Blood Feud (aka Will There Ever Be A Rainbow?)

"Blood Feud" (7F22) is a Simpsons story that is purportedly without a moral. This much is proudly flaunted in the arch final sequence, in which the family discuss the implications of the preceding 20 minutes and arrive at the conclusion that it was "just a bunch of stuff that happened", albeit a bunch of memorable stuff. It is not, however, a story without morals. The distinction might be key.

From the start, The Simpsons has always been a little too cool for conventional moralising. The very idea that the show might exist to provide serious instruction rather than silly diversion was curtly dismissed in this episode's direct predecessor, "Three Men and A Comic Book". There, the joke was that the takeaway was entirely obvious, and even articulated by Bart, but the characters themselves remained churlishly unreceptive. In "Blood Feud" the family doesn't so much as fail the lesson as it fails them. They actively go looking for meaning in their most recent experience but can't find it - or, more accurately, are unable to condense it into any kind of glib, easily-packaged adage in the way that Marge attempts. This was the final installment of Season 2 (airing unusually late, on July 11th 1991, as part of some experimental scheduling Fox was dabbling in at the time), and as such its contemplative closing sequence gets to serve as a spiritual summary for the show's entire second year, rounding it out with the confounding image of the family eating from their TV trays while regarding the colossal Olmec head that now takes up most of their living room, diverting attention from the typically all-commanding television set. The head becomes a hilarious metaphor for the gaping lack of clarity left staring them in the face, which they have no choice but to figure out how to accommodate (echoing the viewer's own bewilderment in having to digest this as our conclusion). That, "Blood Feud" supposes, is merely life. Few of us have had to reckon with the specific problem of having an unwanted giant Olmec head hoisted upon us, but we've all been in situations where we've had to accept non-closure as a form of closure. This final observation, which feels so crucial to the spirit of the episode and the series as a whole, apparently stemmed from the writers' frustrations in figuring out how to close the danged thing - earlier versions of George Meyer's script apparently had a different conclusion in mind, but the crew felt that it was the kind of story that defied being wrapped up in a neat little bow and ultimately decided to make that the ending. Thus bearing out the episode's point that sometimes it's better just to shrug your shoulders and move on than to give a situation more pontification than it merits.

There is, supposedly, no coherent lesson to be drawn from "Blood Feud", but that's not to say that the moral choices made throughout have had no value. "Blood Feud" is certainly a lot more concerned with the nuances of those choices than was "Three Men" before it, laying out a scenario in which there is little black and white, but various shades of grey. This scenario involves Burns coming down with a potentially fatal condition called hypohemia (made up, but it sounds convincing enough coming from Dr Hibbert's lips) and requiring a blood transfusion to save his life. The first complication being that Burns' blood type is O negative, meaning that he can only receive blood from O negative donors, who aren't exactly in abundant supply. A heartbroken Smithers (who is B positive, and thus unable to help) makes an appeal to the power plant workforce to come forward if they have O negative blood or know anyone who does. It's here that we run into our second complication, in that most of the workforce view Burns as unworthy of compassion and are unwilling to so much as look into it. "I'd give him my blood," laughs Carl, "Except for one thing. I don't want to." Homer is disgusted by this reaction, but not because he cares about Burns - rather, he spies an opportunity to get into Burns' good gracious and to reap a handsome cash reward by doing him the ultimate solid. (Note: It is revealed in this sequence that Carl is Homer's supervisor, something that I'm not sure ever came up again, but it allows for a great interaction where Carl shows an unusually reprimanding side.)  He is delighted to discover that Bart has the desired blood type, although Bart himself has misgivings (something that seemingly has less to do with Burns than with him being put off by the physical process of giving blood). To be fair to Bart, this isn't his first rodeo. It isn't brought up in the script, but he had previously donated blood in "Bart vs Thanksgiving", and the experience didn't exactly have a great outcome from his end, with him losing too much blood and being left to pass out outside the clinic. Homer convinces Bart to go through with it by assuring him that the obscenely wealthy Burns will repay them with riches beyond their wildest dreams. The transfusion is a success and Burns makes a full recovery, but Homer is dumbfounded when all he sees fit to send their way is a perfunctory thank you card addressed to Bart. In the heat of the moment he decides to pen Burns a message of his own, filled with unbridled insults, but is convinced by Marge not to send it. Unfortunately Bart, believing his father's anger to be righteous, gets a hold of it and slips it into the mail anyway. How will the family fare now that there's no going back?

The situation is compounded by the matter that neither Homer or Burns can be said to be wholly in the wrong or in the right. They both behave extremely poorly at different points in the episode, but their respective feelings of aggrievement aren't exactly unjustified either. Homer is unapologetically upfront about his avaricious motivations for getting Bart to donate his blood, but the fact remains that Burns would be dead if not for his intervention. Does the barefaced shamelessness of Homer's intentions make Burns any less indebted to him? As for Burns, he initially does only the bare minium in expressing gratitude to Bart for providing the life-saving fluids, but based on what we see from Burns' end, we're given no reason to believe that those sentiments weren't entirely sincere. It seemingly never crossed his mind that the family should desire money for saving him, and he sees the card as an appropriate and civilised response to a basic act of human decency - which potentially says more about how out of touch he is with his fellow man than any laudable values on his part. It's also clear that none of that really matters once the insulting missive has found its way into his hands, and that whatever he's going to do to Homer next will absolutely not be civilised. But then again, can we really blame Burns for being incensed that one of his employees had the nerve to write a letter telling him that he stinks like an elephant's butt? Hard to deny that Homer dug his own grave on that one.

For its first two thirds, "Blood Feud" is predominantly interested in the extent to which Homer is a corruptive influence on the impressionable Bart, an idea previously explored in "Homer's Night Out" (speaking of which, we get a return appearance from the Fe-Mailman, who'd sadly slip into oblivion thereafter). There is a war being waged for the soul of the Simpsons household, as embodied by Bart, the bountiful child who holds the power of life or death within his plasma, and the value he's inclined to attached to his unique position. On the one side is Homer, who sets an actively bad example by teaching of the wrong lessons, then gets to deal with all of the consequences when Bart is inspired to take matters into his own hands. At the opposite end is Marge, who becomes the family's moral centre, insisting that there was no greater incentive to donate Bart's blood than the simple fact that someone was in need and they were in a position to help them. That the beneficiary is Burns, the man who just four episodes back, in "Brush With Greatness", she declared to be totally lacking in virtue is of no odds to her. It was the right thing to do, and no less than what any decent person would have done. Her outlook is mocked by Homer as overly idealistic, with the accusation that she's living in a make-believe world populated by "magic frogs with funny little hats". Lisa, meanwhile, has little to add to the main conflict, being too preoccupied with a subplot where she is attempting to give Maggie a head start on her education by subjecting her to flash cards with very advanced themes - which pays off beautifully come the Olmec head's arrival.

Bart might have the ability to restore a moribund Burns back to life, but we'll also see that he has the power to bring terrible destruction if his gift is misused - which is blatantly a given in Homer's hands. His  skewed priorities are perfectly laid out in a hilarious scene where regales Bart with a debased retelling of Androcles and the lion, in which he's misremembered Hercules as the hero (he's presumably getting his wires crossed with the story of Hercules and the Nemean lion), incorporates elements of Arthurian lore (countless people try to pull the thorn from the lion's paw but are unsuccessful) and also thinks that it might have been a Bible story. The biggest corruption, though, comes in what Homer recalls as being the story's moral; it ceases to be a tale about how altruism begets goodwill, which we too might be in need of someday, but rather about how it's always worth helping those in positions of wealth and power because they can give you the most in return. In his version, the lion happened to have deep pockets and rewarded "Hercules" with a share of his riches (Bart has questions about how a lion would have money in the first place, and is assured that it was the olden days). In the original story, Androcles was a fugitive of Ancient Rome who encountered a wounded lion while on the run and helped it out by removing a thorn from its paw. Some time later Androcles was captured and sent to the Circus Maximus with the intention that he be devoured by wild beasts for the entertainment of an emperor. The lion he found himself up against was none other than the one he'd aided earlier, who remembered him and greeted him in friendship. The emperor was so moved by what he saw that he allowed both Androcles and the lion to go free. Not only was Androcles' compassion for the lion reciprocated when he was in a position of powerlessness, it even managed to indirectly win over a third party who had initially shown up to enjoy watching his blood be shed. This is all worth noting, because a variation on the Androcles story actually does play out throughout the events of the episode and its original message is borne out, just not in the way that Homer anticipates (clue: Burns is not the lion in this scenario, but the emperor).

