird little footnote in the series' history. There's nothing else like it, for better or for worse, and for that reason alone, I believe that it should not be forgotten.

First, though, some personal context. I missed out on the whole "Who Shot Mr Burns?" phenomenon back in 1995, due to The Simpsons still being a Sky 1 exclusive in the UK and my mother and father not having resolved their long-standing conflict as to whether satellite dishes were a worthy investment or an neighbourhood-wrecking eyesore. My mother, who took the latter argument, finally relented two years later, so I got to see the two-parter in the spring of 1997 and, happily, went into it entirely unspoiled, meaning that I actually got to take a crack at solving the mystery myself. At the time, the internet still wasn't a household thing (at least not in my household) and I didn't have the foresight to tape the episode, so my forensic work largely consisted of my brother and I debating the likelihood of various Springfieldians being bloodthirsty enough to gun down Mr Burns. I actually don't remember if I had any candidates in mind who I figured were most probable. I think I enjoyed the fact that it could have been just about anyone in Springfield and wanted to keep as open a mind as possible. However, I do remember being adamant about the one character whom I was absolutely positive did not pull the trigger. I was certain that the shooter was not Smithers. Partly because they were blatantly setting him up to be the prime suspect, and by age 12 I was already mystery-savvy enough to know that prime suspects are usually red herrings. But irrespective of that, there wasn't a nerve in my body that would allow me to consider the possibility that Smithers would harm Burns, under any circumstances. I mean, he's probably the nicest, most mild-mannered guy in all of Springfield, next to Ned Flanders. I had faith in Waylon. I also didn't think that Lisa was very likely, because...yeah, come on. Finally, I never took Santa's Little Helper seriously as a suspect and was frustrated that he apparently was being treated as such by the makers of Springfield's Most Wanted, because the dog does not have opposable thumbs. This was before The Plague Dogs taught me that you don't need opposable thumbs to blow a man's face off.

Unlike those who caught the premier of Part One back in May 1995, I did not have to wait just shy of two months to learn the answer. I did have to wait a whole extra evening, however, because Sky 1 were then in the practice of showing Springfield's Most Wanted in place of a regular episode. It is not an official Simpsons episode, and yet Sky 1 seemed to treat it as such, and I was truly baffled in 1997 when I tuned in the following night, expecting for a continuation of the Mr Burns saga, only to be greeted by this startling live action footage in which a man in a helicopter was addressing the camera, explaining that they were flying above Miami in pursuit of Burns' still-unidentified gunman, rumored to be fleeing to Cuba. Having never watched America's Most Wanted and having no idea who any of the featured people were, I hadn't the foggiest what I was supposed to make of this. I cottoned on very quickly that it was a parody of sorts, but it was nevertheless disconcerting to see all of these real, flesh-and-blood individuals sitting around discussing the Burns mystery as if it were a real case. It was a surreal experience to say the least.

Sky 1 treated Springfield's Most Wanted as if it were any other Simpsons episode, which includes editing the episode down to remove scenes that the Sky censors considered offensive or otherwise problematic. The original, uncut special is included as an extra on Disc 4 of the Season 6 DVD release, which finally gave me the chance to finally compare the two. In the past I've been very critical of this practice, when I went through Sky 1's edit of "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" and demonstrated how their extensive doctoring of that episode (my second favourite of all-time) rendered it incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint. Here, though, I'm going to do the unthinkable and suggest that Sky 1's editing actually improved Springfield's Most Wanted, for they excised easily the most odious portion of the special, when Walsh, deploying the exact same tone he's used throughout the entire pastiche, suddenly starts regaling us with a sincere run-down of the value and importance of America's Most Wanted, which you could also catch every Saturday at 21:30, 20:30 central, right here on Fox. Perhaps it was a simple trade-off - in return for fronting the Simpsons special, Walsh was given the opportunity to promote his own show. But it is not at all well-implemented and it leaves you with kind of an unpleasant aftertaste, once you realise that you were duped into watching what effectively amounted to a twenty-minute advertisement for America's Most Wanted. That, ultimately, is what I think makes Springfield's Most Wanted such a dead duck on the parody front. It isn't a send-up of America's Most Wanted, as those sequences on "Some Enchanted Evening" were, nor does it lampoon the kind of disproportionate media frenzy The Simpsons had generated from its two-part mystery - it exists purely as a promotional tool, in service of two Fox programs at once. It attempts self-mockery and self-congratulation within the very same breath and in the end the two cancel one another out.

