Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)
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For the first part of this episode, see Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part One).
"Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)" is the second part of the only two-part episode of The Simpsons to date. It originally aired as the season premiere of season seven, on September 17, 1995.
In the months following the airing of part one, there was much widespread debate among fans of the series as to who actually shot Mr. Burns. FOX, the television network that ran the series, offered a contest to tie in with the mystery (sponsored by 1-800-COLLECT). It was one of the first contests to tie together elements of television and the Internet. When the show returned in September, FOX saw their ratings quadruple to 46 million people, making it the most watched Simpsons episode ever.[citation needed]
The show mimicked the similar controversy that had resulted when the character J.R. Ewing was shot on the series Dallas in the episode titled "A House Divided," known by most as "Who shot J.R.?" This episode also contains references to the television series Twin Peaks, including the basic plot line—in which everyone is deemed a suspect—and the direct homage to Detective Dale Cooper's dream.
Before the second part season opener, Fox aired a special, Springfield's Most Wanted, hosted by John Walsh of America's Most Wanted which featured theories as to who might have shot Mr. Burns. This special is included in the Season 6 DVD Box Set, despite airing 4 months after Season 6 ended.
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[edit] Synopsis
Kent Brockman reports on Mr. Burns' assault. He was pronounced dead at a hospital until transferred to a better hospital where doctors upgraded his condition to alive, but in a coma. After Brockman speaks to Wiggum, it is revealed that two witnesses are already being questioned: Maggie and Santa's Little Helper, as they were both the only ones in the area when Burns was shot.
At the Simpson residence, Lisa says that everyone in Springfield had a reason for shooting Mr. Burns, even themselves. Everyone starts arguing amongst themselves about who did it, when Marge announces that there is already a prime suspect: Waylon Smithers. Smithers is already starting to wonder if he himself shot down Mr. Burns in a drunken rage. When he finds a recently fired gun in his jacket, he remembers that after he left the town meeting, he ran into some old man on the way home, and shot him. Smithers bursts into tears, crying, "What have I done?"
Moe, Barney, Lenny and Carl arrive at Homer's house and ask if he wants to come and help pull down Burns’ sun blocker. With the help of Snake, Otto, Groundskeeper Willie and the Bumblebee Man, they snap the machine in half. The sun blocker crashes into Shelbyville, much to everyone's delight. Smithers, meanwhile is driven mad by guilt and goes to a Catholic Church and confess his sins. When he finishes, Chief Wiggum (who was in the confessional instead of a priest) emerges and takes Smithers in for questioning. Both the police and the press interrogate Smithers. Sideshow Mel remembers that Smithers once said that he never missed an episode of Pardon My Zinger, which airs at the very time Burns was shot. He also notices the fact that during the press conference Smithers quotes a joke from the episode of "Pardon my Zinger" that aired the day that Mr. Burns was shot. Mel heads for the station to point this out and Smithers recalls that he left the town meeting early to get home in time, and that the old man he ran into on the way was Jasper. The police and Smithers head for the newly repaired retirement home to check on Jasper and discover that Smithers did shoot him, but in his wooden leg, so there was no harm done.
With the prime suspect cleared, the police continue to investigate the matter. Lisa decides to help by making a chart of all the other major suspects. However, she forgets about Tito Puente, and when she tells the police (when Wiggum points out he's a suspect) that he did vow revenge, the police consider going to check him out. When Lisa says "He's in show business, he's a celebrity", the police immediately go to see him. However, the only kind of revenge Tito has in mind is an insulting, albeit catchy, tune; Tito is cleared. Skinner is next on the list, but the police clear him when he tells the police that he did go to the town meeting to ambush Burns, but he was in the lavatory applying his camouflage make-up at the time of the shooting. He adds that Superintendent Chalmers can also vouch for his whereabouts as he entered the lavatory at the time of the assault too, just as Skinner realized he had taken his mother's make-up kit instead of his camo make-up. Skinner confirms that Chalmers can verify his whereabouts, but quickly insists that "anything else he tells you is a filthy lie."
