Gin and Jag (Pet Shop Boys)

So, some time ago "Susan's House" by Eels was the song for which I used to feel equal parts dread and anticipation whenever I heard it starting up on the airwaves. Back then, I was captivated by the bizarre combination of an eerily robotic monologue with an incongruously sweet-sounding piano melody, but it was also the freakiest thing I had ever heard, and that was enough to inspire some spectacular pre-teen horripulations. More than two decades have passed since the era of Beautiful Freak; my ear drums are older and have had the chance to immerse themselves in stranger, more dislocating material still, prompting the question as to what holds top honors for the scariest song I know now? What song most chills my adult anima to the core?

It might seem like an unlikely candidate, but I think that "Gin and Jag" by Pet Shop Boys is a seriously underchampioned slice of nightmare bait. In fact, I think it's seriously underchampioned as a track in general, but then that's hardly surprising given that it was never at the forefront of any PSB releases. Its first appearance was as a B-side to PSB's 2009 single "Love, etc". It was later included as part of the 2012 compilation album Format, and as part of Yes: Further Listening. Its role has always been strictly supplementary and odds are good that you've only bothered with it if you're a PSB aficionado/completist. If not, then your loss, as I'd actually rate it a stronger, more fascinating piece than at least ten of the eleven tracks that comprised the standard edition of Yes (which, to be clear, is a very good album).

PSB's music tends to be quite a bit darker than it's given credit for - at the very least, there's often an unsettling undercurrent nestled beneath the poppy synths and Tennant's characteristically aloof-sounding vocals, although rarely as outright sinister as in "Gin and Jag". Probably the song that most rivals it in the terror stakes would be "Luna Park" from their 2006 album Fundamental (which makes eerie analogies between the kind of innocuous thrills sought at an amusement park and the kind of fear-mongering prevalent in the post-9/11 landscape). By comparison, "Gin and Jag" describes a smaller, more intimate encounter between two individuals, one that we swiftly detect has the potential to get incredibly ugly. I can see why Tennant and Lowe didn't see fit to include it the album proper; its menacing, rueful tone would have seemed out of place on a relatively upbeat and (as befits the title) affirmative album like Yes (which is not to suggest that Yes is a feel-good listen; it does bow out with "Legacy", one of the strangest and most perturbing PSB tracks to date).

"Gin and Jag" gives us a hair-raising glimpse into the world of a middle-aged, middle-class man who deeply regrets the choices he's made in life. His self-serving hit and run tactics, both in the world of business ("I made a pile and got out quick") and in relationships ("Never married, no kids that I know of"), have left him financially very well-off and without obligations, but all alone and with seemingly no purpose as he approaches his twilight years. The unsavoury twist being that he's telling the story to a young woman (presumably no older than her early 20s) he's befriended online and has persuaded to visit him in his empty life of material luxury. She, plainly, isn't enjoying the experience and cannot wait to leave, but he has other aspirations for how the evening might go, his genteel demeanor scarcely disguising the bilious mixture of envy, condescension and disdain with which he regards his callow house-caller. It's a set-up that does not exactly spell goodwill.

The title "Gin and Jag" derives from a UK slang term used to describe the upper middle-class, gin (and tonics) and Jaguars (the car, not the cat) being linchpins of the stereotypical middle-class lifestyle. The protagonist admits that his relentless pursuit of such a lifestyle might have been his single biggest failing, and that the trappings have become just that - an entrapment ("I'm a little too gin and jag"). The song does not make for comfortable listening, and not just because it's told from the perspective of a character who is insistent on taking this narrative in a direction we would much sooner it didn't go, but because it's such an intensely claustrophobic piece on both sides. We have two characters caught up in a highly unpleasant situation, each fighting against a very different kind of ticking clock, a struggle emphasised in the repeated warning, "Don't stare at the setting sun." The approaching nightfall is ominous because it underlines the very real, immediate danger facing the young woman; if she does not get out before it becomes too dark to do so, then she could find herself stranded with this prospective rapist. But it's an image that also calls to mind the protagonist's own closing window of opportunity. Beneath his iciness there's a definite sense of panic driving his actions. He attempts to win over his reluctant companion with the reminder that their time on Earth is finite, stating that,"Grab it while you can is my advice, don't waste your bloody time" - advice which, in this context, sounds unmistakably predatory. It's also ironic, for the protagonist has clearly adhered to a code of opportunistic plundering for all of his life, and all he now has to show for it (besides a flashy decanter) is a whole lot of wasted time. He recounts that as a younger man he was "quite a catch", the obvious irony there being that nobody ever did - in part because he was averse to commitment, but it's just as likely that he wound up being left alone because his erstwhile friends and potential suitors deduced that he wasn't worth their time. And now, he too yearns to escape his predicament.

How does he see this flesh-and-blood encounter with his online associate turning things around? Does he seek the sexual conquest of a young woman, the kind he presumably used to date back when he was free and easy and abhorred the thought of a "litter", as a reminder of the glory days, one last gasp of carnal indulgence before he figures he's truly past his prime? Or is there a sincere thread of hope, amid that overpowering lust, that their union may kindle the start of something new and optimistic, to rescue him from his impending dead-end of solitude and despair (the line, "There's a lot of room at the inn tonight" has to signify something, besides emphasising just how empty and lonely his life is in the present day)? If so, then it's clear that the relationship is already turning sour; his old tendencies are dooming him, and now it's purely a matter of just how grisly this will get.

What makes "Gin and Jag" such a complex track, and all the more unsettling for it, is that it not only narrates this potentially gruesome scenario from the perspective of the aspiring perpetrator, but that perpetrator is depicted as, if not sympathetic, then recognisably human. The fears he conveys are entirely relatable ones. He recognises that he's growing old, and the only thing that terrifies him more than having to acknowledge that the best years of his life may be long behind him is the realisation that those years were all misspent. He's a sorrowful figure, but we never lose sight of how dangerous he is, thanks to the unpleasantly double-edged nature of his lamenting, fusing expressions of personal regret with bitter feelings of disdain for the woman in his company - for example, "Don't write me off as an old has-been, it's not all over yet", which is a desperate attempt to reassure himself that he may still have a few golden years left ahead of him (probably not the case), and also a threat directed at his young captive not to assume that his wretchedness makes him harmless (on that point he has credibility). Nowhere is this more evident than in the proverb accompanying those repeated warnings about the sun. "Youth is wasted on the young" (an expression often attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, among others, although its actual origins are debatable) is a maxim based on the observation that most people don't appreciate how precious youth is until they've lost it. Here, it's used as an admission of the protagonist's own squandered youth, and his realisation that his recklessness and lack of foresight has led to his current predicament, but there's a derisiveness about it too, revealing just how viciously he envies this jejune woman with her whole life still ahead of her. The insinuation is that he sees her as unworthy of the qualities that he himself has wasted, and this is the most frighteningly malignant aspect of the song, suggesting that his predatory advances are rooted not merely in lust, but in a spiteful, willfully malicious desire to cut her down while she's still in her prime. Obviously, he's not getting his own youth back, but perhaps he can ensnare an unmindful  victim to join him, if not as a romantic partner, then as a fellow sufferer in his world of stagnant misery. His contempt for the younger generation becomes all the more harrowing when we consider that it was, in all odds, the woman's youthful inexperience that enabled her to be drawn into such a perilous situation in the first place. She would, presumably, be quite naive for him to have gotten as far with her as he has, although her apparent fixation with the outside scenery implies that she is already cottoning on (too late?) to her mistake. Toward the end of the song, he ostensibly offers her a way out, with the passive-aggressive retort, "If you don't want to give it a go tonight, you may as well pack your bags" (possibly in a preemptive attempt at rejection before she has the chance to do it to him). But then that sun is already setting outside.

At the very end, the protagonist appears to acknowledge that for him, there can be no escape, as he resigns himself to his private hell with the repeated acknowledgement that, "I'm a little too gin and jag". Whether or not he will force this unfortunate young woman to share in his entrapment is a question that's left dangling.

Hedgehog In The Fog vs An Elephant In Your Mind

There is an enormous amount of emotion to be mined from the appealingly basic scenario of a diminutive animal attempting to navigate its way through a bout of uninviting weather. This is something that Russian animator Yuri Norstein understood when he made his 1975 film Hedgehog in The Fog (or Yozhik v Tumane), which was produced at the Soyuzmultfilm animation studio in Moscow. The film concerns a small hedgehog (Maria Vinogradova) who every evening journeys out to see his friend the bear for an idyllic night of drinking tea and counting the stars. On this particular evening, the hedgehog notices a horse up ahead surrounded by a strange fog, and grows concerned that the horse will perish should she become engulfed by the fog. The hedgehog ventures into the fog, intending to talk to the horse, only to lose his own bearings and become trapped in the pale and indistinct world. There, the hedgehog is terrorised by a number of unfamiliar beings and assisted by others, and eventually tumbles into a stream, where he is saved from drowning by a mysterious "Someone", who carries him to the shore. In the final scene, we see that the hedgehog has made it safely to the bear (Vyacheslav Nevinny), who is exasperated at his friend's tardiness, stating that he had been calling out repeatedly to the hedgehog and was distressed to have received no answer. The hedgehog thinks how fortunate it is that he has found his way back to the bear and that they can enjoy another evening of counting the stars. However, he remains unsettled by the thought that the horse is still stranded out there in the fog and wonders what, ultimately, will become of her.

