The first thing to be said about "Homer Loves Flanders" (episode 1F14) is that it contains one of my all-time favourite low-key Simpsons jokes. The kind that you don't necessarily register on your first viewing, or even your second or third, but which suddenly hits you like a ton of bricks on the fourth. Early in the episode, we find Homer driving to work and listening to the radio, leading to the all-important plot development of the call-in competition to win tickets to the upcoming Pigskin Classic football game between the Shelbyville Sharks and the Springfield Atoms. Before that though, we catch the closing notes of an eerily tortured-sounding a cappella performance, followed by the announcement, "That was Bobby McFerrin's new one: I'm Worried, Need Money." Now I love Bobby McFerrin. I think he's supremely talented, and The Voice is one of those under-championed albums I'm constantly recommending to anyone who cares. Still, I've got to appreciate the humour here. McFerrin ended up with the dreaded "One Hit Wonder" tag, with his 1988 single "Don't Worry, Be Happy" being his only significant chart success. In public perception, a one hit wonder will often appear more of a failure than a none hit wonder. No hits might imply that you just never got your lucky break, or that your music wasn't mainstream enough to catch on with the masses. One hit implies that you had the momentum but couldn't sustain it. For a second there you were on top of the world, and you blew it. This was one of several gags littered throughout Season 5 at the expense of musicians whose chart glory was merely flash in the pan. Carl Douglas was described as a one trick pony in "Bart Gets Famous". "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" had that ironic joke about us not having seen the last of Dexy's Midnight Runners (note: this refers to US perception of the band - Dexy's Midnight Runners are not regarded as a one hit wonder in their native UK, where they had another number 1 single, "Geno"). The McFerrin jab feels particularly caustic, though. There's the fact that the title "I'm Worried, Need Money" goes directly against the ethos expressed in "Don't Worry, Be Happy". All the more biting is the unmistakable, half-broken discomposure in the voice of the alleged McFerrin as he wails out those final disconcerting strains. This is a man who's lost his wits watching his momentary empire crumble around him, wrecked by the fickle nature of success.
This fascination with faded stardom was indicative of an underlying anxiety that would intermittently surface during The Simpsons' run in the mid-90s, back when David Mirkin was the man in charge - the possibility that its own popularity was finite. From the beginning, The Simpsons had taken a healthily leery approach to its status as a pop cultural phenomenon, with examples of meta humor, like the plot trajectory of "Dancin' Homer" and the Macy's Parade gag in "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", suggesting that the series was experiencing a form of imposter syndrome and fully expected the public to see through it before too long. By Season 5 it had been around long enough to know that it had staying power, and to openly contemplate how amazingly far it had already come; "Bart Gets Famous" was an entirely upfront post-mortem of the Bart Mania that had characterised its initial wave of success, from the perspective of a series that had survived the pressures of getting so very popular so early on in its career. Compared to the apocalyptic rumblings that became all-too explicit during the back half of Oakley and Weinstein's reign, life under Mirkin seemed relatively complacent and at ease with itself. But it's here that we can also pinpoint arguably the most direct precursor to that Season 8 brand malaise, in a couple of small but critical moments of "Homer Loves Flanders". Bart is perturbed by the episode's central development, which sees Homer suddenly becoming very chummy with Ned Flanders and wanting their respective clans to hang out together. Lisa is less concerned, having grown savvy to the rules of the game: "It seems like every week something odd happens to the Simpsons. My advice is to ride it out, make an occasional smart-aleck quip, and by next week we'll be back to where we started from, ready for another wacky adventure." As the episode nears its conclusion, Homer and Ned's friendship seems stronger than ever, prompting a dumbfounded Lisa to contemplate the unthinkable: "Maybe this means the end of our wacky adventures."
