Flaming Moe's (aka A Moe-st Successful Formula)

Much like the concoction from which its title derives, "Flaming Moe's" (episode 8F08) was something of an overnight sensation. Debuting on November 21st 1991, it immediately cemented its reputation as one of The Simpsons' most electrifying entries. There was a certain panache to the episode, something that caught fire and captured viewers' attentions in a way that exceeded expectations even for a series that had already garnered such glorious notoriety. On the DVD commentary, it's noted by the production crew that "Flaming Moe's" was a really big deal when first it aired, regularly landing spots in contemporary top episode columns. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood of I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide declare it to be "Possibly the best Simpsons episode" (of course, in their expanded edition they bestow that exact same honor on Season 9's "The Principal and The Pauper", which is...a minority opinion, to say the least). What was the reason for its breakout success? Was it the wonderfully self-depreciating guest appearance from Aerosmith? A testament to how much audiences loved Cheers (still yet to close its doors and give way to Frasier) and were willing to extend that love to anything that paid homage to it? Those were delicious extras for sure, but certainly not the main ingredient. The main ingredient was Moe. Slimy, despicable, lewd, greasy, backstabbing Moe. He's essentially a counterpart to the children's cough syrup that, as Homer fortuitously discovered, will transform the most low grade, kitchen-sink of cocktails into a luxury beverage, provided the alcohol is first allowed to get a little burned. You know that syrup, like anything bearing the Krusty brand, is dubious, cheap and in no way trustworthy, and yet there is something about it that keeps bar patrons from Springfield and beyond coming back for more. Moe is, on the surface, every bit as repulsive - the plot of this episode has him stealing Homer's recipe and passing it off as his own brainchild without qualms - and yet he makes for such an engaging, and weirdly sympathetic central figure. We shouldn't like Moe, but there is something so achingly, snivellingly human about the guy that whenever he's onscreen, we're totally absorbed.

"Flaming Moe's" feels like an important episode in the evolution of The Simpsons, being one of their earliest experiments in putting a supporting Springfieldian front and centre. It isn't purely a Moe show - Homer plays a pivotal role, and Marge, Bart, Lisa and even Maggie all get their chances to shine. But the dynamics happening within the household are definitely secondary compared to the dynamics happening inside the tavern, and in the strained friendship between Moe and Homer. The only episode before it that felt quite so radical, in terms of side-lining the Simpsons themselves, was "Principal Charming" of Season 2. By its third season, the series was feeling confident enough to try broadening its canvas further, taking advantage of the town's various other colourful denizens and exploring what kinds of stories could be supported beyond the snapshots of modern family life. Not all of their efforts were successful - a counterpoint to "Flaming Moe's" from the back end of the season is "The Otto Show", an episode centred on a character who doesn't prove strong enough to carry his own narrative, and whom the writers have wisely shied away from using too heavily since. Not everybody has the Moe Factor, that pining desperation to be loved and valued by a world he so bitterly resents. But there is a little Moe in all of us, for sure. (As a bonus, the extensive bar focus gives us the opportunity to see other prominent Springfieldians in bizarre after dark personas. Krusty as a pimp? A drunken Edna K attempting to pick up Homer? A well-groomed Barney with trendy wingmen named Armando and Raffi?)

The series was onto a winning formula with "Flaming Moe's", but what's curious is that they did not, for some time, make any serious attempt to repeat it. It was the first episode to use Moe as a main character, and for a number of years it was also the ONLY episode that could be conceivably described as Moe-centric. He had the occasional moment of plot significance here and there - he played a key role in the resolution of "New Kid on The Block" of Season 4, and "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" of Season 5 added the intriguing development of him coveting Homer's life, specifically his union with Marge - but was mostly restricted to asides in his bar room. It wasn't until Season 7, with "Bart Sells His Soul" and "Team Homer", that he started to be brought back into the spotlight. And for another episode in which Homer's friendship with Moe was the emotional nexus, we would have to wait five whole years, until "The Homer They Fall" of Season 8. Writer Robert Cohen, meanwhile, would prove something of a one script wonder, at least where The Simpsons was concerned, with "Flaming Moe's" being his only credited contribution (although he worked elsewhere on the series as a production assistant).

