Brother From Another Series (aka We Don't Talk About Pruno)

Today is the Ides of March, and what better way to honor the occasion than by paying tribute to the two most endearing backstabbers that I know?

On the DVD commentary for "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase", Ken Keeler introduces the core concept of a spin-off as being to "take a successful show and make an unsuccessful one out of it". That gets a hearty laugh out of Yeardley Smith and provides the basis of the episode's entire irony-drenched philosophy. There are, however, two very obvious counterpoints to Keeler's definition. Firstly, The Simpsons itself is a spin-off, of the crudely drawn filler material on The Tracy Ullman Show. Secondly, the series had, that very season, already paid tribute to one of the most acclaimed spin-offs in television history (the tribute in question was, ironically, penned by Keeler himself), the one that has, ever since, served as a model example of how to do a sitcom spin-off correctly. And for good reason - Frasier kicked Cheers' butt. I recognise that Cheers itself is still an iconic and fondly-remembered show, but then my assertion is not an at all uncommon one - shit got interesting when Frasier ditched his Boston barstool and took his place alongside his fastidious younger brother in their Seattle opera box. "Brother From Another Series" (episode 4F14), which first aired on February 23rd 1997, is another shining example of why I hold Season 8 in such high regard - it's the kind of experimental episode I could only really see them pulling off at this point in the series' lifespan, one that, in lesser hands, might have smacked of hollow gimmickry. The previous season's "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" had already explored (very successfully, I might add) how far you could take a Bob encounter in terms of pure, gut-wrenching peril, and while "Brother From Another Series" features a similarly action-orientated climax with Springfield once again at risk of complete annihilation, it's less interested in topping its predecessor in that regard than in examining Bob's predicament from a predominantly fresh perspective. It brings in a sparkling new addition to Bob's line-up of thorny relationships, one that cuts closer to home than usual for the clown-cum-criminal and sheds compelling light on the man he is, and the man he could potentially be if his circumstances were slightly altered. The result is a very different kind of Sideshow Bob episode, in which Bob finally gets to pay homage to the role for which his voice actor Kelsey Grammer is best renowned, whilst building on his in-universe characterisation in a way that is functional, meaningful and exceedingly gratifying. You can keep your Cape Feares, seriously. For me, THIS is the Bob narrative to rule them all.

True Simpsons geeks might have noted that "Brother From Another Series" was only the second episode named in honor of John Sayles' criminally underrated 1984 science fiction indie The Brother From Another Planet - and, unlike Season 4's slackly-titled "Brother From The Same Planet", the reference actually works, alluding to the imported nature of pivotal kinship, and to the fact that anybody hip to the television sitcom landscape of the 1990s would have certainly seen it play out before somewhere, in some parallel reality. In this episode, Bob gets an unexpected new beginning when his kid brother Cecil (voice of David Hyde Pierce) re-enters his life after a decade of estrangement, and manages to secure his release from prison, on the condition that Bob stays with him and joins his hydrodynamical workforce. Naturally, this isn't doing wonders for Bart's sleeping habits - Bob insists that he's over his vindictiveness and wants only to lead a normal life, but the shamus in short pants isn't nearly so willing to let their relationship go, and makes a point of stalking Bob in the hopes of proving that the leopard's spots remain unchanged. The obvious precursor to this scenario is "Black Widower" of Season 3, with Bart once again being the only character inclined to entertain the possibility that an ostensibly rehabilitated Bob might be harbouring dangerous intentions. But on this occasion the culpability is inverted, so that (oh delicious twist) Bart has the wrong perspective and Bob is effectively the good guy, a novel arrangement that gives Bob the privilege of, not unreasonably, getting to declare Bart psychotic.