"Homer Loves Flanders", which first aired March 17th 1994, can be categorized as part a trilogy of Mirkin-era episodes that dealt with the consequences of something being fundamentally off within the Simpsons universe, and where the threats to the characters are happening on an existential level. "The Last Temptation of Homer" and "Lisa's Rival" offer variations on this same theme, although in both of their cases the disturbance is set in motion by the intrusion of an uncannily perfect outsider who is (however unintentionally) threatening to usurp the established territory of one of the family. "Homer Loves Flanders" takes as a different approach, in having the crisis arise from a simple rearrangement of the show's internal dynamics. What's intrinsically hilarious about the notion of Homer and Ned's friendship posing a danger to the very fabric of the Simpsons' world is that it is, on the surface, an entirely plausible and logical development within said world. One day, Homer could very well wake up to the reality that being friends with Ned is more fulfilling than stewing in constant resentment toward him. After all, Ned's a really generous and helpful guy, and of course he's got that neat rumpus room we'd first seen in "Dead Putting Society". Why wouldn't Homer grow to like him, if he could just be persuaded to give Ned a chance? And why would this spell an end to the Simpsons' adventures in general? How many of them were actually dependent on Homer's dislike of Ned? This isn't exactly comparable to Homer dumping Marge for Mindy, which would break the premise of the series completely - in most regards, life could continue pretty much as normal for the family. The answer is, of course, that such a change, however benign, would still go against the status quo, which by now had firmly entrenched rules about what could and couldn't happen. In 1994 The Simpsons had long proven that it had a successful formula, but the prevailing anxiety that seemed to pop up every so often under Mirkin had to do with this formula being nevertheless a fragile one, and the possibility that the slightest amount of tinkering could cause it to completely unravel. It doesn't take much for your fortunes to drastically change. One minute you're on top of the world and feeling happy, and the next minute you're deeply worried and wailing about your desperate need of money.
In making sense of Bart and Lisa's statements on the matter, it's important to keep in mind that while they are a part of this supposedly threatened world, there is a greater extent to which they're serving as audience stand-ins. It's done a touch more subtly than in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", but it's still conspicuous enough. For the most part, they are passive observers of the episode's developments rather than active participants, the Flimpsons picnic being the only point at which they themselves come into any direct conflict with the Flanders (first through their respective efforts to introduce sugar into Rod and Todd's diet, then by introducing Zesty Italian dressing to their eyes). Lisa is effectively advising Bart that if he doesn't like where a particular Simpsons story is going, not to worry, because there'll be another one next week and the events of this one won't have any lasting impact. Her remark about making the occasional smart-aleck quip alludes to the banalities of sitcom convention, and to the extent to which the viewer is complicit in this process, in favouring what's safe and familiar over anything more challenging or substantial. (It's notable that Lisa's position is at odds with her earlier stance in "Bart Gets Famous" - here she openly welcomes a non-sequitur utterance of one of Bart's catchphrases as being within the spirit of things). Her most telling observation and the one with the bleakest implications, is "And by next week, we'll be back to where we started from". It suggests something of a paradox, in acknowledging both the passing of time and the fact that the Simpsons themselves are at the exact same point in life they've always been. On the one hand, it might be reassuring to know that the family and the world we've come to love so much aren't going anywhere. But what is being denied to the characters in this whole cycle is the opportunity for any kind of meaningful growth or improvement. An eventual friendship seems like a perfectly natural trajectory for the Homer-Ned relations, but it cannot happen - in no small way, because the viewer has grown accustomed to a world in which Homer's hatred for Ned is off the charts.
Heck, Ned himself has grown to accustomed to a world in which Homer loathes him, which allows for the episode's most startling development - Bart and Lisa might do a bit of hand-wringing from the sidelines, but it's Ned who copes the least smoothly with this challenge to the status quo. There's a bit of misdirection in the second act in which it looks as though the main conflict will be about Homer prioritising his time with Ned over time with his own family (making it momentarily reminiscent of your typical Home-Wrecker episode), but this doesn't go anywhere outside of Homer forcing the two families to come together for the aforementioned Flimpsons picnic. "Homer Loves Flanders" is really a character study about Ned and his own complicated, not universally sunny feelings toward Homer. Though Homer insists that the deity he recognises, a waffle tossed up onto the hallway ceiling by Bart (a strange gag, but there are stranger gags still to come), is silently mocking him, it is quite blatantly Ned who is the target of this week's round of cosmic taunting. A little Homer goes a long way, and faced with a Homer who suddenly wants to smother him with his presence 24/7, Ned's status as the mellow and tolerant one in the equation is also thrown into disarray.
