Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Fireman's Story

When the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" campaign first launched in 1987, the idea was to divert emphasis from the immediate consequences of drink driving and to focus on the emotional devastation that was going to linger on long after that fateful moment of collision, reverberating, inevitably, throughout the entire lifetimes of those affected. Even more harrowing than the sight of vehicles crumpling and bodies rupturing was the sight of hurt individuals attempting to go about their business and resume something resembling normalcy when the psychological fallout continues to tear them apart. The real wreckage in such accidents, as is hinted in the campaign slogan, is the one that occurs in the aftermath, subtler to the eye but no less excruciating to those who live it.

The original tactic was one of all-out sombreness, preliminary installments being characterised by their use of dull colours and a kind of atmospheric inertia, evocative of time slowing to a deadening crawl and trapping the occupants in their unending grief. The haunting plainness of these films was geared toward creating a sense of authenticity, a naked emotional honesty designed to replicate the talking heads approach endemic to the documentary format, so that the featured individuals felt as though they could have been real people describing actual occurrences. Some of these early attempts work better than others - in "Real Lives" (aka "Funeral")* from 1989, the austerity, while initially impactful, ultimately risks dragging the film into tedium, while "Classroom" (the second weakest of the series) veers dangerously close to mawkishness. On the flip side, "Jenny" (aka "Mother") is extraordinarily powerful, and Ken Stott's performance as the titular figure in "Fireman's Story" still sends shivers down spines. "Fireman's Story" was, in many respects, typical of the campaign's beginnings, in consisting of a monologue delivered by an individual grappling with the traumatic repercussions of irresponsible driving, although it was a unique entry in choosing to focus wholly on the perspective of a first responder, a perspective often overlooked in safety campaigns. Its approach is also somewhat more overtly dramatic than anything this soon into the campaign's lifespan and, thanks to the opening in which Stott's character is seen entering the station in his firefighting gear, feels deceptively more action-driven (the immediacy of the set-up foreshadows the creativity of later installments in which the viewer got to experience the situation directly from the perspective of one of the active participants), while remaining as talk-orientated as its contemporaries. The result is a sterling example of how to deliver a hard-hitting message without the use of gore or spectacle.

In the 60-second film, Stott plays a firefighter who has just returned from dealing with the appalling aftermath of a crash that claimed three lives, and gives an account of the night's events to an off-screen colleague (this was, for a while, the closest the campaign came to incorporating anything of the accident itself). His description of the dismantling of the vehicle, and the removal of the mangled bodies therein unfolds, eerily, like the opening of a Matryoshka doll, with new layers of horror being uncovered the deeper in you go: "Me and the new lad got the first one out the front seat. He'd never seen anything like it. Had to leave the body on the side of the road. I covered it with my tunic. Took, what, two hours to get the other one out? Pretty girl, looked a bit like my sister. And, uh, then we found the baby..."

The lack of visible gore does not preclude the pervasion of squeamish detail regarding the fragility of the human form, although this goes largely understated. The implication is that the crash has wiped out an entire young family, but the first body to be removed from the car, presumably having taken the worst pummelling in the collision, goes unidentified. Their body was so badly mutilated that Stott's fireman is unable to think of them, in their current state, as a person; when he recounts how he covered their body with his tunic, they are designated the status of "it". By comparison, the second body was intact enough that Stott was able to project a sense of familiarity onto her; his observation that she "looked a bit like my sister" is clearly intended to evoke a sense of interchangeability, that it could be anybody's sister in this awful situation. The mention of the baby, whose presence the first responders were not aware of until they were already deep into the wreckage, provokes a startling change in Stott's presentation. While visibly agitated when he arrives, he at first seems to be keeping his distress in check, and his account at a genial, conversational level. The baby, though, completely breaks him - he sobs, then suddenly lurches forward in anger, making the nature of the film explicit:  "You know what bothers me? The bloke in the other car kept saying it wasn't his fault, but he'd been drinking, hadn't he?" Notably, Stott does not seem at all surprised by the role that alcohol has had to play in this incident; reading between the lines, we can conclude that he has seen this same scenario before on previous nights (he also comments that his new colleague had never seen anything like it, implying that he himself has), which clearly hasn't numbed his ability to be a part of the suffering. By opening with Stott and crew arriving at the station, the film might have us primed for a traditional story of macho heroics, but our expectations are swiftly subverted with Stott's opening up of his own emotional vulnerabilities, making it plain that there is no room for heroism in this scenario, merely pain and trauma on every side.

In his closing statement, Stott alludes to both the drink driver's crippling lack of self-preservation, and the bitter implications of his having survived the incident in spite of it: "I don't know how he'll ever live with himself." In this scenario, the survivors probably should envy the dead.

 

* Note: There are a few entries in this series that I've seen referenced by alternate titles, and I am not 100% sure which is official. Wikipedia has this particular film listed as "Fireman's Tale", but the BFI database has it down as "Fireman's Story", so that's what I've gone with.

Words and Pictures '90: Oscar Got The Blame

There were few picture books that struck me as quite as cursed, as a budding reader, as Tony Ross's 1987 publication Oscar Got The Blame.

The conflict described throughout the book was in most respects entirely banal - a child has an imaginary (or, depending on your interpretation, invisible) friend and struggles to convince his parents of their existence -  and yet it played out like a miniature horror story for young children, with an increasingly sinister undercurrent that culminated in a spectacularly hair-raising visual punchline. If you turned to the final page and saw what was lurking right at the end of the story, then you could bank on having a sleepless night or two. It can be seen as a reversal on the author's earlier book, I'm Coming To Get You!, concerning a ravenous space alien stalking an Earth boy, which is entirely upfront about the grisly nature of its central conflict but closes on a reassuring punchline that suddenly puts everything into perspective. And, maybe it's just me, but I've always found Ross's visual style to have a lively but somewhat grotesque quality that, as a child, made me feel kind of queasy. His sense of humor could skew fairly dark, as you'll know if you've ever read his subversive take on The Boy Who Cried Wolf (his was the first version of the story I knew, and I was disappointed when I discovered that it wasn't the standard), but there was something about reading a Ross book that made me feel inherently uncomfortable, even with things as ostensibly mundane as they are throughout most of Oscar Got The Blame. Oscar works as effective companion reading to I'm Coming To Get You!, with which it shares some thematic parallels, notably a subtext regarding how children process difficult emotions (there's also a striking physical similarity between the respective protagonists of each book), bringing us to the conclusion that the monsters you really need to watch out for are inevitably the ones you carry around inside of you.

