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| A stark reminder that even Tracy Ullman short Simpsons are funnier than what we get nowadays. |
Smithers inadvertently leaves the supply closet ajar, which Homer takes full advantage of by letting everyone taking the contents within. After work, Homer sees Burns approaching and quickly flees, forcing every other car to crash and spill out office supplies for Burns to see. The next day, Burns yells at everyone for their thievery except for Homer, whom Burns didn't see with any supplies, and even gives Homer the day off. Although the entire plant is angry at Homer, Homer doesn't care and he spends the day fishing with Bart at the lake, though Bart tries to correct Homer that karma is when if you do something bad, something bad happens to you.
Sure enough, the next morning, Homer wets the bed. He's able to hide it, but the next morning he wets it even worse. He realizes that this must be for how he threw everyone at work under the bus, and decides to make it up to them and karma by hosting an apology party, for free even! Believing himself to be even, Homer happily goes to sleep that night, but finds in horror the next morning that he has wet the bed yet again. Homer buys a 'urine detection system' to blare an alarm should he start leaking, and that's when the entire family learns of Homer's problem. Later, Homer deals with it by simply wearing a diaper, which is a massive turn off for Marge. One night, Marge is on a late night walk when Professor Frink just drops in, literally. Aware of Homer's problem thanks to Twitter, Frink proposes Marge use a new invention of his which can go into people's dreams to find whatever subconscious quirk is making them do this or that.
Frink hooks up the entire family to a sleeping Homer, and they successfully enter his dream, which is him skiing adequately. He's met by death, who's carrying a coffin. As Homer uncovers that the coffin reads "Marriage", he panics a bit. Suddenly, everyone falls off a cliff and, worse yet, Frink reveals that dying in the dream means dying for real. Luckily, Lisa gets the idea for their dream selves to fall asleep and enter a secondary dream world of their own. Quickly they do so, where they wind up in one of their own Tracy Ullman shorts. Homer is forced to confront the marriage coffin, when fish suddenly swarm out. With the room flooding with fish, the family decides to fall asleep and enter a tertiary dream world. This world, Lisa's, is mostly uninteresting and everyone quickly falls asleep for yet another world, which annoys Lisa. Finally, they reach Homer's innermost desires and while Homer is unwilling to confront his trouble, back in reality Chief Wiggum busts in to stop Frink for some reason, the two fumbling over Frink's dream device enough to cause chaos in the dream world.
Death returns to rescue the family, but reveals itself to be Homer's mother, Mona Simpson. Taking the family to a secluded theatre, she reveals a scene back just weeks before she left Abe. Abe and a young Homer had gone on a fishing trip promising to bring back plenty of fish, but Homer's excitement causes the boat to capsize, and the two are forced to swim all the way back, which takes hours. Homer realizes its the same lake as the one he took Bart to the other day, and so that was what triggered his wet dreams, however he also comes to believe that it was his actions that caused Abe and Mona to split, though Mona quickly shows Homer that wasn't the case at all, so, uh, case closed. Homer and Mona finally give each other a proper goodbye even though the latter is just a figment of Homer's dream, and the family is able to wake up from each level of dream they were in back to reality with Homer's as dry as he'll ever be.
Quick Review
This episode, which is the last episode I had seen before starting this blog (everything from here on out is new to me!), started off pretty decently with the nuclear plant storyline and the bed wetting plot was initially pretty good as well. Professor Frink provided a modest amount of comedy, too.
However, once the episode turned into a full blown Inception parody things, predictably, went south. Too much time was spent spoofing that movie and not enough time was spent making it all funny, though the homage to the Tracy Ullman shorts was appreciated. The whole thing with Mona at the end was just weird as well. Its like the writers finally got the memo that the way Mona Leaves-a ended wasn't the best way to conclude Mona Simpson's story and just hamfisted her into a poor Inception parody to set up a farewell dialogue between her and her son. Coupled that with the odd resolution to Homer's bed wetting, and the latter part of the episode basically destroyed the good will built up at the beginning.
Final Score: 6.6
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