"Homer Loves Flanders" opens, appropriately, with focus on another state of longstanding disharmony between neighbouring forces, that of Springfield and Shelbyville, whose football teams are playing against one another in the much-anticipated Pigskin Classic. Why should these two communities, so alike in abrasive indignity, feel so much animosity for one another? It can't all come down to a lemon tree and disagreements about marrying cousins. More likely it's a variation on the same problem facing Homer and Ned, in that people who are stuck together can't help but get on one another's nerves. As per Lisa's account, the rivalry between the two burgs might have started out as a bit of healthy competition, but has escalated into something altogether less wholesome: "They built a mini-mall, so we built a bigger mini-mall. They made the world's largest pizza, so we burned down their city hall." Shelbyville has apparently gotten its revenge by spiking Springfield's water supply (which it kind of already was, by Springfield's own doing). It's clearly in the interests of both cities to put aside their petty grudges and restrict this contention to the sporting arena, but alas, they're too far along that the same path of destructive bitterness, with no prospect of alleviation or self-improvement. The futile rivalry has become too great a defining point for their respective locale's sense of pride and character. Homer of course wants to be there to cheer on the Atoms and jeer the Sharks, but has bad luck securing a ticket, despite missing eight days of work to camp out in the line outside the Shelbyville Stadium (so, the implication is that he's been there for at least ten days?). The only person in front of him happens to be a scalper, who takes all of the tickets (ironically, Homer was advised only moments earlier that a scalper would have been an affordable option if he hadn't forgone all those days of working). He later attempts to win two tickets via the radio call-in, but is beaten to them by none other than Ned. When Ned, ever the genial and thoughtful soul, shows up at Homer's door to offer him his second ticket, Homer immediately takes that as the ultimate sign of the Ceiling Waffle's mockery. He eventually accepts (but not without first contemplating knocking Ned out with a lead pipe and stealing the tickets), and to his surprise actually enjoys the time in Ned's company. The decisive factor that finally convinces Homer that Ned is truly top notch buddy material is when Ned is revealed to be on first name terms with the Atoms' star player, Stan Taylor, who attended Ned's Bible group. Stan offers Ned the game ball as a token of thanks for the spiritual guidance, and Ned persuades him to give it to Homer instead, on the grounds that he would enjoy it more. For once, the kindness of Ned's gesture isn't lost on Homer, and he resolves to spend more time with Ned. He also goes home and tosses out his wedding photo in order to make space for the football (affectionately named Stitchface) upon the family mantelpiece. Homer's infatuation with Ned is such that he's basically replaced Marge in his affections. Although there is one need of Homer's that Ned presumably isn't meeting, requiring him to periodically fall back on Marge - when he brushes off Marge's attempts at initiating conversation with a curtly robotic "Can't talk, see Flanders," he adds the promise of, "Later sex."