Hedgehog in The Fog remains one of the most enduring examples of Soviet animation, with admirers the world over (it was voted the greatest animated film of all time at a Tokyo film festival in 2003), and it isn't difficult to see why. There are very few films, animated or otherwise, that encapsulate quite the same sense of unsettling melancholy and beguiling eeriness. We feel the smallness of the protagonist and the overpowering magnitude of his surroundings - surroundings which, which the nocturnal haze, appear at once grotesque, ethereal and beautifully sombre. Above all, it's an intensely enigmatic piece. It tells a deceptively simple story, and yet everything within it feels as it could be a symbol for something far greater. The narrative, with its talking animals and elegant brevity, has all the trappings of a traditional Aesopian allegory, but does not make its meaning explicit and ends on a deliberately open-ended note, one in which the hedgehog achieves his initial goal of joining the bear for a night of star-gazing, but it feels as if we've barely scratched the surface of the bigger picture unfolding all around them, and several key questions are left without answers. It plays like a fable, but presents as the most fiendish of riddles.

An obvious interpretation is that the film is about confronting the unknown, for it is the hedgehog's decision to tear away from his nightly routine and go in search of an altogether different truth that leads to his being lost and his nearly cut off from everything that he once knew. To take any kind of step in the dark (or into the pale, in this case) is a risky business. And yet, one thing that Hedgehog in The Fog emphatically is not is a cautionary fable about the perils of deviating from the beaten track, not least because there is ample reason to believe that the hedgehog is in danger before he makes the fateful decision to enter into the fog. From almost the beginning of the film, we have the disturbing imagery of the hedgehog being stalked by the shadowy figure of the owl, who emerges very suddenly as the hedgehog passes through a dark patch of trees. The owl is a puzzling character, in that its intentions are overall very difficult to gauge; its dark, looming form, pronounced talons and the frightening proximity with which it attaches itself to the unwitting hedgehog give it an ominously predatory air, and yet the owl is clearly not without a playful side and at first seems more interested in mimicking the hedgehog than in preying on him. We are left with two seemingly contradictory ways in which to interpret the owl - either it is a benign (if not entirely benevolent) figure who merely appears frightening in the dead of night, or it is a very genuine danger lurking within plain sight, which the hedgehog, in his terminal complacency, remains entirely oblivious to. Hedgehog in The Fog may be a film about gazing into the unknown and attempting not to lose yourself in the process, but it also has a lot to say about the dangers of the familiar, and of assuming that one is safe simply because one has walked this same route a hundred times before.

The crucial thing, to me, is that the hedgehog starts out with a very narrow, insular perspective of the world, and it is only by going through the nebulous, alien world of the fog that he finally gains clarity. As the film begins we might argue that the hedgehog already lives in a kind of fog, one which enables him to behave as if he and the bear are the sole inhabitants of the world and keeps him oblivious to the suffering and concerns of those outside of it. His existence with the bear is innocent and carefree, but it is also fragile, with the insidious figure of the owl suggesting that it could be disrupted and torn apart at any moment. Ignorance, ultimately, will not protect them. When the hedgehog is able to see past his self-imposed fog and becomes aware of the horse standing in the literal fog, his perspective is forever changed. His compassion and curiosity over this enigmatic creature compel him to get involved with something far greater than him, and well beyond his understanding. The price for his broadened horizon is the total loss of innocence, for although the hedgehog spends much of the film fighting to get back to what he once knew, this proves to be futile. The hedgehog makes it back to the bear and the two are able to resume their usual routine of drinking tea and counting stars, but the hedgehog we see at the end is clearly not the same hedgehog who first set foot into the fog. Something has changed.

The great irony is that, even when our protagonist is trapped in the unfamiliar terrain of the fog, the familiar is never far away, physically speaking - the voice of the bear can be heard calling out to the hedgehog all throughout his ordeal. The hedgehog's friendship with the bear remains his key lifeline, keeping him anchored to the world from which he has strayed, and it is the hedgehog's misplacement of his sack of raspberry jam, a token of their friendship, that proves the most disastrous point of his excursion, an indication that he is in danger of never finding his way back. Within the fog, the hedgehog suddenly becomes aware that the world around him is very populated, and various strangers slowly reveal themselves in the haze. Some of them prove to be unexpected allies, while others merely deepen his escalating panic. Among the latter camp, we have the owl, who has followed the hedgehog into the fog and (intentionally or not) scares him witless. We also have bats and a snail. Most terrifying of all, though, is the elephant. The hedgehog runs into an elephant in the fog that should not be there, and in all likelihood isn't, but is no less ominous for it.

The elephant is glimpsed only briefly, first of all when the hedgehog disturbs a snail beneath a leaf and later during a montage of shots in which the hedgehog is suddenly bombarded with horrifying images within the fog. It is by far the most absurd item the hedgehog encounters out there (being distinctly out of place among those European forest fauna), and yet it passes without comment from either the narrator or the hedgehog. It is never seen clearly, only as a murky, indistinct silhouette that nevertheless bears the recognisable shape and stature of an elephant, and it is alarming, because we are never entirely certain what we are seeing. We think we see an elephant, but we never get a close enough look at the shape in question to be sure if our hero really is being menaced by a fog-dwelling pachyderm, or if this is simply his mind playing tricks on him. The elephant occurs so fleetingly that it may not even register for the first-time viewer, yet it strikes me as significant as I'm convinced that the elephant is intended to be the antithesis of the horse.

The horse, whose solitary plight compels the hedgehog to venture into the fog, represents something precious yet also fragile; an integral component of film that, as absurd as the hedgehog's specific concern about the horse choking on the fog might be, we certainly never doubt that the hedgehog was right to take an interest in the fate of the horse. Something about the horse allures us; it is every bit as beautiful in its purity as it is haunting in its vulnerability. It stands out as something worth protecting and understanding, but do so one is required to traverse the unknowable and wrestle with uncertainty, and this comes with its own set of hazards. If the horse, an emblem of truth and purity, is what you enter into the fog hoping to find, then the elephant is what you risk running into in its place. The elephant embodies everything that the horse does not - confusion, distortion, dislocation, dread. It is a symbol of the world being warped out of perspective and, instead of getting closer to the truth, the hedgehog is now in danger of being consumed completely by his overwhelming incomprehension. The elephant is the oblivion lurking at the other end of the fog. Why an elephant? Obviously, its great looming form clues us in as the magnitude of the threat, but I am also put in mind of the ancient Indian fable about the blind men and the elephant, with its warnings about the pitfalls of regarding the world from a limited perspective.

Not everything that lurks in the fog is a threat, of course - the hedgehog survives his ordeal through the intervention and support of various other creatures. A dog reunites him with his misplaced sack of raspberry jam (once the hedgehog has recovered this, he becomes aware of the bear calling to him), a firefly temporarily lights his way (although it just as casually abandons him) and the "Someone" within the water carries him to dry land. At the heart of Hedgehog in The Fog appears to be a message about how none of us can endure without empathy and co-operation, but there is nonetheless a troubling distance to these interactions; the dog and the firefly share no words with the hedgehog, and the "Someone" insists on maintaining their anonymity. Friendships of the kind enjoyed between the hedgehog and the bear are entirely alien here; animals do what they can to help another in need but seem cautious, as if unwilling to reveal too much of themselves. Once they have done their bit, they have served their purpose and must immediately move on. There is no room for star-counting and tea-drinking within the fog.

At the end of the film, the bear tells the hedgehog that there is nobody else with whom he would be able to count the stars; this speaks again of the very insular nature of the hedgehog's existence outside of the fog, in which he and the bear are able to live as if they have the entire universe to themselves, but acts all the more potently as reminder of just how frail and endangered their world blatantly is. The guilelessness that characterises their nightly routine is, we sense, a little too precious and wholesome to last with so much darkness and foreboding creeping right around the corner. For now, their routine is able to continue for at least another night, but we can see in the final scene that a wedge has already been driven between the bear and the hedgehog - the latter appears in a daze, and not wholly attuned to the concerns of his friend. His thoughts, after all, are still with the horse, of whose plight the bear remains blissfully ignorant. The hedgehog's eyes have been opened - he comprehends that the world is a wider, more intricate and more desolate place than he'd ever imagined, a knowledge that sets him visibly apart from his companion, and yet paradoxically his uncertainty has only heightened. The hedgehog never learns the fate of the horse, and it is this unsettling loose end, this feeling of connection with the vulnerability of a stranger, that keeps him from retreating back into the comforting blindness of his own metaphorical fog. He has joined the bigger world (or more accurately, acknowledged that he was always a part of it), where things are not so easily resolved or understood, and where the pursuit of answers might only lead to further questions. All that he truly knows is somewhere in the fog is a horse who may not ever find her own way out. And that is enough that he cannot look back.

The Last Temptation of Homer (aka Mindy Can Read Minds?)

