Walking Big & Tall

"Walking Big & Tall" is the thirteenth episode of the twenty-sixth season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and the 565th overall episode of the series. It aired on Fox on February 8, 2015.^[1]

Plot

Thirty years ago, Springfield has a town meeting where a younger version of the Old Jewish Man mentions that Springfield's Soviet sister city Springograd has "disappeared from the map." Afterwards, a younger Hans Moleman was shown to be the Mayor of Springfield when he reveals Springfield's new anthem "Only Springfield." The anthem is played by Dewey Largo on the piano over the years.

At the latest town hall meeting in the present, Moe returns from his vacation in Tuscaloosa and shows their anthem on MyTube where it is the same as their anthem which caused various reactions from the citizens like Dewey Largo pushing the piano off the stage, Kirk and Luann Van Houten spilling the drinks and stepping on the cups, and another citizen wonders what to do with guns when they are angry. When Sideshow Mel claims it to be an amazing musical coincidence, Moe then shows the anthems on MyTube where the cites that used the generic anthem outside of Tuscaloosa have included but are not limited to Austin, Texas, Oakland, California, Calgary, Provo, Utah, Ulan Bator (their anthem is sung by four Mongols), and Area 51 (their anthem is sung by a guard and three aliens). Moe states that every town has their own version of the same anthem including Des Moines, Iowa. Mayor Quimby identifies that the song was written by Hans Moleman as the citizens converge on him. Hans admitted that he bought the anthem from a salesman that's been selling it to half the towns in North America and stated that he didn't think anyone would find out since he thought nobody goes anywhere outside of Springfield. Groundskeeper Willie states that he can't do away with the anthem's lyrics on his chest and that he'll never be buried in a Jewish cemetery. When Hans Moleman begs for mercy, the citizens tie up Hans Moleman and put him on a horse which gallops into the desert. Lisa says to Mayor Quimby that she could write a new anthem. Pharrell Williams turns up and says that he could also write one and starts to recite his song "Happy". Quimby states that Lisa offered first, so he gives Pharrell the same punishment as Moleman.

Lisa and Bart compose a new anthem and perform it. Homer has difficulty sitting in his seat at the performance due to his obesity. When he must stand to give a standing ovation, he tears out his row of seats, causing destruction to the theater. Marge demands that he joins a weight-control group, but the one he joins, run by the mobility scooter-bound Albert, states that obesity is beautiful. They cause a disruption outside a fashion store which they claim promotes unrealistically thin figures, and all are arrested.

Marge arrives to bail Homer on condition that he leave the group and start a diet, but he refuses and returns to jail with his obese friends. Lisa and Bart try to compose a song to convince Homer to leave the group, but argue so much that they never perform it. Marge points out that Homer should not follow Albert, who she says is too lazy to walk. He attempts to get up from his scooter to prove her wrong, but suffers a fatal heart attack. At the funeral, Albert was shown to have been cremated and his ashes were stored in a bunch of jars. Homer delivers a eulogy where on learning that the deceased was only 23, pleads for the obese people to lose weight. He and Marge walk home as he promises to yo-yo diet, and a montage shows Homer's physique changing drastically with his age.

In the final scene, Hans Moleman is still being galloped into the desert as he finally says "Whoa" to stop the horse. He then comments that he should have done that in the first place.

Reception

The episode received an audience of 2.78 million, making it the second most watched show on Fox that night after the Family Guy episode "Quagmire's Mom".^[2] Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B-, saying "The careless construction of latter-day Simpsons episodes is never more pronounced than in “Walking Big & Tall,” a slapdash amalgam of two marginally promising plots which would have benefitted from some room to breathe. Even more than the usual resulting thinness of main and sub-plot, “Walking Big & Tall” sets up one A-story and simply abandons it in favor of another, the baffling result of which is a confused two-headed monster of an episode whose flashes of amusement wither under the latter plot’s mean-spirited succession of fat jokes".^[3]

References