There is, from the start, a more obvious problem with this supposed peacetime between the Simpsons and Flanders abodes, which is that Homer comes on so strong in his affections that it doesn't quite seem genuine. The fiery enthusiasm with which he greets the prospect of getting to hang with Ned every day isn't terribly dissimilar from the fiery enthusiasm he had for, say, acquiring a used trampoline earlier that season in "Bart's Inner Child". Or indeed his over the top exuberance on hearing the guitar riff in Eddie Money's "Two Tickets To Paradise" from earlier in the same episode, which causes him to forget his predicament in not having tickets to the game, but only temporarily. You can count on Homer to feel intensely about anything in the moment, but for that passion to peter out just as abruptly (did he even mention the trampoline in the back half of "Bart's Inner Child"?). As sure a sign as any that the friendship is not fated to last is that his obsession with Ned feels more like one of his random crazes than any rational effort to get to know a man he's been reflexively spurning for eight years. Ned's willingness to lay out the welcome mat for Homer remains something the latter can fundamentally abuse, his tendencies to permanently borrow household items from Ned being no less considerate than his newfound tendency to invade the Flanders' space by encroaching on their family dinners, destroying their pool table and interrupting their anodyne television viewing (I don't know if the sheep show Rod and Todd are watching is a parody of an actual cartoon, but it's priceless, as is Todd's somewhat baffled response to its moral implications: "That's all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?"). Homer is nevertheless touched by the Flanders' seemingly limitless efforts to accommodate him, and attempts to return the favour by initiating Ned into his own family (by which he means his fellow booze hounds down at Moe's), and then by having his biological family join the Flanders for a picnic, an arrangement that, unbeknownst to the wilfully oblivious Honer, the Flanders are every bit as cheesed off about as the Simpsons. This culminates in quite possibly the darkest sequence we had yet seen in any non-Halloween Simpsons installment, in which Ned heads up to the top of a clock tower, pulls out a gun and proceeds to fire upon the innocents below, sensing Homer's presence in them all. Granted, it is a dream sequence, but by Season 5 standards this is still pretty extreme.
For as shocking as this sequence is the first time you see it, and as chilling as it remains on subsequent viewings, the execution is simply beautiful. There's the eerie, Hitchcockian shot of the endlessly winding staircase Ned climbs to carry out his depraved deed, the ominous silence that greets his ascent, the sickly green skies above him, the washed-out blues of his unsuspecting targets down below, and their terrified screams as they realise what's happening. It doesn't immediately betray the fact that it's a dream, but we can tell right away that something is off, and that Ned is headed for some very out of character dealings. The only mitigating detail is that he doesn't appear to have had much success in his attempted massacre, since there are no bodies on the ground. It escalates into something all the more viciously exaggerated, when a mailman shows up and starts firing his own gun back at Ned. As a child, the visual of a postal carrier with an assault weapon concealed inside his mailbag always seemed like such a random bit of weirdness, until I learned that the term "going postal" was coined for a reason. Ned wakes up in a cold sweat, and has some disturbing news to share with Maude - he thinks he hates Homer Simpson.
I'll be honest here - I don't think the hatred Ned professes that to feel for Homer here is really anything new. What's lurking deep within a Springfieldian's soul can't always be detected from the surface - take what we also learn about Moe, and his surreptitious practice of reading literary classics to the residents of hospitals and shelters while tearing up at the sentimental parts (note: those are not valid quotes from either My Friend Flicka or Little Women). On a similar token, there's some level on which I suspect Ned has always privately disliked Homer, way down in the bowels of his psyche. I believe this was evident enough in "Dead Putting Society", when Ned demonstrated that he could actually be pretty darned tetchy with Homer if he really got going. You couldn't hold it against Ned for harbouring those sentiments - he tries so hard to be a good neighbour to Homer, and Homer's always so rude to him in return. Often Ned might come across as being merely oblivious to Homer's position, but I don't think this is the case. Ned isn't stupid, and he recognises those clear displays of animosity on Homer's part. It's more that he sees it as his Christian and neighbourly duty to rise above it and to always be the bigger man - as Homer puts it here, to turn every cheek on his body. Under the usual state of affairs, Ned has grown acclimatized to dealing with Homer's rudeness, so that he doesn't take it personally and keeps his own urges for retaliation in check. It's easy enough when Homer is mostly going to be blowing him off and he can simply walk away from him in the aftermath. But now the situation has changed, and he has to figure out how to deal with a Homer who is as obnoxious as ever, but from the angle of constantly wanting to be in his face and having zero respect for his family's boundaries. This is why the imbalance in the status quo proves particularly dangerous for Ned. It forces him to confront those buried and dormant feelings he'd long considered conquered.
