Labor Pains (S25, E05-535)

Such dirty thoughts, and with his girl right there too.

Plot Summary
Homer goes to a poker game at Carl's apartment one night, telling Marge he's going to be working late instead.  After exploiting Lenny's reflective shades to win the night, Homer quits while he's ahead.  Upon taking the elevator, a pregnant woman steps in as she's going through convulsions.  As luck would have it, the power goes out in the elevator, leaving Homer and the pregnant woman (and an unseen, uncaring third person) trapped.  The woman, who hasn't seen her boyfriend in months, starts going into labor, and Homer recalls his past experiences to the best of his ability to help deliver the baby.  The woman, Gretchen, decides to name the baby after Homer.

After a poker night where the others find out Homer's been exploiting Lenny's reflective shades, Homer realizes that Gretchen lives in the apartment right next to Carl's, and pays her and Homer Jr. a visit.  With nobody else around to help take care of the baby, Homer agrees to help Gretchen look after Homer Jr.  Homer devotes more and more time to the baby, which draws some suspicions from Marge, especially when she catches Homer buying tons of baby supplies at the store knowing full well he doesn't do that for Maggie.  Aware that Homer's been playing poker rather than go to work, Marge visits Carl's apartment but doesn't find Homer there.  However, she does hear Homer in the next apartment over and sees him playing with the baby, assuming the worst.

Homer quickly clears up the confusion, telling Marge about the elevator delivery (and the third man is around to confirm the story), and Marge does allow Homer to spend more time with the baby.  Homer tries to make amends by taking the baby along with his own three kids to the zoo.  However, Maggie and Homer Jr. just do not get along in the dual-stroller, and Homer Jr. slips out and pushes Maggie away.  Maggie ends up stopping herself, but Marge is there to witness this and decides enough is enough and forces Homer to stop seeing Homer Jr.  Homer relents, and prepares himself to never see the baby again.  Upon returning to Gretchen's apartment, it turns out Gretchen's boyfriend has returned, because he had spent the last few months in the military.  Homer gives the baby back to his real father and departs in a sad state.  Upon returning home, Homer is met by Maggie, who is willing to forgive her father for spending more time with that other baby, and Homer gladly embraces Maggie's forgiveness (these are things that actually happen).

In the sidestory, Lisa for some reason takes up an interest in, as she calls it, American football, and goes to a game with Milhouse (whose father is working as a peanut vendor at the stadium).  There, the cheerleading squad brings Lisa down to be an honorary junior cheerleader or something and Lisa fully enjoys the moment.  Afterwards, though, Lisa learns that the cheerleaders get paid very little for what they do and for how badly they're exploited.  She's able to rally the cheerleaders into going on strike until they get a raise and/or better benefits.  With apparently no other attractive women in town left to replace the cheerleaders, the team's owner is left with no other option but to cave in and give the cheerleaders a raise - at the expense of the peanut vendor's salary of course.

Quick Review
I enjoyed this episode more than I probably should have, really.  I mean, the episode's basic premise sounds pretty boring and having a Lisa-heavy sidestory never makes for good times, either.  Still, there were quite a few jokes and gags that worked in the episode for both storylines and there wasn't really anything that dragged the episode down any.  It's about as good an episode as one can expect nowadays though of course its nothing special.

Final Score: 7.5