The book opens by introducing us to Oscar, a small and rather sheepish-looking boy, and to his best friend, Billy, of whom you can't form any immediate impression on account of his being invisible. Oscar is very attached to Billy, but his parents have little patience for the arrangement, insisting that Billy doesn't exist outside of Oscar's overly active imagination. This is a problem, we discover, because Billy has a penchant for causing all manner of trouble around the household, for which Oscar is always assumed to be responsible. From that, a narrative rhythm develops, in which we're told about the various misdeeds supposedly carried out by Billy, with the inevitable consequence that Oscar got the blame. At the end of the book, when Billy's misbehaving has gone far enough to get Oscar banished to his bedroom in disgrace, Oscar laments about the injustice of the situation, and the fact that no one ever believes him about Billy. The final word goes to Billy himself, who accords that, "They never do", as he suddenly becomes visible to the reader. Billy, it turns out, looks a lot like Oscar, but with red devil horns and a malevolent glare that would make even the most hardened individual's bladder weaken. Significantly, when Billy does eventually make himself seen, Oscar has vanished into thin air.

The implied twist - that Billy and Oscar are actually two sides of the same coin - does not seem especially complicated, and yet it's interesting how many people I've encountered who interpreted that final reveal to mean that Billy was real, and that Oscar was in a position of righteousness all along. There are certainly sufficient clues throughout the illustrations that would appear to implicate Oscar in Billy's alleged crimes. For example, when Billy is accused, by Oscar, of bringing mud into the house, we can see little flecks of mud on Oscar's raincoat. When Billy has reportedly tried to give the cat a bath, causing the poor animal to freak out and create havoc around the kitchen, Oscar is visibly clasping a wash cloth behind his back. From my perspective, Ross is leaving precious little room for ambiguity, but then I wonder if some readers have difficulty in consolidating that final, nightmarish image of Billy with the timid and unassuming Oscar we've been following throughout the course of the narrative? It is a startling contrast; Ross could have conveyed much the same idea by adding a slight smirk to Oscar's face at the end, but instead he chose to give his readers a full-on final scare, with a "Billy" who looks as though he's demonically possessed.

Deepening the confusion is that time an animated retelling of the story was featured in a 1990 episode of Words and Pictures centred around the prefix "fr" (the initial focus being on friends, before seguing into frogs). This was from the era that I was shown in school, when presenting duties were handled by Stuart Bradley and Nutmeg the cat (a puppet voiced and operated by Mary Edwards). Before seeing this episode, I was already familiar with Oscar Got The Blame, and I was bracing myself for the horrors of Billy's grand appearance, which transpired to be totally unnecessary. For the most part, the animated images are faithful to Ross's illustrations, but the final reveal is staged in a markedly different, and honestly quite puzzling way that feels reflective of a conscious desire to tone down the story's more unsettling elements, with the result that the final implications end up diverging drastically from those of Ross's narrative. This time, when Oscar is exiled to his bedroom and gripes that nobody believes in his friend Billy, Billy does not make himself visible; instead, he's represented by a burst of energy emitting from the wall behind Oscar. Oscar has wandered well out of view before Billy chimes in, but I don't think it's really communicated that Oscar and Billy are in fact the same person; based on this representation you'd be far more likely to come away with the impression that Billy was real all along, just invisible. This is in spite of Stuart's musings immediately after the sequence, which fall more in line with the implications of the book ("Billy did do some naughty things, didn't he? Maybe it was really Oscar that did them...") Also lost in translation is Billy's intensity at the end of the book - there, his closing declaration of "THEY NEVER DO!", is presented in capital letters, providing a direct contrast to Oscar's more demure representation, while depicting Billy as this intractable whirlwind of chaotic energy. Stuart's reading of the story, surprisingly, takes the opposite approach, making Billy sound mildly more hushed than Oscar, which feeds into the idea of Billy leading this clandestine existence to all but Oscar. Instead of leaving the viewer with a final scare, this ending just feels odd and a little downbeat.

Let's face it, though, the story becomes so much more eerie when we work on the assumption Billy isn't real, and instead have to reconcile meek little Oscar with those true colours he apparently flashes at the end.

Your first impression of the matter might be that, irrespective of whether Billy is real or imaginary, Oscar really needs to develop a better taste in friends. Despite the wholesomeness of some of the earlier images, which show Oscar walking with his arm wrapped around the invisible Billy, and Oscar sleeping in a bed with two teddy bears, one of them set aside for Billy, Billy does not seem to be doing much other than getting Oscar into trouble, with the final pages putting a more antagonistic slant on their relationship. The closing exchange between Oscar and Billy takes the form of a taunt from the latter to the former, as Billy triumphantly revels in his ostensible impunity. His tongue is protruding from his mouth, a mocking gesture possibly directed at Oscar in context, although since Billy is breaking the fourth wall and looking at the reader in this image, we might interpret this disturbing visual punchline as being at the reader's expense. I would go a step further, and argue that the closing image functions as a kind of thematic echo to an illustration that occurs earlier in the story, and which carries a similar degree of uncomfortable emotional intensity (and which, perhaps none too coincidentally, was also omitted from the Words and Pictures adaptation). This image depicts Dad's reaction when he discovers that "Billy" has dressed up the dog in his clothing, by means of an extreme close-up of the man howling with rage, in which Ross appears to have taken immense delight in accentuating as many gruesome details as possible, from the assortment of veins in Dad's bulging eyeballs to his bristly, unkempt whiskers, to the yellow stains on his imperfectly-aligned teeth. This image of the screaming Dad and our final, unsettling glimpse of the incorrigible Billy, stand out as the two most significant of all the illustrations, in that they represent the opposing forces in the pivotal conflict at their most exaggeratedly monstrous; in each, we see an unbridled outpouring of the tensions we suspect are perpetually bubbling below the surface of the household's dynamics, and the result in both cases is just as grotesque. They are suggestive of a raw, fundamental primality to our nature that social mores dictate we suppress and rein in; "Billy" becomes an outlet for the feelings and impulses that Oscar is expected to paper over and never express, with the image of Dad indicating that he, too, is as capable of such ferality. Indeed, we might even conclude that "Oscar" is really the mask the character is forced to assume and that "Billy" represents his id at its most pure and uninhibited. That Oscar should be harboring so much unexpressed rage of his own does not, perhaps, come as surprising, given that he is the underdog in an ongoing conflict in which his only permitted recourse is to keep mum.

