"Homer's Barbershop Quartet" opens with the family at a swap meet (or car boot sale, as we'd call it in the UK), where Bart and Lisa are perusing Comic Book Guy's stall and, after learning a little about the Rodent Invasion of the early 1960s, are surprised to dig out a record with Homer's face on the cover. Homer explains to them that, back in 1985, he was part of a barbershop quartet (alongside Skinner, Apu and Chief Wiggum) that used to perform regularly at Moe's. The group had a slow start, but eventually became a local sensation, at which point they were approached by a theatrical agent named Nigel who wanted to represent them, on the condition that they lose Wiggum, whom he considered "too Village People". On discovering Barney's hidden talent for singing, the group brought him in as a replacement and went on to record a hit record, "Baby on Board", under the name The Be Sharps. Alas, the taste of celebrity was sweet, but ultimately fleeting, and by the end of the summer the quartet had become an obscure footnote in music history. This is the story of their dramatic rise and fall.
We can technically count "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" as the fourth in the ongoing branch of "flashback episodes" that originated with "The Way We Was" of Season 2; doing so handily gives the branch a five-year streak that wasn't broken until Oakley and Weinstein took over as showrunners (one assumes that after "And Maggie Makes Three" they ran out of obvious subject matter). But "Quartet" would inevitably be the odd one out, in part because it's the only flashback episode, of that initial streak, that isn't focussed on the family. The other Simpsons are always somewhere at the back of Homer's mind throughout his rise to fame - there's a rather meagre subplot dealing with the mutual dissatisfaction that accompanies his being separated from his young family, but this has no discernible impact on how the episode ultimately resolves. But more glaring still is that is that the events of this particular flashback aren't events that conceivably fit with what we already know about the family. The other flashback episodes play out like the putting together of pieces in a puzzle, combining to give us the bigger story of the Simpsons' formation and how the family in its present state came to be. The questions they tackled were all very logical ones. How did Homer and Marge meet? How did they marry? What were the circumstances behind each of the children's births? How did Homer come to work at the nuclear power plant? When did the family move into Evergreen Terrace? "Quartet", by contrast, tells a story that is, by its own admission, a profoundly illogical thing to be retroactively working into the family's backstory this far into the series. Toward the end of the episode, Bart and Lisa (performing their intermittent duty as viewer substitutes) fire off a barrage of questions that directly attack the preposterousness of the tale their father has just related, the most insurmountable of which is, "How come we never heard about this until today?" Indeed. It would be one thing if a youthful Homer had been part of a music outfit that never went anywhere and left him a bit embarrassed as a thirtysomething. But for him to have been in a band that enjoyed chart success, toured Sweden, performed for the Statue of Liberty's centennial, won a Grammy, inspired a slew of tacky merchandise and still reunites for the occasional Dame Edna special...well, it surely wouldn't have taken this long to come up from an in-universe perspective? It's the kind of thing that should threaten to significantly rewire our perception of Homer as a character. Besides which, Santa's Little Helper is clearly glimpsed one of the flashbacks to 1985. The dog probably wasn't born until later in 80s, and he certainly didn't live with the Simpsons at this point, so CONTINUITY TORPEDOED! (Mind you, the dog in question is a different shade of brown to Santa's Little Helper, so is it possible the Simpsons owned another greyhound we'd also just never heard about? It would certainly be no more of a stretch than the mere existence of The Be Sharps.)
