The Last of the Red Hat Mamas (S17, E07-363)

She was wearing this cap during the heist, and after Burns caught them,
but not when she snuck the egg out.  What the hell happened?

Plot Summary
The Simpsons attend an Easter egg hunt sponsored by the mayor.  Marge and several other ladies are escorted by the mayor's, er, uh, wife, through the mansion, and are invited to a tea social with her.  However, Homer gets into a fight with an Easter bunny there and crashes the mayor's office just as the ladies are set to move on.  The tea social is cancelled and Marge is left embarrassed, again.  That night, she's mad at Homer for ruining another chance for Marge to make friends.  Homer tries to make amends the next day by finding a friend for Marge, but it fails and Marge goes out to walk off some steam.  During this, she comes across a group of ladies wearing red who Marge takes a liking to and vice-versa.  The ladies, including guest-star-voiced Tammy and Agnes Skinner, are a group who call themselves the "Cheery Red Tomatoes", and decide to bring Marge on as a junior member.

Marge is having a blast with her new friends, and for once Homer is happy that she's having fun with friends.  After a skydiving trip, the Tomatoes decide to promote Marge to a full member, complete with a nice pink hat.  However, with that hat, Marge also becomes privy to the group's secrets, including a plan to steal money from Mr. Burns!  It turns out that Burns had promised a million dollars to a children's hospital with Tammy receiving the check, but Burns backed out at the very last second.  So, Tammy and the other Tomatoes plan to sneak in Burns' manor to steal the old man's Faberge Eggs.  Marge is initially unwilling to go along with this, but our good friend peer pressure causes her to go along with the plan anyway.

Homer learns of this plan and tries to drives to Burns Manor to stop her, but runs afoul of the police because he's speeding there.  He basically brings the police to the ladies along with Burns, but the ladies are able to cry their way out of being charged by Burns.  He forces the ladies to give back his eggs, but Marge reveals after their exit the manor that she snuck one egg in her hair, so the ladies have some compensation for what's happened.  The group is forced to disband in order to lay low, but Homer promises Marge that she'll always have at least one friend always: Homer.

In a side story, Lisa sees an opportunity to go to Rome for the summer, but Principal Skinner notes that only those fluent in Italian can go.  Lisa tries to find a tutor, and gets one in Milhouse, who picked up the language from his Italian grandmother.  The two go to Springfield's Italian sector so Lisa can 'live' the language, and in the process Lisa starts to become infatuated with Milhouse, who is being rather romantic this episode.  However, Lisa is stunned to find Milhouse hanging with another girl.  Lisa gives Milhouse quite the verbal shouting, but does so in Italian, so Milhouse's tutoring worked but Lisa hates Milhouse again so it all works out I guess.

Quick Review
This was an alright episode, starts off fairly strong but tapers off at the end even as some focus is given to the usually funny Mr. Burns.  Lisa's side story didn't have much humor going for it, though, and kept the episode from being any better.

Final Score: 7.1