Friday, May 10, 2013

The Way We Weren't (S15, E20-333)

Coincedence: the flashback episode.
Plot Summary
Bart and Milhouse somehow coerce Sherri, Terri and their kissable cousin into a game of spin the bottle.  After coincidentally drinking the beer that is being tossed out for the bottle, a waking Homer goes to investigate, only to be accidentally kissed by Milhouse.  Brushing that aside, Homer gets mad at Bart for using his beer in this fashion.  Marge intervenes and has the two go to "Simpson family court", which is as lame as it sounds.  In his defense, Bart tries to claim that Homer was kissing girls when he was 10 as well.  Marge says that Homer's first kiss was her, when they were in high school, but Homer reveals that he did kiss another girl before then, much to Marge's shock.

Homer tells the story of when he was 10, his father took him to a camp for underprivileged boys.  However, because the camp had to pay lawsuit money for a previous incident, Homer and the other boys are forced to be servants at the girls' camp across the lake.  As the boys are doing dishes in a hidden room next to the cafeteria, a rather familiar-sounding girl accidentally leaves her retainer on her dinner tray.  Homer happily returns it back to the girl, and after some minor flirting, the two agree to meet each other later that night.  A short time later, a switchblade accident causes an injury to Homer's eye, and he's forced to wear an eye patch to his date.  Homer hitches a boat ride and does just that, meeting a brunette girl ontop a hill.  Back in the present, Marge reveals that she was, in fact, that girl, but Homer did something so unforgivable during those days that if she knew that boy was the same Homer, she never would've married him.

Marge tells her side of the story, where she went to a camp intended to help young girls bag men.  After her chance encounter with Homer (who, after overhearing how lame a name 'Homer' is, tells her his name is Elvis Jagger Abdul-Jabbar), the two agree to the date.  Marge tries to iron her hair, a style at the time, but ends up burning her hair, and she's forced to go as a brunette.  The two meet up at the hill as previously mentioned.  After a few moments of awkwardness, the two finally decide to kiss, which becomes the best moment of their respective lives.  Homer gives Marge a heart-shaped rock as a memento of the night.  The two agree to meet again the next night, however the next night only Marge shows up, with Homer nowhere to be found.

Homer looks like a pretty bad guy, but he tries to explain what happened.  Shortly after he and Marge shared the kiss and left one another, Homer accidentally falls off a cliff and into the lake.  The next morning he washes ashore at the fat camp and, given his portly state, is believed to be part of said camp.  He's unable to escape in time, and thus is unable to meet with Marge.  The next day, Homer finds an opportunity to escape and promptly takes it.  However, Marge is devastated by what's happened and decides to leave camp.  She throws away the heart-shaped rock, and it splits in two.  Homer arrives just after Marge leaves, and after a horrifying experience with Patty, sees one of the halves of the rock and realizes its too late.

Back in the present, Homer hopes the explanation is enough to help Marge understand, but she's still mad at him over what ended up being years of trauma towards boys.  Finally, Homer reveals that he kept the heart-rock half he found at the girl's camp because he couldn't stop thinking about that girl until he met Marge.  Marge then reveals that she kept the other half as a reminder of how big a jerk Homer was, but the two decide to make up and make out, Homer role-playing as the eye patched Elvis, and Marge as the brunette anonymous girl.

Quick Review
This was an alright episode, it has its moments and there's hardly anything bad with it (even with the retconning, not that I care all that much about continuity), but as is common with these newer episodes, the quantity and quality of jokes prevents it from achieving anything truly great.

Final Score: 7.5

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