But then, The Be Sharps were not introduced with the intention that they have any serious ramifications for the series' world-building, as evidenced by how seldom they've been referenced in the seasons since. They were introduced purely so that The Simpsons could craft its own personalised love letter to The Beatles, and once we've accepted the distinctly self-contained nature of the story, its charms on that score are manifold. Writer Jeff Martin clearly had a great deal of passion for the Fab Four; that passion is palpable all throughout the script and certainly compensates for whatever conceptual quibbles we might have with the arrangement. If you know your Beatles history, then it's hard not to smile at some of the small ways in which the reality of the series is bent to accommodate the tribute - for example, Moe's Tavern was apparently known as "Moe's Cavern" in the summer of '85 - and the ways in which the quartet members act as embodiments of that history feels almost entirely natural and true to their characterisations. Wiggum is unambiguously the Pete Best of the equation, although none of the Be Sharps themselves serve as analogues for any one specific Beatle. Rather, they just recall bits and pieces of them wherever it fits. Barney starts out as Ringo, the newcomer, but ends up as John, with the Japanese conceptual artist girlfriend (about as on the nose as the allusions get, but at least it's consistent with what we'd later see in "A Star Is Burns", with Barney having an appreciation for the avant garde). Homer starts out as John, the de facto leader and the one who's already taken but encouraged to keep his marriage out of public knowledge, but by the end feels more like Paul (I love Macca, but I can totally hear that song about Mr T coming out of him). Apu being persuaded to adopt the pseudonym De Beaumarchais (on the grounds that Nahasapeemapetilon wouldn't fit on a marque, although De Beaumarchais isn't significantly shorter) likely alludes to "Ringo Starr" being the stage name of Richard Starkey. Skinner is tagged by the press as "the funny one", which was Ringo's designation back in the day (just as John was the smart one, Paul the cute one and George the quiet one). Various poses and fashion choices made by the band throughout directly echo the iconography of The Beatles - notably, a photo from the Let It Be recording sessions, which perfectly captured the divisions between the band members in its final days, here lovingly recreated right as the Be Sharps are nearing their breaking point. Most delectable of all, however, is the origin behind the band name "Be Sharps", chosen because it meets Skinner's requirement for "a name that's witty at first, but seems less funny each time you hear it". That's an accurate assessment of the pun in "Beatles", which is cute when you first notice it, but after a while you just forget is there.
What makes "Quartet" an interesting episode beyond the Beatles allusions is that it also represents a bit of bold experimentation in terms of broadening Homer's social connections. With the exception of Barney, with whom he was well-accustomed to palling around, the line-up of characters in The Be Sharps was a reasonably novel one. If a more contemporary Simpsons episode were to feature the premise of Homer forming a barbershop quartet, the remaining members would almost certainly be Moe, Lenny and Carl. All three of those characters work their way into "Quartet", but at this point in the series there seemed to be a general reluctance to use them much outside of their designated habitats of bar and power plant. Instead, the episode digs a little deeper into the supporting cast, pooling Springfieldians from various all of life in an attempt to settle on some new mates for Homer, some of which stuck while others didn't. "Quartet" seems to mark the turning point where Apu was depicted as one of Homer's close friends, and not simply the guy he'd interact with when he was out shopping for groceries, a move cemented later on in the season with "Homer and Apu". It seems far stranger to contemplate the possibility that the writers were toying with the idea of making Skinner a fixture of Homer's friendship circle, but there does appear to have been a genuine shift toward bringing those characters together during Season 5 - consider that he was included in Homer's vigilante group in "Homer The Vigilante", and they shared a hotel room while serving as jurors in "The Boy Who Knew Too Much". Skinner doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd be in his element with Homer socially, but perhaps that was what made their combination so appealing. Skinner is the uptight straight guy who provides invaluable contrasts. When asked by a reporter if his aforementioned reputation as "the funny one" is justified, his deadpan, "Yes, yes it is," demonstrates why that's seriously no lie (it's also a bit strange how the reporter addresses him as "Principal Skinner", suggesting that his strict schoolmasterly persona has permeated his identity within the band too). The writers were onto something with the pairing, but I guess they just didn't know how to keep it going. As for Wiggum, while I don't feel there was such a conscious effort to make him one of Homer's friends in Season 5, it's worth noting that they would enjoy a more prolonged team-up in "Marge on The Lam".
