The War of The Simpsons (aka People Don't Do That Type of Thing With Fish)

Warning: Contains spoilers for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Old Man and The Sea.

As it turns out, my coverage of the Home-Wrecker saga is still not complete. For there is another. I believe that there is a fifth, unofficial Home-Wrecker whose role in potentially capsizing Marge and Homer's ever-beleaguered union deserves consideration - albeit a very different kind of Home-Wrecker, one who was never going to show up several seasons later as part of an aptly-named bowling team in a visual call-back. (Team mascot, maybe?) I refer of course to General Sherman, the freakishly large catfish whose enigmtic wiles nearly lured Homer away from Marge in Season 2's, "The War of The Simpsons" (7F20), which first aired on May 2nd 1991. Of all the bizarre love triangles to have materialised over the course of the series, this might be the most way-out.

What makes Sherman such an an atypical Home-Wrecker (besides the obvious) is that his own unique relationship with Homer is founded, ostensibly, on enmity. He and Homer wind up on opposing sides of a life or death struggle - Homer aspires to catch the fabled catfish and prove his worthiness in a judgemental world, while Sherman presumably just wants to live another day (although actually, the fish may have a slightly more complex agenda, which we'll get to in due course). And yet at one point Homer explicitly professes love for for his catfish nemesis,when he informs it that, "I love you, but I must kill you!" This particular line was lifted directly from Ernest Hemingway's novella The Old Man and The Sea, the quintessential Man vs. Fish story, which was also referenced earlier on in the season in the opening of "Bart Gets an F". The protagonist, Santiago, makes a similar declaration of love for the giant marlin he has been battling in an acknowledgement of their kinship; recognition that, although ostensibly on opposite sides, they are really participants in the same eternal cycle, with no choice but either to kill or be killed. Hemingway's story is less about the supposed conflict between Man and Nature than it is about Man submitting to Nature's will and rising to its challenges like any other being. Although Santiago overcomes the marlin, he recognises that this cycle of consumption will eventually get the better of him too, and so it does when a school of sharks appears and devours the marlin's carcass, leaving Santiago believing that he has failed them both. The war being waged between Homer and Sherman is likewise the age-old war between predator and prey. Homer is a self-professed predator, at one point attempting to assert his supremacy over Sherman with the taunt that, "I've got a skillet and a stick of butter with your name on it!". Yet the struggle opens with a disturbing subversion on conventional fishing dynamics, in which Sherman is actually the one who hooks and draws Homer into the conflict. Although Homer had set out with the intention of catching Sherman, he has a change of heart and ends up battling the fish anyway purely by happenstance - he picks up a discarded fishing rod, intending to return it to his owner, only to find that Sherman is already waiting for him on the other end. As with Mindy Simmons, it's almost as if Homer has had this date with Sherman from the beginning. Homer's pursuit of the fish, and his declaration of love for it, suggest a reverence similar to Santiago's for his worthy adversary, although it also implicitly reinforces the idea that Homer's interest in the fish constitutes an infidelity to Marge, who has explicitly forbidden him to go after it. For Homer and Marge have come to Catfish Lake to attend a couples' retreat being hosted by Timothy and Helen Lovejoy, and the outcome of the weekend has the potential to either make or break their imperiled marriage. To Marge, Homer's aspirations to devote a significant portion of the trip to catching Sherman are a signal that he perhaps isn't taking the marital crisis as seriously as her. When Homer attempts to sneak out while Marge is sleeping and Marge catches him in the act, you don't have to squint too hard to see shades of Homer attempting to sneak out for a romantic rendezvous.

The title of the episode is a reference to The War of The Roses (1989), a black comedy directed by Homer's own half-brother, Danny DeVito, which details the increasingly bitter marital breakdown between characters played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (not the same characters they portrayed in Romancing The Stone and The Jewel of The Nile, thank gravy). By contrast, Homer and Marge's relationship woes are more genteel (for one thing, the family pets are still alive by the end of "The War of The Simpsons"), although of a markedly more overtly bitter nature than those in "Life on The Fast Lane", when we last saw Homer and Marge come dangerously close to estrangement. There, Homer and Marge only quarrel once, early on, and after Marge meets Jacques it becomes less a matter of Marge being mad at Homer than of her interests shifting silently elsewhere. Here, Marge has blatantly reached the end of her tether with Homer, to the point that she's seriously considering liquidating their union, regardless of whether or not she has anyone else to turn to in the aftermath. The suggestion that their marriage has been slowly but steadily eroding since its genesis is implicit in their opening exchange, when Marge contends that they have never thrown a party for their friends and neighbours, to which Homer responds, "What about that big bash we had with all the champagne and musicians and holy men and everything?", and has to be indignantly reminded that, "That was our wedding!"* In between, it seems, there has been little else to talk about. Their initial conflict, concerning Homer's lack of restraint over Marge's meticulously arranged party snacks, likewise establishes just how much potential there is for the evening to go disastrously wrong. To Marge, the party represents a vital opportunity to improve her social standing, whereas to Homer it is little more than an excuse to indulge his carnal appetites. Which he does when Ned prepares a moreish cocktail that has Homer swiftly plastered, and before they know it his unfortunate guests are being subjected to a non-stop shower of social embarrassments.