Warning: Contains spoilers for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

On the DVD commentary for "Colonel Homer" there is a lot of talk among the series staff about how fundamentally wrong it would be for Homer to even think about embarking on an extramarital affair when securing Marge's spousal devotions was undoubtedly the most fortuitous thing that ever happened to him. As things are, Homer is not astoundingly attentive or sensitive to Marge's needs, but the one line he's emphatically not allowed to cross is being unfaithful to her. They argue that they got around the problem in "Colonel Homer" because, there, Homer doesn't actually comprehend that Lurleen is in love with him, or why his sudden enthusiasm for the aspiring country musician would look awfully suspicious from Marge's end (I think the situation gets slightly stickier than they let on, particularly in the final few minutes, but I'd agree that Homer doesn't consciously enter into his business partnership with Lurleen with romance on his mind). But then they admit that it's all a moot point any way, because a couple of seasons down the line we had an episode where Homer does indeed knowingly contemplate an affair with another woman. For then there was Mindy Simmons (voice of Michelle Pfeiffer), the foul temptress who (in all probability) shared Homer's sentiment that Ziggy had gotten too preachy.

"The Last Temptation of Homer" (1F07) is a very different kind of marital crisis episode, one that's less interested in exploring the emotional and dramatic implications of Homer and Marge's marriage coming apart at the seams than it is in placing Homer in a torturous situation and extracting as much humour as possible out of watching him squirm. Here, Homer's attraction to Mindy isn't precipitated by any kind of domestic fall-out between himself and Marge; Mindy simply wanders into Homer's life one day and Homer can't get her out of his head. In a way, the lack of evident discord in his relationship with Marge makes Homer's dilemma here all the more agonising, because he's got no real justification for gravitating toward another woman, other than that life just happened to hit him with a massive "What if?" Homer assumes that his life with Marge is perfectly balanced, but what if Mindy was really the woman of his dreams, and they'd just never happened to cross paths until now? Homer has no reason to complain about Marge, but he's given every reason to believe that he could have been just as happily married to Mindy in an alternate universe, and it's a thought that inevitably throws his entire worldview into turmoil. "The Last Temptation of Homer" also dispenses with the plot thread, integral to both "Life on The Fast Lane" and "Colonel Homer", in which the partner at risk of being abandoned has to grapple with their growing suspicions. Marge remains blissfully ignorant throughout this entire ordeal, and never once cottons on that she has competition. The only other member of the household who, very faintly, finds out about the new woman in Homer's life is Lisa, whose suspicions are aroused when she catches her father singing a corrupted version of Barry Manilow's "Mandy", although she does not pursue the matter further. Mindy, for her part, is also a lot less forward than Jacques or Lurleen. Although she clearly reciprocates Homer's feelings, she's able to hold off actively flirting with him for most of the episode. And yet she is by far the most dangerous of all the Home-Wreckers, because her very existence undermines the validity of Homer's own. All of the Home-Wreckers sans Kashmir (who is forever the anomaly) present a threat to the status quo because they each show the apple of their proverbial eye that they could have things very differently, if they so chose, but none cuts quite so brutally to that apple's existential core as Mindy does to Homer.

I've spoken in the past about how the Simpsons universe is cruel and capricious, and if there's an episode that definitively demonstrates that, it's "The Last Temptation of Homer". It's especially disconcerting when you compare it to the resolution of "Life on The Fast Lane". There, the universe pretty much intervened to prevent Marge from going to Jacques' apartment, hence the appearance of the whole ironic street. This makes sense if we consider that the entire fabric of the Simpsons universe is intrinsically stitched up in Homer and Marge's union; if their marriage breaks down, the status quo of the series will likewise be obliterated, and there is no The Simpsons. So the universe was really only acting to protect itself (even if it came at the expense of Marge's chance to find renewed direction in life). In "The Last Temptation of Homer", however, the universe seems to be pushing in precisely the opposite direction, pulling out whatever stops it can to ensure that we get to the point where Homer and Mindy end up in the same bedroom, with Homer's resistance whittled down to its last dying embers. The Simpsons universe needs little excuse to give its denizens a good taunting, but on this occasion its behaviour is particularly troubling as it looks to be engineering an outcome that would guarantee its own destruction. This is an episode in which the universe, bizarrely, wants to die.

The events of the episode get into motion when Homer's colleague Charlie vanishes under mysterious circumstances and the plant is forced to hire a new dangerous emissions supervisor. Mindy is hired as a concession to the United States Department of Labor, who demand that Burns reverse his sexist employment policies and take on at least one female employee. Lenny and Carl are subsequently heard complaining about the prospect of having a female co-worker around, because it obligates them not to behave like slobs on the job. This, honestly, is the one aspect of "The Last Temptation of Homer" that seriously gets stuck in my craw, because we've seen numerous examples of women working at the plant before (just off the top of my head, there's Ms Finch from "Principal Charming", the apocalypse fetishist from "Homer Defined" and, hell, even Marge herself was employed there only last season). One gets hung up on the consistency of the Simpsons timeline at entirely one's peril, but in this case it's a little too egregious for me to ignore. Basically, they made this continuity-screwing assertion just for the purposes of setting up a punchline involving a highly unpleasant duck. I'll let you decide if the trade-off was worth it.

I have two incidental observations about Mindy, one benign, the other slightly more troubling. Firstly, she has the same surname as Abe's deceased girlfriend, Beatrice Simmons from "Old Money", so could they possibly be related? Secondly, Mindy is a junk food addict who is constantly guzzling, and yet she has an amazingly trim figure for someone who packs their face with double glaze donuts all day. I do understand what they're going for with this; Mindy was purposely conceived to be the impossibly perfect bait for Homer, combining the body of a pin-up with all of Homer's defining carnal traits. Not only is she physically desirable, closer inspection reveals that she's every bit as much as a gluttonous slob as he. We've met Homer's female double, and that she happens to be the most paradoxically comely-looking being ever to set foot in Springfield is pretty much the joke in itself. But still, we've got this character who is binge eater and yet also incongruously skinny, and does that not leave itself wide open to a somewhat more...uncomfortable interpretation? I hesitate to push too far with this point, as I know that it's going to be a sensitive subject for many and I have no desire to come off as flippant, but one day it crossed my mind that Mindy might be bulimic, and I haven't been able to see her in the same way since. Nowadays, when she tells Homer that she's leaving to sneak in a quick nap before lunch, I have this uneasy sensation that she's actually headed off to the power plant restroom to do something else entirely.

Mindy's possible eating disorder aside, she and Homer are clearly two hearts believing in just one mind, and this goes some way toward addressing one of the most daunting challenges in the episode's narrative logic - that is, making it seem entirely par for the course that Mindy, this impossibly bewitching Springfieldian, would fall so head over heels in love with Homer. I noted previously that the production staff for "Colonel Homer", as per their words in the episode's DVD commentary, consider it something of a stretch that an attractive woman like Lurleen would set her sights on Homer, but I think it makes sense given that Lurleen clearly has a history of being mistreated by men and Homer's warmth and sincerity make him seem like a breath of fresh air. With Mindy it's a lot more straightforward - she falls for Homer because kismet has willed for them to be together. The two of them were visibly made for one another, and neither party has recourse to ignore that. There is a gut level on which the viewer too can appreciate the sheer correctness of their magnetism. Mindy is an immensely likeable character - I don't see how anyone can possibly not love her - and the emotions she brings out in Homer, however messy, are undeniably adorable, particularly early on when she has him murmuring fondly like a smitten little schoolboy ("Mindy has a motorcycle"). But it's also devastating, because not only does it threaten Homer's fidelity to Marge, it undermines the very basis of his existence and everything he has, up until now, taken for granted as the natural order of the universe in which he lives. If Homer was meant to be with Mindy, then his marriage to Marge, the life they have built together and indeed the entire foundation of The Simpsons as a series, is suddenly exposed as a total sham. At one point, Homer proclaims this to be the worst crisis his marriage has ever faced. Worse than Lurleen, worse than Jacques, worse than General Sherman the catfish, apparently. His relationship with Marge has overcome numerous challenges in the past, against all odds, but what sets this particular crisis apart from its predecessors is that it is, effectively, all Homer's cross to bear. In "Life on The Fast Lane", Marge's almost-affair with Jacques was an open secret; everybody knew what was happening, including Homer. With "Colonel Homer", it was a case of everybody knowing except Homer. But in "The Last Temptation of Homer" nobody knows, except Homer. It's a quandary which has Homer at his most thoroughly introspective, questioning not merely the future of his marriage, but also the universe as a whole and his fundamental place within it.

The nature of Homer's crisis is hinted at in the episode title, derived from Martin Scorsese's highly controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which is based on the 1955 novel by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis (and I appreciate that this may also be a sensitive matter for some readers, but I'm only going off what's in the movie). Here, the dying Jesus (Willem Dafoe) is greeted on the cross by an angel (Juliette Caton), who offers him the opportunity to escape his fate and live the life of an ordinary man. Jesus accepts, and lives a peaceful, nondescript life for many decades (as part of his normal life, he loses his virginity to Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) which is the element that many church leaders got their panties in a twist about at the time), but as he reaches old age tensions between the Romans and the Jews reach breaking point and result in the destruction of Israel. As Jerusalem goes up in flames, Jesus is reunited with one of his old friends, Judas Iscariot (Harvey Keitel), who tells him that by not going through with the crucifixion, he failed to bring about salvation, and is now fated to die like every other man. Jesus crawls through the burning ruins of Jerusalem, imploring God to allow him the opportunity to finish what he started, whereupon he finds himself back on the cross, a young man once again, having overcome the titular last temptation - that is, the temptation to simply be human. He cries out, "It is accomplished!", with his final breath, and the movie ends with an abstract visual sequence.