Homer does not have particularly noble intentions for the bulk of "Blood Feud", although what keeps him from becoming too despicable is a similar kind of principle to "When Flanders Failed", in that his outlook might be exaggerated, but there is nevertheless something recognisably human in it. Humans are messy, and not every good deed we might be inclined is going to come from a position of total selflessness. If we were to help someone with a lot of cash to spare, then perhaps on some level we would be thinking about a possible material repayment, even if we wouldn't be so outspoken on that point as Homer. If we'd made such a magnificent gesture as to donate our blood to someone who'd be dead without it, then we too might feel a little underwhelmed if all we ended up with was a minimally-worded thank you card. Where we know Homer is definitely going too far is in the way he involves Bart in his retaliation. He is unable to accept any responsibility for having misled his son into thinking that a big reward was guaranteed, rationalising the sending of his letter as nothing less than an act of parental duty ("I promised my boy one simple thing. Lots of riches. And that man broke my promise"). In itself, the writing of the letter isn't necessarily a bad thing - if Homer feels that strongly about it, then it might well be healthy for him to get his words down and out of his system - but he imbues Bart with his toxicity, getting him to write his churlish abuses as he dictates them. Bart doesn't seem to take the lack of reward as hard as his father, although he is only too happy to be enlisted as his partner in crime (the elephant's butt line being his personal contribution). After all, it appeals to his love of mayhem and of challenging authority. Unfortunately, Burns is not the kind of authority it is within the family's interests to challenge, and certainly not in such a bluntly crude way. This is something that Homer comes to recognise, when Marge dissuades him from sending the letter in the heat of the moment and asks him to sleep on it. His anger dissipates overnight, as is deftly illustrated in what might be my favourite sequence of the entire episode, when we get a little peak into Homer's dreams and initially find him throttling Burns, who morphs into a bottle of syrup Homer is joyously applying to a plate of pancakes (I miss the days when the dream sequences in The Simpsons were distinguished by their slightly off colour palettes). Unfortunately, the negative impression he's made on Bart won't be pushed aside so easily. The kid hasn't mastered the adult technique of getting worked up and then seeing sense the following day, and he has no such filter where Burns is concerned. He is however familiar enough with the adult routine to know that they tend to bottle out if they don't immediately act on their rage, and takes the liberty of posting the letter on his father's behalf. (Side-note: when Homer learns what happened to the letter and cries out, "D'oh!", you can see a slightly off-model Ned Flanders trimming his hedge at the front.)

In its second act, "Blood Feud" turns into more of a caper with Homer and Bart, as they attempt to retrieve the wayward letter from the mailbox and later from the post office. It's here that the story is at its most purely silly and joyful, as they try everything from physically attacking the mailbox (winning the solidarity of a passing Barney, who cheers them on in fighting the power), to conspiring to destroy its contents by watering its insides with a hosepipe (Bart is trepidatious at the prospect of damaging everybody else's mail in the process, but Homer sees this as trivial: "You know the kinds of letters people write? Dear somebody you never heard of, how is so and so, blah, blah blah, yours truly, some bozo. Big loss"), to walking up to the post office counter and pretending to be Mr Burns, only to immediately realise the flaw in their plan, in that Homer doesn't actually know his boss's first name. Finally Homer attempts to sneak into Burns' office first thing in the morning and retrieve the letter before Burns even notices it's there, but by now it's too late. Burns gets to the letter first and reads it out in Homer's presence. Naturally, he's appalled at the words contained and Homer's future is looking distinctly unrosy.

It's in the third act that "Blood Feud" steps away from the Homer-Bart conflict and reveals where its interests really lie. It is a story with a surprise hero, which is the thing that I most appreciate about it and would argue makes it the perfect ending to the second season. Finally, Homer's benevolent gesture is repaid in no insignificant way, with the real show of gratitude he receives coming not from Burns, but from Smithers, who is the lion to Homer's Androcles. Burns initially wants to fire Homer, but decides that that would be going too easy on him and orders Smithers to arrange for him to be brutally beaten by Joey the goon (another promising side character who would remain sadly under-utilised). Unlike Burns himself, however, Smithers cannot overlook that Homer saved Burns' life, and for that much he feels personally indebted to him. He later shows up at Burns' office to report that the beating did not go ahead, because he intervened and called it off, thus risking becoming the next target of his boss's wrath. In the process, he becomes the episode's real moral centre - Homer and Burns are by turns unsympathetic, and we might even deem Marge's principled assertion that helping Burns should be reward enough in itself to ring a little hollow in practice, but there can be no question that Smithers has done something incredibly selfless, genuine and courageous. Keep in mind that the season's second episode, "Simpson and Delilah", saw Smithers attempting to spitefully sabotage Homer's career to protect his own status, so I see his actions here as a case of his characterisation coming full circle. He gets a chance to atone for the sins of his recent past and to demonstrate the circumstances under which he'd be willing to stand up to Burns. In this instance, the gambit pays off. Burns, much like the emperor from the story of Androcles, is moved enough by Smithers' show of humaneness that it jars him out of his rage and has him reconsidering his response to the Simpsons' life-saving gift. The most bittersweet aspect of the ending is that Homer doesn't find out about any of this. Although he fears some kind of retribution from Burns, he never learns how close he came to being pummelled into a bloody pulp and that it was Smithers (whom he'd dismissed as a jerk in "Principal Charming") who saved him. So when the family are discussing the story's moral implications and conclude that there are none, their perception is somewhat blinkered by their having missed out on its most vital development. If the point of this story goes above their heads, then it might be because it was only ever ostensibly about them.

 (Here's something I never noticed until my most recent viewing: Burns has a mounted triceratops head on his wall. The ultimate symbol of impossible decadence. Not only that, but a triceratops skull later appears in the window display of Plunderer Pete's. Someone involved in production clearly had a fetish for those decapitated dinos.)

What "Blood Feud" ultimately offers is further illumination on the nature of the Burns-Smithers alliance, a relationship Marge had previously queried in "Brush With Greatness", when she wondered how Smithers could bare to be around someone who was so abusive to him, and to everybody else. Smithers' response was very telling: "I value every second we're together, from the moment I squeeze his orange juice in the morning till I tuck him in at night." I'd wager that a significant part of Smithers' pull to Burns stems from his being persistently exposed to the elderly tyrant at his most vulnerable. He understands Burns on a far more intimate and personal level than any other Springfieldian, and while this doesn't mean that he necessarily gets to see a much nicer side to him than anyone else, he does see a far needier side. Burns might be a bogeyman, but he's a bogeyman who requires constant nurturing in order to function, something that arouses Smithers' protective urges and speaks to his need to be needed (the series would later propose a similar, less convincing underpinning to Homer and Marge's relationship, in "Secrets of A Successful Marriage"). We see the extent to which he's willing to go for Burns at the start of the episode, when he immediately offers up his blood, and it's revealed that he'd previously helped Burns out of another medical tight spot by giving him one of his kidneys (slight nitpick, but if Smithers is unable to donate blood to Burns, he can't donate a kidney either). He's also the only person on Earth who treats Burns' illness as a cause for mourning, rather than for scoffing or for filling one's own pockets. It is, paradoxically, this steadfast devotion to Burns that puts him at odds with Burns regarding the fate of Homer. Ordinarily, Smithers will go along with Burns because he loves him so wholeheartedly; he also couldn't turn against the person who ensured the survival of the man he loves.

On that score "Blood Feud" ends up being a surprisingly humanising episode for Burns - somewhat ironically, given the positively vampiric lens through which he regards the transfusion ("I tried every tincture and poultice and tonic and patent medicine there is, and all I really needed was the blood of a young boy"). It builds on the conclusion Marge reached in "Brush With Greatness" that whatever inner beauty there was to be found in Burns came from his being a man of intense physical vulnerability - here, we find him in even more intense physical need than usual, and Burns is eventually prompted to reckon with the implications of this. Despite Marge's assessment, in "Brush With Greatness", that there was nothing good in Burns' character, "Blood Feud" suggests that there is a level on which he is redeemable. He has to hand it to Smithers and acknowledge that he hasn't given the Simpsons their fair due. Its stance on the Burns-Smithers dynamic is ultimately more positive than that "Homer The Smithers" of Season 7 - an episode that, while it illustrated how valuable the relationship was to both parties, suggested that it was also grounded by an unhealthy, mutually restrictive interdependence (you may recall that when I covered that episode, I likened their dynamic to another classic fable, this one about the perils of expecting honor from those who are not inclined to give it). Here, Burns and Smithers are depicted as life partners whose employer-employee relationship functions on the same level as that of a married couple, with Smithers filling a similar role for Burns as Marge does for Homer. When Burns tells Smithers, in the episode's single greatest line of dialogue, "As usual, you've been the sober yin to my raging yang", we can certainly hear echoes of Homer's earlier remark to Marge, when she'd dissuaded him from posting the letter, about finally understanding the meaning of the term "better half". Homer and Burns each do regrettable things in their fits of rage, and require their respective partners to bring much-needed balance to the dynamic, in keeping them from going off the deep end - something that, in both cases, is presented as being no less than the natural give and take of any supportive relationship. If "Blood Feud" has a moral, I would argue that it has something to do with the extent to which we are all essentially dependent on one another, be it in the physical sense that Burns was dependent on Bart's fluids and Homer on Smithers' mercy, or in the sense of needing that other person to bring perspective to our own skewed and potentially destructive disposition.