A knock-on effect is that Ned's image as an upstanding citizen begins to deteriorate, both in the eyes of his family and the general public. This is paralleled with Homer's own reputation getting a major boost, when he attempts to assist in Ned's charity work at the shelter and his desire to get it over with as quickly as possible is mistaken for enthusiasm by an adjacent journalist. Once we've reached the third act, Homer's behaviours get ever more cartoonishly silly, to the point where he's chasing the Flanders' car a la the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The story remains grounded, however, by the very real, very painful consequences Ned's itches for a little respite start to bring. First he appears sinful in front of his sons, when he manages to get rid of Homer by telling him that he already has plans that day to take the boys to see their grandmother (presumably the one on Maude's side who later got taken hostage in the Holy Land, and not the beatnik who doesn't believe in rules). Rod and Todd are excited to hear this, at which point Ned attempts to introduce them to the concept of a white lie, and how sometimes it is okay to tell untruths when the goal is to spare another person's feelings. Rod isn't having any of it ("Lies make baby Jesus cry!"). Then when attempting to escape from Homer in the family Geo he gets pulled over for speeding by Chief Wiggum (yeah, well, unlike lying, which might be permissible under certain circumstances, reckless driving is always a bad idea, Ned - don't make me tap the most disturbingly ironic use I've ever seen of Bobby McFerrin, from our friends the LTSA in New Zealand), who accuses him of being high on goofballs in front of a busload of people from the First Church of Springfield. "Where's your Messiah now?" Wiggum asks tauntingly, echoing Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments. Where indeed.
Things come to a head that Sunday, when the church parishioners collapse into a flurry of distrustful whispering as Ned walks through the door, but applaud Homer for his work at the homeless shelter. As Reverend Lovejoy (who teases an upcoming sermon under the spiteful title of "What Ned Did") asks everyone to bow their heads in silent prayer, Ned becomes transfixed with the intrusive sound of Homer's relentless nasal breathing and, unable to bear it any more, blows his top in front of the whole church: "Can't you see? This man isn't a hero! He's annoying! He's very, very annoying!" The parishioners accuse Ned of being jealous of Homer and angrily round on him, but to everyone's surprise, including Ned's, it's Homer who comes to his defence. For as ridiculously exaggerated as Homer's affections might have been up until now, in his climactic speech he suddenly seems achingly sincere, owning up to his history as a less-than-pleasant neighbour and how commendable Ned always was in showing him so much patience. "If everyone here were like Ned Flanders," he argues, "there would be no need for Heaven. We'd already be there." The rest of the church is moved into apologising to Ned. In turn, Ned approaches Homer and thanks him for standing up for him. The two of them reconcile and head off for a game at the Pitch N' Putt, triggering a second round of existential anxiety in our young onlookers, who are bothered that there's now less than a minute on the clock and no sign as yet of things returning to normal.
It's sad, really. At the end of the episode, Homer and Ned had demonstrated that perhaps there was a basis for a genuine and healthy friendship between them after all. Homer had Ned's back when it really counted, and Ned recognised the value of that. Both neighbours were able to move past their respective reservations and reach a shared understanding that looked as though it might reap mutual benefits. The notion of that this kind of growth represents a threat to the series is a little troubling, even when the comic implications are golden. Is there not some part of us that wants to see the characters rewarded with meaningful development when they make an honest effort to better themselves? But, like it or lump it, Lisa's prediction for how this will all pan out proves entirely correct. In the story's epilogue, which onscreen titles helpfully inform us takes place the following Thursday at 8:00pm, Homer arrives home with the deeds to an allegedly haunted property, courtesy of his late great uncle Boris, and plans for the family to prove those superstitions wrong by spending the weekend there. Ned appears at the Simpsons' window to say hello and is told by Homer to get lost. Ned cheerfully accepts and goes his own way. No explanation is given, and Bart and Lisa seem alone in possessing any recollection of the previous week's happenings, furthering the sense that they represent the viewer's perspective - the show's internal world has simply reset itself, and the events of this episode might as well not have happened. The telltale clue is in that oddly specific detail about this occurring on Thursday at 8:00pm, which back in 1994 was when new Simpsons episodes were debuting on Fox. This is in effect, a faux preview for the next episode, airing March 24th. In reality, there wasn't a new episode that aired on that date (the following installment, "Bart Gets An Elephant", had to wait until March 31st), so while I doubt that writer David Richardson and the crew could have foreseen this at the scripting stage, it plays as its own bit of irresistible meta humor. This is effectively a preview for a lost episode.[1] Brilliant!
