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 thought 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 I'm not 100% clear on that point. They had Homer as the odds-on favourite, at 2:1. I recall 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?

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #15: Aflac and HSA (A Tale of Ducky and Bunny)

The humble anas platyrhynchos may be the most beloved of all farmyard fowl (judging by the high proportion of cartoon characters that are anatines), yet there's something about the common duck that registers as oddly incongruous. Ostensibly, ducks are the clowns of the poultry kingdom - observe them waddling along on their flat, oversized feet and they look comical as hell. And yet when a duck gets vocal, its repeated quacking sounds eerily like laughter, and laughter of a particularly mocking and derisive sort at that. Suddenly, the duck becomes less of a clown than a leering voyeur. He comes across as knowing something that you don't. Cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of dark humor comic Far Side, understood this when he coined the term, Anatidaephobia, denoting the fear that somewhere, somehow a duck is watching you. But what of the fear that a duck is following you and looking to embed the names of insurance providers within your impressionable skull? This disturbing conceit formed the basis for a series of ads that began in 1999 and held surprising longevity for the American Family Life Assurance Company (aka Aflac). These involved an increasingly exasperated Pekin duck with a strange knack for showing up wherever unwitting humans were discussing all matters health insurance, with the intention of ensuring that everyone far and wide knew the brand name "Aflac". The ads were created by New York based agency Kaplan Thaler Group, who found their inspiration in the epiphany that saying "Aflac" rapidly and repeatedly has the uncanny effect of making you sound like a duck.

Like the titular bird from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", the Aflac duck possesses an extremely limited vocabulary, the name of an insurance company being apparently his only stock and store. Also like Poe's raven, his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, and his raison d'etre is to drive humans to distraction with his ostensibly witless utterances. The twist being that hardly anybody seems to notice him, no matter how loud and obnoxious he is, save a perpetually nonplussed character played by Earl Billings who shows up in a number of ads and alone seems aware of the ubiquitous fowl. The duck acts as the avenging spirit of the unsung insurance firm, targeting those who are indebted to Aflac but haven't done the company the honor of memorizing their brand name.

The duck's abrasive, imposing disposition would undoubtedly have made him more of an irritant, if not for how genuinely unnerving he is in his omnipresence. In one particularly unsettling ad, we see him closing in on a couple in their bedroom as they innocently discuss the prospect of starting a family, oblivious as to what kind of menace is creeping through their private refuge in the dead of night and eying them up as they prepare to get down to the reproductive process. Although the final implication is that they end up adopting the voyeuristic duck as their figurative child; the closing shot shows the three of them lying together in a state of familial bliss. The Aflac duck ends up becoming the symbol of fertility, having facilitated peace of mind for the next generation.

I draw attention to this ad, which has the duck trailing a couple of flight attendants at an airport, because nestled somewhere within my mental storage space is the surreal imagery of a duck tapping frantically at an airplane window during take-off, only I'm fairly certain that it comes from Babe: Pig In The City (1998), and not the Aflac campaign. Someone confirm that I didn't just imagine a scene in which Babe is stalked by Ferdinand from the outside of a plane? I'm positive that the Aflac duck does indeed owe a debt to Ferdinand.

The Aflac duck was originally voiced by comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who had previously carved out a memorable pop culture niche for himself voicing another loud-mouthed avian, Iago the parrot, in Disney's Aladdin (1992) and its assorted spin-offs. Gottfried actually appeared in person, with the duck, in one commercial, in which he tried to return his featured counterpart to a pet store on the grounds that its repeated cries were uneasy on the ears, and wound up trading it in, appropriately, for a more verbose parrot. Aflac later parted ways with Gottfried in 2011, following some insensitive remarks he made in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on his Twitter account (which is the go-to method of career suicide in this day and age), after which Gottfried was replaced by Daniel McKeague.

The duck campaign was successfully transferred to Japan, where Aflac also operates. However, in the UK, where the brand name "Aflac" is basically meaningless, the web-footed wonder never had the chance to shine, although he did have a lesser-known counterpart for a short period - the early 00s, UK healthcare company HSA tried their hand at replicating the success of Aflac's campaign with their own variation on the concept. Hence, UK viewers were baffled with a string of ads in which unsuspecting humans were stalked by a white rabbit who could talk, but apparently only the letters "H, S, A", and only in that order. Why a rabbit? Your guess is as good as mine. The original pun, of the brand name sounding like a duck's quack, obviously had to be sacrificed in translation, but a whole new pun was substituted in its place, in that the rabbit sounded as if he was saying, "Hey, just say", in response to the questions raised by his unwitting targets. Like his anatine counterpart, the luckless leporine was invariably ignored and often wound up on the receiving end of some misfortune. Although initially portrayed by a puppet, later ads had him as a slightly dodgy-looking CGI creation.