Which is not to say that Springfield's Most Wanted is devoid of gags that land. I like the fact that the supposed dramatization of Burns' shooting is actually just the footage from Part One re-run in black and white and with a "Re-creation" tag at the bottom. There's also a running gag in which the extras behind Walsh appear to have a constant flow of donuts going (honestly, there's so much donut consumption going on in the background of this special that I feel as if I'm going to have a hypoglycemic shock just looking at it). Still, it's surprising just how seriously the world apparently took this silly little cartoon mystery back in 1995. I would have sworn that the stuff about The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas taking bets on the suspects was created purely for the special, as a mockery of the kind of overblown hype that had dominated 7-Elevens all summer long. But no, this was apparently completely real, with Homer being the odds-on favourite at 2:1. I recall that my brother took exception to The Mirage's rankings, thinking it highly unfair that Krusty was ranked as the third most likely suspect, with 3:1 odds, given that he'd been in Reno for six weeks and had missed out on the key events as they happened. He was actually onto something there - it's interesting that Krusty was apparently such a popular answer among fans when there was zero evidence pointing to him in Part One, and he isn't even considered as a suspect in Part Deux (maybe people were still hung up on that Butterfinger promotion in which Krusty was revealed to have broken into Bart's bedroom and deprived a ten-year-old child of his candy bars...to quote the nicotine-addled harlequin himself, what the hell was that?!) Equally strange, and hilarious, is that Hans Moleman was featured so high - again, there was zero evidence to back it up, but I can see why so many fans would have wanted that outcome from a shits and giggles perspective. In fact, I regret that the alternate ending we saw in the 138th Episode Spectacular had Smithers as the culprit and not him.

The first portion of Springfield's Most Wanted is little more than a clip show themed around Burns, as Walsh examines the life history of the victim and the numerous people he wronged along the way (note: Walsh gives Burns' age as 81, which is indeed how old Burns claimed to be in the Season 2 episode "Simpson and Delilah", although in "Who Shot Mr Burns?" itself Skinner was under the impression he was 104). In the second half of the special, Walsh calls upon the testimony of three different experts, each with their own unique angles on how to approach the mystery of who shot Mr Burns. They are former Los Angeles chief of police Daryl Gates, Vegas book-keeper Jimmy Vaccaro and Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr Lydia Hanson. Daryl Gates and Jimmy Vaccaro are real individuals who feature here as themselves (although Gates is no longer with us, having passed on in 2010). Dr Lydia Hanson, however, is entirely fictitious and played by actress Elizabeth Hayes, whose other credits, according to IMDb, include a handful of Matlock episodes and a role in the 1991 film Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (in which she played a character named Simpson, appropriately enough). It didn't surprise me at all to learn that she wasn't genuine, because as fake and hokey as this entire special is, there is something particularly odd and off-putting about her contributions. She stares at the camera with a cartoon-like intensity that persistently threatens to tear down whatever air of faux-gravitas Springfield's Most Wanted is able to muster. Of the expert testimony, the Daryl Gates segment is the only one that's actually useful to anyone with an interest in analysing the case as a whodunnit, in that he's the only one who bases his testimony on clues that you can actually use to solve the mystery. He doesn't come anywhere close to identifying the correct suspect but all of the observations he makes are nevertheless valid ones that could feasibly lead you in the right direction. Gates pulls out the following:

• The shooting was the work of an amateur and not a professional hitman who meant business: having wounded Mr Burns, his assailant allowed him to stagger around helplessly into the public view, passing up what should have been a straightforward opportunity to fire again and finish the job.
• Mr Burns appeared to recognise his assailant, indicating that he was shot by somebody he knew.
• Before the gunshot, we heard what sounded like a two-way physical struggle between Burns and his assailant; the fact that the shooter was not easily able to overpower the feeble old man suggests that they were not much stronger than him. This is possibly the most important clue that Gates stumbles upon, although he makes the mistake of assuming that the shooter must have been "a real wimp".