Mindy, so the episode title tells us, is Homer's "last" temptation, and their mutual attraction creates a bizarre paradox; their union is essential if the universe is to correct itself and follow its intended course, but since its very nexus lies rooted within the fundamental error that is Homer and Marge's marriage, the universe would have to destroy itself in the process. And the universe, certainly, does appear to be unraveling all around us. As noted, the episode is entirely devoid of any genuine domestic drama, but when Homer returns home from work, hoping to reaffirm his commitment to his familiar way of living, he finds that life as knew it isn't there any more. His world has become just marginally out of whack, although it's out of whack in completely mundane, everyday kinds of ways - Marge has a cold and cannot be so available to him, Bart is undergoing an array of medical procedures which threaten to engulf his own sense of personal identity (more on that shortly), Lisa has prepared him fish sticks which are burned on the outside and frozen on the inside (I'm sure there's a perfect metaphor in that, but I haven't yet figured out what it is) and Maggie...well, she remains out of sight for the entirety of the episode. What's important is that Homer's family have become ever-so-slightly grotesque to him, now that she sees them for the metaphysical blips that they are. Meeting Mindy has changed Homer, and he can't return to the home he once knew. Homer is confused, so he turns to a higher power - the chattering cyclops - for guidance. Kent Brockman, David Attenborough and the National Ringworm Association all send him a very clear message: "JUST DO IT!" His crisis deepening, Homer resorts to calling an emotional support hotline, but gets through to none other than Ned Flanders, who suddenly transforms into the neighbour from Hell in wanting to spill the beans to Marge. Feeling betrayed and forsaken by all external sources of help, Homer is forced to look within and go on a soul-searching journey in order to find a way through his predicament - which, in a slightly surreal nod to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, manifests in a visit from Homer's guardian angel, who assumes the form of Colonel Klink (a fictional character from 1960s sitcom Hogan's Heroes) and purports to show Homer how miserable life would be if he'd married Mindy instead of Marge. As it turns out, Homer and Mindy would be fabulously well-off, and talk non-stop about how happy they are, and Marge would be President of the United States. Angel-Klink realises that he's not making out his point, so he abruptly terminates the vision and leaves Homer stranded in his dilly of a pickle. There's a popular theory that Karl from "Simpson and Delilah" is really Homer's guardian angel; apparently not, although if Karl did want the job then I'm sure he'd be a lot better at it than this joker.

At the centre of Homer's crisis is the revelation that, if the universe, as it exists, is founded upon a succession of falsehoods, then he too is not the individual he has long assumed himself to be. His encounter with Angel-Klink reveals to him that if the universe had followed its intended path, then he could have been someone else entirely - successful, sophisticated and perpetually contented. Instead, he somehow wound up in the role of a blue collar every-loser grappling through yet another wacky adventure week after week. This is not the universe as it was intended to be. And yet it is the universe that we have. If it were to disappear, perhaps something better would rise in its place, but all Homer has is the here and now. And the dilemma he faces, here and now, is whether, knowing that things could have turned out very differently, he is to accept kismet, step down from his ernoeous role and put this misbegotten universe out of its misery once and for all, or to embrace this beautiful metaphysical glitch of an existence, and all of its messy imperfections, as the life that he really wants, thus affirming it as the "authentic" universe after all. "Colonel Homer" had, to an extent, touched upon Homer's frustrations at always having to be the screw-up, and to that end "Temptation" offers him an enticing escape clause. The universe may end, but Homer is relieved of his position at the centre of it, no longer obligated to keep performing the same unenviable role over and over. The "last temptation" of Homer, in other words, is to be released from the burden of being Homer Simpson.

Homer's personal crisis throughout "The Last Temptation of Homer" is echoed in a parallel narrative involving Bart, who learns that he has a host of visual and posture impairments and is forced to undergo a barrage of uncomfortable correctional procedures, including wearing oversized glasses and oversized shoes, all of which threaten to erase his identity as school hall rebel and recast him, much to his dismay, as a socially awkward nerd. As Simpsons B stories go, this one isn't terribly substantial; it stands out as easily the most disposable subplot in all of Season 5 (which was surprisingly light on B material, compared to Seasons 3 and 4), which might have to do with it being the most tenuously linked to the A story, at least on the surface. The two stories directly intersect at exactly one point in the episode - during the aforementioned scene where Homer returns to his family home and finds his son somewhat unrecognisable, with his protrusive glasses and medicated salve dripping from his scalp. It's an odd amount of effort to put into a narrative arc that serves chiefly to set up one of several mild disturbances to Homer's domestic routine, one that the writers themselves apparently lose interest in, because once it's served its purpose for Homer's story, it trails on for a short while and effectively just stops. Bart has to wear this humiliating body gear for a time and then he doesn't; this is about as aimlessly barebones as a subplot can get. But I think the real substance of this B story lies in the sequence where Bart pulls out his skateboard from his locker and proclaims that "I'm still the same person I've always been", a point he drastically fails to prove when his oversized shoes throw off his balance and render his skateboarding skills inoperative. Bart's social status as underachiever and proud means everything to him, but worse than being rebranded by his peers is the increasing sense of self-doubt that slowly takes a hold of him, perfectly encapsulated in a scene where he sees his own reflection in Milhouse's lens and exclaims, in horror, "I'm a nerd!" Bart discovers that a few seemingly minor changes to his circumstances can completely alter the person he assumes himself to be - that the nature of identity is fragile, and hangs in the balance of a chaotic and ill-conceived cosmos.

Bart is relieved of his personal crisis the easy way - his allotted time as a nerd reaches its natural conclusion (once the episode has racked up enough filler material) and he's allowed to resume his old identity (although he gets beaten up by the school bullies anyway, because that is an integral part of who they are). For Homer, however, there is no such reprieve, and the universe persists in its relentless course to bring himself and Mindy together. The situation escalates when when he is sent away with Mindy on a business trip to an energy convention, and the two of them end up sharing adjacent hotel rooms. The universe is now quite ready to do away with itself, yet even it seems to have second thoughts about its impending demise; there is an anomalous moment where Homer and Mindy, while consuming an assortment of ill-gotten room service entrees, eat a chili dog from respective ends and wind up kissing in the middle, whereupon Homer's bloated belly suddenly interjects, tearing through his shirt to reveal an under-garment bearing Marge's distorted face (Marge having leapt at the chance to get her face on a t-shirt earlier in the episode - only, as is befitting for this universe, it came out slightly mangled). Homer thinks he hears Marge's disapproving murmurs and flees, but it is only the sounds of a carpet cleaner being wielded by the bellhop outside. That evening, however, the universe hits back with newly-determined resolve to finish this once and for all, when Homer and Mindy are crowned King and Queen of the energy convention and awarded a romantic dinner at the sexiest Chinese restaurant in town. At this point, Homer turns to the announcer and asks to be relieved of his dilemma, but the announcer refuses, outraged that Homer would even have the gall to ask. The universe is in a precarious position, and the fate of everything within remains unresolved; all that is left is for Homer to finally stare his existential crisis straight in the face and decide once and for all whether to validate this wretched macrocosm or to finally enable it to end.

Although "The Last Temptation of Homer" is overall a much more gag-driven and less drama-orientated installment than its predecessors, it still manages to bow out on a surprisingly sincere and poignant final note, where Homer invites Mindy into his hotel room and breaks down in front of her, believing that all of his efforts to stave off temptation have been for nought and that he now has no choice but to surrender to the will of the cosmos. Mindy reminds Homer that he still has free will in all of this; he might think that it is written in the stars because he read it off of a fortune cookie, but as she so eloquently puts it, desserts aren't always right. Homer admits that he isn't actually sure what he wills from this, acknowledging that he wants Mindy desperately but also feels a strong attachment to his family, imperfect though his life may be, and as much as he is occasionally compelled to throttle his son. Mindy advises him to look within his heart, assuring him that he will find clarity as to what he truly wants. And then they kiss, in one of the boldest yet also most legitimately touching moments in the entire series. But it's a sadly mournful kiss, a clear indication that their relationship has just concluded. Tonally, it plays like an exact inversion of the kiss Karl triumphantly planted on Homer in "Simpson and Delilah", although it serves much the same purpose; it's a regretful acknowledgement of what could have been, or maybe even should have been, but was sadly rendered inoperative in this particular lifetime. For when Homer delves deep into his heart to see what he really wants, he looks up to see Marge standing right before him.

It is accomplished!

Except someone once told me that there is a popular fan theory that Homer actually did sleep with Mindy and just imagined that he was with Marge the whole time on account of a guilty conscience. Look, I don't mean to step on any of you Homer/Mindy shippers' toes, but I hope you realise that if it's really that easy then I am allowed to claim, with every bit as much validity, that Marge went to the Fiesta Terrace and slept with Jacques, and that her appropriation of the closing sequence from An Officer and a Gentleman was all but a fantasy designed to alleviate her guilt at having cheated on her husband. In fact, maybe I will start doing that from now on; it makes me feel a lot happier.