While nowhere near as aggressive as the Aflac duck, the HSA rabbit was still a strange beast. Unlike American audiences, however, Brits really didn't go for the joke. Compared to the duck, the HSA rabbit had a fairly short-lived run of it, and his career was marred by controversy when over 80 complaints were made by the public regarding one of the ads, which showed a woman putting the rabbit into a washing machine - a sequence which we all know, in real life, would result in a variation of that scene from Fatal Attraction. Some years ago, I recall reading through an online Ofcom archive (which now looks to have been vaporised) indicating that the complaints made against the ad were upheld on the grounds that it was shown at a time when it could have been seen by impressionable children.

I can't find the controversial spin commercial, so you'll have to make do with this ad in which the bunny (in his vaguely disturbing CGI rendering) discovers that golfing really isn't his sport.

As I say, the HSA rabbit is long gone. Either he fell back down a hole to Wonderland or had a fatal run-in with another Glenn Close type. The Aflac duck, on the other hand, is still kicking it, and still as loud and abrasive as ever in 2019. So to the policy-conscious, watch your backs, for there may be a Pekin peeking into your privacy. That Gary Larson knew what he was on about.

Old Money (aka Modern-Day Saint, Rich Nut or Both? Only Time Will Tell)

If there's one facet of the human experience that The Simpsons has steadfastly refused to romanticise right from the start, it's old age. The series has always been entirely unapologetic in its insistence that there is no joy or dignity to be found in growing old. Make no mistake, the instant you're past your prime and exhibiting your first signs of dependency upon the younger generation to help you through the day, the world absolutely will not hesitate to have you whisked out of sight, so that you can wither away your remaining years in a place where it does not have to acknowledge you, much less deal with anything that could be construed as an imposition. To avoid such a fate, it seems that your best bet is either to be fabulously wealthy, like Mr Burns (in which case you may still require an extraordinarily dedicated right-hand man to literally keep you upright), or to have subjugated your offspring to the point where they would seriously struggle to survive outside of your shadow, a la Agnes Skinner. The situation in Springfield isn't quite Logan's Run, but it's still pretty dire.

The Simpsons' relationship with their own grizzled patriarch, Abraham Simpson, is a fraught one, the family being so negligent and so unwilling even to feign enthusiasm during their perfunctory social calls that it would be extremely easy, in lesser hands, to have them coming off as entirely unsympathetic. Here, though, it's a complicated situation, compounded by the fact that Abe is neither a kindly old gent nor an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom - rather, he's a resentful coot who is at best a mindless bore and at worst, a really, really mean and unpleasant individual. But then there's an awful lot in Abe's life to be resentful about. Society's treatment of himself, and of his fellow seniors, is beyond appalling. The ironically-named Springfield Retirement Castle (in reality, a derelict dive) purports to be a place "where the elderly can hide from the inevitable", and yet its actual modus operandi appears to be the exact reverse - it's a place that conceals the inevitable from the outside world, which really doesn't care to face up to either the responsibility of caring for the infirm or to the inevitability of its own mortality. On a personal level, however, there's no denying that Abe set the precedent for non-caring with his own incredibly rotten behaviour toward his children. Had he nurtured and cherished his sons as they were growing up, then he might have found them better inclined to take care of him in his old age. Instead, he psychologically damaged one son and completely abandoned the other, so there is an extent to which he's merely reaping the seeds that he sowed. And yet, any insinuation that Abe's plight is nothing less than karmic justice for his own lifetime of negligence would in itself be seriously misguided. "Old Money" (7F17) of Season 2 opens with Homer experiencing the horrifying epiphany that, in enabling the cycle to continue, he may be effectively setting the stage for himself to wind up in Abe's position one day, having imprinted the message on Bart, Lisa and Maggie that this is how you treat the aged. It's a cycle that is not going to end until somebody has the moral courage to give an unconditional fuck.

