Million Dollar Abie
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Million Dollar Abie is the sixteenth episode of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons. It originally aired on April 2, 2006. The title of this episode is a play on the 2004 movie Million Dollar Baby.
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[edit] Plot
When it is announced that the commissioner of pro football Bud Armstrong wants to expand the league, Homer leads the charge to get the new franchise in Springfield. At first his family does not think he could do it, but Homer manages to put forth a surprisingly strong package for the Springfield Meltdowns and the new Duff Beer Krusty Burger Buzz Cola Costington's Department Store Kwik-E-Mart Stupid Flanders Park.
The commissioner narrows down the choice of the two cities to either Springfield or Los Angeles. L.A. puts forth an anti-Springfield video hosted by Rob Reiner and features a song sung by celebrity impersonators that ends with them singing "Springfield Blows". All the owners decide that Springfield is the lesser of two evils (it doesn't hurt that the Rich Texan owns slums in Springfield and another owner snaps that she didn't kill her husband and seize his team just to put a team in Los Angeles) and the Commissioner awards the new team to Springfield. The town gets "Meltmania" and "Downs syndrome" and quickly builds Homer's new park and paints the town in the team colours (orange and purple) and changes all of the street names to football-related names (e.g. Two-Point Conversion Blvd).
On the day when Springfield is officially announced as the new team, the Commissioner gets confused by all of the new street names and gets lost. He stops for directions at the Simpsons' house and is greeted by Grampa Simpson, who welcomes him in. However, Grampa starts to fear that the commissioner is an undercover burglar and attacks him and ties him up because, at the same time, he is watching on TV a program about undercover burglars who act just as the Commissioner did (asking for a telephone and a bathroom and, sometimes, taking pictures of the children of the house - he was looking at one with Bart and Lisa when attacked). The rest of the family arrives home, disappointed that the commissioner did not show and is shocked to find him tied up in their living room. The commissioner is so angry that he declares that the Meltdowns will never be and leaves, never to return.
The entire town starts to hate Grampa, and the expensive stadium has to be used for farmers' markets. Grampa is depressed and decides to seek out a doctor who will help him commit suicide. The doctor tells Grampa to reconsider, and Grampa decides that if anyone calls him in the next 24 hours, he will not go through with his plan. The call never comes and Grampa goes back to the clinic the next day. Grampa comes very close to being killed but the police show up just in time to stop it.
Grampa thinks he is dead and runs through the town, seeing "Hamburger Heaven" and a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. He soon learns that he is not dead, gets a new lease on life and decides to live it up. Meanwhile, the city decides to turn the unused football stadium into an arena for bull fighting. Despite Lisa's protests, Grampa decides to become a matador. Grampa wins his first fight with a bull, but at home, Lisa tells Grampa that she is disappointed. Grampa tells her that people are cheering him for his success, but Lisa tells him that she has always cheered for him until now. Grampa is not sure about that, but in the next fight he sees the bull that he is about to kill and decides to spare its life. He releases all the bulls, which immediately start running through the streets of Springfield, causing a great deal of destruction. Lisa is proud of Grampa and the two reconcile, but they both became in danger by two bulls flying with balloons.
[edit] Censorship
- This episode was classified with an "M" rating by Australian TV network Channel Ten for "adult themes" due to the plot about Grampa wanting to go through with assisted suicide.
[edit] Trivia
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- Before the credits start, there is a scene with a young Abe, in black and white. Abe is a microphone tester for a court, yet he insists on denouncing all his communist friends, among people like his own brother and Joseph Stalin, he says John DiMaggio was a communist. John DiMaggio is the actor who voices Bender on Groening's TV series "Futurama". In the season six episode, Homer the Great Abe has a membership card for the Communist party (along with ones for The Elks Club, the Masons, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, and The Stonecutters).
- When the bulls run through the streets of Springfield, a caricature of longtime Simpsons writer George Meyer is seen among the group of people running from them.
- When Abe is waiting for someone to call him, the simulated time lapse effect and music parody the movie Koyaanisqatsi, a movie parodied less than seven years earlier in the episode "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (which also featured a Simpson male [Homer on "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder"/Grampa in this episode] attempting suicide, but being stopped and now trying to do something with his life [Homer trying to be a better father to Maggie in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder"/Grampa becoming a bullfighter in this episode]).
[edit] Cultural references
- In the opening scene, the family is watching a promo for a FOX show called "Boobs" starring Carmen Electra which is a parody of Stacked starring Pamela Anderson.
- Fictional impersonators acted as celebrities who appear in the "Springfield Blows" video, a parody of the song " We Are the World ", include Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Courtney Love, Jim Jam Bonks (The Simpsons' parody of Jar Jar Binks), Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend from The Who, Keith Richards, Biff Tannen (as portrayed by Thomas F. Wilson), Sting, Barbra Streisand, Cyndi Lauper, Sylvester Stallone, Freddy Krueger and El Kabong.
- The Rich Texan is opposed to Los Angeles' team bid in part because they have Bennifers, Brangelinas, and "that potty mouth Sarah Silverman." The first entry can refer either to Ben Affleck's former relationship with/engagement to Jennifer Lopez or his current marriage/parenthood with Jennifer Garner, while the second entry refers to the high-profile relationship between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
- The "48 Minutes" sequence is a parody of CBS' long-running newsmagazine show 60 Minutes; it also refers to the timing of a typical hour-long network TV show, where roughly 48 minutes of actual content is shown and the remaining 12 minutes consist of commercials.
- Among the individuals whom Dr. Egoyan points out to Abe as suicides are "Ernest Hemingway" and "Hunter S. Thompson" (both are famous writers who committed suicide by shooting themselves).
- One of the options on the diePod's menu is "Megadeath", an allusion to the thrash metal band Megadeth.
- The diePod is of course a spoof of the iPod. Interestingly, the film Scary Movie 4 also contained an iPod joke (a "War of the Worlds" parody involving "TriPods") and opened not long after this episode aired in April 2006.
- Dr. Egoyan, the doctor that helps Grampa try to kill himself an obvious reference to Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
- The name of the Glenn Miller Orchestra song that plays during Grampa's euthanasia session is "Pennsylvania 6-5000".
- The song that plays when Abe goes down is "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)" by John Lennon from the 1974 album, Walls and Bridges.
- The song that plays when Abe 'lives it up' is 'Superman' by R.E.M. from their 1986 album, Lifes Rich Pageant.
- The euthanasia clinic is right next to a Howard Johnson just like in Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome To The Monkey House.
- The song Lisa sings as she tries to convince Springfield citizens not to participate in the bull fighting is a parody of the song "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan.
- Wiggum says to the doctor that is trying to kill Abe Simpson that he is a "natural born killer". This is a reference to the 1994 film Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone.