It could be that they were reluctant to go back to the Moe well too quickly after "Flaming Moe's" for risk of repeating itself. And while there would be a great many great Moe moments in the years to come (I am particularly fond of the character study he receives in the "The Love-Matic Grampa" segment of  "The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase"), there is no other episode that quite so astutely captures the essence of the Homer-Moe dynamic, a relationship that's not so much symbiotic as it is parasitic. It's nicely summed up by Moe's explanation for why his business has lately been being going through such a rough patch: "Increased job satisfaction and family togetherness are poison for a purveyor of mind-numbing intoxicants like myself." Moe is a miserable being who leeches off the misery of others. Somewhat ironically, given that he's later revealed to envy the life Homer has, Moe's success depends on keeping Homer from realising its full potential. He sells a temporary escapism that Homer is all-too willing to buy, and Homer in turn gives him a steady flow of income. Moe is always there for Homer, albeit not in the most wholesome of ways, and Homer is always there for Moe, even as the rest of the world is too contented to be drinking. What makes Moe's betrayal of Homer in "Flaming Moe's" such a searing gut-punch is not so much that he would take a recipe that Homer came up with and market it without procuring his friend's consent or offering him credit - this frankly is only the logical extension of an alliance that has always been fundamentally exploitative. It's that Moe no longer has any need for Homer the instant his own prospects are looking up. The longstanding threat to Moe would be if Homer were to overcome his habitual drinking and find fulfilment elsewhere, be it in either his family, his career or a more constructive hobby. Homer has, unbeknownst to him, always been the more powerful party in the relationship. But it ends up being Homer who gets left behind, once Moe finds fulfilment in a more desirable class of customer. 

For as beloved as the episode is, it contains a sequence that I consider to be highly underrated, seldom brought up when people talk about the most emotionally painful moments in the show. It occurs as Homer is confronting Moe at the counter of his now-packed bar, protesting that if there were any justice in this world, he would be credited as the drink's creator and his face would be featured on a range of crappy merchandise (ha ha, meta). When Moe does not take his objections too seriously, Homer indignantly exercises the power he's harboured all of this time and tells him that he's lost a customer. This is the kind of announcement that, a short while ago, would have absolutely devastated Moe. Now, he tells Homer that he'll have to speak up, as he accepts a seemingly unending rush of cash coming from all angles of the tavern. Moe isn't knowingly taunting Homer; he genuinely can't hear him above the clatter of the cash register or the clamouring of other patrons thirsting for a Flaming Moe. Once the most valuable asset in Moe's life, Homer now finds himself drowned out amid a sea of indistinct voices, a person of no particular importance to a bartender who is soaring his way up to the big leagues. There's a hilarious moment elsewhere in the episode where Professor Frink, attempting to crack the mysteries of the Flaming Moe, has a computer analyse it and declare the secret ingredient to be love. Really, he's only half-wrong. Homer sharing the recipe came from a place of love, but Moe did not reciprocate. In some respects it is a love story (albeit a toxic one), with Homer slipping into the archetype of the bitter ex who stood by their partner through times of hardship, only to be cast aside once success was in their grasp. I'd like to think it's not a total coincidence that the name of the beverage, no matter whose name is attached to the end, sounds suspiciously like a gay slang term. (Happy Pride Month!)

It is noteworthy that, while Homer is obviously shocked by Moe's bald-faced pilfering of the Flaming Homer recipe, and his move to rename the beverage to accommodate his own legacy, it does not at first create such a dire rift in their friendship. Soon after, Homer is seen back at the bar, casually chatting with Moe about his recent increase in business and if his drink might have had something to do with it. It's only when Moe is approached by Harv Bannister, a representative of Tipsy McStagger, the major food and beverage chain that wants to purchase the recipe to the Flaming Moe, that we see the seeds of real rancour being planted. Moe refuses Bannister's bid, and is assured by Barney that he made the right call, since "Only an idiot would give away a million dollar recipe like that." Words that, unbeknownst to their speaker, cut Homer to the quick. But is it the money that's really gotten him down? What's tragic about the situation is that it had seemingly never occurred to Homer that his home recipe could be marketed and sold for such a lucrative sum. He was simply sharing his tip for a delicious drink as a friend trying to help out another friend who was struggling with low beer stocks, and for the purposes of them sharing an intimate moment as two best mates. It also seemingly doesn't occur to Homer, until the end of the episode, that he wields another certain nefarious power in this equation, in that he's the only person besides Moe who knows the secret ingredient of the coveted beverage. Homer could very easily have sabotaged Moe's trade out of spite, and yet it takes some serious whittling down to get him to the point where he's prepared to do that. Vengeance is not on his mind, and nor is blackmail. At one point he tries exploring his legal options, but is advised that he has no case by Lionel Hutz, who is amazed to discover that books can be a source of useful information, not just fancy decorations to make an office look better. What Homer really wants is acknowledgement from the so-called pal who used him and discarded him so callously. When he returns to the bar, now the hottest joint in Springfield, and has to enter through the bathroom window on account of not being on the exclusive guest list, and pointedly orders a Flaming Homer, it's not so much a demand for belated shares or credit as a plea for validation. It is jealousy, and not envy (and no, the two are not interchangeable) that drives his reaction.