The Jimmy Vaccaro segment, which approaches the question from the perspective of which characters to bet on if you're interested in making a killing on this Mr Burns phenomenon at The Mirage, is pure fluff - his most valuable insight is in urging prospective gamblers to shy away from ostensibly probable candidates (ie: Homer and Smithers) and to instead spread their money over suspects with a higher pay-out. That much was a good call, as The Mirage had the actual shooter ranked as a long-shot, at 70:1, although if you'd actually followed Vaccaro's specific recommendations you would have lost money, because all of the candidates he singles out - Moe, Krusty and Groundskeeper Willie - turned out to be bogus. Unlike Gates, Vaccaro isn't basing this on evidence from "Part One" itself, just vague observations about the characters in general (Moe's kind of shady, Krusty's a dark horse and Willie's pretty bestial). It's more an excuse to show a bunch of clips from old episodes than anything.

The Dr Lydia Hansen sequence is quite a bit stranger, and not simply because Hayes' performance as the fictitious psychiatrist is so bizarrely synthetic. She attempts to draw up a profile of Burns' shooter based on her understanding of the criminal mindset, and to be honest, most of what she comes up with could technically apply to Maggie, but I'm unclear on how much of that was intentional. Hansen informs us that "the seeds of crime are often sown very early in life" and notes that "there's one boy in Springfield who fits that description like a glove" (oh dear, that was an OJ Simpson reference). She of course means Bart, but she does nevertheless inadvertently point the viewer down the correct route in suggesting that they focus on the younger suspects. Next, Hansen notes that the public nature of the crime would suggest that the shooter was more an impulsive fool than a criminal mastermind: "I think Mr Burns might have been attacked by someone who is, as we say, intellectually challenged." Naturally, she has Homer in mind. Maggie is of course a bright baby, but still very much a baby, so perhaps "intellectually challenged" is a fair assessment. Finally, Hansen notes that substance abusers are more likely to behave violently than non-abusers, and with that "I'd investigate the suspects with a habit." And as we all know, Maggie Simpson is the most orally fixated character in animation history. Sterling work, Hansen.

Surprisingly, the most important clue of the special is yielded by none other than Chief Wiggum, whom Walsh consults via a TV screen to check in where Springfield's own police department is at with the case. Wiggum states that they are still searching for the weapon used in the shooting of Burns and are looking at two possible leads - Abe Simpson's Smith & Wesson, which was mysteriously unearthed from the Simpsons' front yard, and the gun that Burns had on him at the town meeting, which remains unaccounted for. Indeed, when Mr Burns collapses on the sundial, if you look closely (and have capacity to freeze-frame the episode) you can see that his gun is missing from his holster. This is one of the most critical clues of all, as once you've figured out that Burns was shot by his own gun, it becomes easier to decipher the arbitrary nature of the shooting. Ironically, this is something that Wiggum never comes close to uncovering in the episode itself, and is finally recalled by Lisa before she solves the mystery (although I'd note that this is something of a cheat on the episode's part, as Lisa was not present at the scene when Burns collapsed and should not have been able to recall that particular detail from memory).