The Simpsons, though, can't really appreciate that, because all they're left with in the final scene is that rather hostile-looking Olmec head glaring back at them. Burns resolves to gift them with the most marvellous and luxurious present that money can buy, but instead ends up bringing them the ultimate white elephant, a 3000 year old carving that, while a beautiful bit of craftsmanship on the part of the Mesoamericans, isn't going to do anything other than occupy a lot of space and weird them out. Even when Burns is trying to be nice, he can't help but betray his fundamentally antagonistic nature. The carving he picks out as his peace offering is specifically of Xtapalapaquetl the god of war, which stands in direct contrast to the other item with which he gifts the Simpsons, an advance copy of his upcoming autobiography about his battle with hypohemia, which bears the hilariously hokey title, Will There Ever Be A Rainbow? Now really, what the heck does that even mean? Within this context, we suspect that "rainbow" to be a superficial metaphor packaged in a superficial question that Burns is only superficially interested in answering, much as he is only superficially interested in meeting the needs of the Simpsons, for all of the expense he throws their way. There is no reason why he should have chosen Xtapalapaquetl, other than the likelihood that it appealed to his own belligerent character, and he thus assumed that the Simpsons would love it too...that, or he was subconsciously looking to make a statement to his underlings about how he's not to be trifled with. Burns and Smithers receive a happy ending, with Burns getting to walk away feeling satisfied that he's made amends, and Smithers getting to prop Burns back up on his pedestal, assuring him that he's his god of generosity. Meanwhile, the family are left scratching their heads over what to make of this uneasy mix of gratitude and contempt on their would-be benefactor's part.

Still, it's hard to feel that the Simpsons have been particularly cheated by the outcome. Perhaps they have gotten exactly what they deserve. Bart, who made the actual physical sacrifice that saved Burns, is unironically delighted with the head, which might be what most counts. Elsewhere, the benevolence of Homer's gesture has been repaid in full (although he doesn't know it) and his less noble intentions have been answered in a way that feels appropriately humorous. Now, all that's left to do is to survey the (white) elephant in the room, the gaping hole where some form of closure, fulfilment or enlightenment should be where instead there sits a big angry head. Even if Burns wasn't mocking them, it certainly feels as though the universe is. Marge insists that there must be something the family was meant to learn from all this and reaches for some kind of simplified instruction, but she can't find one that accommodates the story from all angles. Her first attempt is "A good deed is its own reward", but Bart objects that he considers the Olmec head to be a fabulous reward, so she adjusts it to "No good deed goes unrewarded". Homer counters that it was actually a bad deed, his strongly-worded letter to Burns, that got them the alleged prize, prompting Marge to shift to the more morally ambiguous "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Rather than let the discussion degrade any further, Lisa offers the resigned suggestion that there maybe was no moral to this particular tale (she's only partially right - there is a moral, but it's too nuanced to be reduced to the kind of concise and cliched observation that Marge requires). The family all agree, but conclude that it was at least a memorable chapter in their lives - a winking concession to the viewer that they hope they at least enjoyed coming along for the journey (and the 21 journeys before it), even if the destination was a baffling non-sequitur. As a capper to the whole season it really is delightful. The family wind up no richer and ultimately no wiser than when they came in, but find a joyous satisfaction in the times they've spent together.

Finally, I don't know what that skinny figure on Bart's desk with the long hair is supposed to be (a stressed Troll doll?), but I kinda want one.

Halfway Across The Galaxy And Turn Left (aka Third From The Sun)

A children's series from the 1990s that I wish people talked about more is Halfway Across The Galaxy and Turn Left. A gem of a series based on a 1985 novel by Australian author Robin Klein, regarding a family of fugitive extra terrestrials who flee their home planet of Zyrgon and travel to Earth by following the directions laid out in the title, where they attempt to start anew in a suburb down under. I remember this one being a pretty big deal back in 1994. People on my playground spoke about it, and were genuinely interested in where the story was headed. I'm not sure how we let this one fall into the cracks of obscurity, but I suggest that we all rectify that post haste. 

The big intriguing hook of Klein's original premise was that, in Zyrgon society, the family dynamics are reversed, so that children have authority over their parents, or at least have an official route to gaining that authority. The book centres on the middle child, X, who is the equivalent of 12 years old on Earth, and has studied tirelessly for the position of Family Organiser, earning a scholarship at the Zyrgon Community Centre and becoming formally recognised as the head of her household. In spite of her status, X feels a degree of inferiority compared to her two siblings, for her teenage sister Dovis is a skilled pilot on track to becoming a Cosmic Flier, while youngest child Qwrk is a mathematical genius awaiting a professorship with the Knowledge Bank. By contrast, X's role is considered dull and not very glamorous, a path she pursued because she couldn't excel at anything more exciting. Nevertheless, her hard-nosed leadership proves indispensable when the children's Father, a compulsive gambler, is exposed as a serial lottery cheater and wanted by the Zyrgon Law Enforcement, forcing the family to vacate the planet. They anticipate that this will be only a temporary measure, with the current regime expected to topple at any moment, and regularly check in with Lox, a dashing young Space Shuttle captain with whom X is infatuated, for updates on the situation. In the meantime, they attempt to hide on Earth by posing as a human family who've recently relocated from abroad, adopting Earth names (X becomes Charlotte, Dovis becomes Astrella, Qwrk becomes George, Father becomes Mortimer, Mother becomes Renee and the family, whose surname was never given, become the Jacksons) and attempting to assimilate themselves into the local culture. Not wanting to attract attention, X orders them to be as nondescript as possible, but this poses a problem when the children attend school and Qwrk is required to present as a child of average intelligence, something he can't even fake. X has him take up the violin, hoping that his lack of musical aptitude will convince the school that there is nothing remarkable about him. But, as Boards of Canada told us, music is math, and Qwrk has little trouble applying his mathematical prowess to mastering the instrument, causing him to be hailed a prodigy and for the school to restructure his lessons around his musical education. Meanwhile, the charismatic Dovis takes to life on Earth like a duck to water, becoming one of the most popular girls in her peer group, and Mother and Father find jobs pertaining to their respective talents for fashion and cooking. X is the only one who still struggles to adjust, bogged down by the weight of her responsibilities.

Eventually, X decides that it would be easier for the family to return to Zyrgon, if they used the money saved from her scholarship to bribe the officials to drop the charges against Father, by which point everyone else has grown accustomed to their Earth routines and meets her proposal with resistance. X then discovers, through communication with Lox, that they actually can't go back, since it's come to light that the test papers that earned her that scholarship were falsified, and she's now the one the Zyrgon authorities are interested in apprehending. Father admits to tinkering with the results on X's behalf, knowing how much she'd wanted to succeed as an Organiser. Realising that she's been living a sham and was never suited to the position, X feels relief rather than disappointment. The book ends with her dispelling the raft the family travelled in, so that the Zyrgon law enforcers will be unable to trace it to their current location. With no choice but to remain on Earth, she opens up to embracing her new life as a child, announcing that the family will have to learn to start organising themselves. In the meantime, she's going ice-skating with her schoolfriend Jenny Roland.

At just 144 pages, the book is a slim read. The television adaptation, conversely, consisted of 28 half-hour episodes, so you know that they added in a ton of extra material. The show's Wikipedia entry states that the series was split into two arcs, with the first staying close to the events of the book. Eh, sort of. For the first 10 episodes or so, it's a reasonably faithful adaptation. We again follow the adventures of X (Lauren Hewitt), Qwrk (Jeffrey Walker), Dovis (played by German actress Silvia Seidel with dialogue dubbed by Amanda Douge), Father (Bruce Myles) and Mother (Jan Friedl), who in this version come to the fictional Melburnian suburb of Bellwood (filmed in the actual Melburnian suburbs of Williamstown and Surrey Hills), claiming to be returning to Australia after a period of living in Peru. They face many of the same challenges as in the book (Qwrk's violin story, for example, is transplanted pretty much wholesale), although the tone of the narrative is noticeably altered, not least because we get considerably more direct insight into the happenings on Zyrgon, something that in the novel was related largely second-hand from X's perspective. Zyrgon culture has also gotten even more draconian - in the novel, the penalty awaiting X and Father, should they be apprehended, was a term in the Detention Centre, which was not suggested to be any worse than an Earth prison, whereas in the series they are threatened with execution by being cast into a pit of lava. After 10 episodes, the series starts following its own storyline, based on the new world-building introduced. It should be acknowledged that Klein penned her own sequel to her novel, Turn Right For Zyrgon, which I understand was written after the TV series and incorporated a few of the plot points from its latter half. I will confess that I've never read the sequel, copies of which seem to be quite hard to come by (I'm not even sure if it was ever published in the UK, in spite of the popularity the series enjoyed here at the time, and the original novel being readily available during its run), so I am unable to comment on how it compares to the events of the series. 