"Brother From Another Series" is an episode that I've held off talking about for a while. I've held off talking about it because I want to do it all the justice that I possibly can, since it is quite a bit special to me. By that, I mean that it is my all-time favourite Simpsons episode - it has been ever since its UK debut late in the spring of 97. At the time, I was still a virgin to all things Frasier, so the central conceit was lost on me, although I did pick up that there was something a little...peculiar about Cecil as a character. There was, very blatantly, an in-joke that I wasn't getting; the title alone was a dead giveaway in that regard. I still had so much more of a journey to undertake regarding "Brother From Another Series" and that other series it was so lovingly homaging, but that didn't prevent me from immediately falling in love with the dynamic between Bob and Cecil - after years of Bob being such an odd man out in his highbrow graces, it was heartening and refreshing having him contend with a character who could operate on the same wavelength. I also give "Brother" credit for being the first Bob episode to really attempt to explore any of the specifics of Bob's backstory - eight seasons in, and we still knew next to nothing about his personal history. The only window we'd previously gotten was in "Sideshow Bob Roberts", where it was revealed that Bob attended Yale University, and as such feels automatic antipathy for the alumni of Princeton (a gag that actually receives additional payoff here - guess what university Cecil attended?). The question of Bob's family was something I had long wondered about (disregarding Neil, his nephew from one issue of the Simpsons Comics, who can get his non-canonical ass out of here) - it didn't look like any of them attended his wedding in "Black Widower", but I figured that he had to have one. Finally, "Brother" stands out for being the Bob episode that I can most get behind philosophically speaking, as a card-carrying Sideshow Bob sympathiser - it is an unusually favourable episode toward Bob, which has less to do with him getting to be the hero on this occasion than it does "Brother" appearing particularly mindful of the plight Bob faces as an ex-con. Rather than upholding his criminal history as evidence that he can never be a functional member of society and should be fundamentally regarded as an object of fear, this episode flips the process on its head, in having Bob really, really wanting to go straight, but finding that his past will ultimately always be wielded against him. You might say that it is the anti-"Black Widower", an antecedent of which Keeler's intelligent script does seem to be looking to make us specifically conscious - the events of "Widower" are evoked, outside of Bob's usual rap sheet recital, during his dinner with Edna K, when he notes that their evening together constitutes his first date in six years (I assume he's talking about Selma, although his math is a little off, given that that episode aired in 1992). As far as I'm concerned, setting out to be the anti-"Black Widower" is an extraordinarily auspicious place for any Sideshow Bob episode to start.

I've professed to being less fond of "Widower" than I am the other Bob episodes of the "classic" era, in part because Bob's motives for wanting to kill Selma are so disappointingly arbitrary (compared to "Krusty Gets Busted", in which he was given a very clear and compelling reason for his backstabbing). Truth is, I find it such a bleak and depressing installment in general; it's the episode that affirms Bob's commitment to the path of sociopathy (making his flimsy motivation all the more frustrating), but it comes at it from a position of unrelenting sardonicism. "Widower" is obviously attuned to the crippling flaws of the criminal justice system; it's aware that, rather than enabling Bob to become an upstanding citizen, his experiences within this system have pushed him even further along that slippery slope. The ludicrousness of Bob being expected to rebuild his life is highlighted in the disclosure that he left prison with only ten dollars to his name and no visible means of supporting himself besides leeching off of his new fiancée. The episode does, superficially, purport to transmit sympathy in Bob's corner, only to throw it back by the end with the twist that he was Evil All Along, and there's just no helping him, other than to put him back under lock and key. And, let's face it - Bart's distrust of Bob was rooted overwhelmingly in the fact that Bob had specifically wronged Krusty, a character to whom he feels a disproportionate sense of loyalty. The revelation that Selma's beau was an ex-con did not, in itself, perturb him ("Cool, he can teach us how to kill a guy with a lunch tray!"). I appreciate that it must have been intensely awkward for Bart to have this man hanging around his family's kitchen after the part he'd played in implicating him, but he had no real evidence on which to base his initial suspicions that Bob was up to no good, outside of the fact that he just didn't like him. Marge's observation that Bart never lost his mistrust might serve as a "cute" callback to the ending of "Krusty Gets Busted", but it does highlight the central problem that Bart has been rewarded for what were fundamentally always prejudices on his part - at least by "Brother From Another Series", Bob has proven himself to be a repeat offender, and Bart arguably does have some justification for his paranoia. Naturally, he is a bit shaken by their previous encounters, but he's also genre savvy; he's been playing this game with Bob for long enough to know what to expect. "Brother" goes entirely the opposite route to "Widower", in demonstrating that Bart's expectations actually have him blinkered - his gaze is so fixed on Bob that it never occurs to him to watch out for Cecil. As Keeler notes on the commentary: "You don't like Bart, by the end of the episode. He hasn't been right in his suspicions. Everyone in this episode is wrong EXCEPT Sideshow Bob."