Walsh then reveals that Springfield's Most Wanted has conducted its own investigation, and proceeds to list off a series of clues. It's here that the special best plays as a supplementary tool for those interested in solving the mystery, for there are a couple of red herrings among them, but the bulk of these were real clues intentionally inserted by the writing staff. For example, Walsh points out that Skinner and Moe were likely not the shooters as their weapons did not match the particulars of the crime (Skinner had silencer on his gun, but the gunshot was clearly audible, whereas Moe had a shotgun, which would have inflicted a far graver injury than Burns sustained - there's that scene from The Plague Dogs I alluded to earlier). Walsh also picks up on the major clue that really got everybody talking at the time - namely, the significance of the letters Burns points to as he lies sprawled across the sundial. His fingers appear to be resting upon the letters W and S, which as Walsh points out, are Waylon Smithers' initials. The big twist, of course, was that Burns would have seen these letters upside down and read the W as an M; Walsh doesn't explicitly highlight this, but he is clearly prompting the viewer in that direction when he suggests that the biggest clue of all comes from the multiple references to the time three o'clock throughout the episode, including that Mr Burns is shot at 15:00. "Coincidence?" asks Walsh. "I don't think so!" It sounds awfully silly, but no, if you'd cracked this then you were only inches away from identifying the shooter. The recurring three o'clock motif served two purposes - firstly to provide Smithers with an alibi, as he specifies that he always watches a show called Pardon My Zinger, which airs daily at 15:00 (although you would need to have noticed a background detail during the scene in Moe's Tavern to know this). Secondly, it was intended as subliminal clue to indicate the correct angle from which to read the letters on the sundial, since Burns makes the shape of a clock pointing to three when viewed upside down. There's an additional giveaway clue that Walsh delivers with deadpan subtlety, yet it's incorporated way too precisely to just be a coincidence. Walsh suggests that the shooter was someone "at the town meeting who had their sights set on Burns", which is juxtaposed with the clip where Burns asks who among the townspeople is bold enough to stop him. Maggie is alone in not breaking eye contact with Burns.

Interspersed throughout Springfield's Most Wanted are a handful of bumpers in which various 90s celebrities weigh in and give their (100% scripted) opinions on who shot Mr Burns. The original unedited special on Fox contained five bumpers, featuring Dennis Franz, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Kevin Nealon, Chris Elliott and Andrew Shue, although only Franz, Thorne-Smith and Shue were featured in the version that aired on Sky 1. As a kid, I had no idea who any of those people were. As an adult, I know who exactly one of them is (Dennis Franz played Warren Toomey, nemesis to Norman Bates in Psycho II - at the time, he was also in a popular show called NYPD Blue, but bugger if I've watched that). Here's what they each have to say:

Dennis Franz: "I think that punk kid Bart did it. Burns messed with the kid's mutt, so the kid offs the fogey. I've seen that sorehead use guns before too. He ain't bad. Just give me one weekend alone with Mr Smart Guy, I'll straighten him out real good."

Courtney Thorne-Smith: "I am certain it was Smithers who shot old man Burns. Sure they were friends, good friends. But their relationship has been strained lately and Smithers just snapped."

Kevin Nealon: "I think Smithers did it. I think he had certain "feelings" for Burns that weren't quite mutual, if you know what I mean. You know, that whole jilted lover thing. I mean, every girl I ever broke up with took a couple of shots at me too, you know. It's just human nature. I've got scars to prove it too, I got like a bullet hole in my stomach. It looks like a belly button but it's not. It's a bullet hole. Got lint in it. You can't tell."

Chris Elliott: "What? Who shot J.R.? Is that what this is? That was like twenty years ago! Is that the joke here? I am sick as a dog right now. I really don't have the time for this. I don't watch cartoons. I can give you a guess, and it's not going to be an educated one. The Banana Splits?"

Andrew Shue: "I think that Mr Burns shot himself. You know, he's so feeble that he dropped the pistol on his loafers and it went off. And when you think about it, it's pretty obvious."

Franz, Thorne-Smith and Nealon wasted everybody's time and their own with their nonsense (particularly Nealon - I'm omphalophobic, so I didn't need to hear about that). I think that Shue's answer, however, is perhaps the most curious thing going on in this special. On the surface, it reads like a parody of the kind of far-reaching, arbitrary twists that fans are inclined to spew up in response to cliffhanger endings such as these (and I don't know if it's a reference to something that actually happened in Dallas, which I have never watched, or a similar program). I suspect his assertion that "when you think about it, it's pretty obvious" is intended to evoke a strong "Huh?" reaction in the viewer. And yet he's the one who gets by far the closest to the truth. He doesn't factor Maggie into the equation, but he's correct about Burns being shot by his own gun, and about the whole thing basically pivoting around a really dumb accident. So what, precisely, is Shue getting at when he advises us that it will become obvious when we think about it? Might he be preparing us for the possibility that this is, when all is said and done, an animated comedy with a status quo to maintain, and if we're investing too much time and energy into attempting to solve this mystery, then we're practically setting ourselves up for disappointment? Obviously, the solution, when it comes, is going to be more silly and comedic than grisly and dramatic. Obviously, weaselly tricks are going to be deployed to keep the all-important apple cart from being upset - nobody is going to jail, and certainly none of the series regulars are going to have their integrity destroyed through the revelation that they were ruthless enough to gun down a frail old man. In other words, we're headed for a cop-out here. Shue comes across as man who thinks outside of the box.

