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| Its really nice of Homer and Marge to let Moe go on like this. |
Marge is impressed with a new paper towel and its superior absorption ability. She is impressed so much, she becomes enamored with the towel's advertising icon: Burly. Homer takes note of this and teams up with Bart and Barney to fool Marge into thinking Burly's model is coming over for dinner. Marge is hurt (emotionally) by the prank, so Homer decides to make it up to her by taking her out to dinner and a show. As Marge forgives Homer for what she admits was a pretty good prank, a hypnotism show begins. The hypnotist gets off to a slow start, what with people like Smithers telling the guy his father died when he was a baby and all. Still, the hypnotist gets a willing participant in Homer. He has Homer recall a memory from when he was 12, but doing so causes Homer to scream relentlessly even after being snapped out of hypnosis. The family takes Homer home, but he still can't stop screaming.
The next day, Lenny and Carl bring Homer back from work, as his screaming has ruined both nap time and quiet time. Carl suggests that Homer might have awakened a previously repressed memory, so they all get to unveiling Homer's memory.
Homer, 12 years old, went hiking with, coincidentally enough, Lenny and Carl. Moe even joined the three, and in the present day he joins everyone with telling the story. The four go camping one night, and talk about the future, including the nuclear plant, going full blast somewhat nearby. The next morning, the four go to the quarry, but its looking rather shallow and muddy. Homer is the only one who actually dives in, and hurts himself falling into the shallow, muddy water. Present day, Moe believes this is why Homer is screaming, but Homer continues recalling the memory. As young Homer recovers from his fall - and his friends leaving the scene - he investigates why the quarry is so shallow, and finds that the inlet pipe is clogged. He unclogs it, releasing a surge of water. When Homer recovers, he finds that a corpse has been thrown out and fallen ontop of Homer, just rotting and decaying in front of him. The mystery behind Homer's trauma is solved, but it opens up a new mystery: why was there a corpse in the quarry in the first place?
Bart proclaims this a Simpson mystery, leaving Lenny, Carl and a distraught Moe out of it. The family goes to the quarry under the presumption that because Homer never told anybody about the body it would still be there. Chief Wiggum joins in the search, and with the help of several rolls of Burly paper towels, the quarry is drained. The body is now just a decayed skeleton, so the Chief and the family go inside the pipe to learn where it leads. They end up in Mr. Burns' office at the plant, where Burns realizes that, at long last, the truth must be known.
The body is that of Waylon Smithers Sr., the father of the current Smithers. Burns insists he didn't kill Smithers Sr., and has a film that will prove his innocence. In the film, the core is about to undergo a meltdown, but Smithers Sr. sacrifices his life to stop it and save the town, leaving his infant son Smithers Jr. in Burns' arms. As cover ups were all the rage at the time, Burns tossed Smithers Sr.'s corpse into his corpse hatch. Smithers Jr. overhears this story and is at least glad to know that his father died a hero. Hopefully, the story Burns told young Waylon about his father being killed by a group of Amazon women didn't affect Jr. in any notable way. The Simpsons go home, Homer taking Smithers Sr.'s skull as a memento for some reason, and Homer and Marge humor Moe, who claims to have found key clues in the mystery that had already been solved.
Quick Review
This was a pretty good episode. The scenes involving Marge's obsession with Burly early on were great, an excellent way to start the episode. Once the plot focused on Homer's trauma and the murder mystery, the laughs died down a bit but characters like Moe provided enough entertainment to keep the episode from falling apart.
Final Score: 8.1
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