What also sticks out is that, despite the intensity of that final illustration, Oscar/Billy hardly seems like a sociopath in the making. Few, if any, of his actions appear to have been practised out of malice. Some of them, such as tracking mud into the house and leaving the bathroom taps running, feel like the kind of honest, everyday mistakes you would expect from a child of his age. Others, like making breakfast (chaotically) and washing the cat, come off more as misguided attempts at being helpful. Dressing up the dog in his dad's tie and slippers is the type of cheeky deed a small child would think amusing and not understand why it might be a problem. The most outright mischievous the character seems to get is in putting frogs inside his grandmother's slippers. For the most part, Billy does appear to mean well, which is partly what makes that final image so disturbing. That Ross has chosen these kinds of smaller, mundane mishaps, as opposed to anything particularly shocking or dramatic, is as good an indication as any that Oscar is experiencing nothing more than the usual trials and tribulations of growing up, in having to navigate feelings and impulses that he does not necessarily comprehend, whilst coming to grips with social convention and what is expected of him. The most obvious comparison would be Shirley Jackson's short story "Charles", except that in this scenario the parents obviously have no delusions as to what is going on. Which is not to say that the parents are not, in some way, a part of the problem. Oscar Got The Blame deals with a common concern in children's literature, which is the failure of parents and children to see eye-to-eye. Oscar's parents are not as negligent and horrible as Bernard's from Not Now, Bernard by David McKee - they are clearly the sensible, no-nonsense sort, and their refusal to indulge Oscar's fantasies, under the circumstances, is understandable - but there is a distinct lack of emotional warmth in any of their depicted interactions with Oscar. For the purposes of the story they exist purely as authority figures and dispensers of the titular blame. The only hint of any affection on their part is in the mention of a bedtime story, of which Oscar is deprived as a punishment, implying that they make a habit of reading to him on a nightly basis. This in itself is rather ironic, as it suggests a willingness to engage in imagination and fantasy of which the parents otherwise seem entirely intolerant; the opening of the story indicates that they object on mere principle to the suggestion of Billy, even before it explored how Oscar routinely uses his friend in unsuccessful bids to circumvent his parents' authority. The reference to the story potentially offers a hint as to Billy's real function, in providing a buffer between the strict austerity of Oscar's parents and his need for escapist fantasy. Underpinning that is the lack of evidence that Oscar has any actual flesh-and-blood friends with whom he can expend his rough housing energies. He is seemingly an only child, and no other children appear throughout the book, suggesting that his world is isolated, and that his friendship with Billy provides a refuge in which to shelter from loneliness and adult stringency alike. Oscar's bond with Billy might be self-destructive, but it is the best offence and defence he has with the odds so weighted against him; his adherence to his imaginary friend is itself an act of defiance, a refusal to play by his parents' very matter-of-fact rules. The final appearance of Billy might be the stuff of nightmares, but perhaps we should take it as reassurance that Oscar is a survivor, whose wild heart cannot be broken.

The significance of Billy is perhaps echoed in the second story to be featured in the "Fr" episode of Words and Pictures, Frogs' Holiday by Margaret Gordon, which depicts the altogether more genial friendship between a band of holiday-making frogs and a laundrette owner named Mrs Crumple. Here, it is noted that small boys, along with big fish, are one of the greatest banes of frog's existence (Mrs Crumple, it is established, is a friend to neither fish nor boy, making a her an excellent ally to the frogs), and therein we find the implicit suggestion that Oscar's misbehaviour stems from some fundamental itching in his callow psyche - which is to say, he is much the same bundle of malevolent energy as any other child.

The best part of the "Fr" episode, though? There are rats involved! Compared to their predecessors, Vicky Ireland and Charlie, who typically stayed put in their library, Stuart and Nutmeg tended to do a lot more location shooting, and in this episode they visit some children in a classroom who've created scrapbooks about their friends. One girl is awesome enough to have dedicated a page to her rat friends, Alice and Rascal. Alice, the hooded agouti rat, then shows up to be formally introduced to Nutmeg. Alice gives the cloth cat a sniff, but appears to quickly lose interest, wandering off in the other direction - we're assured that they became very friendly, however.

 

Wholesome content. :3

Interestingly, a second animated adaptation of Oscar Got The Blame materialised only a year later as part of the VHS release Anytime Tales by King Rollo Films, a compilation of ten different stories derived from the works of Tony Ross and David McKee (also included were the former's I'm Coming To Get You! and the latter's Not Now, Bernard). This version was more faithful to Ross's book than the Words and Pictures animation, incorporating the close-up image of Dad howling (although his teeth here aren't quite so disgustingly yellow), and ending with the unsettling entrance of the visible Billy, who in this take is depicted as emerging from the wall once Oscar has walked past it. I doubt this approach did much to stifle the dissension among consumers as to the exact meaning of that ending, but if it gave a few children sufficient goosebumps then I'd consider the job done.

Words and Pictures '84: Owl vs Winter

There was always something about the Vicky Ireland era of Words and Pictures that's stuck me as a little eerie and haunted - and by that, I'm not just alluding to the fact that an episode about animal skeletons (that I assume to be legitimate) was featured in the post-apocalyptic portion of the notorious 1984 nuclear drama Threads. Really, it's more that the Ireland era made up some of my earliest experiences in watching television, back when any moving image that seemed unfamiliar and uncanny was guaranteed to set me on edge, and it's inevitable that the bulk of my memories of the series are built from hazy, half-remembered details, not all of which have managed to resurface on YouTube or my family's private collection of 1980s tape recordings. One of the reasons why the track "And The Cuckoo Comes" by The Advisory Circle resonates with me so is because the educational (or not) monologue recited throughout feels strongly reminiscent of the kind of teaching Ireland would have imparted on Words and Pictures (no doubt set to some kind of appealing cutout animation sequence), but distorted and warped out of shape in a manner that seems to perfectly mirror my own lingering apprehension in taking this particular trip down memory lane. To my preschooler brain, there seemed to be something inherently, if inexplicably sinister about the world of Words and Pictures, an intuitive misgiving that The Advisory Circle seemed to understand only too well.

Words and Pictures was first launched by BBC Schools in 1970 to promote literacy skills in young children, a sister series to the highly successful Look and Read that started three years prior. When Ireland came on in 1982, she was only the fourth person to take up presenting duties, but she had the longest reign of any presenter in the series' history, finally going her separate way in 1989. The premise of this era had it that Ireland was your friendly local librarian, always on hand to greet the visiting children and to read them stories. Assisting Ireland was Charlie, a two-dimensional cartoon creature who apparently lived in the library and was voiced by Charles O'Rourke (to modern eyes, Charlie looks a ridiculously crude creation, but I'm sure that for a BBC budget in 1982 he was the very height of sophistication). By the time I was actually watching the series in school, the format had shifted to be about Stuart Bradley and his sidekick Nutmeg the cat (a puppet creation with disproportionately large eyes) - their era seemed comparatively brighter and more colourful, removed from that musty library aura in which Ireland and Charlie were so at home, and I have overall fewer alarming memories attached to it - which isn't to say that there were none at all. They did, after all, base an episode around Tony Ross's Oscar Got The Blame, a perkily grotesque variation on the set-up explored in Shirley Jackson's "Charles".