Elliott, on the other hand, I'm kind of thankful to for being the only one to throw his hands up and declare: "Who cares? It's a cartoon!" His segment is one of the few points where the special where it becomes entirely on the nose about just how stupid it is. Although is he suggesting that The Banana Splits are a bunch of bloodthirsty killing machines? I won't hear of such blasphemy.

Springfield's Most Wanted ends with Walsh giving the following summary: "Tonight, we've discovered numerous clues, followed a lot of leads, and investigated a multitude of suspects. So, what have we accomplished? Not much." In the original version, this is where he asks to be serious for a moment (but doesn't do anything else to differentiate this segment from the rest of the special) and starts plugging America's Most Wanted, before announcing that the second part of "Who Shot Mr Burns?" is coming up next. In the Sky 1 edit, however, the episode dispenses with all of that and ends on Walsh's "Not much", making it feel like more of an actual punchline. Both versions round off with an end-credits tribute to Mr Burns - that is, a series of clips showcasing Burns' lighter side, set to a rendition of "The Way We Were." It is...surprisingly tear-jerking.

Getting back to the question I raised earlier about whether the solution to the mystery was an ingenious twist, a crushing anti-climax and or a glorious waste of time, I would say that it's all of those things at once, and that's what makes it so grand. You have to love that after all the hype and speculation they generated, they were happy to bow out on a denouement that basically showed the whole thing up for the nonsense that it was (even the sundial clue turns out to be a giant fluke, in context, since Burns implies at the end that he didn't point to those letters consciously). And besides, it's not as if the solution comes out of nowhere. The clues are certainly all there. In addition to that aforementioned sundial thing, the plot point about Burns wanting to steal candy from a baby was carefully established earlier on in the episode. Also, I've not tested this but I'm told that if you pay attention to the route Burns takes after leaving the town hall and compare this to the model of Springfield he'd showed Smithers earlier, you can deduce that he does indeed end up in the parking lot where Marge left Maggie.

There is, however, one serious problem that I have with the solution, and it's for this reason that I was initially unwilling to consider Maggie as a suspect. Not having taped the episode, I'd actually ruled her out at the start of my investigation, because I was absolutely convinced that when the gunshot was fired, Marge had Maggie right there with her. My memory had played a trick on me. By the very same heartfelt certitude that would not allow me to believe that Smithers was capable of hurting Burns, I could not bring myself to believe that Marge would really be so negligent as to leave Maggie unattended in a parking lot. To do so would be shockingly out of character for her. So when I saw Springfield's Most Wanted and got to refresh my memory through their "Re-creation", I was genuinely aghast to confirm that Maggie was indeed not with Marge at the time. Really, Marge, that was asking for trouble - do they not have a fear of baby snatchers in Springfield? (Granted, Maggie wasn't entirely alone as she had Santa's Little Helper with her, but he was crippled; he also doesn't react at all when Burns approaches the car and starts hassling Maggie, which goes to show what kind of a guard dog he is.) With hindsight, that should have been the big tip-off, for me, that Maggie was indeed the culprit. In fact, it should have been the big tip-off for EVERYONE. For them to pull a contrivance as glaring as Marge failing to secure the well-being of her youngest child, you know that something must be up. The only reason they would do that is if they needed Maggie to be elsewhere for the purposes of the plot. Although I realised at that point that Maggie was fair game, I did not capitalise on this clue and deduce, as I should, that she HAD to be shooter. And for that much I will forever kick myself.

Although the people who should feel really ashamed are the ones who dialed that 1-800-COLLECT number and voted for Smithers. Seriously, how could you?