The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show (S08, E14-167)

"I have to go now.  My planet needs me."
Note: Poochie died on the way back to his home planet.

Plot Summary
As it turns out, nobody is bothering to watch Itchy & Scratchy anymore despite the show's continuing quality.  Roger Meyers Jr. is tasked with finding a way to get it ratings or have it removed from Krusty's show.  At a focus group featuring kids, he learns that the only 'real' problem with Itchy & Scratchy is that its characters just do not have the same impact as they used to.  Upon this realization, Meyers comes up with a solution: adding a new character.

A network executive demands the new character, a dog, to be in-your-face 90s extreme with an attitude because apparently that's what the kids want.  The dog, lethargically named "Poochie" starts making waves in the news.  As Lisa laments the purposes of these new characters, Roy pops into the scene to greet the family, having known Roy for some time somehow.  The kids suggest Homer try out to be Poochie's voice actor, given Homer has a humorous voice.  Homer decides to try out and ultimately wins the gig after showing some attitude.  The hype for the new cartoon gets pretty big, but when the cartoon premieres, it just features Poochie doing extreme 90s things like rapping, dunking a basketball and that oh-so-lovable 90s slang, while showcasing no violence at all.  The episode is nearly universally hated, with only Homer defending it given that he voices the character who is the root of the hate.

Homer attempts to solve the problem by suggesting ways to make Poochie better, but the executives have only one option to fix the cartoon: killing Poochie off.  At the voice read, Homer refuses to read his line which calls for Poochie to beg for death.  Instead, with the help of the VA for Itchy & Scratchy, Homer reads a new set of lines, apologizing to viewers, admitting that Poochie got off on the wrong foot, and requests that they give Poochie one more chance.  The read gains the approval of everyone in the room, including Meyers.  However, later on, it seems the network executives get the last word, as the new episode, rather hastily edited, has Poochie 'leaving' for his home planet, but dying on the way.  With a lawyer present, Poochie is not only dead, but legally unable to return to the cartoon at a later point (though in later Simpsons episodes he comes back anyway).  Homer, who never got paid for the work, laments the loss, as it seems like the world wasn't quite ready for Poochie - or Roy, as he takes his leave to live in an apartment with "two sexy ladies".  The cartoons return to normal, but again nobody watches them anyway.

Quick Review
A rather pointed look into the realm of cartoon decision making and perhaps an ominous predictor of what's to come, this episode still has a lot of hilarity to be had with its various parodies and sleights and such, so ends it ends up being a quality episode overall.

Final Score: 9.1

The Day the Violence Died (S07, E18-146)

Milhouse: "Look out, Itchy!  He's Irish!"

Plot Summary
With the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon celebrating its 75th anniversary, a parade is to be held.  Homer, Bart and Lisa try to get there early, as in the night before kind of early, and though they get a chance to see some I&S related memorabilia, they oversleep and miss a big chunk of the parade anyway.  Bart separates from the group and joins the parade directly, which brings cheer for some reason.  The parade, which was poorly routed, goes into Bumtown, and speeds off quickly.  Bart is unable to keep pace and catches a bum throwing tomatoes at the parade.  Bart confronts the bum over Itchy & Scratchy, but the bum reveals that he was actually the one to create Itchy, a character that Roger Meyers Sr. stole, and that he invented cartoon violence in general.  He even has a old movie to prove it: "Manhattan Madness", a film made in 1919 where Itchy kills an Irishman and President Teddy Roosevelt.  As Bart decides that this bum, Chester J. Lampwick, is legit, the movie reel falls apart and crumbles to ash, destroying the last known proof of Chester's work.

Regardless, Bart is determined for Chester to get what's his.  Talking to the head of I&S Studios now, Roger Meyers Jr., does not help, so Bart and Chester take them to court, Bart getting the $1000 fee from Homer.  As expected, not having the film makes Chester's case near impossible to prove, but then Bart remembers a frame of Itchy that he saw the night before the parade that looked just like the Itchy in Chester's film.  He borrows $750 rather quickly from Homer to buy the frame of Itchy, and within it reveals that Chester did indeed draw that Itchy back in 1919.  Chester wins the case, and gets $800 billion in restitution (which was probably less after appeals).  However, the case also leaves I&S Studios bankrupt, essentially killing Itchy & Scratchy, much to Bart's unprepared shock.

After being unable to deal with the replacement edu-tainment cartoon, Bart & Lisa decide to try and get I&S back.  However, Roger Meyers Jr. has no money, and nobody they can talk to is either able or willing to spend money to get the cartoons back.  They're about to give up and tackle another problem (getting Apu out of jail for public indecency), when Marge gives them a confidence booster.  They finally find a 'perfect' solution to the I&S problem, but when they go to present it to Meyers, they find that they've been beaten to the punch.

It turns out that the post office's character "Mr. Zip" is a knockoff of Meyer Sr.'s actual original character "Manic Mailman", and as a result the government gives Meyers a huge cash settlement, allowing I&S Studios to go back into business.  The people responsible for finding this?  A young boy and girl by the names of Lester & Eliza, who would look suspiciously like Bart & Lisa if this had been animated eight or nine years prior.  They also solved Apu's nudity problem, and also reunited Krusty with his estranged wife, a problem Bart & Lisa weren't even aware of!  Though Bart and Lisa are happy Itchy & Scratchy are back, they can't shake that unsettling feeling of being beaten to the punch by a seemingly unrelated pair of kids, especially when Lester rolls on by on his skateboard giving Bart a suspicious look.