There, is however, a bit more to unpack in this epilogue than the inexplicable reset between Homer and Ned. Richardson's script is sly enough to weave in a subtle warning on how, by denying progression and keeping the characters trapped within the same time loop ad infinitum, there might be a price to pay sooner or later. The set-up for Homer's haunted house story, coupled with the name drop of a deceased relative we'd never even known existed until now, sounds dubious as sin. Obviously, it exists in quotation marks, as code for the kind of creaky sitcom devices we'd ordinarily regard as being beneath our favourite show. That's how we know the script is having some fun with us. But it's also a playful concession to to the likelihood that if The Simpsons persisted on its current path, it was going to struggle to stay fresh. Change is risky, sure, but is stagnation any more enticing as an alternative? Where else did The Simpsons have to go from here, if it wasn't permitted to do a little evolving? These are questions that Oakley and Weinstein would grapple with more consciously throughout their upcoming tenure, and for all the experimentation and world-building that was allowed to happen in their time, they arrived at basically the same conclusion. There's not a world of difference between the underlying implications of this ending and Troy McClure's foreboding in "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" on the potential developments in the series' future ("Did someone say long-lost triplets?!"). Both are snide reminders that if you get too limited in your options, eventually you're going to end up in shark-infested waters, and you can bet then that you're going to start jumping.
Now this wasn't the first instance in which the series had implemented a faux preview for the purposes of mocking the hoariness of lesser sitcoms. It happened previously at the end of "Treehouse of Horror II", where the preposterous set-up of Homer having Burns' head stitched to his neck promised to pave way for future hi-jinks with the two of them butting their connected skulls over whether to attend an all-you-can-eat-spaghetti dinner or a reception for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Homer even had a potential catchphrase in the works ("I hate having two heads!"). Sometimes you've just got to lampoon crummy sitcoms for the pleasure of lampooning crummy sitcoms. On this occasion, though, the outcome is more obviously linked to the wishes and expectations of outsides forces, through our audience surrogates Bart and Lisa. That's not to say that the onus is being played on the viewer for this predicament - Bart and Lisa had little direct influence on the situation, after all - but the viewer is rather being implicitly not to get too comfortable with the current state of things, because sooner or later something has to give. Consider what Bart and Lisa are actually doing in this scene. They're so relieved for the confirmation that Homer and Ned are no longer pals that they don't bat an eyelid at the kind of wacky adventure Homer is proposing, which is to spend the weekend in decrepit old house that's potentially haunted. Surely they'd be much safer staying in Evergreen Terrace while their dad and Ned enjoy a friendly game of pool in the rumpus room next door? Instead, they assume that since the world appears to be running according to its usual rules, they know what they're getting from it and all is right within. In actuality, they might be headed for something that is, by the standards of their universe, all the more profoundly wrong. The final moments find the Simpsons inside the house (which we only see from the exterior), and Homer reassuring the others that the place definitely isn't haunted, before the lights go out and the family screams in unison at some off-screen horror. We leave the Simpsons face to face with the dark unknown - which is precisely what Bart and Lisa were looking to avoid. Moral of the story: just because you're in familiar hands, don't assume that they're necessarily good hands.
[1] A variation on this set-up later showed up in the Season 7 episode "Bart The Fink", with further jokes about how improbably hoary it was. It was quite blatantly a different situation, however. There it was Homer's great-aunt Hortense who'd passed away (not the same aunt Hortense who was already dead in "Bart Gets Hit By A Car", surely?), and they didn't get the house itself, they just had to spend the night there to get their financial inheritance. It's a standard clause.
No comments:
Post a Comment