Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy

The family runs past a repeating background shot of the couch and TV (in a parody of how cartoons from the 1950s and 1960s use repeat pans to save money on producing animation).

DVD
commentary

David Mirkin
Bill Oakley
Josh Weinstein
Wes Archer

Season 6
September 4, 1994 – May 21, 1995

List of all The Simpsons episodes

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"Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons' sixth season.

1 Plot
2 Cultural references
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

When Homer and Marge's marriage becomes boring due to their fading sex lives, Grampa pieces together a tonic that is guaranteed to "put the yowzer back in your trouser". The effectiveness of the tonic results in Homer and Grampa going into business together, selling “Simpson and Son’s Revitalizing Tonic” to the public utilizing a medicine show. They travel from town to town selling the product, but when they visit the farmhouse where Homer grew up, the two get into an argument. Grampa calls Homer an “accident” which makes Homer angry, and causes him to shut Grampa out of his life. It also causes him to change the way he acts as a father to his own children, whom he vows to show the attention and love he never got from Grampa. Bart and Lisa, however, feel he is overcompensating. Because of the undesirable results of Homer's well-intentioned efforts to be a good parent to them, they find that they prefer the “old” Homer. Depressed at having failed to be a good father even when he is trying, Homer goes back to the farmhouse to think, and sees old photographs, including one of himself as a child on Christmas morning where, in typical Homer fashion, he thinks "my Dad was not even there that Christmas when I got to meet Santa Claus". However, Homer then becomes aware that it was his father in a Santa costume, proving that Abe did really care for his son. Homer quickly reunites with Grampa, whom by coincidence has also gone to the farmhouse to reflect. Both of them accidentally set fire to different parts of the building at the same time and bump into one another on the front porch while fleeing the blaze. The two both admit they are “screw-ups” and forgive one another.

In a subplot, Bart and friends attempt to figure out why all of the adults disappear after they buy "Simpson and Son's Tonic". They come up with numerous imaginative ideas, none of which have to do with the tonic. Lisa sarcastically offers up the possibility of all the adults being "reverse vampires" and having to be home before dark, which frightens the rest of the kids more than their serious ideas.

[edit] Cultural references

The outfit worn by Grampa is similar to the one worn by Colonel Sanders.
Simpson and Son references the television show, Sanford and Son.
Homer accidentally grabs a racy photography book by Robert Mapplethorpe at the bookstore.
X-Files theme song played after Bart purchased "Unidentified Flying Outrage!"
Then Vice President Al Gore is shown "celebrating" Lisa's purchase of his book Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow by listening to "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang.^[1]
Lisa references Occam's Razor.
Milhouse's line "We're through the looking-glass here, people" is from Oliver Stone's JFK, and is a reference to a work by Lewis Carroll.
Prof. Frink transforming into a suave man with a deep voice is a reference to Jerry Lewis transforming into Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor.
Foggy Mountain Breakdown is played during a chase scene, reminiscent of a recurring theme of the 1967 landmark film Bonnie and Clyde. The parody was that it was the music that was causing the chase: when the music stops, the chase stops.
Grampa Simpson uses the word Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis successfully.