Waiting for Duffman (S26, E17-569)

There's just something so... lifeless... about this whole episode.

Plot Summary
During a cycling function, Duffman injures his hip severely enough that he requires hip replacement surgery.  This forces the current Duffman, Barry, to retire, and Duff to hold a televised competition to find its next Duffman.  Homer decides to enter not (just) to be able to drink free beer, but also to earn some recognition that can be put on his obituary.  In the contest, Homer does well, but winds up as the runner-up.  Luckily for him, the winner has a tattoo of a competing beer brand, and with the winner being disqualified as a result, Homer ends up earning the title of Duffman.

However, Homer is injected with a computer chip that supposedly prevents him from consuming alcohol, as being Duffman is an always-sober endeavor.  Homer tries to drink a little bit of beer to check, but finds the chip really does work.  Regardless, Homer carries on his duties as Duffman admirably, and Duff finds its profits soaring as the public seemingly loves a man who looks worse than them selling them beer.  Homer, however, comes to find that Duff, and beer in general, actually brings ruin to people and the town, something he can only grasp now that he's been sober for so long.

At a racetrack, Homer uses his power as Duffman to have only non-alcoholic beer served, to prove that people can still have fun regardless of  the alcoholic content of their beverage.  Still, people don't like to be tricked into drinking non-alcoholic beer, and a mob forms to take Homer out.  The head of Duffman forces Homer to drink a regular beer to get the crowd off him, telling Homer that the "chip" was a ruse and Homer fell to the simple power of suggestion.  Disgruntled by that news, Homer drinks the beer to avoid the public lynching, and immediately reverts to his old self.  Still, Homer relishes in now being considered a "has been", while a healthy Barry is given back his mantle as Duffman.

Quick Review
This episode was pretty boring for much of the latter portion.  It started off pretty decently, but once it got into the Duffman antics the comedy just wasn't there.  The plot was fairly dry, and there was hardly anything remotely funny to redeem this episode.  The t-shirt cannon reference still stings 15 years later, by the way.

Sorry, Sam Simon, I wish you had a better episode dedicated to you. :(

Final Score: 6.1

500 Keys (S22, E21-485)

How did they even get some of those keys, like the school key?

Plot Summary
Homer takes the kids out to buy a returned wedding cake for cheap, but after returning home he accidentally leaves Maggie in the car, locked, with the keys.  Marge empties out a drawer full of keys hoping to find the car's spare, but Maggie is somehow able to exit the car on her own and return inside the house.  With panic subsided, the family takes a look at all the keys they have, and decide to do whatever with them.  Bart takes a handful of keys in hopes of committing pranks, but every attempt of his ends up doing the community good, which he hates.  Homer has the keys to the Duff Brewery somehow, so he and Barney sneak in, going to the back of the brewery where the blimp is.  Barney tricks Homer into thinking the blimp wants him inside, and Homer quickly steals the blimp and flies off into the sky.

Lisa finds a key to the school, and runs off to return it.  She's stopped by Nelson, who convinces her to live a little, and figure out what the key opens before returning it.  Lisa looks around the building, and sees three odd door side by side: Banned Books, Band Books, and Banned Band Books.  Lisa's key ends up opening the latter door, and she goes inside to find a strange sight: a large classroom that seems impressive at first, but none of the materials within are actually legitimate.  Lisa talks to Principal Skinner about the room, but when the two, along with a bunch of kids, go to the door, the path to the room is replaced by a bookcase, leaving Lisa stunned.

With Superintendent Chalmers apparently part of the cover up, Skinner is able to grab Lisa's key, and Lisa is left unable to solve the mystery.  Luckily, the school paper took a photo of Lisa holding the key, so she uses it to have a duplicate key made to reopen that door.  She busts down the bookcase and re-enters the room, where a mysterious stranger writes on the chalkboard about "the children of bus 23".  Bart, whose tired of his key adventure, teams up with Lisa at this point and has her talk to someone who has been at the school for a long time: the often held back Nelson.  Nelson does recall a bus 23, where on a wintry morning Chalmers forces Skinner to send off that bus through an ice bridge for the sake of time even though it'd likely be too heavy to cross.  Homer arrives in the blimp on coincidence, and the two decide to have Homer take them there.

