Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Dial 'N' for Nerder (S19, E14-414)

Whew, this is too hot for me, how did this pass censors, my goodness gracious.
Plot Summary
Marge is worried about Homer's weight, and gets him to go on another diet, this time one focused around eating nothing but bell peppers.  However, Homer actually gains weight afterwards, and Marge becomes ultra suspicious.  She sees on TV a show where a group of people catch men cheating on their wives, and Marge decides to give them a try in an attempt to catch Homer cheating on his diet.

Bart and Lisa are pushed out of the house while Marge does that.  The two decide to go to Springfield National Park.  They find Martin Prince, doing some kind of archaeological thing, and Lisa joins in.  Bart, though, goes off on his own.  He sees Sideshow Mel sleeping nearby, and decides to steal his hair-bone to set up a prank.  Bart calls Martin over to look at the bone, attached to a string where Bart pulls it nearby.  It hits Martin in the head, and he tumbles over a fence off a cliff.  Lisa tries to save him, but it doesn't work, and Martin falls a rather steep distance.  The Simpson kids freak out, Bart especially, and they return home.

Lisa tries to urge Bart to go rescue Martin, but after returning home they see on the news that Martin has likely died, perhaps when a nearby cougar came and ate him (or at least his shirt).  Lisa realizes that she's an accomplice to murder.  Unwilling to go to jail over it, Lisa snaps Bart out of it, and the two try to live on, given that Martin's death has been ruled an accident.  Neither does it very well, soon attracting the suspicions of Nelson Muntz, who begins to investigate what happened.  A short time later, Nelson comes across the two, and reveals he found the bone with the string attached, freaking out both kids even more.

Meanwhile, the crew sent to trail Homer find a gold mine as Homer is in fact cheating on his diet, and in rather disgusting ways.  Eventually, they tell Marge about it in hopes that she'll explode on him in good TV fashion.  However, Marge realizes the crew doesn't care about mending her relationship with Homer, only caring about ratings instead, and shoos them away as she forgives Homer for his hidden gluttony.

Lisa learns that Bart has gone to Martin's house to "end it all".  However, Bart, who had picked up Martin's locker belongings out of guilt, is instead tending to a flock of cocoons Martin had set up previously after reading a journal Martin had written about it.  After seeing butterflies break free from them, Lisa admits that she's going crazy trying to hide what happened, and openly admits they killed Martin.  Nelson is right there, having taped the confession, but so is Martin, who has survived.  Martin informs them that his underpants' large elasticity helped him survive the fall while at the same time throwing him away from the cougar onto a small island where he spent lots of time creating a garment to hide his shame.  With Martin alive, Bart and Lisa are off the hook, though Lisa realizes just how dark she can be.  Nelson closes the episode by referencing a show from the 70s in a Family Guy-esque manner.

Quick Review
The episode started off pretty well and held up okay for the most apart, but fell apart at the end when jokes were thrown aside to bring some humorless conclusions to both storylines.  The reference Nelson gives at the end was just completely random filler that served no purpose, really, and it really brings down what was otherwise a pretty decent episode.

Final Score: 6.8

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