"Old Money", a tale of love, loss, loneliness and discount lions, was the first Simpsons episode to focus extensively on Abe, and to attempt to draw up a more sympathetic side to his character - this was very much-needed, as the last episode in which he'd appeared, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", really does make him out to be the most despicable son of a bitch in all of Springfield. There, we learn about Herb and how Abe has this other son out there for whom he apparently feels no concern or compassion; that is, until he learns that Herb is now a millionaire, at which point he legs it to Herb's base in Detroit as quickly as possible, only to give up on him the instant he gets wind of the fact that he's not in the money any more (he also rejects Homer's offer of a ride back home, damning both of his sons in one fell swoop). Given that "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Old Money" occur almost back-to-back in the running order of Season 2, if you marathon the episodes then it becomes somewhat difficult to cast off the irony that the world's general treatment of Abe in this episode is not altogether dissimilar from Abe's own treatment of Herb - specifically, his eagerness to sweep his little unwanted love child under the rug, shirking all responsibility for his upbringing and dumping him in the hands of some institution, a tune he swiftly changes when he hears word of all the money to be harvested from this disowned whizkid. Another irony that does not escape me throughout "Old Money" is that the narrative, which sees Abe come into a small fortune of his own after a painfully truncated romance with winsome fellow retiree Beatrice Simmons (voice of Audrey Meadows), ultimately goes in the direction of Abe wanting to use his money to help others but not knowing which needy souls are most warranting, and resolving to give everybody in Springfield a chance to plead their case. That's great and noble of Abe and all, but while all of this is happening, I can't help but think that he has a son living in really extreme poverty whom he could be helping to get back on his feet with just a fraction of that money. Does Herb cross Abe's mind at any point throughout this adventure? There is a slight inconsistency on that - early on, when Bea asks Abe to summarise his life story, he gives this succinct response: "Widower. One son. One working kidney. You?" Wow Abe, you just lied to Bea twice there (possibly thrice - we don't even know if that kidney story checks out), although I suppose we can overlook the discrepancy with Mona given that, as far as everyone, production staff included, was concerned at this point, she WAS dead. However, at the end of the episode, when Homer prevents Abe from blowing his entire fortune on a game of roulette, he tells Homer, "For the first time in my life, I'm glad I had children." Children. Plural. So he's referring to both Homer and Herb. Hmm. I'm pointing this out because, while I do think that "Old Money" is a fantastic episode on its own terms, the very knowledge of Herb's being casts a long and inadvertent shadow over it, made all the more salient in having the two episodes fall so close together.

(Actually, I think it is possible to account for Abe's cherry-picked personal history from a continuity standpoint, even retroactively. Obviously, he doesn't want to have to explain to Bea the circumstances under which Mona left him, or in which he sired Herb and subsequently ditched him. Neither story makes him look particularly attractive, after all.*)

I say that "Old Money" is a fantastic episode, but it's also one that I find difficult to rewatch incessantly, chiefly because it's so downbeat for its near entirety, with heavy focus on the characters' suffering and isolation - mostly Abe's, but Homer also takes things very hard when his father disowns him for the middle portion of the episode. "Old Money" explores Abe's troubled relationship with Homer in greater depth than any preceding episode, although it's not really at the forefront of the narrative. Rather, it deals with a broader need of Abe's to reconnect with a world that discarded him as expired goods long ago. At the start of the episode, we see that Abe's life has disintegrated into a miserable rut of monthly outings with his family that neither party much looks forward to, in between which he's forced to stagnate within the decrepit walls of the Retirement Castle. His blossoming romance with Bea gives him a fleeting sense of renewed purpose, but this is snatched from him before even the second act - and in a cruel twist of fate, Bea's death occurs while Abe is held up in a particularly disastrous family outing, meaning that he misses out on Bea's birthday celebration and what would have been the final evening of her life (hence his disowning of Homer in retaliation). Bea doesn't get a lot of screen time before tragedy inevitably strikes, but from the short montage that she and Abe have, it's clear they've formed a very close and sincere connection, and when we hear news of Bea's demise, it's genuinely painful, a reminder of just how fragile and precarious life can be at any stage, but for those in their twilight years especially. In fact, I believe that this was the first time that the series had dealt so explicitly with the subject of death ("One Fish, Two Fish, Blow Fish, Blue Fish" sees Homer having to look his own mortality in the face, but in terms of a character actually dying and us getting to witness the emotional impact, I think the closest we'd come prior was in Marge's reference to the untimely demise of the original Snowball). There's that mordant and absolutely devastating line from Abe: "They may say she died of a burst ventricle but I know she died of a broken heart." A burst ventricle would of course be a broken heart, in literal terms. But then Abe isn't talking in literal terms here.

Not that the episode doesn't have its share of alleviating moments. There's that borderline surreal sequence in which the family takes a wrong turn at the world's most frugal safari park and are besieged by a pride of lions (I'm not sure, but I think this might even be a nod to the baboon attack from The Omen**), and of course, that wonderful sequence in the third act in which the entire town turns out to Abe's room at the Retirement Castle in an effort to get their hands on the old man's riches. Once the loneliest of social pariahs, Abe suddenly finds his attentions are very in demand indeed. When I say the entire town shows up...pretty much everyone who'd been introduced at this point in the series is there (although Bob's not present for obvious reasons, and I guess that Karl's too altruistic to want to deprive an old gent of his money). Have fun picking out all of the familiar faces.