Produced by Crawfords Australia, the series aired in 1994 on the Seven Network in Australia, and in the UK as part of the now-defunct CITV programming block. At the time, I got really invested in the story and characters, although for such a long-running series it was basically inevitable that I was going to miss an episode here and there, and for some reason my viewing during the second half got particularly spotty. I am happy to say that I caught the finale, "We Live On The Best One", so I at least got to see how everything concluded. I had missed the penultimate episode, "Trial By Lava", and remember how shocked I was when I learned from the recap what the final cliffhanger had been. But I was thrilled to bits with how the story ultimately resolved, and the closing line, spoken by X, is one that's really stuck with me through the years. I recently revisited the series in full, which it had long been on my mind to do, and was chuffed at how much I got from it the second time around. This is a show that has it all - a memorable cast of characters, a gripping sense of adventure, a stirring theme tune (courtesy of Peter Sullivan), visual designs that are really quite lovely (inevitably, some of the effects look kind of dated now, but for a television production of its day it seriously doesn't look too shabby, with those shots of the Zyrgon civilisation in particular still feeling so chilly, haunting and alien), and while it makes for darker, more dramatic viewing than some of the other Australian children's shows I remember from that era (most notably Round The Twist and Genie From Down Under), there's still a healthy undercurrent of that same antipodean quirkiness. My only quibble is that the sprawling structure^[1] isn't immune to intermittent flabbiness. There comes a point (around episode 13) where it shifts from being a serialised science-fiction adventure into more of an episodic fish out of water dramedy, and from there you get your share of episodes that could be described as "filler", in that they don't do a massive amount to further the overarching plot. Such fillers aren't necessarily a bad thing, with some simply slowing down to focus more on the characters (episode 14, "Qwrk Lands On His Feet", an unusually X-lite installment that has Qwrk befriending an aspiring skateboarder, offers an agreeable little study of the youngest Jackson). But there is a particularly laggy stretch later on (namely, episodes 20 to 22) that leaves you wondering when the adventure is going to pick up again - which it thankfully does in style for the remaining six entries. It's an excellent series, though one that might have benefited from being a smidge shorter.

(Top: The villainous Chief, as portrayed by Bruce Spence. Bottom: Chief in his more harmless rubot form.)

One of the most significant changes in the television adaptation was the addition of The Chief, a sinister and relentless law enforcer who'd tracked the family all the way from Zyrgon and was intent on bringing X and Father to his twisted vision of justice. In his anisocoric eyes (yes, Chief has the same eye condition as David Bowie), X had abused her position as Family Organiser by refusing to turn in her father, which already made her a high-level traitor to Zyrgon society, never mind any matter of falsified test papers. In the finale, it's revealed that he'd also harboured some personal jealousy of X, recognising how favoured she was by Zyrgon ruler Prinicipa (Diane Cliento) and her potential to rise up the ranks faster than him. (Chief had no real interest in Mother, Dovis or Qwrk, and in episode 11, "Home Is Where The Heart Is", when he temporarily apprehended X and Father, was happy to leave them behind on Earth.) In the book, the Zyrgon law enforcement were never more than a distant, vaguely-defined threat, with much of the conflict arising from the family's efforts to adjust to life on Earth, while in the television series the jeopardy naturally became a lot more immediate and intense, with an enforcer so actively and aggressively on their trail. Chief also got confused by the ways of Earth, and had contempt for what he saw as the planet's chaos and disorder (there's a hilarious moment in the penultimate episode where he tries to explain to Principa the concept of shopping malls). As a child, he was by and far my favourite character, and I recall that very specific disappointment, on reading the book, when it became apparent that he wasn't going to be in this version of the story; without him, it became a very different, somewhat slighter experience (although there was a reference to a "Law-Enforcer-In-Chief" who according to Lox loves the sound of his own voice, which I suspect was the basis for his character).

One of the joys of rediscovering the television series as an adult has been in seeing how fantastically well Chief holds up as an antagonist. A big part of that has to do with his being played by the legendary Bruce Spence - not only does Spence's lofty, gangling frame give him an imposing and convincingly alien presence, he could imbue Chief with a sublime creepiness and sublime campiness all in one package, simply through what he does with his mouth (a talent put to subsequent use in his cameo as the Mouth of Sauron in The Lord of The Rings: Return of The King, which was egregiously excised from the theatrical cut). The guy is skin-crawling, but so, so fun. He also has an unexpected and frankly weird character arc, which involves him spending the middle portion of the series in the form of a harmless "rubot" (robotic beings used on Zyrgon in the roles of dogs and cocktail waiters), having accidentally transformed himself in a botched attempt to capture X, and being adopted by Father as a sort of pet he keeps around without X's knowledge. For a few episodes, he and Father appear to forge quite a loving bond, with Father regularly going out of his way to protect Chief, after taking pity on him in his disarmed state. From Chief's perspective the truce was almost certainly one of convenience - having finally returned to his true form (in episode 19, "Welcome To The Human Race"), he goes right back to hunting Father and X. Mercy and emotion are just not things that he comprehends, and while X is able to teach him something of their value in the series finale, his time under Father's care is oddly never cited as a factor in his eventual redemption.

The other major change made by the television series was to expand extensively on the role of Jenny Roland (Kellie Smythe), the lonely Earth girl befriended by X who ultimately gives her a reason to feel that she belongs on the Blue Planet. In fact, the very first scene of the opening episode centres on Jenny's perspective, indicating that the series will be her story as much as X's. It is established that Jenny is struggling with the absence of her father, who distanced himself from the family following the breakdown of her parents' marriage. Jenny spots a falling star in the night sky and wishes for her father's return. She then makes an additional wish that is not said out loud, but later shared with X - she wants things to be different for her at school this year, and to find a friend. (Were you watching, Chris Sanders?) The narrative thread regarding Jenny's father is not explicitly resolved, but he implication is that X has arrived to fill a dual role, both as Jenny's friend and as a surrogate parent, in helping her to come to terms with her father's abandonment. When X attempts to have the family return to Zyrgon (claiming that they are going back to their old home in Peru), Jenny is forced to relive that abandonment and expresses her anger for her father by taking it out on the fishing boat he left behind, a symbol of their vacated connection. Unlike in the book, where Jenny remains oblivious to X's origins, in the television series X chooses to confide the truth in Jenny and her brother Colin (Che Broadbent), who become actively involved in the family's efforts to remain undetected on Earth and to evade the clutches of The Chief. In turn, their alliance provides Jenny with a means of healing from her own upheaval. The fishing boat, which has stood unused since her father's desertion, is granted a newfound mobility thanks to the Jacksons' telekinetic abilities (abilities that might potentially be unlockable in Earthlings too, if they concentrate). It plays an essential part in rescuing X and Father when they are apprehended by Chief in episode 11, and at the end of of episode 12 ("X: The Unknown Factor") when the girls have come through the first phase of their ordeal, they go out for a celebratory joyride in their flying boat, mutual survivors of adult insensitivity. Just as X learns to enjoy life by becoming more of a child, Jenny learns to take control of hers by becoming more confident and independent. In the final arc, when Chief succeeds in capturing X and bringing her to trial on Zyrgon, Jenny and Colin make the gutsy decision to accompany Dovis halfway across the galaxy (and right) to save her.

Not all Earthlings are so hospitable, of course, and X must also contend with alpha schoolgirl Michelle Froggat (Tenley Gillmore) and her lackey Dallas (Katrina Lambert), who've long looked down on Jenny and take a similar disliking to X for not fitting in (in the absence of Chief, they were essentially the closest thing the book had to corporeal villains). By the end of the book it's hinted that Michelle might be forming a grudging respect for X, after she wins a school race; in the series, their enmity merely intensifies in the second half, when Michelle's family move into the house next to the Jacksons and her father (Denis Moore) becomes equally fixated on their weirdness (her mother (Ellen Cressey) is more inclined to let them be, in a dynamic that vaguely reminds me of Patrick and Pippa from One Foot In the Grave). In all fairness to Michelle, she undergoes a pretty traumatic experience in episode 12, when Chief falsely imprisons her and assumes her form in order to lure X into a trap; I'm not sure I'd be so inclined to roll with all of these strange going-ons around me either. (It does mean that, for one episode, Gillmore gets to have an absolute ball playing Chief in Michelle's form, replicating Spence's uncanny lip energy.) 

The character who feels the most altered from his literary counterpart is Lox (Paul Kelman), the family's contact on Zyrgon. In the book he was a vain, unsympathetic character who cared only about his own reputation and status, and when the scandal about X's forged test papers came to light refused to help the family any further. He was also X's primary tie to her home planet, an attachment that revealed a more fanciful side to her hyper-serious character. She had aspirations of one day marrying him, in the same way that a schoolgirl might fantasise about marrying a favourite pop star, and was disappointed to learn that he'd become engaged to a kiosk attendant named Jady following her family's departure. Finally seeing through Lox, and her own foolishness in being so enamored of him, antecedes her willingness to let Zyrgon and the position of Family Organiser go. Her devotion to Lox represents her sense of affinity with the adult world (in her view, that she was "born in the wrong chronology"), which she comes to realise was deeply misplaced; in her final line in the book, it is implied that she might have transferred those affections to the more age-appropriate Colin. In the series, while still the object of X's naive pre-adolescent attachments, Lox isn't quite so self-serving and becomes much more of a comic relief figure. In this version, Jady (Kerry Armstrong) is no mere kiosk attendant, but the fiercely loyal assistant of Chief (she's also the source of the series' funniest running gag, in the conspicuous amatory tension between herself and Chief that their own tyrannical protocol keeps them from acknowledging), looking to honey trap Lox into revealing information about X's whereabouts. Eventually Lox is forced into hiding himself and joins the family on Earth, where he becomes fascinated with cowboys and westerns and attempts to emulate their culture, not appreciating how hopelessly out of place it is in 1990s Melbourne. He nevertheless proves himself useful in episode 19 by saving the family from Chief, then fresh out of his rubot era, and is inspired to return to Zyrgon as a dissident (albeit a mostly incompetent one).