Colonel Homer (aka Let's Break Some Hearts!)

Homer and Marge have had their marital stresses over the years, but here's a poser - on how many occasions have those stresses reached such critical condition that we've seen their relationship enter DEFCON 1? By that, I mean episodes in which their marriage is clearly in very real, very imminent danger of ending (and liquidating the status quo of the series along with it). If we limit our selection for now to only the show's "classic" era (Seasons 1 to 8), then I'd say there are at least three (actually, I'm surprised that my count is apparently that low). Those are "Life on The Fast Lane" of Season 1, "The War of The Simpsons" of Season 2 and "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" of Season 5 (in "Secrets of a Successful Marriage", they have their most angry and dramatic dispute, but it's also the least convincing of the lot; the terms under which they reconcile are also the most hokey, but I'll save that for if/when I cover that episode). There are numerous other episodes in which they have their momentary fall-outs, and occasionally their very bitter blowouts, eg: "Bart Gets Hit By A Car", where Homer gets awfully sulky with Marge in the third act, but you don't really sense that they're likely to hold it against one another forever. Then you have those episodes like "A Milhouse Divided", where Homer thinks their marriage is in danger but this isn't corroborated by any hard evidence from Marge's side. There are also episodes where Marge does seem quite prepared to stick it to Homer, such as "Some Enchanted Evening", but is easily dissuaded. On any of the occasions cited, we might have gone into DEFCON 2 or 3, but the situation doesn't quite seem critical enough to suggest that The End is nigh.

The three episodes I realise I haven't included are those in which Homer has his fidelities tested by any of the female Home-Wreckers (as they self-identified in "Team Homer") - Princess Kashmir of "Homer's Night Out", Lurleen Lumpkin of "Colonel Homer" and Mindy Simmons of "The Last Temptation of Homer". In fact, the universal running theme across all three instances of DEFCON 1 is that it was invariably Marge who was tempted to hit the destruct button on their relationship; the reverse would be utterly unthinkable. There's a lot in Homer's life that isn't perfect (his dead-end job and his troubled relationship with his father, to name only two), but as far as his wife is concerned he really hit the jackpot; there aren't many who would put up with even half of the nonsense that Marge does from Homer, and she causes him so little grief in return. I touched on this already in my coverage of "Simpson and Delilah", but due to the highly uneven nature of their relationship, it's so much trickier to have Homer contemplating infidelity than it is Marge, and any episode where Homer does take an interest in another woman has to deploy some form of buffer in order to make the situation seem marginally less dire. "Homer's Night Out" flat-out doesn't fit the bill because Kashmir and Homer aren't seriously entangled, and even though Marge and Homer do have a serious dispute (in which Marge, again, would have been the one more likely to initiate the end), the focus ultimately seems to shift more toward Homer's relationship with Bart. "The Last Temptation of Homer" sees Homer caught up in a mutual infatuation with Mindy, but he doesn't like the situation one bit and attempts to resist it every step of the way, only the universe won't let him be. Before that, though, we had "Colonel Homer" (8F19), where Homer befriends aspiring country singer Lurleen (voice of Beverly D'Angelo, who also had a major hand in writing Lurleen's music), who in return falls passionately in love with him, and here there's a bit more ambiguity as to what Homer wants out of the deal. Are we in danger of tipping over into DEFCON 1 territory? Well, Marge certainly seems to think so, but Homer straddles such an indistinct line between blissful innocence and lurid desires he doesn't know he has that it's difficult to gauge exactly what's compelling him to get so involved with Lurleen.

I've been meaning to talk about "Colonel Homer" for a while because, of the episodes in which Homer is seriously tempted by another woman, this one is the most obvious successor to "Life on The Fast Lane". The two episodes follow a near-identical story structure, wherein a non-isolated incident of marital strife leaves one adult Simpson feeling unappreciated and disaffected. Disaffected Simpson goes to a venue outside of their comfort zone, where they encounter a friendly Home-Wrecker who is instantly smitten with them. Disaffected Simpson enjoys the companionship of Home-Wrecker so much that they prioritise them over the rest of the family; meanwhile, the spouse of Disaffected Simpson grows increasingly suspicious about the situation and fearful for the future of their marriage. However, when Home-Wrecker gets serious about wanting to take their relationship to the next level, Disaffected Simpson faces a dilemma and ultimately rejects Home-Wrecker in favour of upholding their marriage. The key factor separating the two scenarios has to do with how well-attuned Disaffected Simpson is to the reality of their situation. Whereas Marge understood exactly what she was getting herself into with Jacques, here Homer spends the better part of the episode cheerfully oblivious to all three corners on this awkward love triangle; he has no idea why his spending so much time with Lurleen should bother Marge so, no awareness of the signals he's potentially sending Lurleen, and above all, no attunement as to what's really driving him the whole while. Homer is an innocent who doesn't realise just how culpable he is, and it's fascinating how much of a difference this makes to the tone of the episode overall. "Life on The Fast Lane" relies heavily on understatement and what the characters are unable to verbalise - there, a lot was made of the fact that Homer could never find the words to confront Marge directly about the situation with Jacques, and the best defence he could make for his marriage was a very muted compliment of Marge's sandwich-making technique. "Colonel Homer", by contrast, requires the characters to be much more forward - here, Marge very explicitly asks Homer if he is having an affair with Lurleen. Lurleen, meanwhile, openly flaunts her feelings for Homer in her music, and only when she sings "Bunk with me tonight," several times to Homer's face does the penny finally drop (about sixteen minutes into the episode).

This onslaught of overstatement is necessitated by Homer's complete lack of self-awareness; he's too dim to appreciate the meaning of his own narrative, so it's down to the two key female players to spell it out for him, and much of the drama, and indeed the humour, arises from the three of them having somewhat different interpretations of the same scenario (as opposed to "Life on The Fast Lane" where everybody was basically on the same page). It's for this reason that I think a lot of people seem to come away with the impression that Marge was overly defensive and kind of a stick in the mud throughout this episode. If I had a penny for every time I heard someone suggest that Marge was in the wrong, and that she should have just shut up and let Homer enjoy the thrill of being manager to a rising country star, then I'd at least have enough for a matinee and a small soda by now. But to those who think that Marge should have been contented being Homer's unquestioning cheerleader, I would implore you to listen closely to the lyrics of Lurleen's song, "I've Finally Bagged Me A Homer". She clearly isn't singing about baseball - not to mention that the "homer", or home run to which she ostensibly refers is also used as a popular sexual metaphor. What person in Marge's position wouldn't have ground their teeth like hell? Another factor that I think convinces some people that the threat is largely in Marge's head is that she's basically having to ruminate on it alone. Unlike "Life on The Fast Lane", which took time to illustrate how the increasingly realistic prospect of domestic upheaval was affecting all of the family (sans Maggie), "Colonel Homer" focuses almost exclusively on the adults in the equation; the closest the kids come to having any voice in this is in Bart's reflection that he's angry with Homer but can't help but love his swanky manager's suit. Actually, Moe gets to express more vulnerability than Bart and Lisa; he's pretty wounded to learn that Homer parked his keister on someone else's bar stool.

We've seen Marge become manifestly jealous of Homer in the past - in "Simpson and Delilah" she was disgruntled at the prospect of Homer getting a female PA and insisted that he hire a male applicant (unbeknownst to her, a gay one who also harbored feelings for Homer), but this is after Homer admits to her that all the young women he's interviewed have made kissy faces at him; her jealousy doesn't arise from nowhere. You could argue that Marge was here a little hasty in expressing her disapproval of Lurleen. You could also argue that Marge's own experience in being on the other end of this scenario has perhaps left her hyper-vigilant to the possibility that Homer could, under the right circumstances, do the same to her. But I don't believe that Marge's jealousy here is of her own making, or at all out of proportion. Just as it's clear that Lurleen is fixated on Homer, so too it's clear that Homer is fixated on her, even if he doesn't yet understand the true extent of his fixation. Marge is simply ahead of Homer in this particular game. She's is also a lot more vocal on the matter because her sense of indignation is stronger than was Homer's in "Life on The Fast Lane". One of the reasons why Homer there puts up such a limited fight for his marriage is because he knows, deep down, that he's possibly had this coming for some time. Marge, though, has long done her best to stand by Homer, and the possibility of him ditching her for another woman is simply unthinkable.