The most striking visual gag of the episode, however, occurs shortly before the climax, as Abe, moved by Lisa's suggestion that the neediest of people are out there on the streets (like his own first-born???), takes a wander through a particularly poverty-ridden district of Springfield and gets a first-hand glimpse of the suffering not far from his doorstep. It's a short, wonderfully atmospheric sequence that concludes with what was most assuredly one of the slickest cultural references accomplished by the series at this point, as Abe is seen sipping coffee at the counter of a diner immediately recognisable as that from Edward Hopper's iconic 1942 painting Nighthawks. Nighthawks was also evoked in the Season 8 episode "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment", in which a very similar diner provides the setting for what isn't a very happy birthday for Rex Banner. "Old Money", however, boasts the far more faithful recreation of Hoppers painting, to the point that Abe has effectively wandered in and assumed his place among Hopper's own small gathering of insomnious drifters. In narrative terms, the purpose of this entire sequence is to convince Abe that the problems Lisa describes are far greater than his own meagre fortune can redress, inspiring him to head to a casino soon after in the hopes of increasing his wealth. But it's a singularly haunting moment that perfectly encapsulates the entire theme of "Old Money".

In his book Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche, Gordon Theisen argues that the appeal of Hopper's painting, in all its dingy desolation, lies in its evocation of the all-American diner as a kind of sanctuary in a dimly-lit, aggressively urbanised world. In a manner that recalls George Ritzer's model of McDonaldization, Theisen argues that the precise refuge offered by the diner is in allowing those who walk within its walls and take their place on one of its stools to momentarily cast off the burden of being an individual: "Because they are so standardized, so predictable, with a menu that varies surprisingly little from one to another from across the country, they are almost universally democratic...it allows the customers, whatever their lives may be like outside the diner, however troubled or troubling, simply to be someone at the counter, like so many others throughout the city and across the country." (p.84-85) The paradox of this unifying experience is that it does not, by its nature, offer unity. A consequence of this code of anonymity is that everybody is perpetually a stranger, with no sense of connection or affinity to anyone else within the diner. "The customers, the servers, ourselves - were we to enter - are not together, but are people who only happen to be in this particular diner at this particular time." (p.87) People effectively become ghosts (although not the literal sort that Bea manifests as), mere shadows of the lives they've momentarily abandoned as they sit there struggling to forget, or perhaps struggling to recall, exactly has led them to this moment in time. This is important, as Abe spends much of the episode as such a ghost, a husk of the man he formerly was, drifting through a society that's already consigned him to the figurative grave, all the while making a desperate bid to become somebody and finding himself being no one in particular.

Above: Abe Simpson experiences a reflective moment amid the Springfield nightlife.

Below: The original Nighthawks painting by Edward Hopper.

Abe's aspirations are likewise suggested by the bizarre piece of headgear he dons for the latter half of the episode. Having inherited Bea's fortune, the first thing Abe does to exercise his newfound wealth is to head over to the military antiques store and purchase a garish red fez attached to a dubious $400 price tag and an equally dubious story about it once having belonged, briefly, to Napoleon Bonaparte. As an aside, "Old Money" is one of only two episodes to depict a friendship between Abe and crooked antique dealer Herman (the other being "Bart The General" of Season 1), a relationship which was thereafter entirely abandoned, with Jasper replacing Herman as Abe's closest friend in the world and Herman being pushed to the very sidelines of Springfieldian existence (bar "The Springfield Connection" of Season 6, in which he was featured as the villain, and "22 Short Films About Springfield" of Season 7, which showed a very disturbing side to his character indeed). I'll take the opportunity now to go on record as saying that I think Herman's an interesting character and I regret that the series didn't care to delve any deeper into his rapport with Abe; he offers a very different kind of dynamic to that of Jasper, being a military mind of a younger generation and a social link outside of the Retirement Castle. From the sounds of it, Abe doesn't actually buy Herman's cock and bull story about the hat belonging to Napoleon and figures that it can be worth no more than $5, but as soon as he has the funding he doggedly decides he's going to have it regardless, almost as a point of principle after being denied it earlier in the episode. In a curious visual motif, Abe continues to wear the hat for the remainder of the episode, implying that it carries deeper significance than as a frivolous token of Abe throwing his monetary weight around. Rather, the hat becomes a symbol of Abe's desire to transcend his current identity and assume a new one, symbolism that is further enforced in his leaving his old hat upon the counter, enabling Herman to offer it up for sale as the hat McKinley was shot in. Abe literally hopes that he can enter the store as one person and leave as another but, much like Herman's dubious sales pitches, finds that he's just an anonymous vessel drifting through an assortment of adopted guises, each as disposable as the last.