Zeppy and Jenny 

Also dropping by to offer support are Aunt Hecla (Sandy Gore) and her pet Zeppy, a zepelope, or "hybrid antelope" as per the book (specifically, he looks like a hybrid of a pronghorn and Dougal from The Magic Roundabout), though if anyone asks he's a rare breed of Earth goat. Despite her eccentric appearance, Hecla is the voice of reason, a former Family Organiser who alone recognises how absurd it is to place that kind of responsibility on a child. She takes it on herself to shoulder X's burden, assuming X's form and giving herself up to Chief, although the ruse is uncovered once she is back on Zyrgon (Zeppy, meanwhile, remains on Earth with the Jacksons, but he becomes less prominent as the series goes on and by the end has completely faded into the backdrop). Hecla vocalises one of the story's key concerns, which has to do with the perils of parentification and of forcing children to grow up too soon. During her stay on Earth, she tries to dissuade X from feeling so accountable for her family with the reminder that she is only a child. This is echoed more harrowingly in the penultimate episode, when Chief is preparing to execute X by throwing her into the much-feared lava pit, and Hecla tries to reason with him to let her go on those exact same grounds. There's the implicit suggestion that there is not such a gulf between what parentification has done to X and Chief's attempts to literally destroy her. In Klein's book we might have detected a certain subtext, in which the whole of Zyrgon (there a less concrete threat) reads as a shorthand for the omnipresent anxieties that loom over X and keep her bound to her premature obligations. This analogy is even more pronounced in the series, where Zyrgon becomes a caricature of adulthood at its most joyless, a cold blue realm of endless discipline and uniformity, where fun is literally forbidden and sweet treats are unheard of (crucially, it is the residents' demands for ice cream - a classically childish request - that causes Chief to lose his control over them). Earth, by contrast, represents the freshness and boundless opportunities of childhood, a green and vibrant world in which the family are reborn and given the chance to reinvent themselves from scratch, and to discover the potential that they never knew they had.

Another major theme of the television series is immigration and diversity, with X and her family being foreigners attempting to start over in a world that is new to them, and which does not always understand them in turn. I feel this was the significance of making the Froggats direct neighbours to the Jacksons in the latter half, since it makes the issue of coexistence more explicit - we share a common world and need to live alongside one another, even if our customs and outlooks don't always accord. Mr Froggat despises the Jacksons for being different, and there's an obvious message about how such bigotry may be passed down through the generations, with Mr Froggat's bitter intolerance visibly rubbing off on his daughter. Which is not to say that there's no hope for Michelle. In episode 26 ("Dark Night, Star Bright") she finds herself caught between her parents' opposing views on the matter. Mrs Froggat encourages Michelle to accept the Jacksons and advocates multiculturalism, while Mr Froggat lays out his vision of a "perfect" society in which everyone is the same and non-conformity brutally punished, a vision that is chillingly reminiscent of the dystopian system on Zyrgon. Even Michelle, who looks up to her father and usually goes along with him, is disturbed by the notion. Elsewhere, in episode 15 ("Hearing A Different Drummer"), Dovis enters into a relationship with a young poet named David (David Walters), and admits to him that her family are originally from Zyrgon. While David likely doesn't appreciate that "Zyrgon" is a whole other planet, as opposed to another country, he is unfazed, sharing that his family is of Ukrainian descent and assuring Dovis that Australia is, historically speaking, a new country for a lot of its populace.

By the end of the series, while the narrative on Zyrgon is neatly tied up, the situation with the Froggats is a left little more open-ended. The Froggats must resign themselves to the fact that the Jacksons are here to stay (following a brief interval in which they'd announced their intention to leave, much to the delight of Mr Froggat and Michelle), but will relations between the two families be in any way improved going forward? Will Michelle continue to make X's life difficult in school, or will she finally come around to her, as she did the book? Sure, if X can depart Zyrgon on peaceful terms with Chief, then Michelle should be a doddle, right? The answer might lie in that powerful closing line, when the Froggats go outside to see the Jacksons returning to their property with a splashy new car, and receive the unwelcome news that they are not only staying put, but are now lottery winners. It seems that Father has been up to his old tricks again, although one would hope that this is just a one-off to give his family enough money to live comfortably in their new lives. "What luck", says Mr Froggat, barely concealing his deflation. X responds: "That's not luck, Mr Froggat. THIS is luck. There's a million billion of these planets, and we live on the best one." The final sequence shows the Jacksons, along with Jenny and Colin, running playfully around their garden, a collection of children and children at heart, while the Froggats observe them from the other side of the fence. The shot then pulls back to reveal Australia as viewed from outer space, part of a bigger world and indeed a bigger universe. Although the Froggats appear to be excluded from that final celebration, we might detect an implicit invitation in X's words, one that is being extended to the viewer as much as to her reluctant neighbours. After all, her closing statement is "We live on the best one", denoting the Earth's entire populace. The invitation is to see ourselves as part of a global community that is enriched by our individual differences, and in which we become stronger when we embrace and lean on one another (a message likewise conveyed in the conclusion to Chief's arc, when he and X both become stranded in the lava pit, and are required to cooperate in order to get out alive). To simply be on this wonderful planet, and to have so much splendour and diversity around us is, in X's terms, is to have done better than to have won the lottery. The opportunity to make the most of that is there, and the Froggats' final position in that equation is undefined in the same way that our own position is undefined - whether we choose cross the fence and partake in the Jacksons' celebration, or else stay leerily upon the sidelines, is ultimately in our hands.

The "Jacksons" - don't forget to turn left!  

[1] It is, I think, a bit of a stretch on Wikipedia's part to claim that the series can be divided into two distinct arcs. Broadly, it can be broken down into four different phases: the initial 12-episode adventure, the more laid-back interval from 13 to 18 that focusses on the Jacksons vs the Froggats, David romancing Dovis and the subplot about Father caring for Chief as a rubot, culminating in Chief's regaining his true form in episode 19, that rather idle gap between 20 and 22 where Mother goes to Paris and Lox goes home but not a lot else happens, and then the final arc where Chief reunites with Jady and they close in on X for the climactic showdown. Not the most even structure, but a lot of good times.

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #55: Bosch Roadkill (Say No To Squirrelicide)

 2015's "Stop The Roadkill" short feels like an odd mishmash of concepts. What starts out as a self-confessed PSA about the millions of critters killed on America's roads by the week culminates in a marketing pitch for Bosch's "on fleek" brand of windscreen wipers. The presence of the Humane Society logo at the end assures us that this passionate plea on behalf of imperilled wildlife was utterly sincere; even so, having it all boil down to an endorsement for wipers causes it to play somewhat like the protracted set-up to a gag. An elaborate display followed by a quick punchline, posing a simple solution to a problem that we suspect is quite a bit more complicated. The impact of roads on wildlife populations is nothing to be sneezed at (remember how much it kept coming up as a losing scenario when we looked at the Survival books three years ago?), and I'm sure there are a whole number of factors to be taken into consideration in the battle to reduce it (speed, constructing roads in ways that avoid breaking up habitats in the first place, etc). But as a starting point, fair enough - in order to prevent collisions (with wildlife, other motorists or anything else) you do need to be able to clearly see what's in front of you. A car with insufficient components won't be doing any favours to anyone. And as the ad's hook makes clear, a driver is only as benevolent and as worthy as the vehicle they hop around in. The scrawny cast don't care to distinguish, repeatedly warning the viewer against being a killer car, as opposed to simply steering one.

There's a likeable novelty to the production. The smashed and rotting corpses of five different animals, representative of those millions who wind up as roadkill every week, are reanimated under the light of the full moon. Having failed to make it safely to the other side, they find themselves stranded in an undead limbo, bound to the asphalt and cursed to bemoan their miserable fates to a retro dance track that is vaguely reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", although not a full-on pastiche (Vincent Price-esque narration sequence notwithstanding). A promotional blurb included on the Andrew Barrett Creative website informs us that the tune in question is 100% original (and also composed by "a famous musical producer" who goes identified), although for me it still has a curious, even comforting air of backward familiarity - it's the kind of song I can hear and swear I've already heard sampled in multiple vaporwave tracks, without quite recalling the specifics. 

