Boy-Scoutz N the Hood
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"Boy-Scoutz N the Hood" is the eighth episode of The Simpsons' fifth season.
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[edit] Plot
Bart and Milhouse are playing games at the Arcade, but when Bart exclaims out loud that they are out of money, he and Milhouse are forced to leave. Meanwhile, Homer drops his last peanut under the couch, and when he tries to find it, he finds a $20 bill instead. After it dawns on him that he can buy many more peanuts with the money, Homer heads for the door and accidentally slips on the peanut he dropped, causing the bill to fly out of his hands and out of the window. After being blown across town by the wind, the 20 dollar bill lands right in front of Bart and Milhouse. They use it to buy a super Squishy beverage from Apu entirely comprised of syrup. After having hallucinations, they run wild around Springfield on a sugar rush daze: taking in a Broadway play, testing out skateboards, playing video games in a VIP section, buying temporary tattoos, and causing mischief all around. The next morning, Bart wakes up, hungover from his sugar high and discovers to his horror that he joined a club called The Junior Campers (an organization similar to the Boy Scouts of America) while under the influence of the syrup Squishy (while Milhouse got a bad word shaved in his hair and Barney ended up on a Greek ship sailing in unknown waters).
He takes his uniform to school with him to return it, but learns that he can attend a meeting instead of taking a pop quiz. Bart does not like the first meeting (which consists of sponge-bathing the elderly), but when he finds out that he gets to have a pocket knife, he decides to keep attending the meetings. After a while Bart begins to enjoy being a Camper, which results in Homer mocking him relentlessly (though Bart gets back at Homer by setting up traps baited with pies). Next, a father-son rafting trip is to be held, so Bart has to bring Homer. Homer does not like it much, but it gets worse when he, Bart, Ned Flanders and Rod Flanders have to share the same raft. Due to Homer losing the map, they accidentally take the wrong turn and find themselves lost at sea. They stay that way for a while, helpless with no food or water. While they are lost at sea, Homer's various actions continue to make the situation worse (such as tossing Rod's Walkman into the ocean after the batteries have died, his insistence on using the rationed water to wash his socks, and eating all of the food while demonstrating how to ration it) and cause Bart to be annoyed with him. When the raft springs a leak after Homer gives Bart a pocket knife he stole off Ernest Borgnine, all seems lost, but then Homer smells his way to a Krusty Burger on an off-shore oil rig in the thick fog. They are saved, and Bart is proud of his father.
Meanwhile, the other Junior Campers (led by Ernest Borgnine) take the correct route. For the most part, Borgnine is the only adult shown when the show cuts back to the rest of the Campers after Homer and Ned's raft gets lost. They end up in an even worse position: after initially finding themselves trapped in a dark, tangled forest (and seemingly hunted by the mountain men from the film Deliverance), they are attacked by a bear - Borgnine cannot fight it since Homer has stolen his Swiss Army knife to give to Bart as a present. Eventually, the other campers seek refuge at an abandoned summer camp, where they are ambushed by an unknown figure lurking in the woods similar to a scene out of Friday the 13th.
[edit] Syndication cuts
The following scenes are cut in syndication broadcasts:
- Right after Bart discovers that he signed up for the Junior Campers and comments that "A man on a Squishy bender can do some crazy things.", there is a short scene featuring Barney waking up on a ship headed to Greece and saying "Oh no! Not again!".
- After Bart discovers that the junior campers carry pocket-knives, there is a scene where he encounters Moe kicking Hans Moleman out of his bar for not using a coaster and Hans brandishing a knife that is so heavy, it sends him crashing to the ground.
- Homer muttering "Mmm, apple..." after he falls in the disguised hole in the driveway with another pie as bait.
- A scene where Chief Wiggum argues with Marge over the phone that Homer and Bart must be missing for at least a week before he starts searching for them, explaining to her that the police force is very busy. He then resumes his game of checkers with a dog.
- A scene where Ned finds a group of dolphins and hopes they will save his group, but the dolphins swim away, speaking through subtitled dialogue, "You're all going to die." Ned subsequently becomes delirious, chanting "Done-Diddly-Doodly" until Homer slaps him more times than he should, saying that "It's better to be safe than sorry."
- A scene with Chief Wiggum and Lou about to embark on their search and rescue, with Wiggum demanding that they go to the store to get beer and cold cuts.
[edit] Cultural references
- The couch gag could be a reference to Pac-Man (the floating eyes look like the floating ghosts from this classic video game).
- The episode title is a play on the 1991 John Singleton film Boyz N the Hood.
- When Bart first tastes the all-syrup squishy he says "Ooooo, that's good squishy!" a la Jackie Gleason.
- The "Springfield, Springfield" number performed by Bart and Milhouse is a reference to the musical number "New York, New York" from On the Town, a film staring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. At one point, a sailor appears to deliver the real lyrics, but then Bart points him to New York.
- The scene in which Borgnine and the other rafters drift through a dark forest watched by persons unknown is a reference to the movie Deliverance, and features the music from the film's "Dueling Banjos" scene.
- The unseen person or creature that attacks Borgnine at the end of the episode is implied to be Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th movies. This is not said in the episode, but it is hinted at since the group is in an abandoned summer camp, like the one in the films and a music very similar to one of the main themes of the series plays when the screen fades to black. Also, while the children are singing, the camera plays the famous 'Jason Vorrhees' P.O.V. and his trademark whisper.
- The myopic character Hans Moleman's cane sword is a reference to the legendary Chanbara film character Zatoichi. In addition, the scene where he pulls his knife out on Moe and says "You call that a knife? THIS is a knife!" references the famous line from Crocodile Dundee.
- Martin Prince is seen playing a video game based on the movie My Dinner with Andre
- During a hallucination, Homer imagines himself singing the song Sugar, Sugar by The Archies while dancing with lollipops and ice cream cones.
- Homer Simpson's words "Don't you know the poem? 'Water, water, everywhere, so let's all have a drink.'" are reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem written by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (The original lines are: "Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.")
[edit] Outside influences from this episode
- Guitarist Jason Becker has a song named "Floor Pie," named for a one-off joke in this episode, on his album The Blackberry Jams. The same album has another track entitled "Groin Grabbingly Transcendent," a reference to the episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?."
[edit] External links
- "Boy-Scoutz N the Hood" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