Theisen understands this need for liberation from the self, as it offers the opportunity for a personal rebirth: "That we might be anyone suggests that we might become anyone, leave ourselves behind for someone new and better." (p.96) This is something that Abe spends the entirety of "Old Money" attempting to accomplish; to transcend his degrading entrapment inside the body of a maligned senior citizen and become something else entirely. The really pressing urge driving Abe throughout "Old Money" is the grim reality that his life, as it is, is not very fulfilling. Having been discarded by a society that figures he's used up all of his functionality, Abe's living environment offers him no greater impetus than to run out his retirement clock by his lonesome. The very process of being anchored to a retirement home that serves primarily to keep the elderly segregated from younger society has resulted in the erosion of his identity. We saw evidence of this earlier in a Season 1 episode, "Bart The General", in which Bart goes to the Retirement Castle and asks to see "Grampa", only to discover that half of the residents there answer to that moniker (and are all equally desperate for acknowledgement from the outside world). As far as society is concerned, Abe is a nobody, with no further role that he can offer. His tenure as a husband came to an early close when Mona left the picture. His prospective new identity as Bea's suitor has also been cut short and, in severing ties with Homer, he has willfully surrendered his identity as a family man. Having come into money and claimed the fez as his own, Abe hopes that he's on his way to the start of something more gratifying, a lifestyle imbued with the full-on thrills of mud-wrestling clubs and imitation Disneylands. And yet he drifts through his new life of non-stop adrenaline-baiting just as impassively, failing to connect with any of the sights, sounds or people around him. He finds every bit as much fulfillment as a rich old gent as he did a poor one, to the extent that even Bea is compelled to put in a posthumous appearance and prompt him to rethink the path he's choosing. Incidentally, I'm not quite sure what to make of that sequence in which Bea manifests in spectral form to Abe; it softens the blow of her untimely demise, for better or for worse, but I don't know how at ease I am with the whole notion of a character talking to another from beyond the grave outside of a Halloween episode. Fond though I am of "Round Springfield" of Season 6, I sometimes wonder if the ending, in which the spirit of Bleeding Gums Murphy literally manifests in the clouds for one final saxophone jam with Lisa, is perhaps a little too much for those very reasons, but if ever I'm tempted to dismiss it as symptomatic of the looser realism of Season 6, I have to remind myself that it does technically does have a precedent right here in the more grounded Season 2. Having said that, I can see how their exchange functions on a symbolic level. As I say, Abe has effectively become a ghost himself at this point, a man floating from locale to locale with no robust emotional anchor to anything. He's entered a whole other plane of existence, and it seems oddly fitting that it would take an encounter with a literal ghost to bring him back down to Earth.

After consulting with the ghost of Bea (literally or figuratively) Abe decides instead to reach out to the community, use his wealth to help others and assume a whole new identity as either a modern-day saint, a rich nut or both. This works to the extent that Abe is no longer a nobody as far as society is concerned - to the contrary, he is hailed as a local celebrity - but it does little to alleviate his lingering sense of purposelessness and isolation. For although Abe gets to converse with a vast array of Springfieldians, as they shuffle in and air their frivolous and occasionally malevolent proposals in a drawn-out succession, he experiences no sense of genuine permanency or connection in their interactions - that is, aside from a threat issued by Mr Burns, who assures Abe that he's made a very powerful enemy in rebuffing him. They do not pretend to be interested in anything other than Abe's money and Abe, for the most part, isn't willing to humour any of these avaricious hopefuls for a second that they're in with a chance. When Abe decides to escape his latest entrapment and takes his place among the characters in the Nighthawks painting, what he experiences is a momentary reprieve from the burdens of being Abraham Simpson, whatever that might mean. He finds himself connecting with similarly lost souls by not connecting at all, as he stands at the crossroads, pondering exactly what kind of person he should aspire to be next, in a world that's so much more broken and despairing than he'd ever imagined.

The excursion instills Abe with a sense of purpose - having realised that there are more needy people out there than he has the means to help, he aspires to take action that will increase his money, and thus his ability to help - but his resolution, to take a day trip to a casino in the hopes of multiplying his funds, borders on a kind of self-destructive savior complex. It nearly ends in disaster, with Abe coming dangerously close to losing his every penny on a game of roulette, but he is prevented from placing that fatal bet through the intervention of Homer. The hardest lesson Abe has to learn is that he is not Superman. He cannot fix the fundamental failings of the world at large. Instead, Abe's final revelation comes from the acknowledgement that he is in fact mortal. At the end of the episode, he observes his fellow seniors boarding the bus back to Springfield and then studies his own withered hands, as if contemplating for the first time in ages that he is indeed one of them. Abe ends up making the connection he sought by looking inward at the damning hellhole he's spent the episode trying to transcend, and realising that the neediest souls, and the ones that he's best equipped to help, are the ones he's been impassively rubbing shoulders with this entire time. The Retirement Castle may be a place where the elderly go to be depersonalised, but Abe figures he can redress that by transforming it from a drab dumping ground into a livable community. As such, Abe finds fulfillment in wholeheartedly accepting his status as a senior citizen and reminding his peers that they matter as much as anyone else. Hence his final line, one renovated retirement home and newly-installed Beatrice Simmons Memorial Dining Hall later: "Dignity's on me, friends." Abe is still wearing the ridiculous fez he bought from Herman as he says this, but it doesn't look quite so ridiculous now that he has the bow-tie and dinner jacket to back it up. Abe truly has transcended himself and become a better person. He promises dignity, and he exudes it.