The biggest thrill of the video is in the puppetry and the character designs, and in the various smaller touches that give each of the zombie critters their own distinct flavours as they twist their pulverised, disintegrating hides to the cautionary beat. Their grotesqueness is counterbalanced by a warmth and personality that keeps the tone intrinsically fun, even as a flattened squirrel with unearthly glowing eyes is spewing the stomach-churning details about the damage dealt to his internal organs when he found himself caught beneath the wheels of a truck. His being a squirrel means we get an inevitable "nuts" innuendo - almost as inevitable as the rapping skunk who gives a demonstration of his anal artillery by discharging a cloud of noxious greenish gas (reinforcing the misconception that skunks are effectively passing gas in defence, as opposed to repelling their predators with foul-smelling liquid, but I suppose the biology might vary with an undead skunk, or "dead mother trucker", in the words of his leporine back-up). But even the most predictable elements are delivered with a stark brutality that fits the ad's playfully warped vibe. There's also a sly parody of PSA sloganeering, with the squirrel chanting "Just Say No to squirrelicide!" Enhancing the flavour considerably are the unique injuries that point to each creature's individual tale of woe. The deer has bagged a couple of souvenirs from the car that hammered him, in the form of the tree-shaped air freshener and rear view mirror dangling from his antlers (making me wonder if the driver fared any better in the collision, since he'd presumably had to have gone through the windshield in order to get them), and uses a Deer X-ing sign as a painfully ironic crutch. The skunk has skid marks running in a perfectly vertical line down his back, and sports a licence plate on his front as bling. One of the rabbit's ears looks to be hanging by a thread, while his leg detaches and does its own independent jig. The fox has a flashing headlight embedded in her chest, bone protruding from her tail, and can rotate her broken neck 360 degrees a la Regan from The Exorcist (she also detaches it in a later scene). For zombies, they seem like a mostly benign bunch, in generally wanting little more than for motorists to be conscious of their plight. The skunk is alone in expressing any vindictive intent, in awaiting the opportunity to get back at the SUV-driving, carpooling soccer mom responsible for his unwanted second stripe by directing the full fury of his unhallowed anal glands her way.

The ad climaxes with a car appearing on the road, but stopping well short of the undead menagerie. The unseen driver uses Bosch brand wipers and thus has zero trouble in seeing them ahead...although with that in mind I'm surprised that they aren't freaked out by the sight of these uncanny critters jiving in plain sight and don't immediately make a u-turn back to civilisation. But perhaps that too is a testament to how in control they feel as a result of having those wipers installed. Having made their point, most of the animals slink back into the roadside shrubbery, but the squirrel persists in dragging the moment out past its natural conclusion, leaping up onto the hood of the car and getting ejected by the wipers. They are thus depicted as invaluable tools in helping commuters to navigate the unexpected, including pesky zombie sciurines with chips on their shoulders (and within their nuts). We close with the tagline "Invented for life", which in this context has a crafty double meaning. 

The legacy of the short is somewhat of a phantom one, at least from my own late-to-the-party perspective. At the time it became "an internet sensation and Bosch's most effective online film ever" (according to A Barrett) it must have passed me by, meaning that I didn't attempt to access its official website, which reportedly had biographies for each of the battered quintet, until it had slipped away to Defunctville. I'm not having much luck in pulling up this information when I try whacking it into the Wayback Machine either, so if the characters had names I guess they'll have to remain a mystery to me, along with any details to their backstories that are finer than what the ad itself makes evident (the fox and rabbit, for example, don't get to tell their stories in the lyrics, so it might have been interesting to learn how they came a cropper).  More curious still are the gallery of GIFs and production images on the A Barrett page, which, in addition to showcasing some neat concept art, indicate that the ad even had its own miniature line of tie-in merchandising. There are tantalising photos depicting a keychain of the deer and a vinyl pressing of the song - although I'm not 100% convinced that the latter ever existed and wasn't just a mock-up created as a tongue-in-cheek promotional image (for one, I can't seem to locate a Discogs entry for the item; if it was real, then I'd hazard a guess that it was only available in a strictly limited capacity, as a promo item given out to press or to crew members, or something along those lines). Perhaps it's only appropriate that these decomposing creatures should linger on in a fragmentary form, no longer the full picture of what they once were, destined to haunt my unsatiated curiosity for evermore with their incompleteness. But so long as the ad itself is able to keep on circulating, the spirit of this demented nocturnal rave can keep rising up, furthering its huggably nightmarish cycle for innumerable full moons to come.

Three Men and A Comic Book (aka To Everything, Turn Turn Turn)

 

The spring of 1991 saw The Simpsons nearing the end of its second season in style, climaxing with the two-blow gut punch of "Lisa's Substitute" and "The War of The Simpsons", back-to-back episodes that demonstrated what an uncanny flair the ostensibly grotesque cartoon had for devastating drama. The emotional stakes had never felt higher, the consequences of the characters' choices never more pressing and intimate. With the penultimate episode, "Three Men and A Comic Book" (7F21), we can feel the season making a conscious effort to ease itself into palate cleansing mode; I suspect it's not a coincidence that its two most emotionally painful episodes were followed up by one of the series' most purely fun offerings to date, enabling viewers to head into the summer with more of a light-hearted skip in their step (the actual season finale, "Blood Feud", would be held over for an unusually belated July debut). That might seem like an odd proposition. After all, in its third act "Three Man and A Comic Book" becomes dark and physically nasty in ways that those aforementioned episodes didn't, with Bart descending into feverish paranoia, Martin being falsely imprisoned and Milhouse threatened with a drop from the Simpsons' treehouse. We might have been on the edge of our seat during that sequence in "Substitute" where Lisa finally loses her cool with Homer and repeatedly calls him a baboon, but neither character was endangered in quite so blunt and concrete a way as Milhouse is here. The distinction being that "Three Men and A Comic Book" remains, at all times, an intrinsically playful scenario, even as its pivotal conflict grows ever more alarming. The narrative tension is driven by something so small - a particularly elusive edition of a comic book starring Springfield's favourite radioactive superhero - and the calamity it inspires is ultimately so disproportionate (even with its $100 price tag) that there's only so seriously it warrants being taken. I think we've always enough confidence that Bart is neither crazed or depraved enough that he'd sacrifice his best friend in order to preserve said comic, even as he's assuring the hysterical Milhouse that a fall wouldn't be the worst possible outcome, since the atmospheric rainstorm would potentially soften him up on the way down.

"Three Men and A Comic Book" is a significantly lighter installment than its two direct predecessors, yet it still feels every bit as audacious, particularly with the wild gambits taken in its final act. For the first two thirds, it tells a grounded story dealing with an all-too relatable childhood conundrum - the problem of cash and how to accumulate it fast when you're young and craving something well beyond your means - and then for the big finish relocates its action to the confines of the treehouse, signifying our sudden escalation into more dizzying and dangerous heights. From there it becomes largely a three hander between Bart, Martin and Milhouse, with Marge and Homer getting the occasional interjection. We experience the claustrophobia of being perpetually surrounded by those rugged treehouse walls, exacerbating the intense absurdities of the climactic showdown and illustrating the extent to which our titular trio are mired together in their mutual suspicion, cut off from anything resembling reason and good sense, and with a brutally long way to fall on their inevitable crash back down to Earth.

The theme of corrupted childhoods is established in the gladly irreverent first scene, where Bart and Lisa pass their time en route to Springfield's 12th annual comic book convention devising a dark fan theory connecting two of Harvey Comics' flagship characters. Bart's proposal that Casper The Friendly Ghost is really the spirit of the deceased Richie Rich is intriguing, as is Lisa's deepening of the lore with the speculation that Richie possibly took his own life after realising how misspent it was in pursuit of dollars - but alas, not consistent with the canon of the 1995 feature film (which is the canon that primarily matters when it comes to Casper), where Casper was revealed to have died of pneumonia. Actually, based on the anecdotes that director Brad Silberling had to share on the film's DVD commentary, it seems that the powers that be over at Harvey Comics would sooner you didn't think of Casper as the spirit of a deceased child, period (however much his being a ghost automatically invites that line of thought), but rather as a separate entity altogether. According to Silberling, Harvey Comics heavily contested that particular element of the feature film, along with Casper's infatuation with Kat and Dr Harvey's falling to his death, however readily undone by the Lazarus (jeez, they were against everything about this film that was interesting or meaningful). Being a Casper fan, what I most appreciate about this exchange is Lisa's rebuttal when Bart refers to him as Casper The Wimpy Ghost: "I think it's sad that you equate friendliness with wimpiness, and I hope it keeps you from ever achieving true popularity." Well said, Lisa. I won't have anybody dissing my boy Casper except the Ghostly Trio (given it's their thing and all).