Even so, the conclusion "Brother" reaches is actually no less bleak than that of "Widower". It doesn't exactly work out any better for Bob, in spite of his being 100% in the clear this time. And yeah, that ending always was something of a bitter pill for me to swallow, being as grotesquely unfair as it is to our hero. To a point, this outcome was dictated by that evil little thing called the status quo, and the imperative to get everything back to square one once our twenty-two minutes are up. But I can accept it as carrying a deeper significance than a simple reset, and it's a significance I greatly appreciate. The ending is as intensely cynical as that of "Widower", the key difference being that this cynicism is not directed at Bob himself, and at the idea per se that he could have outgrown his allotted role as town homicidal maniac and turned things around, but rather at the idea that the town - and by extension, the series dynamics - would ever have allowed that to happen. In this instance, Bob did not fail society so much as society failed him. Besides, there is an upside to the arrangement, in that Bob and Cecil get to stay together. And that's a happy ending, right? Don't those two bruvs just have the most delectable chemistry?

Let's talk now about Cecil and his inspiration. First, a fun fact - his character design was conceived as a synthesis of Sideshow Bob and his voice actor David Hyde Pierce. We've already explored what you'll get if you combine Sideshow Bob and Mick Jagger. Sideshow Bob and David Hyde Pierce, on the other hand, will get you...well, none other than Simply Red frontman, Mick Hucknall. When I heard Josh Weinstein point that out on the DVD commentary, I could have kicked myself for not having made that observation independently. For Cecil does indeed bear more than a passing resemblance to Hucknall as he looked during the Picture Book era. I've never been able to watch the music videos to "Money's Too Tight To Mention" and "Holding Back The Years" in quite the same way again.

I spent an inordinate part of the summer of 97 rewatching my home recording of "Brother From Another Series" back-to-back; it struck me as an almost miraculously wonderful episode of The Simpsons. Mainly, I craved the repartee between Bob and Cecil, and could have taken an entire series' worth of it. I did a little background reading on the episode and discovered that, lucky me, I could have exactly that, Bob and Cecil's brotherly rapport being a somewhat darker variation on that shared by Grammer and Pierce's characters in contemporary sitcom Frasier. I tuned into Channel 4, where Frasier was playing, more out of curiosity than anything else, at the thought of seeing those familiar voices come out of actual human beings. I freaking loved it, and all of a sudden I had a whole new series to devour. My appreciation for "Brother From Another Series" only deepened from there; I could attest that the chemistry between Frasier and Niles Crane had been beautifully replicated in Bob and Cecil, two brothers who compliment each other's refined tastes and who intermittently feel the need to go at one another like a couple of rutting stags. And while I grew to love Frasier and Niles as their own independent characters, to me they will always be the live action counterparts to Bob and Cecil first and foremost. It's how I was introduced to them.

If you've never seen an episode of Frasier, there are a couple of gags in "Brother From Another Series" that might confuse you - the appearance of that "Frasier is a Hit Show On NBC" title card before the second act (a nod to the characteristically Frasier convention of giving each individual episode act its own title), and Cecil's reference to a mysterious "Maris", this being the name of Niles' wife, the focus of a long-running gag in which she is frequently discussed but always stays firmly off of screen. Otherwise, you don't need to be particularly well-versed in Frasier to enjoy the "Brother" on its own terms, although there is still a lot you'll miss out on - not least, the irony of Frasier and Niles both being psychiatrists and Bob and Cecil both being characters who could clearly use psychiatrists in their lives. Nevertheless, you might appreciate that one of the smartest and subtlest underlying gags of the first act is in the set-up seeming particularly suggestive of the beginnings of a TV sitcom, which perhaps comes off as even more salient with "The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase" being so close around the corner. The whole plot point of Cecil arranging for Bob to move into his apartment is reminiscent of the premise of Frasier, in which Frasier played reluctant host to his father Martin (John Mahoney, who would later guest star as the Terwilliger patriarch in "Funeral For A Fiend"), whose mobility issues were making it increasingly difficult for him to live alone. Their relationship wasn't exactly estranged, but Frasier was blatantly never as close to Martin as he was to his late mother Hester, and there had been a notable drift in their contact during his time living in Boston, so a lot of the tension in earlier seasons came from them re-establishing their bond and learning how to put up with one another. Bob and Cecil come together from a similar point of disconnection, with the prospect of catching up after years of not speaking - and all the time in the world in which to get reacquainted is exactly what they end up with, but alas, not in the confines of Cecil's chic apartment.