The sequence detailing Homer's increasingly inebriated antics is a masterpiece in terms of just how unsparingly gruesome it is. Whereas most depictions of drunken behaviour in the series were invariably played for laughs, here we have Homer take us through quite a broad and overwhelmingly unlovely spectrum of emotions, and the results are not for the squeamish. There are some humourous moments, such as when he chews out a gentleman he's only known for a couple of hours but has apparently wanted to tell off for years, but you can practically feel the awkwardness dripping off the walls throughout, and you never lose sight of just how demeaned, at best, their entire company is to be there. The low point of the evening arrives when Homer encounters Maude Flanders by the peanut bowl and starts drooling over her cleavage, but even before we get that far we have a genuinely unsettling bit where Homer tenderly encourages Bart to perform some unspecified party trick before his guests, only to suddenly flip moods and curtly order Bart to bed. So strong is Marge's indignation that she's willing to endure the humiliation of the Lovejoys' couples retreat in an effort to teach Homer a lesson about his marital responsibilities, although much to her chagrin, Homer, while sorry for his behaviour at the party, ends up getting sidetracked by a fish.

Somewhat predictably, I have seen viewers criticise Marge for the stance she takes in "War of The Simpsons", which does, unfortunately, seem to be a running pattern for any episode in which Marge seriously loses her cool with Homer. Some wonder why Marge wouldn't allow Homer a little time out to go fishing, particularly since they weren't required to be with the Lovejoys 24/7, but then I think that's to ignore Marge's implied motive for signing up for the retreat in the first place, which is that she wants Homer to get the message that, as far as she's concerned, their marriage is on the rocks and he urgently needs to get his shit together. When Marge commits herself and Homer to attendance, she does so visibly out of anger, not regret or desperation. Perhaps there is also an element of vengeance in her eagerness to sign up, in that she wants to punish Homer by putting him through much the same degradation as he did her. She certainly can't be acting out of any sincere belief that the Lovejoys are going to have all of the answers to their problems. The thing about the Lovejoys' retreat is that, basically, it's a sham. I think the futility of the affair is underlined when Homer asks Lovejoy if he'll have any time to go fishing during the retreat, and is informed that, "A marriage can't be reconciled in a few hours, Homer. It takes a whole weekend to do that!" Just one weekend, huh? Lovejoy's incompetence is further underscored when he advises Homer to "bait our hooks with honesty", a metaphor that's almost mind-boggling in terms of how flagrantly oxymoronic it is. Homer does not appreciate the condescension, snarkily retorting that, "I also understand bowling expressions." Our reaction to the situation is double-edged - we recognise that Marge's marital troubles are entirely genuine, more so than the Lovejoys blatantly have the time or capacity to remedy, while at the same time the particulars of the retreat are so ridiculous that it's difficult not to see eye-to-eye with Homer's sardonic asides. At the conclusion to the retreat, the best Lovejoy is able to do is to offer to give Marge a certificate she can frame declaring that, in his opinion, the failings are entirely Homer's, an outcome that Marge's dejected frown suggests has brought her no satisfaction.