It is not within Homer's interests to lose the established harmony that he has with Moe. We see the vital function the bartender plays in his life within the opening scene, which has Homer retreating to the tavern to get away from the disorder of Lisa's slumber party. The dealings of the slumber party are their own bit of otherwise disconnected weirdness, showcasing an unusually sinister side to Lisa - being host to four of her schoolfriends transforms the ordinarily down to earth middle child into the cackling leader of what's framed as nothing less than a demonic cult, dabbling in freaky rituals involving candle wax and attempting to assimilate Bart into their ranks by way of a forced makeover. They also jinx him, albeit in the schoolyard sense (remember how annoying it was to get jinxed as a child, and bound to silence until somebody released you by saying your name out loud? Why did we ever accept that as canon?). It all gets a bit too self-consciously silly once Bart flees to his bedroom and the girls get through the locked door by removing its hinges, but it serves its purpose in creating a situation that's sufficiently strange and chaotic (Bart leaps out the window, potentially injuring himself, and Maggie is seized by the party as a consolation prize and caked in make-up) that Homer's first instinct would be to remove himself entirely. Moe is his go-to diversion whenever he's unwilling to handle the responsibilities of being a parent (consider that it's unclear if Marge was also in the house, so he potentially left those kids unsupervised, or whenever reality in general gets too overwhelming. The cruellest knock-on effect of Moe's betrayal and meteoric rise to bartending stardom is that it subverts the arrangement, transforming Homer's default method of escapism into an omnipresent symbol of personal oppression. We see this during a dinner table sequence where the subject of the Flaming Moe keeps coming up (the other Simpsons at least are aware that Homer is the true creator of the beverage, but not entirely mindful in how they discuss it around him). Finding his family are not soothing his spirits, Homer excuses himself, reflexively, with the announcement that he's going to Moe's...only for it to hit him like a ton of bricks that Moe is, in this instance, the problem and not the (temporary) solution. His attempt to find a new watering hole at the ironically named The Aristocrat (where the bartender threatens him on entry with a shotgun and gets extremely pissed off when Homer has the gall to request a clean glass) confirms that Moe's services won't be so easily replaced. Homer and Moe were once invaluable allies in their mutual loserdom. The cold reality - that Moe has ascended to luscious new heights while he's been left to wallow in the gutter, becomes a force so inescapable that it has a far more potent effect on Homer's perception than any alcoholic beverage, immersing him in a world where everyone (men, women, children and daisies alike) bears Moe's pug-like face.

All while Homer's sanity is slowly degrading, Moe is living his dream life. He becomes the toast of Springfield, a community that typically struggles to be the subject of positive conversation, as illuminated in an opening interview with boxing champion Dedrick Tatum ("That town was a dump. If you ever see me back there, you know I really [bleep]ed up bad!" Yeah, I feel the exact same way about the town I grew up in.) He even gets a romantic interest, in the form of an alluring bar maid named Colette, an obvious parody of Diane Chambers, the character played by Shelley Long on the popular NBC sitcom Cheers. Colette was originally intended to be voiced by Catherine O'Hara (best known for her roles in the Beetlejuice and Home Alone films), who had recorded a vocal track, but she was ultimately replaced by regular cast member Jo Ann Harris due to a feeling that there was an insurmountable mismatch between O'Hara's performance and the character's visual presentation. The prospect of female companionship has Moe at his most skin-crawlingly lecherous; the very public job interview he conducts with Colette is comprised of nothing but wall-to-wall sexual harassment, although Colette seems unfazed and capable of holding her own against him. With that in mind, the optics of having her eventually sleep with Moe maybe aren't so great, even as a nod to the Will-They-Won't-They between Diane and Ted Danson's character Sam Malone, but having them enter into a relationship ups the poignancy in terms of what Moe has to lose on an emotional level when his fortunes inevitably crumble. There is payoff at the end. The purpose of Colette's character is, ultimately, to get us to an unsubtle swipe at Long's decision to leave Cheers in 1987. Alone again, Moe informs Homer that Colette "left to pursue a movie career. Frankly, I think she was better off here." This could be perceived as a little mean-spirited, given that Long's cinematic career never reached the same heights as her work on Cheers (although it should be noted that Long also left Cheers because she wanted to spend more time with her family, which she was struggling to do on the show's shooting schedule, so exceeding her success on Cheers was maybe not her top priority). The statement is, however, contextualised as an expression of pathos on Moe's part - Moe might have been happier with Colette around, but of course she wasn't better off with him. Having gained a fleeting taste of intimacy, Moe is restored to his former loneliness, left to ruminate on the likelihood that, in the end, he might have amounted to only a stepping stone on someone else's path to glory.