More than a love letter to Frasier, I see "Brother From Another Series" as playing into that broader sense of "what if?" that characterises a number of episodes from Oakley and Weinstein's tenure, most notably "Spin-off Showcase" and its own predecessor, "22 Short Films About Springfield". Like those episodes, the premise (and the title) feels evocative of the kind of parallel sitcom narratives that might be unfolding constantly all over Springfield, and which we could potentially even be watching if the Simpson family didn't insist upon hogging the limelight. But the question of "what if?" carries its own harsher significance for the Terwilliger brothers, as we delve deeper into the nature of their fraternal bond and uncover the reason why they stopped talking. The Crane brothers' dynamic is so skilfully intersected with the specifics of Bob's narrative, intermittently creating something of a culture clash - for example, there's a great moment where Cecil, an ardent wine enthusiast much like Niles, offers his new charge a glass of Bordeaux using typically ornate Crane bro-esque jargon, to which a pruno-surfeited Bob retorts that he'll happily accept anything that doesn't taste like orange juice fermented under a radiator (at least he was tasteful enough to keep it to the radiator). The greatest stroke of genius, though, is in the reveal that Cecil, like Niles, harbours a deep resentment of his brother's celebrity - even if, in Cecil's case, all that celebrity really amounts to is the sad trajectory from a TV clown's sidekick to a pitifully unsuccessful criminal. Hey, Bob got notoriety from the deal, which is more than being a humble civil servant will get you. This echoes Niles' envy of Frasier's status as a local radio psychiatrist, a frequent source of tension between the Crane brothers and something he was particularly explicit on in the Season 1 episode "Author Author", where Niles specifies that becoming a psychiatrist, like Hester, was something he had aspired to since childhood, only for Frasier to nab his thunder by way of seniority. "Brother" offers up its own direct equivalent, through the disclosure that, a decade prior, Cecil had tried out for the much-coveted role of Krusty's sidekick, only for Bob to inadvertently upstage him and take the spoils.

There is, naturally, a thread of unspoken humor in the inexplicability that becoming a clown's sidekick should have been a matter of such imperative for someone as highly educated as Cecil (according to Bob, Cecil wanted to be Krusty's sidekick since he was five years old...which does make me question how old Krusty has to be, since I'm not pegging Cecil as any younger than his mid-late 30s - Bob's in his 40s, right, and I doubt the age gap between the two of them is all that great). What's also not verbalised by either brother but hangs heavily over their contention is the blatancy that accepting the position as Krusty's sidekick was the decision that caused Bob's life to crash and burn, costing him not only his relationship with Cecil, but his dignity, integrity and eventually his liberty. Which is where the whole matter of "what if?" comes in. What if things had gone differently on the day in question, and Bob had never caught Krusty's eye? What if he had been able to resist Krusty's offer, out of solidarity with Cecil? He might have avoided ten wasted years of needless division with his brother for a start. Moreover, he might actually have been able to channel his personal energies into something positive and constructive, instead of getting hung up on futile, self-destructive things like obsession and revenge. Bob's an intelligent, courageous and resourceful person, and he has clearly always had the capacity to do tremendous good in him, something that "Brother From Another Series" enables him to finally act upon. The climax of the episode provides us with a heartening and honestly quite harrowing glimpse into the benevolent Bob he could still have been, and with which Springfield would have been lucky to have been blessed, but which it turned down because it just wasn't ready to accommodate.

Innocent Bob may be in "Brother", but angel he ain't. For all of his good intentions this time around, there is still one area in which he gets things spectacularly wrong - as much as I love him, Bob is kind of a dick to Cecil, and this maybe doesn't reflect so well on him, given how deeply he owes it to Cecil for getting him out of jail. It is telling how much more barbed their interactions become in Cecil's apartment, away from the watchful surveillance of the prison visiting room, giving us insight into the ritualised sparring that has presumably characterised their relationship for some time. Cecil might kick off their dinner table pissing contest with his loftiness in being appointed Chief Hydrological and Hydrodynamical Engineer, but all of the fabulously rude rejoinders are coming out of Bob's mouth; Cecil is completely outmatched in that regard. And true, Cecil is planning to betray Bob, but Bob has no idea at this stage, and he's probably not doing a whole lot to convince Cecil to reconsider his impending perfidy. The specific exchange where Bob dismisses Cecil's suggestion that any civilisation in history has ever considered Chief Hydrological and Hydrodynamical Engineer a "calling", only for Cecil to cough pointedly and Bob to concede that, "Yes, the Cappadocians, fine" - well, it may be my favourite exchange in the entire history of the series. It's hilarious and brilliantly esoteric, and that's exactly what I dig in a Simpsons gag. But you know, it does look an awful lot to me like Cecil was attempting to defuse the tension, and Bob couldn't resist the temptation to keep on being disparaging. I suspect this is intended to feed into the narrative misdirection - our suspicions are meant to be zeroed in on Bob throughout, so his astringent treatment of Cecil might have us questioning if his prior amiability was all part of some act to get through that prison door (I remain wholly unconvinced that his supposed religious awakening was anything but). But no, it turns out that Bob's happiness at being reconciled with his brother is entirely sincere - he just moves past it very quickly, and back into his implied old habit of locking antlers with him. This, ultimately, is the mistake he makes - he underestimates his brother and all that he's capable of, because he's so used to always having the upper hand with him.