When I think about moments from the Ireland era that spooked me as a child, right at the top of my list would be the episode based around the theme of giants, which had a sequence with a bunch of kids playing around a giant's breakfast table - inevitably, the giant returned, and my memory might be deceiving me here, but I don't think those kids got out alive. Somewhere lower down would be a stop motion animation sequence about an owl who couldn't sleep because he was terrified of the strange shapes that appeared in his bed every time he tried to settle down in it, a scenario which resulted in the owl launching all-out warfare upon the shapes and destroying his bed in the process. Less traumatic but still pretty harrowing to watch was another animated sequence in which the same owl, ever the master of good judgement, let the winter into his house and watched helplessly as it transformed his abode into a frozen wasteland. (I also have memories of an utterly fiendish feature set around a clip depicting a community of people spontaneously combusting and these kids having to decide which instrument provided the best musical accompaniment for the moment, but I am not 100% certain that this was from Words and Pictures or some other contemporary educational series. They went with the drums, so you know.) Although I've never gotten anywhere close to reacquainting myself with the horrors of what actually went on that giant's kitchen, I have since identified the two owl animations as adaptations of stories from the collection Owl at Home by American author Arnold Lobel, better known for his series of books about the characters Frog and Toad, a number of which were also adapted for Words and Pictures. The Frog and Toad animations, incidentally, never bothered me. They always seemed as gentle and genial as the premise of a frog and a toad palling around together and enjoying a variety of stoic pleasures would suggest. By contrast, there was something intrinsically less secure about Owl's world, which I don't think I ever put my finger on as a child, but nowadays quite blatantly leaps out as being rooted in the fact Owl leads such an intensely isolated existence. If the Frog and Toad stories were miniature meditations on the delights of friendship, then the Owl stories might be considered the flip side, in that they dealt extensively with the theme of solitude. For all intents and purposes, Owl is the only being who exists in his little universe, yet as the blurb on the back of Lobel's book notes, he isn't always alone. Owl at Home contains five stories in total (although a search on BBC Genome would appear to indicate that "The Guest" and "Strange Bumps" were the only two adapted for Words and Pictures), two of which are about the connections he forges with the world around him, and the companionship he senses, whether it be treacherous ("The Guest") or benign ("Owl and The Moon") in the most overlooked of places. Alternatively, Owl might be at odds with himself, whether knowingly ("Upstairs and Downstairs") or unknowingly ("Strange Bumps"). The middle story, "Tear-Water Tea", is an anomaly in that there is no real conflict to speak of, but it does illustrate that Owl has as fine a knack for discerning the sorrow in the everyday as he does the joy and fascination.

Alas, the "Strange Bumps" episode is presently not available on YouTube, and while I'm pretty sure we had a VHS recording of its somewhere, the tape has been squirrelled away and by now has probably descended into the depths of Moldsville, so I haven't had the opportunity to test how well that childhood unease holds up to adult scrutiny. But "The Guest" has proved less elusive. The episode in question is officially titled "Owl at Home", and first aired on 8th February 1984. According to BBC Genome, it was repeated four times throughout the latter half of the 1980s. The episode is built around the general theme of winter, opening with Ireland arriving at the library in the snow, and following up with stock footage of frosty landscapes set to the winter portion of Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons". The centrepiece, however, is a delightful stop motion animation sequence from Alan Platt recreating the events of "The Guest" (note that while the end-credits contain a general animation credit for Bura and Hardwick, the "puppet sequence" specifically is credited to Platt). Here, Owl's peaceful winter evening by the fireside is interrupted by the sounds of a loud banging at his door, which Owl initially assumes to be an unexpected caller. After repeatedly answering the door to find nobody there, he (correctly) deduces that the knocking is the result of the wind blowing up against his door, but from that leaps to the fanciful conclusion that the winter is knocking on his door because it wants to come in, and that the correct course of action would be to welcome it with open arms. When Winter proves to be woefully short on etiquette, extinguishing Owl's fire and freezing his bowl of pea soup, Owl banishes it back outside, restoring order inside his home and resuming his peaceful solitude.

Reading Lobel's stories, it would be easy enough to assume that the intended irony is that Owl, despite being a bird traditionally used as a shorthand for wisdom, isn't particularly bright. A little too easy and, I would argue, also erroneous. It's more that Owl has the innocence and naivety of a young child, and an active imagination that becomes magnified up against the silence and the voidness of his isolation, which he knows not to be a voidness at all, but a world brimming with wonder and possibilities when viewed with the right perception. Which might all be a roundabout way of saying that Owl's solitary existence has made an absolute kook out of him, but Lobel finds a quiet fulfilment in that kookiness, particularly in the final story. Owl's curiosity and enthusiasm for living are certainly no less valid than that of Frog and Toad, and his reclusive lifestyle is upheld as no more devoid of meaning. There is as much contentment to be found in gazing at the moon as in walking with a companion; in fact, in "Owl and The Moon", they become the same experience.

What really stands out to me about the Words and Pictures adaptation of "The Guest" is that it is actually a compelling little animation in its own right. Platt's stop motion techniques have a charming expressiveness; there is an appealing daintiness to Owl's movements, while the use of doll house furniture as props provide an apt reflection of the character's innocence and vulnerability, so that when the Winter engulfs them it becomes a direct attack on Owl's ingenuous psyche. An equally major driving force behind the tone and of character the piece is the music, a synth-driven arrangement with a piercing, gliding quality that is entirely convincing as the leitmotif of an invasive winter flurry, and which is attributed in the credits to Paddy Kingsland. It's the music, I think, that causes the story to play out somewhat differently to how it plays on the printed page; although the illustrations of the Lobel's book make clear the intensity of the scenario, visibly depicting the Winter as an overpowering force that knocks Owl sideways against the wall and soon has him struggling to keep his head above the snow, it comes across as a more intrinsically humorous situation, what with Owl's very genteel attempts at instructing his visitor to behave. Kingsland's score, meanwhile, brings out the danger of Owl's predicament, beginning the instant he hears that unexpected knocking against his door, so that we have the sense of an intrusive presence slowly closing in on his ostensibly secure fireside tranquillity, and climaxing with a confrontation that favours tension over humor, as Owl fights to reclaim his territory from being completely devoured by Winter's destructive tendencies. The most prominent source of comedy comes in Owl's voice, supplied by Ireland herself, since she gives him a distinctly officious quality that seems amusingly at odds with his character's childlike naivety, but this too seems hauntingly futile in the face of Winter's onslaught. The sequence is accompanied by one of the trademarks of Words and Pictures recitals - intermittent snatches of text appear beneath the animation, to encourage children to apply their literary prowess while processing the narrative, and in this case the repeated textual emphasis that "No one was there" merely underscores the precariousness of Owl's lonely existence, and the dark unknown of the world beyond the fragile safety of his house. Crucially, the opening shot depicts the winter night in calming blue hues, but as the disturbance begins and Owl finds himself gazing outward, expecting to be greeted by someone and finding only a chilly nothingness, the world outside his door becomes enveloped by a blackness, an abyss that is constantly threatening to enter in and destroy Owl's idyll from the inside. The struggle between Owl and Winter for control of the house becomes a battle ground between innocence and corruption, between existence and oblivion, implicit qualities of Lobel's story that Platt and Kingsland bring more to the foreground.