The police question Willie next but he claims that it's impossible for him to fire a gun as he has crippling arthritis in his index fingers from Space Invaders in 1977 (it is never confirmed whether Willie meant the game or actual space invaders). The police eliminate Moe as a suspect with the help of a lie detector, also uncovering some disturbing secrets about Moe himself along the way. At the Simpson house, Marge discovers that Grandpa's gun, which she buried in the backyard, is missing and asks Grandpa where it is. After he complains that people blame him for everything, Marge leaves. Grandpa removes the gun itself from his sweater, stroking it and telling it that he had missed it bad.
At the station, Wiggum prepares to pour some coffee, but after finding out he is out of coffee, he drinks some warm cream. He begins to dream, and in a scene reminiscent of Twin Peaks, he is eating a donut and sitting on one of the chairs in a chat show set. Lisa does a funny walk from behind the curtains and tells him to check Burns' suit for more clues. While checking the suit, he finds an eyelash and tests it for DNA. Wiggum finds that the eyelash matches Simpson DNA. At the same time, Burns wakes up from his coma and cries, "Homer Simpson!"
The police raid the Simpson home for more information. A gun is found in under the seat in Homer's car. Homer claims he has never seen the gun before in his life, but his fingerprints are all over it. When Wiggum discovers that the bullets in the gun match the one they took out of Mr. Burns, he arrests Homer for attempted murder. Later, while at Krusty Burger, Homer escapes from the police and heads for the hospital.
At the station, Waylon Smithers offers a $50,000 reward for Homer's capture, dead or alive. Lisa returns to the scene of the crime and, with the help of an intelligent pigeon, learns the identity of Burns' true assailant. At the hospital, Dr. Riviera discovers some startling information as well. When Mr. Burns shouted "Homer Simpson!" he wasn't giving the name of his gunman, it was because "Homer Simpson" was all he could say. The doctor leaves, and Homer himself, who had successfully infiltrated the hospital and reached Burns' ward, prepares to silence Burns for telling everybody that Homer shot him,and that Burns never remembered Homer's name.
A police bulletin reports that Homer has been spotted at the hospital. Lisa, the police, and the rest of Springfield race to the hospital. Lisa gets there first, protesting to everybody that her father wouldn't hurt a fly. On entering the ward, everyone finds Homer shaking Mr. Burns vigorously, telling him to stop telling everyone that Homer shot him. As Homer continues to shake him, Burns finds his voice and asks, "Smithers, who is this beast that's shaking me?"
Homer loses it, snatches a gun from Wiggum and shouts at Burns to tell everyone that he never shot him... before. Burns just laughs, stating that Homer doesn't have the cranial capacity nor the opposable digits to operate a firearm. And with that, Burns reveals his true assailant... Maggie Simpson.
Burns begins telling his story from the point where he left the town meeting. With the success of his sun-blocker, he had felt like celebrating. He walked into the parking lot to find Maggie, alone, in the Simpson car. She appeared to be smiling. He asked what she was so happy about, and she held up a lollipop. Homer pulls that very same sucker out of his shirt pocket; he had picked it up off the car floor when he was searching for an ice cream cone he had dropped. It was also there that he had absent-mindedly handled the gun, which explained why his fingerprints were all over it. Having decided to give stealing candy from a baby another try, Burns had tried to wrestle the candy away from Maggie, which was proving difficult. Eventually, Burns' gun fell out of its holster into Maggie's hand and fired in Burns' direction. The gun and lollipop then fell out of her hands underneath the car seat.
Mr. Burns, losing strength, tried to find aid, but finding only a useless Jimbo, he gave up and collapsed on the sundial, where he used his last ounce of strength to suck out his gold fillings and swallowed them so as to keep paramedics from stealing them. Burns demands that Maggie be arrested, but Wiggum says no jury in the world will convict a baby—except maybe in Texas. Marge insists that the whole ordeal was an accident. Maggie, however, glares directly at the camera, as if to imply that it may not have been an accident[citation needed].