Homer, of course, can't really operate blimps, so as they reach the river where bus 23 supposedly met its fate, Lisa ends up falling out of the blimp, and into the water where she finds the bus with the kids still inside.  Homer jumps in after her, but he knocks the bus on its side, allowing the bodies to float up through the window.  Quickly, the two realize that these aren't dead kids, but actually mannequins.  However, the two are quickly swarmed by the mannequins and are forced underwater.  Thankfully, another key side story where Marge puts a wind-up key in a moving flatulence toy comes to fruition, as the "Pooter Toot Express" hits an old tree which falls and creates a bridge Homer and Lisa can grab onto.

With the demise of the toy, Marge and Maggie meet up with the rest of the family.  Across the river, Lisa spies the mysterious man she had seen earlier, which turns out to be Otto, who drove the bus to its grave.  Otto is relieved upon learning the kids were only mannequins, and the family decides to bring the mystery to an end.  Skinner and Chalmers attempt to escape, but Bart is able to steal Skinner's car keys, forcing the two to reveal the truth.  Years ago, the school was given a government grant to improve the school.  Skinner cashed the check but the money he put in his pocket was lost when his mother washed his jeans.  Fearing the feds would go after them, the two along with Willie set up a fake classroom with mannequins to fool the feds into thinking they did spend the money wisely.  However, they were only renting the mannequins, so they had to return them quickly, which is why Chalmers risked using the ice bridge route.  Of course, the two never counted on the future Simpsons locking their baby in the car which would lead to them uncovering the keys to the mystery.  Later, Otto, still relieved he didn't kill any kids, now is under the delusion the current group of kids he's carrying are also mannequins as the bus falls into the river.

Quick Review
With a heavy emphasis on storytelling, the episode doesn't have much of a chance to build on comedy, though early on it looked like it would with Bart's and Homer's stories before the focus is put on Lisa's conspiracy story which, mostly, was unfunny.  This ends up as one of the weakest entries to the season.

As an aside, I want to take a moment to mention the character of Superintendent Chalmers.  Originally, the guy was played as a straight man to Skinner's tomfoolery, whom Chalmers tolerated none of.  His main role back in the day would be to critique the scared Principal and his school, which would usually go wrong once Bart pulls off a prank, leaving Skinner in Chalmers' dog house.  It was a gag that worked well, but since then Chalmers' character has changed tremendously.  Nowadays, he's a shell of his former self.  Him yelling out "Skinner!" isn't used as an angry yell to shake up an already shaken Principal, but rather yet another catchphrase that's used only for that purpose.  Further, Chalmers is now often used as Skinner's partner-in-crime in many instances.  It first become really noticeable a few seasons ago, where "Chalmskin" productions hurt the episode more than helped, and that combination didn't help this episode any either.  Chalmers is at his best when he's actually angry at Skinner for one reason or another, not to team up with Skinner to cover up something or working together to earn the school money.

Final Score: 6.2

Old Yeller Belly (S14, E19-310)

Beer commercials will probably never be this wild again. :(

Plot Summary
Bart's treehouse is destroyed, but Homer promises to build him a new one.  However, Homer isn't exactly doing a fast, good, or a job of it, so Marge brings in the Amish to build the treehouse.  They build a rather spectacular treehouse, enough to fit in a party's worth of people.  They also add electricity, which, well, isn't their specialty, and sure enough a faulty outlet causes the treehouse to set on fire.  Homer has an ice sculpture of himself fall on him, trapping him.  He sees Santa's Little Helper nearby, but the dog is scared of the fire and runs off (not before grabbing some turkey), and Homer passes out.  After a short period of time, the cat, Snowball II, goes in to wake Homer and with the sculpture now melted, Homer and the cat quickly escape.

Snowball is hailed a hero by both the town and especially by Homer, who denounces his cowardly dog in the process.  When interviewed, Homer even claims he has no dog, that's how mad he is at Santa's Little Helper.  Bart and Lisa try to toughen the dog up, but that's not working out so well.  One day, Santa's Little Helper is left outside after eating Homer's hamburger, and gets a hold of a nearby can of beer, balancing it on his nose.  A photographer gets a picture of it, and it makes the news.  The owner of Duff sees this and decides to make the dog the beer's new spokesman, with Duffman all washed up.  The family gets royalties and such, and so the dog becomes Suds McDuff, who appears in commercial as one cool dog.  However, the dog's previous owner, that guy at the race track who dumped him way back when, comes back to claim legal ownership of the dog, using Homer's dog-denouncing interview as proof that, at least, the dog doesn't belong to the Simpsons.

