The Seven-Beer Snitch
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"The Seven-Beer Snitch" is the fourteenth episode of The Simpsons' sixteenth season, first aired on April 3, 2005 in the US. 7.3 Million people tuned into this episode making it the least viewed episode of Season 16
[edit] Plot
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While the family visits Shelbyville, the citizens of Shelbyville call Springfield's residents "hicks." This angers Marge, who suggests to the Springfield Cultural Advisory Board that architect Frank Gehry design and build a new cultural center for Springfield. Gehry initially scoffs at Marge's suggestion (which she wrote on Snoopy stationery) and crumples up the letter throwing it on the ground. He is immediately inspired by the form of the crumpled letter and designs a concert hall based upon it. The $30 million project is eventually finished and it opens and closes swiftly because no one in Springfield likes classical music. On opening night, the crowd leaves after the first five bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony stating that they already heard the "dum dum dum dum" and the rest is "just filler".
This allows Mr. Burns to swoop in with an idea of his own: take over the space and turn it into a state prison. Although Homer applies for a guard job, he fails the guard test because Otto switches his urine sample (loaded with so many drugs there are only trace amounts of human urine) and Homer's sample. Burns wants Chief Wiggum to bring back some old and forgotten laws in order to fill his prison with convicts. After Homer kicks a can 5 times in a row, he is thrown into jail for illegal transport of litter.
While in jail, Homer (unwittingly) snitches on Snake's escape attempt. Burns makes Homer a prison snitch. Without fail, Homer snitches up and gets rewarded by the guards--even getting a new plasma TV. Fat Tony and his goons want to learn about the snitch, which is made easy as Marge and Homer discuss his snitching too loudly in the visitation room. Later Snake finds Homer in the library and tells Homer about a breakout that night. The guards are waiting outside for the breakout, but instead the prisoners riot to get Homer. Using the key to the concert hall given to her as head of the Springrield Cultural Activities Board, Marge finds Homer in the prison kitchen with the other prisoners close on his tail. They take refuge in the gas chamber where Marge scolds Homer to "look at those faces whose lives were made worse" by his tattling. Before the prisoners get to Homer and Marge the prison guards come in with tear gas. As they are released Homer snitches to the governor about the prison's conditions including "horse meat with traces of jockey meat". Eventually, he gets released and the governor releases all of the prisoners onto a barge ("where you will all bare-knuckle box until one of you emerges as king of your floating hell").
Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa find out that Snowball II has been gaining weight. Initially in denial, Lisa soon decides to follow her and discovers she has been eating food from another family's house. The new family has adopted her, named her "Smokey", and taught her tricks. Smokey likes her new family and Bart goes in to find out why, but instead the family fills up Bart with good food and teaches him the same trick as Smokey. At the end when Homer sneaks out to Moe's he sees Snowball II sneaking off as well. It fades to black as Homer says dryly, "I won't tell if you don't tell."
During the end credits, we see Homer running into the concert hall, claiming the building is a death trap. But Bart says that Homer had fallen asleep in front of the TV watching The Towering Inferno, and that his claim is only a dream. At that point, Homer gets angry at Bart for knowing the title of his "prophetic vision".
[edit] Cultural references
- The title is a play on Billy Wilder's 1955 comedy The Seven Year Itch.
- The couch gag is a reference to the first episode of the Simpsons, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire with the family literally roasting on a fire.
- The various prison scenes parody several different movies and TV shows that center on prison life, most notably Oz and Escape from Alcatraz.
- Marge refers to Fat Tony's son as Michael, a reference to the movie The Godfather. Michael would later be seen in the season 18 premiere episode "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer".
- When arresting Homer, Chief Wiggum references the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
- The hat Homer wears in prison is inspired by Simon Adebisi from the Oz series
- This episode makes fun of the music of Philip Glass. When people are leaving during a piece of Beethoven Marge shouts "Wait! The next piece is an atonal medley by Philip Glass!" When she shouts this, everybody runs out of the hall, including the orchestra.
- A theatre marquee in Shelbyville advertises "Sideshow Mel in Equus".
- On the letter from Marge to Frank Gehry we can see an image of Snoopy. Another reference to him is when Santa's Little Helper is flying a red plane in a red scarf, very much like Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.
- Homer is seen trying to escape from the prisoners on a Segway PT.
- Frank Gehry is the first architect to appear on The Simpsons. There are several references to his unorthodox designs, such as Gehry crumpling a letter and throwing it, only to discover that it's the perfect building design.
- The concert hall Gehry builds for Springfield is a reference to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, also designed by Gehry.
- When being asked to be the prison snitch, Homer asks if he will eat cheese and imitates Wallace from Wallace and Gromit.
- The conductor of the orchestra resembles Herbert Von Karajan, an Austrian conductor famous for his Beethoven conductings