Part of the underlying joke behind the Be Sharps is of course that barbershop is (as Bart points out) an old-fashioned music style associated predominantly with the turn of the century, and would have seemed really out of place within the popular music climate of the 1980s, despite Homer's insistence to the contrary ("Rock and roll had become stagnant. "Achy Breaky Heart" was seven years away. Something had to fill the void. And that something was Barbershop.") Still, our friend Bobby McFerrin had his own one-off chart success in 1988, so it wasn't as though there was no room for a cappella in the era of synthpop and New Romantics. And here's the secret ingredient that gives the episode that extra layer of conviction, for all its unlikelihoods - as a musical act, The Be Sharps are played more-or-less straight. Singing vocals were provided by then-current members of the Dapper Dans, the barbershop quartet that performs daily as part of Disneyland's Main Street Parade, and interlaced with those of Castellaneta, Azaria and Shearer, so they certainly have the mettle. "Baby on Board", the song Homer is inspired to pen after seeing Marge's latest purchase, a yellow warning sign designed to deter drivers from "intentionally ramming our car", has the benefit of sounding like an authentic a cappella standard and lampooning a contemporary obsession (much like Dexy's Midnight Runners, those "Baby on Board" signs stuck around for longer in the UK, but in the US I understand that their moment came and went in the mid-80s). Although maybe Homer was too quick to abandon that one about Geraldo and Al Capone's vault (somewhat anachronistically, given that the whole Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults fiasco wouldn't happen until April 1986).
"Quartet" is a delightful ride, although it has to be said that there's not a great deal to the story. You can tell, from the beginning, that the writers had difficulty stretching it to the full 22 minutes, because of what's going on with the couch gag; they mash three of them together, giving us something to the tune of a couch gag clip show. ("Cape Feare", its neighbouring episode, had the same problem, but used the more conventional solution of running the extra-long circus-themed variation). Conversely, it also feels like there are pieces missing from it; being one of the last episodes to emerge from Al Jean and Mike Reiss's turn as showrunners, it's got their trademark meandering structure, with not all of the narrative threads neatly combining. Did you notice, for example, that after a while the character of Nigel just disappears from the story altogether? He sets The Be Sharps up on the road to stardom and then apparently takes no interest while the group is disintegrating. It has crossed my mind that his absence might have been a deliberate choice, as an allusion to the death of Brian Epstein, but if we're meant to draw that conclusion it surely would have been helpful to have at least acknowledged him. There's also the matter of the Simpsons struggling while divided; a classic theme, but it doesn't really build to anything narrative-wise. The scene where Marge attempts to compensate for Homer's absence by constructing a dummy father for the young Bart and Lisa is a little unsettling and adds nothing (except for that timeline-muddling Santa's Little Helper appearance), but we do get a nice moment with Homer in his Hollywood hotel room, having a telephone conversation with baby Lisa about his Grammy success (Lisa, who at this stage can't be older than one, is already exhibiting precocious behaviours), before contemplating how much he's missing his family and how unfulfilling he's finding stardom. He's so disillusioned by that realisation that he attempts to give away the Grammy to a bellhop as a tip, only for the bellhop to reject it as not worth having. That joke at the Grammy's expense is as far as this particular thread goes - Homer's longing for his family doesn't come up at all in the third act, as much sense as it would have made to imply that his abilities as a songwriter waned because his heart wasn't in it - but I do like the moody, almost Hopper-esque tones that accompany his hotel-bound solitude. Meanwhile, there's an obvious parallel to be drawn between the raw deal Marge gets in the past and how direly underappreciated she still is in the present. In 1985, she's left alone with the kids and is purposely erased from Homer's public profile so that his teenybopper fans can retain their delusions of having a shot with him. In 1993, pay attention to what Marge is doing in the background of the framing narrative, and you'll see she's having yet another punishing time of it, forced to walk 12 miles when the family's car breaks down in the desert, and later receiving no help in changing the tire. Combine that with the sight gag in which Homer's parenting of toddler Bart consists of leaving him under a laundry basket in the basement, and the implicit message is that while Homer recognises that his real place is among the Simpsons clan, he can't help but take them for granted whenever he's with them.