[edit] Alternate endings
Allegedly to keep the ending from being leaked from animators and writers, there were actually several different conclusions created. Most were nothing more than footage of various characters shooting Burns: Apu, Moe, Barney, and even Santa's Little Helper were featured as the gunmen. But there was also a full-length conclusion animated in which Smithers shot Burns and explained his doing so at Burns' bedside after Homer's wild chase. This footage is seen in "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", with host Troy McClure commenting that if Waylon Smithers had been the gunman, "then we would have to ignore all of the Simpson DNA evidence, and that would be just downright nutty."
[edit] Springfield's Most Wanted
Springfield's Most Wanted was a TV special hosted by John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted. The special aired on September 17, 1995, before the first episode of the seventh season of The Simpsons. Designed as a parody of Walsh's television series, this special was designed to help people find out who shot Mr. Burns, by laying out the potential clues and identifying the possible suspects.
This special aired at 7:30 P.M. ET after the re-air of part one of Who Shot Mr. Burns (Part One), and before the new episode Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two).
Clips of various Simpsons episodes prior to Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two) were included in the episode.
[edit] Trivia
- Willie claims he couldn't have shot Mr. Burns due to his arthritis, which he claims he received from battling space invaders in 1977. The game Space Invaders wasn't released until 1978, which explains Willie having never heard of it (although according to him he was fighting the real thing).
- In Wiggum's dream, the voice of Lisa is done by the actor speaking backwards, and then reversing the noise.[1]
- In Part 2, Mr. Burns is seen to be in hospital room number 2F20, which is also the episode number of that particular episode.
- When the episode first aired, there was a write-in contest for any fan who could accurately guess who shot Mr. Burns. According to the DVD commentary, the contest rules said that a sampling of 1000 randomly-selected entries would be taken and the first one they picked out of that sampling that guessed correctly would win. When no winner was found, Fox wouldn't allow another sampling, so the producers had to find a "winner" in the original sampling which turned out to be an old lady who incorrectly guessed Smithers.
- A prize for guessing the correct answer was to be placed in a Simpsons episode. This never happened.
- The scene in Part I where Mr. Burns stumbles to the sundial, shows Burns with his suit jacket closed and no view of Burns' holster is seen. However, when the scene is shown in flashback in Part II, the jacket is shown open and the gun holster inside is shown empty.
- In the Season 18 episode "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times", Homer claims to have shot Mr. Burns and pinned the blame on Maggie, though this directly contradicts the scene in this episode showing what really happened.
[edit] Cultural references
- Homer escaping from the overturned paddywagon is an homage to The Fugitive.
- The scene where Chief Wiggum has a dream in which Lisa speaks backwards is an obvious homage to Twin Peaks and Special Agent Dale Cooper's interaction with The Man from Another Place. Also, after Homer escapes from the paddywagon, the Squeaky-Voiced Teen speaks to his manager Diane, which is the same name as the unseen secretary that Agent Cooper dictates messages to.
- Sideshow Mel demonstrates deductive reasoning and logic similar to that demonstrated by noted fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. This connection is further noted by Mel's smoking of a pipe during his reflections, as Holmes was frequently known to do.
- The opening sequence of part two, wherein Smithers dreams that he merely dreamt shooting Mr. Burns, before going on to dream that they are in fact undercover detectives on the 1960s Speedway racing circuit (itself parodying The Mod Squad and Quinn Martin's programs), is similar to an incident on the 1980s soap opera Dallas, in which the events of an entire season (including an attempted murder) were explained away as being merely a character's dream.
- The title and the idea of these two episodes are also taken from the series Dallas. In Dallas, they had the "Who shot J.R." two episodes, the first of which ending a season, and the second opening the next season.
- The nightclub where Tito Puente and his band perform looks like the Tropicana from I Love Lucy.
- The nightclub is called 'Chez Guevara', a reference to Che Guevara.
- Groundskeeper Willie's interrogation, especially him crossing and uncrossing his legs, is a parody of the famous interrogation scene in Basic Instinct.
[edit] References
- ^ The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season. DVD commentary for Episode 2F16 "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part II"
[edit] External links
- "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- Springfield's Most Wanted at the Internet Movie Database
