Crook and Ladder (S18, E19-397)

Don't mess around with these guys, they will tear you apart.

Plot Summary
Marge takes advice from a Larry Flint-owned baby magazine to get Maggie to stop sucking on a pacifier.  This backfires, as Maggie goes on a destructive tear throughout the house.  With Maggie's brand of pacifier out of stock, the family starts to go nuts over her, until the dog saves the day and gives her a chew toy to suck on.  Her loud sucking on the toy, though, leaves Homer awake late at night.  He goes to watch TV when he sees a commercial for Nappien, a sleeping aid.  Homer quickly acquires some, and gets some sleep, but then finds out the the Nappien makes Homer sleep walk and do all sorts of crap while he's unconscious.  While Homer tries to remedy this by locking his door, Bart realizes the implications of having a suggestive zombie father, and lets him free to mess with during the night.  As Bart and Milhouse have zombie Homer drive them around, Homer wakes up and, in a panic, drives into a fire station, where after a series of accidents, the entire corp of firefighters are left injured and unable to do their job.

A call goes out for volunteers to fire fight.  Homer decides to join to make up for what he did.  Alongside him are Principal Skinner, Apu, and Moe, who is made the new fire chief.  After a short time of waiting, the four are tasked with saving Luigi's restaurant.  They do so, and as a reward, Luigi lets them have some of his food for free.  The four realize that their heroics earn them a little compensation for their volunteer work, and this holds true for the next few instances they receive a call for help.  However, when the four go and put out a large fire at Burns' mansion, Mr. Burns thanks them without any physical reward.  Upset, Moe decides to use a flimsy line of reasoning to justify taking some of Burns' loot.  The group does so again at Costington's, but Skinner begins to regret what's going on and, after being unable to convince the others to stop, decides to simply look away.  Things complicate further and Marge and the kids rush to see Homer put out a fire, only to arrive just in time to see him, Apu and Moe enjoy the rush of theft.

Marge confronts Homer about the thievery, using the kids as a guilt trip to get Homer to finally relent.  During the next fire, Homer talks to Moe about what's been going on, but in his greed, Moe traps himself.  Homer rescues him as well as a fallen Apu and is heralded as a hero.  Homer tells his kids this story later on, concluding that the four took the stuff they stole and donated it to the homeless.

Quick Review
This was a fun episode for the most part, though the first half of the episode is kind of everywhere before it finally settles on the firefighter story for the second half.  It was also sort of odd how the episode tries to set up Skinner as the moral high ground for a minute before that whole idea dissolves and its up to Marge and the kids to provide that role.  In fact, after Skinner decides to simply look the other way, he has very little to do with the rest of the episode.  That was odd.  Still, despite that, this turns out be a fairly decent episode.

Final Score: 7.5