On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister
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The Simpsons episode | |
"On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" | |
Episode no. | 346 |
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Prod. code | GABF05 |
Orig. Airdate | March 6, 2005 |
Written by | Jeff Westbrook |
Directed by | Bob Anderson |
Chalkboard | "Beer in a milk carton is not milk" |
Couch gag | The camera pans out from the living room, to outer space and beyond, and back to Homer's head |
Guest star | Gary Busey and Jane Kaczmarek |
SNPP capsule | |
Season 16 November 7, 2004 – May 15, 2005 |
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List of all Simpsons episodes... |
"On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons' sixteenth season, which originally aired on March 6, 2005.
[edit] Synopsis
The students of Springfield Elementary School head for a field trip to the Springfield Glacier. Unfortunately, the glacier has melted heavily, and Lisa blames the melt on global warming, as a ranger tries to shut her up. Bart torments her as Lisa desperately asks the students to save the glacier, to no success. Meanwhile, while Homer and Marge go shopping at the Sprawl-Mart, Grampa loses his people greeting abilities and wants Homer to succeed him as the people greeter. Homer does a successful job of being the new people greeter that the manager says Homer can get a full time position without any form of advancement.
The next day, Lisa gets a restraining order filed against Bart. Under the order, according to Chief Wiggum, Bart is forced to be twenty feet away from Lisa at all times, or he will face more legal consequences. Wiggum shows the family a Gary Busey-hosted videotape, "Get Out of My Dreams and Also Out of My Car: A Guide to Your Restraining Order", which teaches Bart how to live with a restraining order. To make the restraining order more fun, Homer makes a 20 foot pole that can be used to keep them apart easier, but it actually impacts Bart's life at home and school. Marge appeals in court to get the restraining order removed. Bart testifies that Lisa is bad and the judge has no sense of humor, but Judge Constance Harm only increases the restraining order to 200 feet. Bart can now only live at the edge of the Simpson family property.
When he lives at the edge of the property, Bart takes a look at nature and embraces it. At Sprawl-Mart, Homer is forced to work overtime without being paid, and he cannot leave the store, and so he lobbies the employees at Sprawl-Mart to shut the store down, but they insist that they have learned to accept the things they cannot change and steal whatever is not nailed down, and Homer leaves the store on his own, (along with several plasma TVs). Bart, still in the backyard, makes a wicker statue of Lisa. She actually likes it so much, she forgives him, and as it is burning, she throws the restraining order and the pole Homer made into the fire.
[edit] Trivia
- This is the first episode written by former Futurama writer Jeff Westbrook.
- Grampa was earlier seen working at Sprawl-Mart in the episode "The Fat and the Furriest".
- Gary Busey is the first celebrity this season to host a Troy McClure-esque video. In the very next episode, Robert Wagner would do the same.
- It is very probable that the situation in which Lisa got homework from Bart, and he thought it was bad, was a reference to what happened when Lisa got the mumps in "Bart's Dog Gets an F".
[edit] Cultural references
- The title is taken from the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
- The title on the Gary Busey video is taken from the Billy Ocean song 'Get Out Of My Dreams And Into My Car'.
- The episode's couch gag spoofs the 1977 science education movie Powers of Ten, which shows the house, Springfield, the continent, the planet, the Milky Way, the universe and back to Homer's body. This gag was first used in "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner".
- The song played during the Lisa/Bart montage is "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police.
- The song that Marge, Lisa, Homer, and Maggie play is Tijuana Taxi.
- Two songs from Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, Morning Mood and In The Hall of The Mountain King, are used in this episode.
- Bart's lines "Look in your heart. I beg you. Look in your heart!" are a reference to the movie Miller's Crossing where John Turturro's character twice implores Gabriel Byrne's character to do the same thing (look into his heart) before killing him (Turturro); once successfully, the other not.
- Wicker statue of Lisa is a reference to the 1973 British Movie, The Wicker Man.