You can see the uneven nature of Homer and Marge's relationship in how the two instances of near-marital breakdown get started. In "Life on The Fast Lane" Marge gets mad at Homer because he forgets her birthday and buys her a gift that he does not even attempt to disguise was purchased for his own use (the episode makes it clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg). In "Colonel Homer", Homer gets mad at Marge after she calls him out for his boorish behaviour during a public screening of taut political thriller The Stockholm Affair, and their fellow theatre patrons very forcibly take Marge's side. Given that Homer's behaviours consisted of nosily slurping on his soda, loudly riffing on the movie's poor special effects and going so far as to announce the movie's plot twist so that the entire auditorium could hear, I don't think any reasonable viewer is going to hold Marge accountable for what happened. Nevertheless, it leaves Homer feeling pained and humiliated enough to want to drive far, far away from the family home, ultimately ending up at a seedy redneck bar where he meets Lurleen. Before he goes, Homer tells Marge that he has always carried himself "with a certain quiet dignity", which she deprived him of this evening. We know that this assertion is ridiculous - there was nothing quiet nor dignified about his behaviour at the Googolplex - so why is he so cheesed off at Marge? Homer's wounded pride stems from much the same obliviousness that carries him through the greater part of this episode - he didn't comprehend how his behaviour could be problematic for the other threatre patrons and was clearly was shocked by Marge's declaration that nobody wants to hear what he thinks, with the theatre audience confirming it. This strikes a particularly bitter nerve with Homer because it ties in with his deeper feelings of failure and personal disappointment; he tires of always being the screw-up, and he feels let-down by Marge's apparent failure to appreciate that. Which is where Lurleen comes in. Whereas Marge left Homer feeling small and insignificant, Lurleen validates his innermost pains by performing a song about them. Lurleen's song may be a downbeat ode to the quiet sorrows of everyday life, but her expression of solidarity fills Homer with an enormous sense of buoyancy. He feels justified in the knowledge that there is someone else out there who truly gets him.

"Colonel Homer" was written by series creator Matt Groening, who gets writing credits on the show relatively rarely, although on the DVD commentary track he admits that he received a lot of help from the rest of the writing team. The episode was inspired by the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, in which D'Angelo portrayed country music superstar Patsy Cline (hence her casting here). Obviously, this episode takes multiple swipes at the world of country and western music, and in that regard there's probably a lot that goes over my head since it's a genre about which I know very little (although I recognise a dueling banjoist when I see one). But I get the distinct impression that Al Jean and Mike Reiss, then working as the series' showrunners, have this observation that country musicians are perhaps a little too candid about their personal lives within their music. I say that because there is a very similar joke in an episode of The Critic, "Sherman, Woman and Child". There, Jay befriends Alice Tompkins, a single mother who recently moved to New York from Knoxville, Tennessee after leaving her husband Cyrus, a country singer whom Alice suspected was cheating on her. What tipped Alice off? Cyrus was singing about it in his lyrics! He even went so far as to title his album I'm being unfaithful to my wife, Alice Tompkins. You heard me, Alice Tompkins. And you thought "Bagged Me A Homer" was a bit on the nose.

On the commentary track, Groening states that his intention here was to write an episode in which Homer is tempted away from the Simpson household by the prospect of a glamorous new career, but ultimately chooses to remain with his family. I've got to say, I'm not sure if that particular dilemma actually comes across in the finished episode - although Homer does talk about it being his life-long dream to manage a country singer (but, of course, he changes his life-long dream every week) and he clearly enjoys flaunting his space-age cowboy suit, it doesn't really feel as if it's the glamour that's pulling him on. The final dilemma feels closer to that of "Life on The Fast Lane", wherein Disaffected Simpson has the opportunity to redefine their lives, if they're able to trade in their current spouse for a suitor who could potentially take them in a whole new direction. Homer obviously doesn't get a lot of fulfillment out of his job at the plant, and it follows that he prefers managing Lurleen's career because it gives him a chance to do something with a bit more pizzazz, but given that this new career path is so heavily tied up in one individual it's somewhat challenging to separate his passion for the job over his personal feelings for Lurleen, and ultimately it is the latter that seems to take precedence in terms of the choice Homer has to make. (And since I've broached the subject, I have far less to say about that other unanswered question that hangs over this episode, concerning how Homer is able to balance his new career as a country music manager with his regular 9 to 5 job at the plant - perhaps he still has the same supervisor from "Dancin Homer", who was just as willing to get temporarily shot of him as they were back then. It's as good an explanation as any.)

On the commentary, they discuss how inherently unpalatable it is for Homer to even contemplate an extramarital affair, although they acknowledge that it's an entirely different kettle of fish where Marge is concerned, with which I obviously agree. They also observe that Marge's anger with Homer at the start of the episode is entirely justified, as most people in her position would have wanted to strangle Homer, which I think is likewise true. Finally, they state that the situation here remains wholesome, where Homer is concerned, because he's entirely oblivious to Lurleen's feelings and does not actually reciprocate them, aaaaand I'm not so sure if I agree with that. It seems to me that Homer IS attracted to Lurleen, only this attraction doesn't register on any conscious level until Lurleen makes her highly unambiguous move on him. Before then, Homer's infatuation with Lurleen plays out in his typically giddy, kid-like fashion, manifesting purely as boundless enthusiasm, and without him ever stopping to think about why he's so drawn to her and her music. And what Groening and his commentary buddies don't acknowledge is that Homer does indeed return to Lurleen after her initial attempt at propositioning him. He also rejects the first offer he gets from the representative of Rebel Yell Records who makes a bid for Lurleen's contract. For the final four minutes of the episode, Homer knows that he's playing with fire, and yet he's reluctant to let go of Lurleen, which implies that he is still undecided as to what he really wants. This begs the question as to what Homer supposes Lurleen could give him that Marge can't, considering that he already has such a sweet deal with her. I said in my coverage of "Simpson and Delilah" that there's nothing Marge could conceivably do that could drive Homer to seek fulfillment elsewhere, and I guess this episode puts that to the test. Despite Groening's words on the matter, I don't think it is the prospect of getting to accompany her further into stardom that has Homer momentarily tempted, but rather Homer's intuition that Lurleen, with her honeyed voice and sensitive song-writing abilities, has a better window into his soul than Marge. After all, Lurleen first wins Homer's attentions with her repeated insistence that, "Your wife don't understand you, but I do." Homer feels a connection with Lurleen because he senses that she, more so than Marge, empathises with what it's like to be a perpetual loser, forever disappointed with one's achievements (or lack thereof) in life. And yet, in the end it's Homer's perpetual loserdom that convinces him that he couldn't have asked for a more wonderful partner than Marge. When Lurleen makes her second attempt at propositioning him, she causes him to flashback through his pitiful history of non-stop romantic rejection, which culminates in Marge finally accepting him for who he is, and Homer realises that there is nobody more empathic and supportive than she. What ultimately prompts Homer to cut ties with Lurleen is not the realisation that she likes him, but rather his coming to terms with the fact that he feels the same way, and if he sticks around any longer, he'll end up crossing a line from which there can be no going back with the woman to whom he owes everything. So he removes himself from the situation, telling Lurleen that all he set out to do was to share her talent with the world, and leaving her future in the hands of the representative from Rebel Yell Records.

What complicates the scenario, and makes "Colonel Homer" such a powerful and multi-layered episode, is that Lurleen, for all her determination to come between Homer and Marge, does not come off as the villain - in fact, if you look at the episode from her perspective then it's a pretty heart-breaking affair. All of the Home-Wreckers except Kashmir end up facing rejection, but Lurleen's story is probably the most tragic of them all because she comes at it from such a stark position of vulnerability. Once again, it's up to the candidness of her song lyrics to do the talking, with titles such as "Don't Look Up My Dress Unless You Mean It", "I'm Basting A Turkey With My Tears" and "I'm Sick Of Your Lying Lips and False Teeth" going some way to reveal just how desolate her life has been up until now. On the DVD commentary, they joke about how ludicrous it is that Lurleen should be so infatuated with Homer when an attractive young woman like herself should be seriously out of his league, but to me it makes sense that Lurleen would like Homer because he's the only man who's ever shown her kindness, and she misinterprets his support and generosity as signs that he's interested in her (at one point Lurleen tells Homer that the concept of men being nice to her without expecting something in return is basically alien to her). She possibly also has Jacques' outsider perspective of Homer and Marge's marriage, in that it's based more on senseless attachment than on anything logical or functional, only from the opposite angle, as Lurleen assumes that Homer is the one who's grown weary of the situation and wants out. (I note that Lurleen - who is, incidentally, the only Home-Wrecker who gets to meet their rival first-hand - doesn't seem at all intimidated by Marge; not only does she kiss Homer right in front of her, she casually tosses off Marge's attempts to lay down her marital territory with that "MRS Homer Simpson" assertion). This is what makes her "Bagged Me A Homer" song so painfully double-edged. On the one hand, this very brazen declaration of her feelings for Homer and her assumption that he's going to be packing in his old life for her confirms Marge's worst fears and indicates that there is a very nasty collision course coming up on the horizon. But it also represents a very sudden, upbeat change in Lurleen's style, which speaks volumes about the shakiness of Lurleen's newfound optimism. She thinks that her life is about to turn around, not because her career is taking off, but because she's finally found a man who cares about her. Lurleen rallies her back-up musicians into the recording with the battle cry "Let's break some hearts!" and it's sadly obvious that the one heart she's setting up to be broken is her own. The ending, when it comes, is not going to be pretty.

Lurleen does actually get closure (which is more than Jacques received), and it's every bit as searingly poignant as we'd expect. Homer realises that he has to wash his hands of her, so he dumps her unceremoniously with the record label representative for the low, low price of $50. Homer misses out on the opportunity to at least squeeze a handsome sum from this emotionally traumatic experience, but accepts that he has something bigger at stake. The final sequence has Lurleen on TV, performing her final song, "Stand By Your Manager", in which she admits defeat, while Homer retreats from the public eye and back to Evergreen Terrace, where he reconciles with Marge. Lurleen gets her big televised break and is now presumably headed for greater things, while Homer willfully embraces his life of humble domesticity. The eyes of the world are now on Lurleen, and yet she's the one who ends up alone. Hard road for her, but then the status quo's a bitch.