Quick Review
I really loved the way this episode ended.  Throwing in Lester and Eliza, most notably their appearances, was well devised and brought something new to the table, not that the "Bart and Lisa solve everything" angle had gotten tired yet.  Other things such as Lionel Hutz's false advertising (Works on Contingency?  No, money down!), Homer's seemingly endless supply of money and the many cartoon parodies, such as the ones from Fritz the Cat and Schoolhouse Rock, really give the episode some shine as well.  Its one of Season 7's best episodes.

Final Score: 9.8

The Front (S04, E19-078)

Grampa: "They pay me $800 a week to tell a cat and mouse what to do!"

Plot Summary
The main plot of this episode features two kids who, upon seeing their favorite cartoon fallen into uninspired, preachy writing, take matters into their own hands and write several good episodes that redeem the program.  File it under "things that can't happen in real life".

Bart and Lisa witness such an episode of Itchy & Scratchy (basically a "don't do drugs" promo), and immediately decide that they could write an episode better than that.  Quickly devising a good episode and putting it on script, they submit their creation to the studio, but is quickly rejected.  Lisa believes that it was rejected because they were dismissed for being children, and decides to put an adult name on there.  Bart decides to use Grampa's name because, hey, he probably wouldn't realize it for awhile.  After getting his name on the script and turning it back in, Roger Meyers Jr. finds the script hilarious and decides to hire Grampa to write more episodes.  Grampa agrees to do so, despite having no idea what Itchy & Scratchy is, only because of the money.

Meanwhile, Marge is invited to a high school reunion.  Upon figuring out that Homer didn't receive an invitation, Homer reveals that he never passed Remedial Science 1A and as such never graduated from high school.  Regardless, the two go to the reunion and have fun.  Homer receives a lot of fun awards (gained the most weight, most improved odor, lowest paying job), however old Principal Dondelinger reveals Homer never graduated, and takes his trophies away, making him the laughing stock of the reunion.  Upset, Homer decides to re-take that science course and graduate high school.  He succeeds, and earns his diploma.

Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa reveal to Grampa why he's getting money, and agree they'll write more episodes in Grampa's name and split the check up three ways.  The cartoons are so good, Meyers fires the other writers and Grampa is nominated for an award for his "writing".  At the awards show, he finally gets a chance to see the cartoon he's credited for, but is appalled by the violent content.  He wins the award, but uses his time at the podium to attack the cartoon and the people who enjoy it so.  He leaves the stage as stuff flies his way and gives the award to the kids, and the three take their leave.

In a bonus segment, The Adventures of Ned Flanders, in the episode entitled Love That God, Flanders has a conversation with his two sons.

[Ned enters room, Rod and Todd are praying]
Ned: Knock that off you two, its time for church!
Todd: We're not going to church today.
Ned [shocked]: What!?  You give me one good reason!
Todd: It's Saturday!
Ned: Hah-hokalidokily doo!

Truly the best segment of our time.

Quick Review
The episode was great just like pretty much all of Season 4.  Homer's side-story turns out to be excellent, and Grampa was used well even if it was just "feeble" Grampa most of the time.  The Flanders segment at the end, regardless for why its even there in the first place, brings another good laugh as well.  The Itchy & Scratchy cartoons written by Bart and Lisa, of which there were two, were very good though I'm fairly sure they were the longest running I&S cartoons to this point (not that its a problem by itself).  An excellent episode overall.

Final Score: 9.2

Itchy & Scratchy & Marge (S02, E09-022)

Nightmare fuel, in its purest form.

Plot Summary
Censorship, always a controversial topic.  Most of the controversy stems not so much as to how much of something should be censored, but rather if one thing should be censored over another.  This episode... doesn't get to that point until the end, but before then it chronicles one woman's quest to end cartoon violence.

Marge's motivations for doing so begin when Maggie bonks Homer on the head with a mallet, an action Marge determines Maggie learned from the Itchy & Scratchy show, the ever-so-lovable violence central.  While banning Bart and Lisa from watching the show (they go elsewhere to watch instead), she tries writing Krusty, an animator for some reason, and Roger Meyers Jr., the head of Itchy & Scratchy Studios, asking them to cut out the violence.  Meyers in particular shrugs her off, and calls her a screwball in a reply letter.  Angered, Marge leads a campaign against the studio, which quickly gains steam.  After a television appearance where Marge pleads viewers who dislike the cartoon's violence to write to Meyers, tons of angry letters get swamped to I&S Studios, and Meyers has no choice.

Indeed, the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons become tamed.  Instead of the two inflicting pain on one another, they instead share lemonade, dance, or tell bedtime stories, which was the best part of the episode.  Marge notices the immediate impact: Maggie imitates the nice cartoons and gives Homer a glass of lemonade.  Meanwhile, given the cartoons are awful now, kids all around Springfield have no reason to stay inside, and head back out and go on all sorts of grand adventures.  It seems the Marge did the town real good.

A short time later, an incoming presentation of Michelangelo's David prompts Marge's protest group back into action.  However, Marge is actually fine with the statue and sees no reason to join along.  Its soon after that, on TV again, that Marge is faced with the realization that she can't be fine with not censoring one kind of thing (the nudity on David) while going all in on another form of censorship (TV violence).  Disgusted, Marge gives in, and soon thereafter Itchy & Scratchy are back to their old violent selves, but at least the school will be forced to visit David on a field trip which is only fair.

Quick Review
It was a fun episode, really.  This was the first episode where Itchy & Scratchy gets a good amount of attention and, as a result, we good a fair amount of I&S cartoons to look at, even if a couple of them were of the 'be nice' variety.  Homer, who was a background character in this episode, still made a lot of good jokes as well.  A good episode overall.

Final Score: 7.9