As the guy has the dog appear all over the place for Duff, the Simpsons decide to get their dog back.  They find the guy who was Duffman, Barry Duffman, and convince him to help them remove the dog as Duff's mascot.  At a beach function, they concoct a plan where Homer will pretend he's drowning, and the dog will prove too cowardly to save him, and then Duffman can come in and save both Homer and his old job.  With Homer floating on a beer keg, the plan starts off fine as the dog indeed proves his cowardice.  However, a shark sees Homer flailing about, and decides to circle him, forcing Duffman to cower away in fear as well.  Homer gets out of the way just as the shark makes its move, and the shark devours the beer keg instead.  It gets really wasted in front of the large crowd, causing Duff to make it its new mascot: Duff McShark.  The race track guy realizes the dog is finished, and gives it back to the Simpsons.

Quick Review
This was a fairly good episode.  I felt the best jokes came during the part where the cat was being hailed as a hero, and the middle portion was overall pretty great.  Duffman is a pretty good character for laughs, and he doesn't fail to provide them here either.  The episode's slow start bogs it down somewhat, but its still one of the best episodes of the season.

Final Score: 8.0

Hungry, Hungry Homer (S12, E15-263)

"Dancing away my hunger pains, movin' my feet so my stomach won't hurt.
I'm kinda like Jesus, but not in a sacrilegious way."

Plot Summary
After helping Lisa acquire a missing piece to her Lego Blocko Eiffel Tower set, Homer comes to the conclusion that helping out 'the little guy' feels pretty good.  Homer spends the next day helping Bart and Marge with their problems.  As Homer discusses his new quirk for the week at the bar, Lenny storms in furious.  The baseball team, the Springfield Isotopes, have been terrible, but Lenny was unable to get a refund for his season tickets.  Homer decides to help Lenny out.

Homer learns that the team was bought by Duff Beer a year ago, and so decides to talk to the team's new owner: Howard K. Duff the eighth.  Homer attempts to speak on Lenny's behalf, but fails to accomplish anything.  On his way out, Homer accidentally stumbles into a private room full of gear and merchandise for the "Albuquerque Isotopes", and realizes that Duff is trying to move the team.  Duff along with his goon Duffman knock Homer unconscious and attempt to erase him memory of what he saw, but Homer remembers anyway.  He attempts to alert the media of the plot, but the room containing the revealing evidence has been cleaned up and Homer is made to look a fool.

Angry that he's being called a liar even though he's telling the truth for once, Homer takes a suggestion from Lisa to go on a hunger strike outside the stadium, not eating again until Howard Duff tells the truth about moving the team.  With nobody usually attending the baseball games, Duff sees Homer waste away outside the stadium on his hunger strike, and sees the people crowded around him, and puts two and two together.  While Homer's sleeping, a pair of guys move Homer and the pole he chained himself to over the center field wall to become a new attraction: Hungry Hungry Homer.  With people now back in the stadium and Homer's yells for the truth too weak to reach anyone's ears, Homer is stuck to waste away for several days.

Growing weaker, skinnier and of course hungrier, Homer begins to hallucinate.  Duff decides enough is enough and has Homer unchained from his pole.  Having Homer come down, he offers Homer a brand new Isotope dog to recover from his 12 day long hunger strike.  Homer, too weak to remember what he was doing in the first place, is about to eat the dog when he realizes that the hot dog's toppings have the bold, southwestern flavors one would find in Albuquerque, and uses the opportunity to finally inform everyone in the stadium about the plan to move.  As the crowd comes to realize the truth, Homer also convinces Duffman to turn against his employer, and Homer effectively saves the team from moving.  However, the mayor of Albuquerque is undeterred, he'll try and get the Dallas Cowboys to come down and play baseball instead.

Quick Review
This was a fine episode, with a few good moments.  Duffman features in the episode's highlights, and though there wasn't anything particularly bad about the episode, the quantity of jokes was just a bit lacking which prompts the score it received.

Final Score: 7.8

Pygmoelian (S11, E16-242)

More like 'pugmoelian', right?  I mean, right?

