Marge in Chains

Many of Springfield's residents purchase 'Juice Looseners' through the mail, which are inefficient and loud juicers built in Japan and shipped from there. One of the assembly line workers has the flu and coughs into the box destined for Homer, filling it with airborne germs. He evidently coughs into many other boxes as well; when the Juice Looseners arrive in Springfield, the dreaded Osaka Flu hits the town and many of the townspeople are affected by the illness. Due to exhaustion from having to look after the rest of her ill family, Marge accidentally forgets to pay for Grampa's bottle of bourbon when shopping at the Kwik-E-Mart. She is then arrested for shoplifting. Chief Wiggum tells Mayor Quimby about the arrest in confidence, and Quimby later reveals this fact to everyone in town during a public address. Marge's reputation is lowered dramatically among the townspeople, who now distrust her around their possessions. As usual, the family hires Lionel Hutz to defend Marge at her trial (Bart realizes that you can do anything as a lawyer and plans to become one), but he loses the case and the jury finds Marge guilty. She is sentenced to 30 days imprisonment at Springfield Women's Prison.

Marge's absence is felt at home as Homer and the rest of the family struggles to cope without her. Without Marge, the house shortly becomes a complete wreck. The annual bake sale also suffers - without Marge's marshmallow squares, the Springfield Park Commission fails to raise enough money to pay for a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Instead they purchase one of Jimmy Carter. The townspeople are enraged by this, and [in typical Springfield manner] riot, using the statue as a battering ram and generally start to destroy the whole town. So, to save his career, Mayor Quimby has Marge released from jail. The townspeople cheerfully welcome her back and apologize for suspecting her. They even unveil a statue for Marge, though it is just the Jimmy Carter one with Marge's hair added to it. The last scene shows Bart and Lisa playing on the statue, which has been converted into a tether ball post.

[edit] Trivia

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The episode's title is a reference to the band Alice in Chains.
Jimmy Carter is called "history's greatest monster". In the DVD commentary for this episode, Mike Reiss and Al Jean reveal that they did not like Carter, although they would vote for him ahead of George W. Bush.
When the Asian worker asks the other man not to tell the boss of his cold, the two laughing at the end is not animated in time to the lip-sync, spoofing English dubbed Martial Arts films.
When he is on the stand at Marge's trial, Apu boasts "I can recite pi to 40,000 places; The last digit is one," which is actually true.^[1]
David Crosby appears as Lionel Hutz's sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. He is seen looking at a Crosby, Stills, and Nash album and ends his first conversation with the line "and know I love you", referring to "Teach Your Children". Phil Hartman, who plays Lionel Hutz in this episode, designed the Crosby, Stills, and Nash logo.
When Snake Jailbird steals the Kwik-E-Mart (literally shoplifting, by placing the entire shop on a large flat-bed truck) he states that he is going to take it to Mexico. En-route, he passes a sign, indicating how far he is from other places, one of which is Mexico and another of which is North Haverbrook, made famous in the episode Marge vs. the Monorail.

[edit] Cultural references

The name of the episode is a reference to the band Alice in Chains.
The scene where Maude Flanders spies on Marge in the bathroom through a hole in the wall is a parody of the classic 1960 horror film Psycho.
In one scene, Lisa compares Lionel Hutz to famed lawyer Clarence Darrow, although Hutz confuses him with Clarence Williams III.
The environment of the Women's Prison in which Marge serves her sentence resembles that as seen in Prisoner.

The prisoner nicknamed "Tattoo Annie" has a MAD magazine fold-in tattooed on her back, which when "folded-in" (by pushing her shoulder blades together) shows the face of the magazine's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, and his famous catchphrase, "What me worry?"
Homer complains that he is going to miss Sheriff Lobo.
In the courtroom scene, the Blue-Haired Lawyer asks the jury who's more attractive, Mel Gibson or Tom Cruise while holding up their pictures, who were both hailed as sex symbols at the time.
The scene where the people knock the statue of Jimmy Carter down and call him a monster could be a reference to what people did to the Vladimir Lenin statues in the Eastern European countries after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Marge's prisoner number is 24601, a reference to the book-turned-musical Les Miserables. Coincidentally, that number would later become Sideshow Bob's most commonly seen prison number.
The TV show on FOX that Ned watches and laughs at, and thus causes him to believe he is damned, is an animated recreation of Married...with Children.