What is obviously wrong-headed about Cecil's scheme to destroy the Springfield dam and have Bob take the fall is that he's already gotten to watch from a distance just how badly becoming Krusty's sidekick worked out for Bob, and the healthiest possible takeaway would've been that Bob had suffered for his actions while he had dodged a bullet. But then healthy life perspectives clearly don't flow in the Terwilliger genes (something we might connect back to Bart's observation on how "inside every hardened criminal beats the heart of a 10-year-old boy", foreshadowing as it does the intrinsic immaturity of Bob and Cecil's respective grudges). It's possible that Cecil wouldn't have fared any better than Bob if he'd gotten the gig, but this is of no odds to the younger Terwilliger; even if he'd wound up with Bob's pitiful life trajectory, it was still his trajectory, and Bob took it from him. What Cecil really wants to do is to prove that he can do better than the brother who's always bested him, if not as Krusty's sidekick then as a master criminal; like Bob, he aspires to subvert the status quo by hitting back at the individuals who've most held him down. Hence, Cecil punishes Bob by making him a victim of the crimes he's thus far only ever been used to dispensing - he sets out to frame Bob, as Bob did to Krusty, and to destroy him, as Bob has previously attempted with multiple characters. (Note: it's not clear if Cecil always set out to blow Bob up along with the dam or if he was just taking advantage of the opportunity - he couldn't have predicted that Bart and Lisa would get involved, and had no premeditated plans for Bart specifically, but it's entirely feasible that he always intended to ambush Bob at the dam and hold him at gunpoint.) To demonstrate that he is a Terwilliger to the core, Cecil admits to Bob upfront that he cares significantly less about the $15 million he's embezzling from the deal so much as getting even with his brother - the money is, as Niles Crane once said of marrying into Maris's family fortune, a delightful bonus. Delightful enough for him to shriek in frustration when Bart causes him to accidentally throw all of the ill-gotten bank notes over the side of the dam (according to a deleted scene, it ended up with Hans Moleman, but I think it's more fitting for the cash to just disappear into oblivion - almost like the briefcase in Fargo - illustrating how unimportant it really is to the situation at hand), but he latches onto an immediate consolation prize via the opportunity to do the single thing that was perpetually beyond Bob, and dispose of one particularly pesky 10-year-old child. To give Cecil his due, he isn't taken in by Bart's flattery as Bob would have been. He could just make a first-rate homicidal maniac yet.

The most ironic thing about the climax of "Brother" is that Bob does still technically get to make an attempt on Bart's life, just under circumstances that make it more admissible than usual. When Cecil hurls Bart off the top of the dam, Bob pulls off the death-defying stunt of swinging and catching him by hanging onto the detonating cord - he saves Bart, but it does leave them both directly at the mercy of Cecil, who has the detonator at the opposite end. Bob proposes that they cut the cord, preventing Cecil from blowing up the dam and saving the town, even if it means that the two of them would inevitably plummet to their deaths. Bart seems reluctant, but Bob's the one with the pliers and he makes the call. I'm put in mind of the climax of "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", where Bob dragged Bart into his last-ditch suicidal gambit to crash the Wright brothers' plane on top of Krusty; in both cases, Bob approaches the prospect of his own destruction with a thoroughgoing fearlessness that is either highly admirable or pant-wettingly terrifying, depending on its context. It just goes to show how easily his talents could have been used in service of good instead of ruination. Bob and Bart both survive, thanks to a conveniently placed water pipe that breaks their fall but leaves Bob temporarily immobilised; Bart does the honorable thing and repays Bob's earlier act of heroism by pulling him to safety when he could have let him quietly slip. Does this hint at a potential understanding between the two long-running enemies? As with everything else, "Brother" illustrates that there is always the possibility of a better way, only have it go tragically down in flames. Despite their two-way show of magnanimity, I suspect it would be extremely difficult, under any circumstances, for Bob and Bart to ever truly to be friends - a problem that may be rooted more in Bart's small-minded grievances than Bob's, as the episode ending bears out.