So, to answer my initial question, we were certainly in DEFCON 2 for much of this episode, but did we ever cross over into DEFCON 1? It's a tough call; Homer's overall obliviousness and the ambiguity as to what he really wants with Lurleen can only provide a buffer for so far in; the potential tipping point occurs when Homer initially refuses to negotiate the ownership of Lurleen's contract. Not to mention the whole device of Homer's love life flashing before his eyes, which has associations with death. I don't think there's a point where Homer is ever totally convinced that he wants Lurleen over Marge (compared to "Life on The Fast Lane", where Marge did initially accept Jacques' invitation to get physical), which is why I'd still lean toward keeping it in DEFCON 2, but I do think we've gone as far up to the edge as we possibly can.

Finally, I want to say something about the line-up at the Googolplex, which is a really loving tribute to the inanity of the movie-going experience in the early 1990s (although I can't work out if I'll Fry Your Face III is meant to be an action movie or some kind of cannibalistic horror). If I had to choose between this dubious lot, then I would certainly be headed into The Smell in Room 19. It seems that the most popular movie is Look Who's Oinking, which is an obvious dig at the Look Who's Talking films starring John Travolta and that lady from Cheers that were hot at the time. Ordinarily, I'd make some kind of Philistines remark, except that I recently came dangerously close to purchasing the full set of those at a junk shop for the bargain price of 50p. I put it back when I realised that it was missing the disc with the movie where Herb Powell plays a talking dog. I guess I've forfeited my right to call anybody a Philistine for at least six months.

I Am Curious (Yellow): The Vexing Case of The Yellow Album (aka Things That Make You Go Hmmm!)

So, speaking of vanishing Prince numbers in projects associated with James L. Brooks...isn't it about time we discussed The Yellow Album, the Simpsons' lesser-known and (much-belated) follow-up to their 1990 hit record The Simpsons Sing The Blues?

Back in 1989, The Simpsons debuted as a standalone series and the world fell in love with it almost immediately. In particular, they fell in love with Bart's anarchic, t-shirt slogan-ready irreverence, and you can bet that corporate America was all poised to turn Bart's one-kid rebellion to their advantage. One of the most infamous products of this initial bout of Bartmania was a novelty pop song, "Do The Bartman", which spawned a popular music video and some years down the line was confirmed to have been co-written by Michael Jackson, who is referenced explicitly in the lyrics. (I hesitate to raise the question, but what exactly is the status of "Do The Bartman" in light of the decision made by the Simpsons heads back in March of this year? Has it gone into the same sin bin as "Stark Raving Dad"?). A worldwide smash, "Do The Bartman" wound up becoming the headline act for the album The Simpsons Sing The Blues (the brainchild of producer David Geffen, who later convinced Jackson Browne to take a stab at writing the title song to James L. Brooks' attempted musical I'll Do Anything), which appeared on shelves in December 1990 in time to exploit the lucrative Christmas markets and swiftly went double platinum. Nowadays, it's easy to dismiss the project as a cynical, meritless attempt to cash in on what at the time was foreseen as being only a momentary fad, but back then we all thought that The Bartman was the height of cool. In the years that followed the Simpsons themselves had absolutely no qualms about poking fun at this particularly gaudy chapter in their careers, the first really transparent example occurring in the Season 3 episode "Treehouse of Horror II", where the family become overnight sensations through the malefic powers of a severed monkey paw and put out an album entitled The Simpsons Go Calypso, complete with Homer and Marge singing a duet of "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)". The show took an even more viciously self-deprecating turn in the Season 5 episode "Bart Gets Famous", where Bart experiences an intense but ultimately short-lived period in the limelight through the equally malefic magic of hollow, easily marketed sloganeering, and gets to record an ersatz MC Hammer track in which he blathers his catchphrase over and over (elsewhere within the same season, Lisa laments that she would be mortified if anybody ever made a lousy product with the Simpsons name on it). Meanwhile, Krustophenia sits on the shelf.

The Simpsons Sing The Blues was such a runaway success that it was basically inevitable that talk would eventually turn to the possibility of a sequel. For a time Dame Rumour was all abuzz about a second Simpsons album being in the works, with contributions from Prince, Linda Ronstadt and C+C Music Factory, but this was nothing more than vaporware...until November 1998, when The Yellow Album randomly showed up out of the blue (albeit without a Prince track in sight). This prompted a few new questions as to what had taken it so long and why it had suddenly appeared now, long after the initial "Do The Bartman" star had faded (although the TV series was still going strong). The story Dame Rumour was now telling was that James L. Brooks was pushing for the album to be released back in 1993, whereas Matt Groening was extremely eager to can the entire project (although he co-wrote one of the tracks, "Ten Commandments of Bart"). From the looks of it, Groening had won out for years, and managed to keep the general populace from experiencing the delights of The Yellow Album, but I guess that in 1998 someone noticed that they had this album lying around and figured they might as well use it. Actually, Robert W. Getz, author of Unauthorised Guide To The Simpsons Collectables and Further Adventures in The Simpsons Collectibles, speculates that what finally enabled the album to see the light of day was the success of Songs In The Key of Springfield, a soundtrack album comprised of songs taken directly from the TV series, released by Rhino Records in 1997. A sequel, Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons, followed later in 1999, but I find it plausible that they yearned for something to fill that gap and keep the public's appetite for Simpsons music whetted, and The Yellow Album was all there and ready to go. If so, then The Yellow Album was effectively put out, not as a follow-up to its spiritual ancestor The Simpsons Sing The Blues, but to the first soundtrack album, despite their being such drastically different animals. With one, you get the multitude of affectionate Broadway parodies and general pop cultural riffing that encapsulated so much of the zest and spirit of the series over the years. The Yellow Album, by contrast, is a slickly-produced pop product, assembled with a clear air of bubblegum disposability that many are inclined to dismiss as contradictory to the entire Simpsons ethos. Make no mistake, this is not a universally beloved album among fans.

My parents bought me a copy of The Yellow Album for the Xmas of '98; back then, I had no idea that there had been a follow-up to The Simpsons Sing The Blues in the works, but even without knowing the backstory, I figured out very quickly that this album's existence was the result of a freaky tear in the space-time continuum. Several details betrayed the fact that it was intended for consumption by denizens of a much younger time in the 1990s. Firstly, there are numerous references made to the TV series throughout, although to nothing further than Season 4. Secondly, on the album cover we see a Krusty doll wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "Welcome Ren & Stimpy", although by 1998 The Ren & Stimpy Show had been out of production for three years and was already yesterday's news. Finally, there's the issue of the music itself, which feels like a perfectly-preserved time capsule of the kind of synthy, dance-orientated filler material you'd have found on many a pop album from a few years prior. Listening to The Yellow Album in the final days of 1998 was a disconcerting experience, like socialising with someone who'd been in a coma for years and was now staggering around, dazed and bewildered at how much the world had changed since they last laid eyes on it. I liked it, but it was so square.

Still, it has to be said that, however much mud fans and music critics were inclined to sling at The Yellow Album, the cover, a mock-up of The Beatles' 1967 game-changer Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is undeniably brilliant. The album itself might have fallen through the cracks of zeitgeist and into an oblivion of general indifference, but the cover has a degree of cultural iconography all of its own. It was recreated as the couch gag for a couple of Season 8 episodes ("Bart After Dark" and "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" - although it was later swapped out in the latter for a Flintstones gag, in order to commemorate The Simpsons surpassing The Flintstones as the longest running primetime animated sitcom). In 2005, US artist Brian Donnelly, aka Kaws, created his own version of the cover, "The KAWS Album", in which the characters were all modified to have freaky X's over their eyes, and which in April 2019 sold for 14.8 million at a Hong Kong auction. They've got Sideshow Bob on there, which definitely makes me happy, but what's lovelier still is that they also have Karl (from "Simpson and Delilah"), making this one of the rare pieces of Simpsons merchandise out there to acknowledge his under-championed existence. Ditto Herb Powell. I'm aware that their being featured here is yet another symptom of the album being intended for a slightly earlier era, for back in 1993 their episodes were still relatively recent and there was a host of more prominent supporting characters who had yet to be introduced or cemented as series regulars, but in 1998 it was still pleasantly surprising to see such a loving throwback to some of those Springfieldian faces who hadn't been seen for so long.

The biggest mystery of The Yellow Album is of course the fate of that phantom Prince song. The track, entitled "My Name Is Bart", was a pastiche of Prince's own 1992 single "My Name Is Prince". Obviously, the Prince collaboration would have been the album's heavy-hitter, intended to equal their earlier success in working with Michael Jackson (even if they were unable to publicise Jackson's involvement at the time), so it seems egregious that this particular track should be the one unaccounted for when The Yellow Album finally clawed its way out of limbo. We know that the track was featured as part of the original package; it was included on some promo copies of the album, but for whatever reason was yanked from the commercial release. I'm not convinced that its inclusion would have enabled The Yellow Album to resonate any better with the general public - "My Name Is Prince" was already six years old by the time it appeared, and the album had certainly missed its opportunity to ride along on its coattails - but it feels incomplete without it. What The Yellow Album really feels as if it needs is some kind of a hook, an obvious stand-out track to give the project a better sense of structure and identity than just a random assortment of Simpsons-orientated pop.