At the retreat, Homer and Marge find themselves seated between two other couples who clearly represent different polar extremes of marital interplay. On the one side are the unbearably blissful Flanders, who are attending the retreat on account of Maude's audacious tendency to underline passages in Ned's Bible when she can't find her own. The frivolousness of their grievance serves to further show up the sheer magnitude of Homer and Marge's problems, although Ned and Maude's presence at the disastrous party also represents a continuation of the lingering fall-out and unspoken judgements that have been seething since Act One - at one point, Homer mortifies Maude by explicitly citing their unsavoury interaction over the peanut bowl. The third couple are ostensibly strangers and identify by the pseudonyms of "John" and "Gloria", but should be entirely familiar to those with an interest in the cinema of Mike Nichols. For they are actually George and Martha, the characters portrayed by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Nichols' 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Even if you're unfamiliar with Nichols' film, I think you'll pick up quickly that there is something distinctly off about these two characters, for they speak suspiciously eloquently for Springfieldians. (They weren't even the first characters in the series to have been lifted more-or-less directly from another source, for Cesar and Ugolin, the two unscrupulous winemakers with whom Bart stayed in "The Crepes of Wrath", were basically transplanted from Claude Berri's films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, monikers and all.) George and Martha are at one another's throats here, which is entirely appropriate, as Nichols' film is a dark comedy-melodrama about marital warfare at its very reddest in tooth and claw. It takes place in the aftermath of a party where much drinking has already occurred, with George, a college professor, and Martha, the daughter of the university's president, constantly striving to viciously one-up each other within the company of a younger couple, Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis), who have joined our protagonists for post-party top-up. A portion of the talk revolves around George and Martha's absent son, who is supposedly turning sixteen tomorrow, but there is a disturbing revelation toward the end of the film when, in a final act of retaliation, George reveals to Martha that he has just received a telegram containing the bad news that their son was killed in a road accident while serving to avoid a porcupine. A distraught Martha challenges George on this, but he insists that, "I can kill him if I want to", while Nick nervously imparts that, "I think I understand this." The implication is, of course, that George and Martha's relationship was stunted by their inability to reproduce and so they invented an imaginary child in order to compensate, only on this particular night George has finally tired of the charade and decided to end it. (It's for this reason that some contemporary commentators accused Albee of writing a play in which the main characters are intended to be stand-ins for a homosexual couple, although this allegation is obviously myopic, in that it ignores that a great many heterosexual couples are also unable to conceive.) The film ends on a note of uncertainty as to what lies ahead for our unhappy couple, with George and Martha once again alone and watching the dawn emerging on the horizon. George asks Martha the titular question, recalling one of her taunts from earlier in the film, to which she responds, "I am, George. I am." Compare this to the ludicrous ease with which Lovejoy here apparently solves their marital problems - he asks them to "remember my saving your lives and bringing you happiness when we pass the collection plate next week", although we are left with some doubt as to whether George and Martha's newfound euphoria will even last that long.

The appearance of George and Martha at the Lovejoys' retreat makes for a hilarious in-joke, but their presence also calls attention to the nature of the personal crises facing Marge and Homer. In his 1978 book, Mike Nichols, H. Wayne Schuth identifies the perpetual drinking going on throughout Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as indicative of the extent to which the characters are stifling, or "drowning" one another with their bitterness and self-delusion. Martha even makes explicit reference to this allusion when she observes that, "a drowning man takes down those nearest". Schuth writes that, "George and Martha and Nick and Honey are symbolically drowning, not just in liquor, but in the way that they relate to each other. In order to save himself from this symbolic drowning, George symbolically kills the fantasy child that binds him and Martha together. Now they will have to swim in reality, not drown in fantasy." Schuth acknowledges that, "there is some question whether they can do this", but nevertheless sees the final image of the new day dawning as "hope for the future." (p.34-36) Kyle Stevens, in Mike Nichols: Sex, Language and The Reinvention of Psychological Realism, has a different interpretation, arguing that it's never made explicit if the child George and Martha fabricated had been a long-running coping mechanism of theirs, or if this was part of a game they were simply playing for just one evening (which would call to question the authenticity of Martha's display of grief at the end). As for the new day dawning, he notes that, "This is implicitly juxtaposed with the shot of the moon that opens the film, although in black-and-white the two do not seem so different." (p.67) Stevens, then, is more pessimistic as to whether George and Martha have really escaped their entrapment, or if they are merely setting the stage for their daily cycle of marital warfare to begin all over again.