In the aftermath, Bob still insists on being a dick to Cecil (jeez Bob, you've been in Cecil's shoes, you could cut him just a little slack); Cecil, by contrast, seems to convey a grudging respect for Bob, conceding that they are now levelled in their mutual inability to pull off their criminal ambitions: "All this time I thought you were a bungler, but destroying a city is far tougher than I thought." Sadly, Cecil's concession is all the graciousness Bob is going to get from this resolution; Chief Wiggum shows up and insists on arresting Bob along with Cecil, despite a gaping lack of evidence for his involvement. Wiggum has clear preconceived expectations about how this scenario must have played out and is as blinkered as Bart was earlier. This turn of events was, for a time, enough to make me thoroughly loathe Wiggum, but I've moved past that, having figured that Bob is a victim of so much more than Wiggum's incompetence. You know what I consider to be the really unsettling thing about this outcome? The total silence from our shamus in short pants. Lisa, to her credit, makes a perfunctory effort to stand up for Bob; Bart keeps his mouth shut and lets it happen. According to the current Wikipedia summary, "Wiggum arrests Bob, despite Bart and Lisa's protests that he is reformed", but it simply isn't true that Bart offers any kind of protest at all. Clearly, he was quite happy to see his old nemesis go back behind bars. Bart might have had the decency to save Bob's life when it fell to him to do so, and he might even have climbed down from his opening assessment that Bob is "pure evil"...but that doesn't necessarily mean he could forgive Bob for all the years of bad blood they will unfortunately always have behind them. Bob may yearn for a change of direction, but Bart is less inclined to let it go. Could we say that Bart is the real villain of "Brother", then? "Irredeemable" as Grammer observes on the episode commentary? It wouldn't be inaccurate, but I'm disposed to go a step further and see his shameful silence as being indicative of Springfield's ultimate indifference toward Bob's plight as a whole. The cruelty of the ending is actually two-fold - not only does Bob get dragged back to jail after his display of incredible heroism, it turns out to have all been for naught. The ill-constructed dam disintegrates by itself and unleashes a deluge upon the town, but it doesn't look like anybody is seriously hurt (I do like the joke that it's apparently only just occurred to Homer to look for Bart and Lisa now, goodness knows how many hours after they snuck out). The harsh reality is that Springfield just wasn't worth Bob's efforts to defend it; he pays the price for sticking up for a town that he knew in his heart of hearts to be cursed. The single victory Bob is afforded in the final scene is in getting to reassert his status as the dominant Terwilliger, by beating Cecil to the top bunk in their cell. Business carries on as usual for our two rutting stags, in whichever neck of the woods they might find themselves.

Here's the thing about Frasier and Niles, though - in spite of their intense sibling rivalry, they were the best of friends really, and very dependent on one another's companionship as their mutual emotional safety net. It's your classic love-hate relationship, and deep down I could see the exact same being true for Bob and Cecil; for as much as they annoy one another, they are also the only individuals who truly "get" one another, and there is a certain degree of reassurance to be had from that. Bob could do a whole lot worse than being locked up with Cecil at the end. Although I am going to admit that the punchline of the episode confuses me a little. "When do they bring us the menus?" sounds like the kind of typically naive thing that Niles would say, but Cecil says it with a knowing smirk, suggesting that he is in on the joke, whatever it might be.

And that's "Brother From Another Series", the episode that both lifted my heart and broke it in one fell swoop and left an indelible impression on my pre-adolescent psyche. I got the sympathetic Sideshow Bob episode I always wanted - which is just as well, because Bob would be taking a hiatus for the next four years, so I had to look on this episode as his going away present of sorts. By the time he eventually returned, in Season 12, the world had become a very different place and so had The Simpsons, and "Day of The Jackanapes" was a crushing disappointment to me (come back "Black Widower", all is forgiven). But you can't take "Brother From Another Series" away from me, and that's what really counts. And while it is a shame that Cecil wasn't able to become a fixture of Bob's installments going forward, because he is such a great character in his own right, I still got to enjoy the Terwilliger brothers' ongoing rivalry second-hand, by way of their parallel universe incarnations in Frasier. We'll always have Maris.