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.