An important motif throughout "The War of The Simpsons" is that Homer, too, is drowning, both in liquor - hence his excessive drinking (like a fish) at the party - and in his overpowering sense of personal failure, which is merely accentuated by his disastrous display. The sequence in which Homer is tasked with remembering his drunken behaviour and initially envisions himself as the toast of a genteel soiree in the style of a New Yorker cartoon, only for the ugly reality to come clawing back in in a dizzying flurry, is a disturbing one, culminating in Homer coming up against a wall of accusing eyes, as his friends and neighbours gawk in horror at his numerous indiscretions. It illustrates the discrepancy between the person Homer wishes he could be and the contemptible screw-up the world blatantly sees whenever it looks his way. Meanwhile, Marge is also drowning in her stagnant and unequal marriage, something that is made painfully evident when she is called on by Lovejoy to list her troubles with Homer, and ends up reciting a lengthy list of grievances that takes her audience and even herself by surprise. Homer recognises that he is failing as a husband, and that pains him. Still, rather than putting his focus and energy in attempting to salvage his marriage, it seems his personal dissatisfaction is prompting him to seek validation elsewhere - hence why he leaps at the opportunity to prove himself to a group of complete strangers at a bait store when he learns about the fabled General Sherman. Homer repeatedly insists that hooking the legendary catfish will bring him his fortune and fame, although the hollowness of this proclamation is twice made plain, firstly when he informs Sherman that catching him will put him up there with all of the fishing greats, of whom he is unable to name any, and secondly when Marge challenges him as to who out there considers his conquest of the catfish to be of that much importance, and Homer responds, "those weirdos in the worm store!" Clearly, Homer does not go after Sherman because he seriously believes that doing so would transform him into an overnight sensation. Rather, Homer seems to be fighting a much more personal battle, one that's less about catching a giant fish per se than it is recovering his broken pride. Homer wants to catch Sherman to prove to himself, above anyone, his own worthiness. Sherman is more than just an abnormally large catfish - to Homer, he is self-respect, self-belief, self-worth and so many other rare and elusive qualities that have been slipping away with each day that he has failed to be a pillar of his community. Homer feels shamed by his fellow human, so it's not surprising that he would seek out the company of a fish; their primal enmity offers him the chance to transcend the constraints and judgements of his prosaic existence, and to simply be a man battling a fellow participant in the broader cycle of life and consumption. As such, the fish becomes his ideal mate, which is made clear in a particularly grotesque moment where Marge is berating Homer, and he sees her face morph into that of a catfish. Well, Troy McClure would surely understand.

The drowning allusion is further emphasised when Homer ends up battling the freakish catfish on a water terrain, and is at one point knocked overboard by Sherman; it is now literally a battle to keep himself from sinking into a watery abyss, which he manages more effectively than the metaphorical battles at the party and the retreat. Like Santiago, Homer rises to the challenge and eventually overpowers Sherman. He basks in his moment of immense triumph, but the cycle of consumption is unending, and we know that Homer will not keep his place atop the ladder for long - sure enough, Marge then appears and assumes the role of the mako sharks of Hemingway's story, in undercutting the epic battle that has just unfolded between man and fish, and suggesting that their confrontation was ultimately futile. Homer believes that by reeling the fish he has proven his worth, but this is all meaningless to Marge, who only sees the fish as a further emblem of Homer's recklessness and self-interest. Upon hearing this, Homer reflexively pushes the fish back, negating his victory over Sherman and surrendering the trophy he fought so tirelessly to claim; only after doing so does Homer contemplate the significance of his actions, in demonstrating that his devotions to Marge were always his top priority. Homer reflects on this confoundedly, as if he himself is surprised by this outcome. He and Marge embrace and, then Sherman reappears to share a private moment with the viewer.