EXCEPT ABE, YOU HAVE THIS DESTITUTE SON SLEEPING IN A GARBAGE DUMP, USING RATS AS A PILLOW AND EATING CHEESE OUT OF DISCARDED PIZZA BOXES. HOW ARE YOU SLEEPING AT NIGHT? HOW IS THIS NOT TEARING YOU APART??? Sorry to keep on flogging this horse, and not to undermine the beautiful gesture that Abe makes to his fellow seniors, but I figure that Herb's impoverished existence should still be acknowledged. I'm sure that Abe could have sent a bit of cash his way and still given Bea her commemorative dining hall.

In his review of the episode on The AV Club, Nathan Rabin accuses "Old Money" of concluding on a "semi-sappy note". The final sequence, which shows the residents of the Castle adjusting to their greatly improved living conditions, is played entirely straight, bereft of a closing punchline or some subversive last minute gags thrown in, but then there aren't enough words in the English language to describe how little I care about that after the sheer emotional purgatory this episode has already put me through. All told, "Old Money" is a rigorously woebegone episode, albeit an intelligent one with a lot of heart and just enough humor to keep it from descending into total cheerlessness, and I think its final uplift is both earned and entirely necessary. Growing old is not something that we as a culture tend to look forward to, and The Simpsons gives us absolutely no reason to. But then the only alternative is dying young. "Old Money" suggests that, with a little respect and regard for our fellow humans, we can do our bit to make even the bleakest of situations more tolerable.

* Although I think the more brutal explanation is that, while Abe may be aware that biologically he has more than one kid, he does not, in practice, recognise Herb as his son because he never had that relationship with him.
** Implying that one of the family is the Anti-Christ. Care to guess which one? 

Drink It Up with Negativland (R.I.P. Five Alive)

So what's fashionable in 2019? New Coke, apparently. Seriously now, if something as universally scorned and derided as New Coke can be reborn as a hot nostalgic property, thanks to its association with a popular Netflix show, then I guess that's proof that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Or else a testament to the redemptive (some would say deceptive) power of nostalgia. Sooner or later everything looks better, the further away from you it gets.

The New Coke fiasco of '85 was but one chapter in the long-running rivalry between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, popularly known as the "Cola Wars", in which the purveyors of two suspiciously similar products vie for our devotions using whatever hollow gimmickry they can mastermind. In New Coke's case, Coca-Cola apparently felt that the new generation had a sweeter tooth than they presently catered to and adjusted their formula accordingly. While I suspect that the majority of consumers were more indifferent to the reformulation than anecdotal history lets on, there's no denying that a large number of people took the change awfully hard and that it didn't take long (less than three months) for Coca-Cola to make a much-publicised u-turn. When the original formula was reintroduced, under the moniker "Coca-Cola Classic", consumers rushed out and bought it with such fervor that Coca-Cola suddenly rocketed massively ahead in the Cola Wars, giving rise to the popular conspiracy theory that New Coke's legendary failure was part of Coca-Cola's plan all along. Snopes tells us that it wasn't and I know we're supposed to trust Snopes, but I do have to admit, after that one Coca-Cola marketing officer came out and informed us that Tab Clear was purposely conceived as a kamikaze product (ie: one designed to go down and take Crystal Pepsi along with it), I've been somewhat inclined to re-open that particular case file. It's not, as Snopes suggests, that I'd like to think that The Coca-Cola Company is infallible (I'm not sure who out there would actually "like" to think that), but that I think we underestimate these corporate bigwigs at our own peril. For they are fat like a cat, and not that dumb and not that smart like a fox.

This enmity between two brands of enamel-rotting soft drinks has proven so tectonic-splitting that Californian plunderphonics band Negativland were inspired to devote an entire concept album to lampooning the sheer inanity of it all. In 1997 they released their eighth studio album, DisPepsi, mixing deadpan tunes and plundered sound collages to take a critical look at the almost Orwellian magnitude with which corporate advertising invades and pervades our daily lives, and at the colder banalities brewing beneath the capitalistic hoopla. As is stated within the album's sleeve notes, "both brands continue to spend millions every year to make and place their ads and commercials everywhere all the time. The actual value of doing this is now questionable at best since everyone has already tried these drinks and everyone knows everything about them that they will ever need to know." Topics covered range from the dubious psychology behind the Pepsi Challenge to the aforementioned speculation that the New Coke debacle was all but an ingeniously-engineered marketing stunt, and of course the odious use of celebrities to shill their products (one track, "Happy Hero", is a particularly searing attack on the shallow and potentially dangerous nature of celebrity worship, with thinly-veiled digs at Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson, among others, and the most hilariously ineffective use of a bleep censor in history). The stand-out track, however, would be "Drink It Up", a bone dry ditty confronting brand loyalty from the perspective of a stupefied consumer whose overwhelming thirst can only be satisfied by Pepsi. The real appeal of the track lies in the clever wordplay he uses to dismiss a wide array of rival brands and products - here's a run-down of what's name-checked and the accompanying puns:

"When 7-Up has got me down..."