The "Owl at Home" story is followed by another animated sequence, this one created using cut-out animation techniques, and arranged to a song, "The Midnight Owl" by Ian Humphris, featuring another, non-anthropomorphic owl, but mainly focussed on a trio of musketeers trampling through the snow to the sounds of grey wolves howling and brown bears growling, keeping up the overall sense of precariousness that pervades the episode. It ends with an exterior shot of the library as the snow persists in falling, allowing the credits to roll to the unintelligible shrieks of children playing, but most predominantly to the ambience of the restless winter wind. It seems appropriate that it should have the final word.

My main takeaway from revisiting "Owl at Home" is that I really need to acquaint myself further with the works of both Platt and Kingsland. Kingsland's other credentials included compositions for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that were featured in such celebrated science fiction series as The Changes and Doctor Who, and numerous additions to the KPM music library. Platt went on to work on the Channel 4 educational series Fourways Farm, for which he received a Peabody Award. His last project, before retirement, was a 30-minute adaptation of Richard Wagner's opera series Der Ring des Nibelungen - which, from the outset, looks astounding.

Volvo 340 vs Renegade Crash Test Dummy (Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm)

The first piece of advertising I remember having any kind of strong reaction to was a 1988 TV ad for the Volvo 340. Throughout my earliest years of television-watching existence, every time they cut to an ad break this thing seemed to be perpetually lying in wait, ready to heap another dose of uncanny valley-isms upon my fragile infant psyche, to the point that I could recite the entire thing by heart long before YouTube enabled me to play catch-up in adulthood. It goes like this - a crash test dummy comes to life while its human overlords aren't around and flees the testing facility by driving the featured vehicle through a three-storey window, making an absolute wreck of both window and Volvo, but walking away unscathed to unleash all manner of unspecified mischief upon the world beyond. It touched such a raw nerve in the three-year-old me that, whenever it aired, I was in the habit of addressing it as "The Naughty Ad", a phrase that sounds so much more provocative to adult ears. I later rationalised that the "naughtiness" came not from the dummy's reckless driving, but from the dummy's lack of clothing. In fact, I'd concocted this entire narrative around the ad that ended with the dummy purposely walking away to buy itself some garments. (Back then, I had no idea what a crash test dummy was, so I was more likely to have connected these uncanny humanoids to the mannequins in shop windows, and I knew their whole purpose was to model clothing - a naked one was jarring.) On further reflection, I think that calling the ad "naughty" was my attempt to communicate, with my extremely limited vocabulary, that I found the content profoundly wrong on so many levels. It didn't terrify me witless, a la the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids TV spots, but it unsettled me in ways that I was anxious to vocalise, yet completely botched because the words I had failed me. So, nearly three and a half decades on, I'm going to try to do justice to the reaction of my three-year-old self, with the words I have at my disposal now.

First, though, what exactly is going on in this ad? Having your vehicle be abused and bent out of shape by a dummy with a mind of its own certainly is a novel means of flaunting its merits. I presume the whole idea was to convey that the Volvo 340 is a reliable car that you could feel quite safe in because the powers that be (be they rogue dummies or flesh and blood manufacturers) had diligently tested it to its absolute limits...with the slogan - "Tested by dummies, driven by the intelligent" - making it clear that they did not expect you to emulate the dummy's reckless behaviour (although at least it has the sense to buckle up first). The way the dummy pats the smashed Volvo at the end of the ad certainly indicates that it has a high opinion of the car's durability. What is not clearly accounted for is the surreptitious nature of the dummy's stunt - obviously it's pulling this off without the authorisation of those white-coated humans we see at the start, but what exactly is the dummy's motivation here? Is it looking to go that extra mile in testing the car's capabilities, apparently not giving a damn about whether or not the company's insurance policy will cover that broken window? Is it going on a simple joyride, the lure of the Volvo having proved too strong? Or is it pulling off a daring escape, having had its fill of the abuses it's been forced to endure as a crash test dummy, that broken window being a departing "Fuck you" to his human oppressors? Although that last scenario appeals to me most from a narrative standpoint, it raises additional questions as to why the dummy just ups and forsakes the rest of its kin, when there was room for four other dummies in that car? Are we to assume that the other dummies aren't alive? Or is it meant to be seen as the only one of them audacious enough to seize the opportunity? Might that be the real meaning behind the closing slogan - that this dummy showed intuitive, thus earning its right to be regarded as a driver and not a test subject? Noteworthy is that, at the very end, the dummy is walking away from the Volvo building, not back toward it, so presumably it has no intention of resuming the life of of a regular crash test dummy, and is instead off to attempt to assimilate itself into human society. That, or murder us all in our sleep. Maybe the revolution starts here, and our rogue dummy fully intends to go back and liberate the other dummies later on down the line, once sufficient bloodshed has unfolded.

  

 

The surreptitiousness of the dummy's actions was a large part of what bugged me about this advert as a child, for it appeared to confirm one of one of my deepest gut suspicions regarding what kinds of unseen forces there were stirring in this mystifying world with which I had barely yet had time to come to grips. I've mentioned that I thought of these dummies as being more-or-less the same thing as shop mannequins, and at the time I did not particularly trust shop mannequins. I disliked turning my back on them, as the idea that they came to life when no one was looking seemed only too logical (a paranoia I assume to be quite prevalent, given that we had a Twilight Zone episode based on that very premise, albeit with mannequins who were revealed to be fundamentally benign). That the dummy went on to drive a car through a window was really beside the point - the fact that it had purposely waited until the humans cleared the room before doing so was the uncomfortable part, making it clear that this dummy's agenda, however difficult to decipher, was at odds with our own. The dummy seemed like a shadow self, a darker side of human nature that only stirred when the lights were off and attentions were diverted. And now that it had broken through the barrier and into the bright wide open, the world was its for the taking.

 

The "naughtiness" of it all unsettled me so that I felt compelled to attach my own narrative to this scenario - and as loopy as it will sound, I decided that the whole thing was actually a creative metaphor for the birthing process. At three years old, I had only a very rudimentary idea as to how that actually worked, and I bridged the uncanny valley by coming to think of these dummies as proto-humans. Humans who were basically stuck in life's waiting room, with the window pane separating them from the outside world representing the fine line between existence and non-existence, and the Volvo being our portal into reality (that this unreality should be signified by such formal, sterile environs seemed only natural to me, even if the outside world didn't seem a great deal more lively). The dummy who escaped in the Volvo attained the privilege of becoming alive, and of joining the human race (and I would very much like to claim that I was connecting the violent spectacle of the dummy's escape, on some instinctive level, to the physical messiness of childbirth, but that much is probably a coincidence).  His next action, so my infant logic dictated, was obviously to go off and buy himself clothing, or how else was he going to blend in around here? The clothes, I imagined, would paper over his remaining uncanniness. The logistics as to whether or not he would already have a bank account set up enabling him to purchase material goods certainly did not occur to me, as at three I was still a few years off having to concern myself with such things.