Plot Summary
The Simpsons go to Duff Days, a beer festival.  One event in said festival is a bartending contest, which Moe is a part of.  Though it seems he's going to lose to a well endowed female contestant, the final contest is a bum tossing and after the female contestant is too disgusted to partake, Moe is barely able to edge out victory.  As a reward, Moe's picture is to be put on the upcoming Duff calender.  When the calenders come in, though, Moe finds that his face is covered with several stickers and, after peeling said stickers off, he's pretty darn ugly.

Depressed over that, Moe takes Lenny's advice and gets plastic surgery for his face.  The idea works, and Moe becomes presentable.  With Homer's help, Moe decides to use his new looks... for revenge!  After a few successful vengeance runs, Moe turns his new eyes towards the TV studio.  He reveals that, 25 years ago, he was denied a role (Dr. Tad Winslow) on a soap opera because he was ugly.  He goes to confront the executive of the show, but his new looks coincide with the actor of Winslow demanding a pay raise combine for the executive to give the role to Moe.

Moe's new gig starts off pretty well, and he gets all the ladies.  However, Moe is able to get a peek at future storylines for the show, and is angered to learn that Winslow's character is to die, leaving Moe without the role again.  On the next taping, which is aired live apparently, Moe has Homer come in and reveal several upcoming storylines.  As it turns out, though, Winslow's death was only part of a dream sequence, but the damage is done and Moe is fired.  Angered, Moe slams the door of a set behind him, confident his new looks will get him other roles.  However, the set wobbles and falls towards him, landing on his new face.  The weight of the wall forces Moe's face to change again, but back to what it was before, an oddity Moe begins to question just as the episode ends.

Quick Review
This was another episode that had its moments but not really enough of them for this episode to be considered great.  It was also sorta weird that this episode, focused on Moe, had Homer around for so many parts where Homer just happened to be around.  Whatever.

Final Score: 7.2

Duffless (S04, E16-075)

Remember when episodes ended like this all the time?

Plot Summary
Its time for another school science fair!  As Bart doesn't have a project ready to go (or at least a good one - seeing the effects of smoking on a dog doesn't count), Lisa shows off a giant tomato, enhanced with anabolic steroids (and judging from the size of it, a ton of steroids).  At school, in a regrettable act, Lisa has Bart take care of the tomato as she retrieves something she forgot.  Seeing Principal Skinner bent over to tie his shoe, though, leaves Bart with no other recourse.  He accurately throws the tomato right into Skinner's butt, leaving Skinner devastated, Bart thoroughly pleased and Lisa mad as all hell.

Angry with Bart, Lisa decides to begin a new project: "Is my brother dumber than a hamster?"  In two different instances Lisa finds the hamster to be far more intelligent than Bart, however Bart finds the project journal and learns of the ploy.  When the science fair arrives, Bart has the last laugh by having the hamster plopped into a toy plane, with little pilot gear fitted onto the hamster.  Despite having no scientific merit, the cute display woos everyone, including Principal Skinner who gives Bart first prize.

Meanwhile, Homer and Barney plan to go to the Duff Brewery, with Homer leaving work early to do so, though he practically blows his plan to Marge.  After escaping work, Homer and Barney have a grand time at the Brewery.  After, given how drunk Barney is, Homer decides to drive them home, but the police are camped right outside ready to pull over people just leaving the Brewery.  Homer is unable the pass the breathalyzer, and is arrested for DWI.  His license is revoked, leaving him to ride a bike to work and elsewhere and is forced to attend AA meetings as a result.  Later on, Marge is able to convince Homer to not have any beer for a month.  Homer reluctantly agrees.

Homer's month without beer becomes rather tortuous, as he's forced to deal with things alcohol was able to otherwise help him through.  His desperation came to such a low that at one point he went to a football game just so he could eat the dirt under the bleachers.  The constant (and sometimes literal) bombardment of  Duff advertising nearly drives Homer over the edge, as well.  Yet, Homer is able to last the entire month.  Quickly rushing to Moe's, Homer's beer enthusiasm is soured as he notices the other boozehounds: depressed, out of it, wasting away.  Opting to get back into beer a later time, Homer heads back home, so he can take Marge on a bike ride at sunset.

Quick Review
Duffless ends up being a fantastic episode.  The scenes with the Duff Brewery near the beginning, Bart and his adventures with the rigged cupcake as well as the science fair sideplot, Homer's month without beer (and the origin of how he first started drinking), these were all excellent moments throughout this episode.  It ended on such a nice moment as well.  Duffless is one of Season 4's best episodes, and maybe a bit underrated as well.

Final Score: 10