If you've listened to the DVD commentary for this episode, then you'll know that creator Matt Groening hates, with a vengeance, the moment where General Sherman resurfaces and winks at the camera. This isn't at all surprising - it combines fourth wall breaking AND anthropomorphism, two common cartoon conventions that Groening was determined to steer away from in an effort to keep the series grounded in some semblance of reality (besides which, catfish don't have eyelids, so winking would be a physical impossibility for them - what are you teaching our children?). Sherman's conspiratorial wink to the audience is a jarring moment for sure, but if we're concerned with realism, then is it any stranger than the sequence in "Old Money" where Abe finds himself sharing his big dipper carriage with the ghost of the recently-deceased Bea Simmons? Seeing the fish wink conspiratorially at the camera completely changes our perception of Sherman, and of the conflict that has just taken place between himself and Homer, for it implies that this outcome was part of Sherman's plan all along - rather than lure Homer away from Marge, it was his intention to give Homer the opportunity to prove himself to Marge. Maybe he's not such a Home-Wrecker after all; in fact, that fish is assuredly a better marriage counselor than the Lovejoys. The absurdity of a fish taking an active interest in the state of Marge and Homer's marriage seems less perplexing when you consider that, as we observed previously in "Life on The Fast Lane", the Simpsons universe does seem to have an in-built mechanism for preserving itself whenever the very centre of its being is at risk of unraveling. In that sense, Sherman serves much the same purpose as that ironic street. But the fact that Sherman was last seen sinking inertly into the water, only to spring dramatically to life when Homer and Marge embrace, would alternatively suggest that Sherman has been reinvigorated by their reconciliation. He is revived, because so is the mutual bond between Marge and Homer. This hints that there may be some deeper symbolism still to Sherman. I would argue that the elusive fish actually represents a part of Homer's self with which he desperately yearns to be reconciled - he still embodies Homer's pride and self-respect, only in attempting to land Sherman, Homer came dangerously close to suffocating those qualities altogether (in that sense, Sherman too was momentarily "drowning", only being a fish he does so out of water). Only when he relinquishes Sherman, and with him, his self-interest, does Homer finally find release from his drowning and truly recover his self-respect. Sherman represents the qualities that Homer has been seeking but, paradoxically, could only obtain through his willingness to let go and demonstrate regard for others. Sherman's abrupt springing to life and his knowing wink at the camera are a signal that all is right with the universe, and that Homer, for the time being anyway, is once again assured about his place within it. The idea that the fish represents a part of Homer that he considered lost but has now been reconciled with is reinforced in the episode's final scene, which takes place, unusually, well away from the family and in the company of extras. The bait store owner is telling the story of the legendary Sherman to another customer, although the legend has now been expanded to include mention of the man who almost caught him - "Went by the name of Homer. Seven feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks. And his eyes were like steel, cold and hard. Had a shock of hair, red like he fires of Hell..." Thus, Homer and Sherman have been permanently unified in the bait store owner's colourful myth-making; they are now partners for all eternity, in a legend that continues to be recycled and re-modified with each new passer-by who drops into the bait store. In that regard, Homer got his wish.

Elsewhere in the episode, there is a subplot concerning the younger family members and how they handle their parents' absence, when Abe is left in charge and Bart and Lisa exploit his naivety in order to do all of the things that they ordinarily couldn't under Homer and Marge's watch. Once again, Bart and Lisa are fully aware of the crisis facing their domestic security, despite Marge's conscientious efforts to pull the wool over their eyes - there is a great scene where Marge takes Homer into the car and plays "Jarabe Tapatio" in an effort to shield their dispute from the children, only for us to cut to Bart and Lisa, who comprehend exactly what's happening (and it's implied that this is such a regular occurrence that "Jarabe Tapatio" - which, incidentally, was used for very similar purposes earlier in the season in "Simpson and Delilah" - now has a Pavlovian effect on Lisa). We then have that equally great scene where Homer has to explain to Bart why he behaved so strangely at the party last night, only to discover that Bart's already several steps ahead of him. The kids know that things are awry - compared to "Life on The Fast Lane", though, it doesn't seem to be eating too big a hole in them here, possibly because they've got the excitement of having no rules and boundaries in place to keep them occupied. Lisa has doubts about the ethics of taking advantage of Abe in this manner, but she remains complicit in the deception until Bart elects to throw a house party of their own, whereupon Lisa declares that, "We've gone too far, and set the children's rights movements back for decades!" Abe, meanwhile, is so distraught (or so it seems) at his failure to be a good babysitter that Bart and Lisa are shamed into cleaning the house and removing all traces of the children's party before Homer and Marge's return - at this point, Abe gets the last laugh, in revealing that his tears were feigned and that he was merely playing the children at their own manipulation game. Perhaps it is Abe, and not Homer, who truly embodies the spirit of Santiago. Like Santiago, Abe is reaching the end of his time, and Bart and Lisa assume control of the household because they figure that he's past it, and that all that's left now is for their generation to inevitably displace him. But Abe, in the face of such overwhelming adversity, proves that there's life and resourcefulness left in him yet. Far from allowing his youngers to render him irrelevant, he ends up nurturing them with worldly wisdom, much as Santiago does for his own young protege, Manolin - in this case, it's the wisdom that Bart discerns when he reflects that, "I'll never trust another old person again." The cycle of life makes chum and champions of us all.

* This, though, is contradicted by flashbacks in "I Married Marge" of Season 3 and "A Milhouse Divided" of Season 8, which suggest that Homer and Marge never had such a glamorous ceremony in the first place.