The part that continued to sit uneasily with me was how those two men in the white coats were to be factored into all of this; obviously they represented some kind of authority in this prenatal waiting room (the dummies' creators? The people who oversaw the whole process?), and what I couldn't dance around in my constructed narrative was how the dummy was blatantly coming into being without their permission. What's important is how this enabled my allegiances to shift, from the humans unwittingly menaced by their own distorted mirror reflections to that uncanny dummy itself, and its struggle to survive in a world that did not expressly invite it. I realise, with hindsight, that the dummy's not-quite human qualities made it the perfect figure on which to project my own nascent existential anxieties; the sense that I was this little thing in an a vast and increasingly daunting universe, and that my very being here seemed somehow absurd. And the alleged naughtiness? On some level, maybe I admired the naughtiness. If there was any message to be gleaned from the dummy's gut-wrenching leap into the world beyond the window, it was that merely existing necessitates some degree of risk.

Homer The Smithers (aka One Crane Flying Solo)

On the DVD commentary for "Homer The Smithers" (aka episode 3F14) showrunner Bill Oakley introduces the episode by explaining that it represented an ambitious attempt, as The Simpsons coasted through its seventh season, to bring the series "back to the family". It's as baffling a statement as I think you can make about "Homer The Smithers", of all episodes, because it really has bupkis to do with the family. Four of the unit it finds all but zero use for, and the other, despite getting title billing and a generous amount of screen time, is effectively a pawn in a story built around testing the bond between two typically inseparable supporting characters. If anything, it takes the focus further away from the family than any other episode that season, with the possible exception of "A Fish Called Selma". Oakley clarifies that what he means by "back to the family" is for The Simpsons to be brought back down to Earth, after multiple seasons with its head stuck in the clouds. Mirkin's era had already seen Homer get blasted into space by NASA, and at this point the series was still grappling with the question as to whether it might have already crossed its event horizon in terms of breaking the plausibility barrier. When they took over as showrunners, Oakley and Josh Weinstein were initially eager for the show to get back to the kinds of smaller, more grounded stories you would have found in the first two or three series. Stories that were, in Oakley's words, about "realistic things that happen within the family." "Or within the workplace situation", he adds, as if it's dawned on him that the "back to the family" analogy perhaps doesn't work for this episode. It was a noble ambition, but one that Oakley and Weinstein clearly ultimately decided was doomed to failure, given that they closed their tenure with Frank Grimes' notorious Blue Screen of Death and the deliberately dire (but not exactly inaccurate) final predictions of "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase".

As part of this drive for stories that wouldn't have felt at all out of place in the show's first two or three seasons, Mike Scully pitched the idea of Smithers taking a vacation and Homer filling in as Burns' personal assistant; Oakley and Weinstein thought this such an obvious story idea that they were amazed it hadn't been done in the first three seasons. The outline was assigned to John Swartzwelder, the most prolific member of the show's writing team, who turned out a surprisingly unassuming script, albeit one still peppered with the kinds subversive, unpredictable gags for which Swartzwelder has been long renowned. The result is another of the more pleasingly experimental installments of Oakley and Weinstein's run, though it's experimental in lower-key ways than, say, "22 Short Films About Springfield" or "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase". It isn't a "gimmick" episode (or "format-bending", in Oakley's words), but it is unique in how refreshingly minimalist it is. It doesn't so much recreate the feeling of the earlier episodes as go as determinedly bare-bones as possible, creating a full and satisfying episode from impressively few elements. I'm not sure if you could really call this a bottle episode, but it definitely falls back on many of the same techniques. There are long stretches of the episode that involve only three characters - Burns, Smithers and Homer - and with Smithers absent for much of the middle act there's a good chunk of it that ends up being a two-hander between Homer and Burns. When you keep in mind that two of those three (Burns and Smithers) are voiced by the same actor, it becomes apparent just how much heavy-lifting Harry Shearer is doing throughout the episode; factor in the additional cameos from Lenny, Dr Hibbert and, in a deleted scene, Ned Flanders (see below) and the episode feels like it could have been purposely conceived as a showcase for Shearer's voicing chops. And with most of the action taking place within a single locale - Burns' office - this is probably the closest The Simpsons have come to replicating the enclosed atmosphere of a staged play.

Where "Homer The Smithers" does feel more reminiscent of the earlier seasons is in its predominantly straightforward treatment of its scenario. There's less of the knowing, self-depreciating humor that characterised Oakley and Weinstein's reign, and which could only really come with longevity and déjà vu. The sole point where we catch the episode winking unambiguously at the audience is in the specific plot point regarding how Homer comes to be involved in what is, from the beginning, two other characters' conflict. No viewer, even those who haven't seen the title of the episode in advance, is going to anticipate anything other than for Homer to be appointed as Smithers' substitute, yet the episode initially feigns interest in going through the motions of providing all the proper narrative connective tissue for getting us from Point A to B. Determined to steer clear of any candidate who could potentially do a better job than he, Smithers searches the plant's database for an employee flagged as being "incompetent", and the database returns 714 possible options. Smithers attempts to narrow down his search by adding "lazy", "clumsy", "dim-witted" and "monstrously ugly" to his specifications, which seems to set the stage perfectly for Homer to come in. Yet the script subverts our expectations, with the database again insisting that Smithers could be referring to any one of 714 names. Smithers, who by now has lived through enough Simpson-centric shit to know where this ultimately headed, resigns himself to fate - "Nuts to this, I'll just get Homer Simpson" - an inevitability reinforced during the obligatory sequence where the selectively amnesic Burns has to be reminded of Homer's existence, and Smithers notes that, "All the recent events of your life have revolved around him in some way." (Of course, if Smithers' own memory was all that hot then he might recall that there have been at least two circumstances under which Homer has previously outshone him - namely, in "Simpson and Delilah" and "Homer Defined" - and perhaps think better of it.)

Homer, meanwhile, is naive enough to think that he's been chosen because of his merits as an employee, specifically his motivational skills ("Everyone always says they have to work a lot harder when I'm around!"), and he throws himself into the role with such an earnest tenacity you feel kinda bad that he's basically been set up to fail. Still, while the episode takes care to establish what the stakes are for Homer - Lisa and Marge independently remind him of what a golden opportunity this is to further his career - its interest in Homer and how far he could potentially go with his new responsibilities are also feigned. "Homer The Smithers" isn't really about Homer, but it pretends that it is by focussing on Homer's perspective and his struggle to make good on Burns' every unreasonable demand. The turning point comes about midway through the episode, when Homer gets so overworked and overstressed by his bullying boss that he does the one thing Smithers would never do - he physically retaliates, socking Burns in the face in the heat of the moment and rendering him unconscious. The punch itself, and its immediate fallout, is genuinely startling; Homer panics that he might have just committed manslaughter, which seems highly unlikely (we'd already been through this "Is Burns dead? Could Homer really get worked up enough to kill him?" thing less than a season ago), but given Burns' age and fragile physical condition, there is a little queasy uncertainty as to where this all might be headed, and the episode lets that fester, by first having Homer run home to consult his next move with Marge and Lisa. He returns to the office to find Burns more-or-less fine, but so shocked by the experience, and so terrified of what else Homer might do to him, that he won't allow him to get close again, prompting Burns to attempt to handle his daily menial tasks by himself. At this point, the perspective switches from Homer to Burns, and his struggle to educate himself in the basic survival skills he's had the luxury of forgoing for so many years. This is where the real tension of the episode lies - in Burns' talent for giving orders versus his latent desire for self-sufficiency, and where Smithers fits in with all of that. That time we'd spent with Homer? All build-up to justify why he would ever reach the point of doing something so tremendously out of character as to punch Mr Burns. But it is an exceptionally good build-up, making sharp and economical use of the fact that it's largely just Homer and Burns in an office together, with each slowly chipping away at the other's patience. It manages to incorporate a few brilliantly absurd sight gags - not least Burns summoning Homer with a giant megaphone and a tiny bell, which Homer can apparently hear all the way over in Evergreen Terrace (how this doesn't keep the whole of Springfield awake is anyone's guess), and the inconveniently timed fire at the first act break. Not to mention that Burns proves so painfully out of touch with the real world that Homer even gets the rare opportunity to be the smart one in the room - he's shrewd enough to know why Burns' request for a dodo egg is definitely off the menu, for example.