Still, in the end the family becomes something of a red herring, to the point that they're given no payoff. The sequence where the quartet members, post-disbandment, are seen settling back into their regular lives is all padding, despite that hilarious bar order from our Yoko Ono parody, but does it strike you as strange that Homer's return to normality is all about him going back to the power plant (where he's implied to have killed Queenie the nuclear chicken...goddammit, Homer) and not reconnecting with the family for which he's been pining? The other Simpsons might be the gravitational pull that keeps Homer from feeling too at home in the world of celebrity, but they are not where the episode's real emotional grounding lies. Rather, the heart of the story lies with the friendships forged with his fellow Be Sharps during their moment of glory, and the feeling of nostalgic regret that ultimately emerges from Homer's recounting, as he looks back on those youthful ambitions that were never fully realised, and the good times that simply couldn't last. Whatever the underlying factor, The Be Sharps came to an end because their creative well ran dry, in spite of Barney's valiant attempts to take the barbershop genre to strange new places. The fateful moment that doomed them to obscurity came when Us Weekly declared them "Not" instead of "Hot". Here, it's possible to detect just a smidgen of the anxiety the series would explore in greater depth with "Bart Gets Famous", and which permeated much of Oakley and Weinstein's era - the idea that the Simpsons' own bubble might pop at any moment. Homer underscores the fickle nature of celebrity when he specifies that The Be Sharps' reign lasted for only five and a half weeks (which, mind you, seems a long time by today's standards). When Homer states that "what goes up must come down", only for Bart and Lisa to retort that Dean Martin, Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra were still going strong, it's hard to say if they're meant to represent the doggedly expectant fans or the defiant staff insisting that they'll keep going regardless. I don't believe such anxieties to be the real point of the episode, however. "Quartet" seems to me to be about something far less cynical than the idea that anything that reaches the top is destined for a sharp and brutal decline. As noted, it is an achingly sincere ode to the Beatles and the numerous lives their music touched. And it's just as sincere about the "what if" question that becomes particularly poignent as it nears its conclusion, when Homer feels compelled to get in touch with his fellow Be Sharps. What if it didn't have to end when it did? What if we could have made this last longer? What else could we have accomplished together? If we tried again, would anybody still care?
The thing I quibbled over earlier on this review, about how this isn't a backstory that logically fits with the the series, actually ends up working to its advantage. Hearing the story of The Be Sharps is akin to brushing up against an alternate reality, in which Homer gets to contemplate another road he might have pursued in life. It's a road he knows was never really for him, but he remains haunted by the suggestion that there was always something there of value, even if he couldn't get close to it for long. He's able to revisit that road, if only for a moment, by reigniting his connection with the friends with whom he once shared that common ambition. The episode ends with Homer meeting with the other Be Sharps on the rooftop of Moe's, where they give an impromptu performance of "Baby on Board" to the streets below, an obvious homage to The Beatles' rooftop concert of 30th January 1969, aka the band's final public performance. Crowds gather to watch, enraptured by what they're seeing. It's also hinted that Wiggum, who had to contend with being a media punching bag during The Be Sharps' success, might get his belated revenge, as he orders Lou to "Get the tear gas" (a nod to how the police intervened in The Beatles' own rooftop concert). Homer signs off by quoting Lennon: "I'd like to thank you on behalf of the group, and I hope we passed the audition." Barney laughs uproariously, then admits he doesn't get it - speaking, I suppose, for every audience member who was either too young or simply too unhip to know just what this episode was getting at.
The ending of "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" is a touching one on multiple levels. There is something immensely magical about the prospect of getting to go back and re-experience some bygone excitement from a time in our lives when things seemed so alive with possibilities. About giving something that seemed long-lost one final, unexpected breath of life. There's the faintest hint of knowing absurdity blended in with the wistful melancholy that accompanies The Be Sharps' reunion - within the show's internal universe, their turn in the spotlight didn't happen so long ago, and it's not as though Homer doesn't interact with two of the other members on a regular basis anyway. But then they're standing in for something far greater outside of the show's reality, that being our continuing cultural connection with The Beatles, a phenomenon that seems at once so tied up in a distant age and yet still so prevalent and perceptible in the present. In 1993, the possibility of The Beatles reuniting in this manner was long off the cards, for obvious reasons; we weren't then even 20 years removed from the band's official break-up, and already they represented something lost and irrecoverable. But their legacy refused to fade, both among the people who'd witnessed their rise to the top as it happened, and among the generations that had come along since, the Simpsons tribute being yet another step in that ongoing proliferation. "Quartet" is a heartfelt attempt, however quixotic, to recreate just a smidgeon of that Beatles magic by having Homer and co follow in their footsteps. The Simpsons might be the masters of deconstructing popular culture from all across the board, but I'm not sure how many other examples send out so sincere a statement of "We heard you. You mattered to us. Here's our little part in keeping your flame alive."
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