The hypothetical sad fate of Richie Rich subtly foreshadows where the story is headed, with Bart's fixation on material acquisition being the thing that invites his own (less macabre) misfortune, although there is something undeniably innocent and wholesome about his desire when it originates. For a long stretch, "Three Men" is about how badly Bart wants a comic book and the lengths he'll go to make it his own, effective because writer Jeff Martin has such a keen empathy for what it's like to be a child and to feel such an intense longing for something that the world almost seems to stop turning until it's safely in your hands. It's a bit like "Marge Be Not Proud" in that regard, except the events don't take anywhere near so distressing a turn. Plus, Bart actually was able to learn and grow from his experiences in that episode, whereas "Three Men and A Comic Book" strikes me as being almost an anti-coming of age story, in which the possibility of growth is suggested but ultimately shot down - making the title, in which the three warring school boys are identified as men more than a little ironic. It is a reference to the 1987 movie Three Men and A Baby (one of those hit comedies of the 1980s that I don't think is all that well-remembered today, although it comes with a fabulously freaky urban legend involving the alleged ghost of yet another deceased child); that the pivotal comic book has taken the place of the baby marks it out as something for which the boys have a shared and crucial responsibility. Having purchased the elusive publication and devoured all the wonders its pages conceal, they now have the mutual challenge of figuring out how to grow beyond that innocent desire and jointly nurture their incredible acquisition. The comic represents an investment in their future, one that we know they're doomed to blow from the instant Martin insists that they need to keep it in optimum condition so that the last one of them alive might have the honor of being buried with it. Not to preserve it for succeeding generations of comic book fans, so that one day another child just like them might have the excitement of getting to read it. Heck, not even so that it may eventually be resold to another collector for an even bigger sum. We watch as their selfishness and jealousy becomes increasingly volatile, at which point the title takes on an additional meaning, evoking not just a Ted Danson comedy about child-rearing, but also the old proverb about how multiple dogs and one bone will seldom agree. 

The comic in question is the first ever issue of Radioactive Man, originally published in November 1952 with the unassuming sale price of 10 cents. Copies in 1991 are hard to come by, and Comic Book Guy, making his debut at the convention, won't part with his for anything less than $100 (he purports that the comic is worth a lot more and that he's offering to it to Bart for lower because he reminds him of himself, though based on his actions elsewhere in the episode that's presumably all part of his sales pitch). Alas, Bart only has 30 dollars to his name, but his reverence for Radioactive Man is through the roof - less for his heroism than for the fact that he never beats up a villain without delivering some cheesy quip (a point Bart emphasises by showing Lisa a comic where Radioactive Man punches a guy into the sun while asking, "Hot enough for ya?", although if you ask me that's just sick). Bart's itch to get his paws on that first issue is intense, but at this stage it's also pure, fuelled by the thrill of owning such a vital component of Radioactive Man history and by the curiosity of getting to experience how his hero's journey began. We can practically taste his frantic sincerity, and he has our sympathies. His first and most obvious recourse is make an appeal the bank of Mom and Dad, but Homer refuses to believe that any comic book could be worth that kind of money. Marge suggests that Bart might look into getting a part-time job, and refers him to an acquaintance named Mrs Glick, an elderly widow (how elderly is never specified, but she had a brother who served in World War I, which potentially puts her in her 90s, possibly older) with no shortage of gruelling chores she needs a hand with. Unfortunately, Glick transpires to be incredibly stingy, awarding Bart with only two quarters for days of work. Following that, and various other ill-fated attempts at raising funds (the most lucrative of which was selling cans of beer from the front lawn, for which he narrowly escaped a reprimanding from Lou and Eddie by offering them his unsold wares) he ends up only five dollars richer than he was before. 

What's particularly canny about the middle act of "Three Men" is the way it touches on two sore spots at once. It's a harrowing reminder of how unfair life felt when, as a child, you fervently wanted something that stayed well outside of your reach. But there's also the insinuation that Bart's money-making endeavours, most notably his manual work for Mrs Glick, represent an induction into the world of adult responsibility, with all of its own hardships and lack of gratifications. When Bart returns home from his ordeal with Glick and churlishly declares that employment is for chumps, Homer is full of admiration for him for having twigged that basic truth so early in life. This overlapping of childhood and adult anxieties is playfully foregrounded in what might be one of the most strangely implemented cultural references of the early seasons, a parody of The Wonder Years that facilitates a guest appearance from Daniel Stern (aka Marv, the drippier half of the Wet Bandits) as Bart's inner monologue. Ostensibly, Stern's voice represents that of an adult Bart, looking back fondly upon his youth and identifying the moment he was tasked with finding a job as a crucial turning point in his coming of age, only for Homer to keep cutting him off in the present by demanding to know what Bart (his gaze turned contemplatively toward the camera) is staring at. It's hilarious, but it's also a little baffling in terms of what we're meant to assume is going on within context. Is Bart actually having a fourth wall-breaking moment that his father isn't privy to, enabling him to share some kind of mental connection with his future self (circa 2011) and communicate with the viewer? Or is the implication that Bart is actively playing at being in The Wonder Years, imagining a narration on behalf of his older self in the style of Kevin Arnold? Alternatively, is he just staring vacantly into space, with Stern's narration teasing us into supposing that something meaningful is transpiring, and Homer repeatedly exposing it for the nonsense that is? Who can say? Even if you're unfamiliar with The Wonder Years, the gag itself remains basically accessible - Stern's narration purports to recontextualise Bart's predicament as the stuff of cozy nostalgia, but this is adamantly shot down by Homer, who represents the voice of a bitter reality. Bart is denied that transcendence, the assurance that his challenges in the present are in fact building toward something much greater, while the supposed future Bart is denied his rose-tinted comforts. The presence of "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds, which was featured in the premier episode of The Wonder Years and doesn't exactly scream nostalgia for the early 90s, leaves Bart all the more dislocated from any sense of coherent time and progression. 

In addition to offering an affectionate look-back at the qualities that make childhood such a slow and aggravating period (and adulthood likewise), "Three Men" is an elegant exercise in the show's continued world-enriching, managing to pack an impressive amount of development into its 22 minutes. The most obvious thing it has going on in that regard is the aforementioned introduction of Comic Book Guy, a character who'd gain notoriety later down the road when he became an avatar for the obsessive netizens whose pedantic critiquing of The Simpsons did not go unnoticed by the production staff. For now, he's merely a caricature of the kinds of contemptuous, emotionally aloof and self-important nerds who regularly pop up behind the counters of comic book stores. A very inspired and well-observed caricature it is too, holding as true in the UK as it does in the US - there was a time when you could walk into any Forbidden Planet around here and nine times out of ten you'd be served by someone redolent of Comic Book Guy. (If I'm honest, there's a level on which I even sympathise with him, at least in his specific lament, "I do not need this, I've got a Masters degree in Folklore and Mythology". Yeah, I too know the sting of having a Masters that nets you absolutely zero prestige in the real world.) This is also our first close-up look at Radioactive Man, who serves as an all-purpose parody of classic comic book superheroes, in the same way that Itchy & Scratchy serve as all-purpose parodies of golden age cartoon stars (he's also an expansion of a gag played more saliently with Krusty, in that if you peer past his outer disguise he bears a spooky resemblance to Homer). In spite of the obvious affection the show's staff have for comic book culture, on the basis of this episode alone, he'd end up being curiously under-utilised as a concept - sure, he would eventually get another spotlight episode in Season 7, this one actually titled "Radioactive Man", and his comics would pop up in every so often in the mise-en-scene, but he didn't exactly become an omnipresent staple of the Simpsons universe a la Itchy & Scratchy. We get here a glimpse into his superheroic origins, when the atomic blast that improbably failed to kill him gave him radioactive powers, and learn something of the dark mythology surrounding names attached to the 1950s television adaptation (there's Dirk Richter, whose murky demise alludes to that of Superman actor George Reeves, and Buddy Hodges, who was erroneously rumored to have been killed in Vietnam), but if you wanted to learn more about the Radioactive Man lore then you largely had to settle for the interpretations in the Simpsons Comics. Speaking of things that were a bigger deal in auxiliary Simpsons media, I think this is the only canon appearance of Bartman, Bart's own superhero alter ego. In his case, it's actually hilarious how much mileage the comics, video games and merchandise were able to mine from the concept, when it barely fits in with the series proper at all. Within context, "Bartman" is a made-up superhero Bart dresses as in a failed attempt to gain discount entry into the convention, and that's as far as his story goes, although he does a get a pretty sweet transformation sequence out of the deal (complete with yet another Superman allusion when Bart jumps into a telephone booth occupied by journalist Dave Shutton). Meanwhile, Lisa's observation, "Too bad we didn't come dressed as popular cartoon characters", is a thing of low-key beauty in itself.