7-Up, a brand of carbonated lemon-lime flavoured soft drink owned by Keurig Dr Pepper in the Us and PepsiCo elsewhere. The product's most famous marketing campaign involved a character named Fido Dido, created in 1985 by Joanna Ferrone and future Pepper Ann creator Sue Rose, although in the 1950s they had a series of commercials produced by Disney featuring a hyperactive rooster named Fresh-Up Freddie.

"When Hi-C gets me low..."

Hi-C, a brand of fruit juice manufactured by Minute Maid.

"My Labatt's Blue ain't blue, it's brown..."

Labatt, a Canadian beer brand. The product name "Blue" refers to the colour of the label, not the beverage itself, which is a standard beer colour.

"My Nestlé's Quik just makes me slow..."

Nestlé's Quik, a brand of drinking chocolate mix from Swiss company Nestlé. In Europe it was marketed under the alternate name Nesquik, which became the brand name worldwide as of 1999. Their advertising mascot is Quicky Bunny.

"When my sparkling cider's lost its shine..."

No brand name specified. Pun self-explanatory.

"My can of Sharp's is dull..."

Sharp's, a low-alcohol beer from the Miller Brewing Company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Hawaiian Punch has knocked me cold..."

Hawaiian Punch, a brand of fruit drink owned by Keurig Dr Pepper. 5% real fruit juice, 95% vomit inducement.

"A feeling hits my skull.
And my mind just turns to Pepsi
And I couldn't tell you why...

Smart drinks lead me to forget..."

This was a 90s thing, I think. Smart drinks, also known as nootropic drinks, were a popular alternative to alcoholic drinks at underground raves, enabling venues to forgo the need for an alcohol sales permit. They were purported to enhance mental performance, although the jury is still out on their effectiveness.

"And Coke won't get me high..."

Coca-Cola, as noted, is Pepsi's biggest marketing rival. The phrase "Coke won't get me high" calls to mind the brand's more notorious namesake, and its historical role in the Coca-Cola manufacturing process, extract of fresh coca leaf being one of the key "medicinal" ingredients in the drink's original recipe (although the exact level of cocaine used is debatable). Can't beat the Real Thing.

"When Constant Comment won't shut up..."

Constant Comment, a brand of tea manufactured by Bigelow Tea Company.

"I'll sit right down and fill my cup
With Pepsi
Drink it up!

When Diet Rite to me is wrong..."

Diet Rite, a brand of sugar-free cola.

"My Country Time's expired..."

Country Time, a brand of powdered lemonade mix. I know this one because that Shelbyvillian kid was hawking it in that episode of The Simpsons. "There's never been anything close to a lemon in it!"

"My Minute Maid's an hour long..."

Minute Maid, the fruitier branch of the Cola-Cola family tree.

"My Maxwell House won't get me wired..."

Maxwell House, a brand of coffee. "Wired", in this context, means to be under the influence of caffeine.

"When my Pet milk turns on me..."

Pet, Inc, a manufacturer of evaporated milk. "Turns on me" has a double meaning, referring to the milk going sour and here being suggestive of a domesticated animal displaying aggression toward its owner.

"And my Five Alive is dead..."

Five Alive, a brand of fruit juice manufactured by Minute Maid, so-called because each variant is created from a combination of five different juices. The original Five Alive consisted of orange, lemon, grapefruit, tangerine and lime.

"When my Royal Crown's been overthrown..."

Royal Crown Cola, popularly known as RC Cola. Another, slightly less formidable contender to the cola throne.

"An impulse hits my head.
And my mind just turns to Pepsi
And I think of it a lot.

My Swiss Miss just wasn't pure..."

Swiss Miss, a brand of cocoa powder. For now I'll have to draw a blank as to whether there's any kind of pun going on here.

"And Kool-Aid isn't hot..."

Kool-Aid, a brand of powdered drink mix manufactured by Kraft Foods. It has particular notoriety for its role in the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, in which over 900 members of the religious cult People's Temple died in a murder-suicide pact after drinking from a vat of poisoned Kool-Aid (although there is some contention as to whether  the beverage they drank was Kool-Aid or a cheaper knock-off Flavor Aid; Kraft, who are obviously tired of the negative associations, are eager to push the latter argument). The incident gave rise to the expression "Drinking The Kool-Aid", denoting servitude to a cause or ideology to a dangerous or self-destructive degree.

"When Odwalla smoothies rough me up..."