Symbiosis?

 

"Homer The Smithers" is first and foremost a character study about Burns and Smithers, what makes their relationship tick and why they choose to remain together, despite the fact that it might not be the healthiest option for either of them. If I were to compare it to one of the early Simpsons installments, it would be "Principal Charming" of Season 2, in that both episodes deal extensively with characters who exist primarily on the sidelines of the lives of the main family (Patty and Selma, in "Principal Charming"), the emphasis being on the isolation that characterises their day to day lives. In both cases, the characters are a duo - one is so rarely seen without the other - and we're given reason to believe that their seeming inseparability is both an insulation against that isolation and something of an immurement in itself. One of the duo gets the opportunity to break away in another direction, leaving the other stranded at a personal dead-end (in both scenarios, an allegiance with Barney Gumble, be it romantic or professional in nature, is treated as tantamount to hitting rock bottom), but ultimately decides that things are better as they were, reaffirming their place within that duo. What separates the two episodes is that one is obviously much more pathos-driven than the other - while "Principal Charming" ends with an achingly bittersweet moment where Selma openly acknowledges the sacrifice Patty has made on her account, and thanks her for it, we get no such gentle gratification at the end of "Homer The Smithers", which closes on a more cynically ambivalent note. For one thing, the sisterly bond between Patty and Selma has the virtue of being grounded in mutual respect, which cannot be said for Burns and Smithers. Their relationship is built on symbiosis, but symbiosis of a more precarious and unequal nature. It's possibly best understood as a variation on an old Aesopian allegory, regarding a wolf who has a bone stuck in his throat and is at dire risk of starvation. He seeks out the help of a crane, imploring him to lower his head into his mouth and to remove the bone with his elongated beak, promising him a great reward for his trouble. When the crane has extracted the bone, the wolf produces nothing, telling the crane that the was permitted to place his head between the jaws of a wolf and to pull it out intact, and if he were at all sensible he would consider that reward enough. The intended message of the story is that one should always consider the fundamental character of a person before becoming entangled with them - if you lend your services to someone who lacks integrity (the wolf, in Aesop's fables, was typically used as a shorthand for the predatory and exploitative), then you should not be surprised if they do not return your good will (although it is, to my mind, an example of a fable in which the wittiness of the punchline almost supersedes the need for a moral - see also the one about the drunken dog who can't remember how he left the party). Now imagine a scenario in which that crane not only considered the honor of getting to stick his head into the wolf's jaws unharmed to be a tremendous reward in its own right, but was positively addicted to the privilege, and we have something resembling the Burns-Smithers dynamic. The crane thrives on his closeness and indispensability to the universally feared wolf, who, lucky him, needs assisting with his chewing and swallowing and always has a bone in his throat that requires dislodging. Yet the crane plays a dangerous game, for the wolf does not regard his right-hand bird as anything other than a means to his own functioning, and should the crane's usefulness suddenly expire, he will find himself as subject to the wolf's mercilessness as anybody else. And the specific manner in which the crane serves the wolf requires him to make himself especially vulnerable (in Smithers' case, by investing so much emotion into his relationship with Burns). It's an arrangement that works for Burns and Smithers - so long as the equilibrium is not disturbed, both characters can survive and be perfectly satisfied within its confines. It goes without saying, though, that it won't be everybody's cup of tea.

One thing that "Homer The Smithers" surely demonstrates is that Smithers is irreplaceable in his role, because there's nobody else in the world who could possibly show Burns the same level of unflinching devotion. To go above and beyond in the way that Smithers does with his assistance to Burns, you would really have to love the decrepit old tyrant (that, or there would have to be a pretty substantial paycheck in it for you at the end of the day, although it's clear at this point that Smithers' motivations aren't mercenary, and a safe bet that whatever Burns is paying him, it isn't nearly enough). Too bad, then, that the sentiment is entirely one-sided. At the beginning of the episode, it does appear as though Burns has something resembling legitimate concern for Smithers' welfare - he can see that Smithers is at risk of burning out, and in desperate need of a vacation. But that's all undercut by what happens on Smithers' return, when Burns has decided that he can function on his own and no longer needs a personal assistant, whereupon he shows the soft-throated Smithers just how sharp his wolf teeth are, callously casting him aside as if he were nothing. In the end, Smithers' years of extraordinary loyalty and back-breaking labor mean zilch to Burns. Which, really, should have us questioning if we actually want to see Smithers restored to his old position by the episode's conclusion. The harsh truth nestling at the bottom of "Homer The Smithers" is that Burns frankly never deserved an assistant as good as Smithers in the first place.

That said, it would be inaccurate to suppose that Smithers is a total innocent in this equation. His motive for choosing Homer as his substitute, rather than somebody upon whom he could count on to do semi-competent job, comes explicitly from a place of self-preservation. The likelihood of Homer's incompetence causing serious problems for Burns does not appear to weigh too heavily on Smithers' mind before he leaves for his vacation - although perhaps he compensates by repeatedly calling to check up on Burns during his leave of absence? We also have to take into account that Burns seems so genuinely happy and liberated during his short-lived period of self-sufficiency, suggesting that Smithers, whether knowingly or not, has kept him in a state of dependency. Burns has benefited immeasurably from Smithers' years of extraordinary servitude, but he has, in a way, also suffered.