Elsewhere, we get a dark origin story for Patty and Selma, at least as we know them, with the revelation that they once had soft, feminine voices before they took up smoking in their teens and their vocal chords were warped beyond recognition (and having covered "Lisa The Beauty Queen" last month, something that leaps out to me about these early Simpsons episodes is how preoccupied the writers were with the topic of cigarettes and their dubious marketing practices - from what we see of the Dirk Richter Radioactive Man series, it's also little more than a stealth Laramie commercial designed to make smoking appealing to kids). Marge has only a small role in "Three Men", but she gets an illuminating flashback recounting how she once agreed to become Patty and Selma's slave in exchange for a cut of their allowance, so as to fulfil her dream of owning a child-sized electric lightbulb oven. The story isn't a total bummer, given that Patty and Selma kept their side of the bargain and Marge did eventually get what she wanted, although the twins' newfound nicotine dependency may not be the only toxic pattern being ingrained in this sequence. Wanting to please and take care of the ones she's close to is something that comes completely naturally to Marge (having acquired her swanky new toy, she delights in using it to prepare lightbulb-warmed cookies for her sisters), much as taking advantage of that instinct comes entirely naturally to the ones she's close to. Arguably, there isn't such a massive gulf between her having to cater to the awkward demands of the teenaged Patty and Selma and her having to cater to the equally awkward demands of her family now, with the latter being all the more thankless for not coming with the promise of a lightbulb oven at the end.

The biggest curiosity of the episode is the character of Mrs Glick, who feels as though she was being set up to become yet another recurring member of Springfield's ever-growing community, but whose appearances since have been few and far between (although plentiful enough for her to have been killed off at least twice). One would assume that the decision for her to be voiced by a guest performer, the legendary Cloris Leachman, limited what the writers felt able to subsequently do with her. Certainly, Leachman brought a unique energy to the eccentric old biddy, which they were never quite able to replicate later on - off the top of my head, I remember Glick having a cameo in "Two Bad Neighbors" of Season 7, where Tress MacNeille had taken over vocal duties, and where her voice and characterisation seemed indistinguishable from that of Agnes Skinner (angry and kind of screwy). Leachman's Glick has a faintly sinister side (according to the commentary, she was loosely inspired by Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, in particular the detail about her wedding dress becoming her mourning dress). She won't take no for an answer when it comes to her stashes of hard ribbon candy, and she seems a little too eager to tip concentrated iodine onto Bart's gardening/cat scratch wounds, in spite of the agony it audibly causes him. Still, she doesn't come off as a wilfully mean character, more oblivious and out of touch with the modern world (though not to the extent that she isn't turned on by its filthy soap operas). Unless she's royally trolling Bart when she hands him his two quarters (which I'm not completely ruling out), she seems genuinely impervious to both her own tight-fistedness and to Bart's bruised indignation (and it is hilarious how she manages to prise a thank you out of him, quite against his intentions). "Three Men" might be where her role within the Simpsons chronology peaked, but she certainly gives it her all, dominating the second act and coming within a hair's breadth of stealing the entire show.

Ultimately, the big attraction turns out to be the grasping chemistry between Bart, Milhouse and Martin, once Bart has to reckon with the fact that he's not the only desperate young soul out there with his eye on the prize. Martin has also been undertaking a one-man crusade to make the comic his own, and Bart spots him in The Android's Dungeon making a gutsy last ditch effort at haggling with Comic Book Guy. His attempts at accumulating funds (which have included visiting his aunt in the nursing home and fishing coins out of the sewer) have been marginally more successful than Bart's - he has 40 dollars, and he's already at his breaking point. Then Milhouse strolls in with 30 dollars in hand, intending to pick up a completely different artefact of a bygone era - a Carl Yastrzemski Topps from 1973, back when he had those mutton chop sideburns - and it dawns on Bart that if they pooled all of their resources together, they would have enough to buy the comic as a group. Unfortunately, as Comic Book Guy is inexplicably elated to point out, they might have bought more than they bargained for, since they now have to deal with the problem of joint custody (a point he accentuates by immediately closing up his store, illustrating how there's no going back).

It is somewhat surprising to note that "Three Men and A Comic Book" was Milhouse's first major story role, considering that he'd been at Bart's side since before the series proper was even underway, debuting in the earliest of the Simpsons-Butterfinger collaborations ("I don't have the Butterfinger group!"). By contrast, Martin had already had at least three prior turns in the spotlight (in "Bart The Genius" , "Bart Gets an F" and the subplot of "Lisa's Substitute"), with all of those episodes highlighting what made him Bart's polar opposite (or "natural enemy", in his own words) so it's refreshing to see "Three Men" establishing some common ground in their shared love of Radioactive Man. In the beginning, Martin stood out as one of the show's most domineering personalities (in part thanks to Russi Taylor's vigorous vocal performances), and while he would have further major roles to come, such as in "Saturdays of Thunder" of Season 3 and "Bart on The Road" of Season 7, there's no denying that his presence receded as the years went on (a side-effect of the writers becoming less interested in Bart's eye-view of the world than in Homer's) and his characterisation was slightly flattened. The joke shifted to his being an effeminate wimp, as opposed to a feisty, intermittently devious poindexter who could go toe to toe with Bart (a worthy adversary, you might say). It is a shame, since I really enjoy the unique dynamic he brings to Bart's friendship circle in "Three Men"; ostensibly, he's the voice of reason, coming up with practical solutions for how they can agree to share, all while being a manipulative bastard underneath. He cunningly assigns the trio days of the week in which they can each claim ownership of the comic, deliberately ordering things so that he'll get to take it home first (and also on a Saturday, which is surely the most desirable day to have it). Milhouse, meanwhile, assumes the role of a docile gamma who's nonetheless cannier than he lets on (he repeatedly challenges Martin on the holes in his system) and is also the one who seems most inclined to actually enjoy their purchase as a comic - his efforts to read it for a second time are blocked by Bart and Martin, who've decided that any further handling of its pages are a no-no. And for what? So that it can be entombed with whichever one of them lives the longest, according to Martin. Once an object of innocent wonder and excitement, the comic has become a disturbance in their childhood paradise. The mystique that surrounded it for as long as it was out of reach has all-too inevitably faded, giving way to toxicity and leery possessiveness. Sure, isn't that where fandom culture invariably takes us? 

I've identified "Three Men" as an anti-coming of age story, in which the lead characters fail to become responsible men who make good on their duty of care for their surrogate baby. At the same time, their  third-act clash evolves well beyond the realm of childish squabbling, being more suggestive of some latent savagery from deep within the human psyche, evoking The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (1948) and also Lord of The Flies (Bart addresses a subdued Martin as "Piggy"). When the boys elect to sleep over and keep mutual watch over their trophy, civilisation good as breaks down within their high-up wooden box (comically so, given that they're never far-removed from Marge's microwaved s'mores and whatever mysterious television room Homer is keeping a half-assed eye on the treehouse from). Bart and Milhouse catch Martin attempting to leave the treehouse to go to the bathroom and insist on binding him to a chair, shortly before coming to physical blows with one another. Milhouse is knocked out of the treehouse, but Bart grabs a hold of his sleeve, just as a gust of wind makes the comic airborne and threatens to blow it into the stormy night. Bart is faced with the final moral choice of whether to prioritise his friend or the comic, prompting Milhouse's stand-out moment, when he ruefully admits that deep down, he never wanted the comic, preferring the mutton chop Yastrzemski card he originally came in for. In the end, Bart decides that their friendship is more valuable than a comic (even a $100 one) and pulls Milhouse to safety, but the universe nevertheless insists on punishing him harshly for his prior twitchiness. It isn't enough for the stray comic to be swept into a muddy puddle and mauled by Santa's Little Helper, it also has to be blasted to pieces by a bolt of lightning, making its destruction feel less like bad luck than some overkill act of divine judgement. Alternatively, you could argue that the bolt of lightning did those kids a favour, since the dratted comic was ultimately nothing but a curse. It didn't have to be, however. Whichever way you slice it, its messy demise is a testament to their squandered potential as care-givers.

"Three Men" risks being a little too on the nose with its moralising, something it slickly circumvents by having the characters reflect on the outcome in a characteristically snide Simpsons fashion, in a way that feels like a direct reversal of the joke at the end of "Bart's Girlfriend". In that episode Bart claims to have learned something but isn't able to articulate what. Here, he's able to articulate the obvious moral takeaway ("We ended up with nothing because the three of us can't share"), but fails to register it as an insight that might inform his decision-making going forward; rather, it's something that just kind of ticks him off. In the peaceful light of dawn we find Bart, Martin and Milhouse attempting the arduous task of recovering and piecing together the comic's remains, but ultimately having to admit defeat and walk away, apparently none the wiser for their experience. Yet there is, as Martin suggests, a kind of natural order to this final arrangement ("Another comic book has returned to the earth from whence it came"), even if the kids themselves remain largely oblivious. Their precious comic isn't actually dead - rather than being zapped into oblivion, it exists in an abundance of scattered fragments that are being reclaimed by nature as an essentiak part of the healing process, with Mother Earth succeeding where her human offshoots have failed. At the end, we see that shreds of its pages have been collected by a bird (more specifically a dove, in a transparent bit of symbolism) and woven into its nest; the comic thus becomes an investment in the future after all, in providing the basic materials for the nurturing of further life. The final word goes to Radioactive Man himself, who closes the episode on a poetic note, by musing that the world is safe again - "but...for how long?". He anticipates both the fragility of this equilibrium, and the lessons that will inevitably need dispensing countless times over.