Colette's arrival turns out to be only the beginning of what later becomes a more intricate homage, complete with a Simpson-ized recreation of the iconic Cheers title sequence and a parody of the theme song, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" by Gary Portnoy. It has to be said that this portion of the episode is a little peculiar, as it's not altogether clear what this is supposed to represent within the context of the episode. The first time I saw it, I remember thinking it was meant to be a TV promo for the Flaming Moe, but it isn't directly framed as such (despite the song playing like an advertising jingle). Now, I think it plays more like the opening to an alternate reality sitcom in which Moe's bar is the focus (a forerunner to some of the concepts later explored in Season 7's "22 Short Films About Springfield") and the hub of a thriving and welcoming community. We see the beginnings of what looks like a typical Cheers installment, with Barney walking the bar in the manner of the late George Wendt's Norm and being greeted enthusiastically by everyone within, including a bartender who is blatantly meant to recall Woody Harrelson. There is, however, an unsettling subversion to this sense of social kinship, suggesting that while Moe might be drawing in bigger and hipper crowds, they are still fundamentally there for release from life's cruelties, and probably no better of for their reliance on the Flaming Moe. The accompanying stills paint an ugly picture of bar life and the intoxicating effects of alcohol, with bar patrons fighting and making one another bleed (anticipating our trip into the actual Cheers bar in "Fear of Flying" of Season 6, in which Norm got drunk and angry and threatened to kill everyone inside the bar). The seemingly disarming ditty, meanwhile, is replete with troublingly bleak lyrics. Compared to the Cheers theme, which was about finding solace and belonging with like-minded souls who valued your existence, these lyrics are focused on the diversionary powers of the drink itself. Get a load of this: 

 

"When the weight of the world has got you down,

and you want to end your life.

Bills to pay, a dead end job,

And problems with the wife.

But don't throw in the towel,

Cos there's a place right round the block

Where you can drink your misery away." 

 

The closing hook, which insists that "Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away", is juxtaposed (amusingly and harrowingly) with a final still showing Homer peering in from outside the bar, his face pressed up against the glass with all the plaintive longing of that kid outside the McDonald's in Santa Claus: The Movie, the patrons within every bit as indifferent to his suffering. Ultimately, the purpose of this sequence is to further accentuate Homer's loneliness, excluded from the celebratory culture surrounding the drink  he personally devised, its touted release from reality totally inaccessible to him.

Colette ends up serving as the moral centre of the story, when she discovers that Moe owes everything to the friend he wronged and continues to mistreat. She convinces Moe that he could put things right by selling the Flaming Moe recipe to Bannister and splitting the profits evenly with Homer. Moe agrees to do so, but is thwarted by Homer, whose despondency has reached its boiling point. Just as Moe is about to sign a contract with Bannister, he appears from the top of the tavern, his coat draped over one half of his face in the style of the Phantom of the Opera (a neat little visual hint at how severely his status as an outcast has warped him), loudly bellowing that he knows the secret to the Flaming Moe to be "nothing but plain, ordinary, over-the-counter children's cough syrup". Bannister gleefully tears up his contract and scarpers. A week later, the high street is awash with vendors selling their own versions of a Flaming Moe, as Homer sheepishly returns to his old hangout to find it devoid of life or business. The only reason anyone would have set foot in Moe's bar was for the joy of downing that exclusive beverage. The community was all a sham, and nobody was going because they liked the tavern itself. Levelled to Homer's lowly status once more, Moe invites his old friend and former greatest customer back inside with open arms.

I will admit that as a child, although I liked the episode as a whole, I was never totally satisfied with how it ends. It comes down to this one simple point - Moe never explicitly apologises to Homer for stealing his recipe, nor does he admit to any wrongdoing. The closest he came to that was when he'd earlier conceded to Colette, "He may have come up with the recipe, but I came up with the idea of charging $6.95 for it." Homer apologises to Moe for his act of sabotage, which Moe graciously accepts, but it's easy to get the impression that Moe still isn't completely reciprocating Homer's goodwill. In truth, the episode ends the only way it can, not with any overtly tender displays of reconciliation, but with two wounded exes finding their way back to each other's arms on the understanding that they're the only ones who actually will lick one another's sores. The Homer-Moe arrangement is imperfect, and there's not much pretending otherwise (Homer's proclamation of "You're the greatest friend a guy could ever have" seems designed to ring a little hollow), but both men recognise that they need the security of other to fall back on. Moe might have betrayed Homer and dropped him like a rock at the first whiff of prosperity, but when all of that's been stripped away from him, he's happy that Homer's still there, and ready to take advantage of that all over again. For now, he makes one concession, in the form of a complementary beverage, which he identifies as a Flaming Homer, giving his sole patron the belated validation he'd desperately craved. We leave our heroes in their deserted dive, mutual underdogs grateful for a little taste of sour affinity.

I dedicate this review to the late George Wendt, who gave a surprisingly unnerving performance in "Fear of Flying".