What "Homer The Smithers" is really interested in exploring is how desperately isolated both Burns and Smithers are from the rest of the world, and the extent to which they are each complicit in that isolation, choosing to retreat comfortably into the safety net of the other when they could be getting so much more from their respective lives. Burns' problems are apparent - his inability to connect with his fellow man is what triggers this whole mess, when a drunken Lenny approaches him outside a drag racing event, wanting to do nothing more malicious than to shake the old man's hand. The viewer knows straight off the bat that Lenny's intentions are harmless, but the encounter is played with a comical faux tension (later echoed when Burns develops a fear of Homer), leaving us no ambiguity as to how terrifying it is for Burns to find himself this up close and personal to the common man, with his murderous eyes and his beer and pretzeled bread-scented breath. Elsewhere, Burns tries reaching out to the outside world, but with his inadequate telephone literacy gets through to Moe (in the seventh season there seemed to be a revival of interest in the long-abandoned running gag of Bart prank-calling Moe, given that we would shortly have another call-back in "Bart on The Road"), who misconstrues the situation and aggressively spurns Burns. It's here that all those earlier, quieter shots of Burns alone in his capacious office really pay off, in underscoring just how grandiose but intrinsically empty his life is. Burns is totally out of his depth in dealing with the world beyond his office because Smithers acts as such a good buffer between him and the rest of humanity, which makes it gratifying to see Burns coming out of his shell in having to learn to get by on his own. Whether he could actually learn to embrace his fellow man, as he does Homer, remains up in the air, but we do see a definite change in his demeanor when he deals pleasantly (if archaically) with a caller who has dialled the wrong number.

The cost to Smithers is a bit more subtextual. We'd witnessed previously in the "Who Shot Mr Burns?" saga that without Burns, he basically can't function; by comparison, his firing in this episode doesn't send him spiralling into a diet of depression, alcohol and comedy sketch shows, but he isn't able to find a niche for himself anywhere else. Smithers has invested so much of his personal identity into his role as Burns' assistant that he's automatically out of place in any other working environment. More fatally, he denies himself the freedom to be who he really is - who he really is being hinted in how he makes the most of his vacation time. On the DVD commentary it's observed that "Homer The Smithers" contains what might have been the most explicit reference to Smithers' sexuality in the series thus far - Smithers calling Burns from a gay nightclub, with Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" playing suggestively in the background. Whereas earlier showrunner Al Jean had taken the stance that Smithers was purely "Burnsexual" (I sometimes wonder if this was Jean's inelegant attempt at safeguarding against potential accusations that Smithers' sexual orientation was being played for a skin-crawl effect, or against the responsibilities of legitimate LGBT representation, period), Oakley and Weinstein make it clear that they had a different interpretation, feeling that there was this discrepancy between who Smithers was in the office and in his personal life. What's apparent is that Smithers doesn't want Burns to know about this discrepancy - when Burns states that he wants to see lots of photos from Smithers' vacation, Smithers insists that picture-taking is not allowed at his chosen resort. On the commentary, episode director Steven Moore notes that when "Homer The Smithers" first aired, on February 25th 1996, it was "a transition period", with homosexuality slowly becoming more accepted by the mainstream, but still a different time, and Smithers wanting to conceal evidence of his sexuality from his boss might not have seemed so unusual back then. We get only fleeting glimpses of Smithers' time away from Burns, but it clearly brings out a different side to him, and we suspect that if he were to pursue this to the full then he could easily have a proper relationship, with a partner with whom he could be on equal footing, and an actual social life. Instead, his dedication to Burns takes precedence above all else, to the point that his vacation is repeatedly interrupted by his compulsion to call back home. Smithers chooses to remain with Burns because he genuinely likes him, and while there is no accounting for taste, Burn's lack of reciprocation, and Smithers' need to conceal the extent of his feelings from Burns leave him personally stunted. Attaching himself to Burns essentially means dooming himself to a life in the closet.

As a side-note, "Homer The Smithers" contains one of my all-time favourite deleted scenes, where Smithers tries working at the Leftorium under Ned Flanders, only for both characters to rub Just Stamp The Ticket Man the wrong way with their mutually oversolicitous approach to customer service. From a purely economical perspective, I can understand why it was cut - we didn't need to see Smithers fail at four different jobs to get the message - but I still lament its excision. Among other things, it would have been the first time we'd seen Springfield's two mildest-mannered residents properly interact (I'm not counting their surprisingly brutal medieval duel in the opening to "Lisa's Wedding"), and while they only get one exchange, they really do have terrific chemistry. I could seriously take a whole spin-off with Ned and Waylon.

Instead, Smithers ends up back with Burns, as is inevitable, although getting there takes a few additional twists and turns, resulting in Homer accidentally knocking Burns from his office window, causing him to break a number of bones, and leaving him once again completely dependent on Smithers for meeting his every need. And, insist as he might that he's developed a taste for self-sufficiency, it doesn't take Burns long to re-embrace the life of being waited on hand and foot. Despite how happy both parties are with this final arrangement, it isn't exactly a tender reunion, a la Patty and Selma at the end of "Principal Charming". The giveaway is in the affected manner in which Burns' jaw gapes open as Smithers feeds him peanuts, unsettlingly reminiscent of Malcolm McDowell at the end of A Clockwork Orange - which, coupled with Smithers' disturbing mantra for coaxing Burns into eating ("Here comes the endangered condor into the power lines!") - is clearly geared toward having us see something more than a little grotesque about this whole set-up. As Burns and Smithers rediscover the reassurance of having the other close at hand, we will likely feel relief that their allotted place within the Simpsons universe has been upheld (as fundamentally flawed as their relationship might be, Burns and Smithers, as a duo, are a vital part of the Springfieldian dynamic). But we understand that it is also a mutual entrapment, even if it's an entrapment into which both characters are re-entering with their eyes wide open. "Homer The Smithers", then, is ultimately about two characters failing to reinvent their lives for the better, because stepping away from the comfort and familiarity of the personal niches in which they've existed for so long proves too hard. Such failure is hardly unique to Burns and Smithers - just a couple of episodes prior, the series had attempted to make a similar, albeit less successful point with Krusty in "Bart The Fink", which ends with the pseudocidal clown making a decision that is flagrantly bad for him but also the only one that the status quo will allow. Whereas "Bart The Fink" weakens its point by having Krusty be actively harangued into his decision by Bart and Lisa, at a time when those kids really should have minded their own goddamned business, Burns and Smithers are permitted to reach this conclusion by themselves, with Homer doing little more than the basic setting of events into motion. As noted, it is an arrangement that works for the both of them, and in the end perhaps their relationship (not unlike Homer and Marge's) is the kind that defies all judgement and can only really be understood by its active participants. We leave the crane, with maybe a scratch or two, once again devotedly plucking lodged bones from the throat of the wolf.

As order is restored with Burns and Smithers, so too do things revert to their default state with Homer, who gets the final word of the episode. As thanks for Homer's role in helping him to reconcile with Burns, Smithers has sent the Simpsons a lavish fruit basket. Lisa asks if Burns survived the fall, a call-back to Homer's earlier freak-out that he might have killed his boss, but Homer's nonchalant response - "What am I, a doctor?" - indicates that he has satisfied whatever personal investment he might once have had in this scenario. Instead, he feasts impassively on grapes, waiting for the next opportunity for Burns' life - or that of any Springfieldian - to circulate back to him.