Nathan Rabin of The AV Club covered the album as part of his Bureau of Regrettable Ideas, and made no bones about how little he cared for it. Much of what he says is entirely valid, although some of his criticisms are a little...peculiar? Specifically I'm talking about this one line:

"...remarkably, the title, redolent of hot, steaming urine, is one of the lesser miscalculations involved."

Err, you feeling well there, Rabin? At the very least, I hope that Rabin is consistent and had the exact same criticism of Yellow Submarine. I'm not even going to ask what kind of imagery The White Album must conjure up for him.

Rabin reserves most of his vitriol for The Yellow Album, although he is every bit as scathing toward The Simpsons Sing The Blues, which he dismisses as "ancillary merchandise, the equivalent of a poorly constructed Bart Simpson giveaway doll from Burger King." My response to that would be that even poorly constructed giveaway dolls from fast food outlets can have their pleasures. I'll confess that, although I'm well aware of the mercenary, corporate intentions behind the product, I actually do like The Simpsons Sing The Blues. It is something of a guilty pleasure, my perspective is undoubtedly coloured in no small way by my personal nostalgia, and I freely admit that there's a mind-numbing amount of filler in the track list, but absolutely nothing in me will ever allow myself to spurn it as a bad album. I'm enough of a sap to feel strangely moved by Lisa's rendition of Billie Holliday's "God Bless The Child", and Smithers gets an improvised guitar solo, so that's a plus point. And while "Do The Bartman" itself does sound unmistakably like a product of its time, the music video still has a special place in my heart (I mean, why wouldn't it? Sideshow Bob puts in an appearance, Jacques and Karl have a queer-baiting moment, and there's even a Willard reference, although you'd have to be particularly eagle-eyed to spot it).

The Yellow Album on the other hand...well, it doesn't have quite the same luxury of nostalgia. Nor did it come with any fun or witty visuals to help inject fresh life into any of its overproduced pop numbers (music videos were planned for the proposed 1993 release, but by 1998 those plans had obviously been ditched). Honestly, I think the album's best niche is as a simple curiosity piece. If you look at it less as a serious attempt to add something meaningful and innovative to the Simpsons legacy and more as a strange side-project that never quite came to full fruition, then perhaps it can inspire some degree of affection in you. It's an album that arrived so conspicuously in the wrong time and place as to suggest a disrupted or alternative universe, and not necessarily as bleak as the one Rabin identifies where "The Simpsons wasn’t a searing, trenchant satire of American culture and the hypocrisy and greed of our cultural institutions, but rather a cheesy vehicle for a novelty joke band." This is a bizarre case of an album that only half-exists; a puzzling paradox of What Might Have Been vs What Was But Not Really. Above all, The Yellow Album is just bemusing.

The opening track is "Love?", which is loosely based on the events of the Season 3 episode "Bart's Friend Falls In Love", and which was co-written by Robert Clivilles and David Cole of C+C Music Factory. It makes for an appropriate enough opener, since it's emblematic of the kind of problems that beset The Yellow Album as a whole, not least its obsolescence. By 1993 C+C Music Factory's sound was already starting to sound kind of dated, and by 1998 this obviously stood no chance of holding up. There is also a deep-rooted underlying weirdness that pervades this song, which I don't think is limited to Nelson Muntz's inexplicable cameo as Bart's mirror reflection, or that the refrain of "What's this word called love?" for years sounded like, "What's this spread called love?" to my ears (in fact, that's what I still hear). Something seems fundamentally off-kilter with the entire Simpsons universe, and that's a feeling that doesn't quite go away when the second track kicks in and Lisa starts singing her rendition of  "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves", originally a 1985 hit for Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin, here with Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart. With "My Name Is Bart" excised, the album doesn't have an obvious successor to "Do The Bartman"; the closest offering would be the Groening-written "Ten Commandments of Bart", which might have done the job had it only managed to be a couple of minutes shorter.

The Yellow Album boasts some weird-ass collaborations; for one, there's a more-or-less straight love duet between Homer Simpson and guest artist Linda Ronstadt (um?) but it doesn't compare to the penultimate track, "Every Summer With You", which is by far the most baffling song in the listing. Marge and Abe are apparently now an item (um?) and are singing about their desire to take a vacation at San Diego bay, and...oh wait, that's supposed to be Homer? So I guess the real mystery would be just what the heck was up with Dan on the day he recorded this (edit: it has since been brought to my attention that the track has actually been presented in the incorrect speed, so Dan's presumably not to blame, although he benefits the least from this particular inexplicability). Actually, despite just how distractingly off-colour Dan's performance sounds, this is probably my favourite track on the album; it's sweet, gentle and hasn't aged too hideously. It's also the only track in the album in which Marge appears (since "I Just Can't Help Myself", which features verses from the other three vocal family members, doesn't see fit to include her...that track is probably my least favourite, despite Bart referencing The Twilight Zone). My second favourite would be "She's Comin' Out Swingin'" by Lisa and The P-Funk All-Stars, which like "Ten Commandments" suffers from being overlong, but does at least incorporate the novelty of hearing Lisa converse with Dr Funkenstein about social security cards.

Elsewhere on The Yellow Album, we also get "Twenty-Four Hours A Day", a vaguely Bollywood-infused dance track performed by Apu, which was presumably intended to be the album's counterpart to its predecessor's "Look At All Those Idiots", in being the only track to momentarily peer at life outside of the Simpson household. I suspect that they purposely penned a song dedicated to one of Hank Azaria's characters to compensate for that fact he was left out of The Simpsons Sing The Blues. I happen to think that "Look At All Those Idiots", a surprisingly successful combination of contemporary dance-pop and Burns' searing contempt for his fellow man, is the superior of the two. Unlike The Simpsons Sing Blues, where only three supporting characters appeared - Burns, Smithers and Bleeding Gums Murphy - The Yellow Album pools from the show's ever-growing supporting cast fairly often, and numerous cameos abound, whether they make sense or not (although that aforementioned Nelson appearance is by far the most confusing).

The final track on the album is "Hail To Thee, Kamp Krusty", which was lifted from the Season 4 episode "Kamp Krusty", and closes this otherwise upbeat album on a bizarrely dark and unsettling note, in which Bart finally sees through the money-grubbing callousness of his idol Krusty The Clown and incites rebellion among his fellow campers. Nowadays the track inevitably carries a melancholic tone, thanks to the participation of the late Russi Taylor. For you see, The Yellow Album DOES feature a Prince, and his name is Martin. If nothing else, then "Hail To Thee, Kamp Krusty" is a wonderful place to hear Taylor deliver a star performance as her most prominent Simpsons character. Krusty, Otto, Lisa and Bart all get their turn in the spotlight, but it's Martin who really steals the show, as he belts out an indignant tirade after being subjected to the horrors of Krusty's weight loss program: "A pox on thee, clown Krusty/Your behaviour gives us pause/Your heart is hard/You have no regard/For the state's child labour laws!"

Perhaps the track's most vexing curiosity lies in Rabin's most astute criticism of The Yellow Album as a whole, namely that it is "a non-ironic version of the kind of mercenary cash-in The Simpsons has satirized mercilessly over the years, most notably via Krusty The Clown." This track, after all, does climax with Bart's disillusionment as a beleaguered consumer whose brand loyalty has caused him to suffer the ill-effects of one crummy tie-in product too many. As the track fades out, with the tortured cries of an enraged and malnourished Bart demanding the total annihilation of Kamp Krusty, it feels so dissonant, like the album suddenly took a sharp turning into a very run-down neighbourhood and decided to settle there. It's almost as if The Yellow Album has, on its death bed, become painfully self-aware and wants out.

What The Yellow Album ultimately offers is a beguiling collection of oddities, each more head-scratching than the last; its entire being is just way too perplexing for me to possibly dislike it, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the series' stranger, less successful offshoots (along with "Springfield's Most Wanted"). Coincidentally, The Yellow Album dropped on 24th November 1998, the exact same day as Chef Aid, that baffling tie-in album for the young and impudent South Park, which was currently enjoying its own equivalent of Bartmania and, like The Simpsons before it, desperately trying to squeeze out every last attainable dime while it lasted. I can't decide whether that put The Yellow Album at a disadvantage or not. On the one hand, South Park was very much the hot and edgy cartoon of the hour, and The Yellow Album must have seemed hopelessly dated and inept, a retroactive fad with a sound from yesteryear throwing itself into the same arena as those fresh and funky foul-mouths from Colorado. On the other hand, Chef Aid was such a poorly-assembled, unlistenable mess of an album (a disappointing proportion of the tracks had nothing to do with South Park and amounted to blatant guest whoring, linked in under the tenuous banner of a fictitious benefit concert) that The Yellow Album could only have scored points for being the lesser anticlimax. You may think that The Yellow Album had something of an identity crisis, in being very conspicuously born out of time, but Chef Aid is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.

Finally, am I the only person out there who would actually love to have heard the rendition of "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)" by Homer and Marge in full? Might have made for a wonderful hidden track on any subsequent Simpsons releases.