Odwalla, a manufacturer of smoothies and fruit juices. I initially assumed that "rough me up" was a cheeky reference to the unfortunate side-effects of excessive smoothie consumption on the guts (whilst providing an additional bit of wordplay with "rough" being the opposite of "smooth"), but there may be a darker meaning. In 1996, Odwalla suffered some seriously negative publicity when an outbreak of E.Coli occurred due to their unsafe processing methods (although the tainted product in question was a batch of apple juice, not a smoothie), resulting in over 60 casualties and one fatality.

"I'll turn to a bigger cup of Pepsi
Drink it up!

When Samuel Adams makes me ail..."

Samuel Adams, a Boston beer brand. This pun plays on the fact that "ail" and "ale" are homophones, implying that the product makes him sick. 

"Dr. Pepper's not around..."

Dr. Pepper, a carbonated soft drink. The origins of the product's moniker are something of a mystery and, as with Coca-Cola, the formula is a trade secret, so no one really knows what they're putting into their bodies with this one. But then, what's the worst that could happen?

"When Sweet Success has let me fail..."

Sweet Success, a brand of diet milkshake manufactured by Nestlé.

"I crave a flavor most profound.
And my mind just turns to Pepsi
When I look, I see, I buy

My Crystal Light has just burned out..."

Another of those dubious powdered beverages manufactured by Kraft, this one boasting a low-calorie content.

"And Canada's gone Dry..."

Canada Dry, a brand of ginger ale.

"My Yoo-Hoo will not call to me..."

Yoo-Hoo, a chocolate-flavoured beverage. Also a common expression when trying to grab a distrait person's attention.

"I am a loyal endorsee of Pepsi
Drink it up!"

We then hear the following audio extract, in which a kid describes his personal fascination with a TV commercial for Pepsi:

"It's just a funny thing...it's just a funny thing, that Pepsi commercial where there's the sun setting on this barn, but you hear this sort of "reee rrrrh," "reee rrrrh," and you don't know what it is, then you see in the back of the barn there's a, a soda machine, and this guy has a dollar bill, going "reee rrrh," "reezh rrrh," and then it takes it. There's, "yes! yes!"

I couldn't pinpoint the source of this audio, but I have found the commercial that the kid in question is talking about. It was part of the "Nothing Else Is A Pepsi" campaign of the mid-90s, and is pretty much exactly as the kid describes it:

I can see why Negativland would choose to compliment their sardonic ode to brand loyalty with a callback to this particular advertisement. It's so bleak. For one thing, there's a lot of emphasis on the solitude of the protagonist. He whiles away the hours at an apparently abandoned gas station, locked in a Sisyphean struggle with a Pepsi vending machine that will not take his crumpled dollar bill, all set to the background noise of "Lonesome Town" by Ricky Nelson. There is a sense of the world still turning - the sun rises and sets as a rooster and coyote make their respective calls to mark the diurnal cycles - but as far as we know this man could well be the last on Earth. Even the slogan, "Nothing Else Is A Pepsi", sounds thoroughly dystopian, hinting that the world beyond the vending machine is an empty abyss offering no sweetness or reward. We have a hero whose only aspiration is to feed his last remaining dollar to a corporate machine, continuously reinserting the note with the monotonous desperation of a rat inside a Skinner Box hitting a lever in the hopes of receiving a food pellet (although I suspect that a rat would realise the futility and give up a lot more quickly). The ad's darkest moment arrives when the machine appears to have finally engulfed his dollar after umpteen failed attempts, and our protagonist celebrates his apparent victory over the mindless machine that's now a whole dollar richer than him. The final twist being that the machine is merely toying with him - it regurgitates his dollar, prompting the Sisyphean struggle to begin all over again. Obviously, the man's devotion to getting that infernal Pepsi is intended as a testament to the product's delicious, habit-forming taste, but it comes off as more of a commentary on the sheer callousness with which the corporate machinery encourages emotional dependency upon its brands and exploits our cravings to get us surrendering our money in exchange for its sugary, additive-laden concoctions.

What the...? The 1990s really were the decade of commercial crass, weren't they?

The sad thing is that, for all of the mockery heaped upon the notion of brand loyalty in Negativland's "Drink It Up", the song itself is ultimately proof that it works. In that listening to it does become something of a challenge in keeping your own Pavlovian urges in check while the various product names are reeled off. When I first heard the song back in April, I was not oblivious to the darker implications, and yet the thought that really dominated my mindset in the aftermath was, "Hmm, you know what I haven't had in years? A Five Alive." The result being that I went to three different supermarkets in an attempt to get my hands on the five-part concoction but every time my search came up fruitless. Does the product even exist any more? Is Five Alive officially dead? If so, then I don't suppose anyone has an unopened carton sitting around in a cupboard somewhere they'd be willing to send me? I have cravings to be satisfied.