El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)

"El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)", (Spanish pronunciation: [el ˈbja.xe misteɾˈjoso de ˈnwes.tɾo ˈxomeɾ]) also known as The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer,^[2] is the ninth episode in the eighth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 5, 1997.^[3] In the episode, Homer eats several Guatemalan insanity peppers and hallucinates, causing him to go on a mysterious voyage. Following this, he questions his relationship with Marge and goes on a journey to find his soulmate.

"El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" was written by Ken Keeler and directed by Jim Reardon.^[3] The episode explores themes of marriage, community, and alcohol use.^[4] Homer's voyage features surreal animation to depict the elaborate hallucination. The episode guest stars Johnny Cash as the "Space Coyote".^[1]

Plot

After a series of distractions from Marge, Homer suddenly smells out the annual chili cook-off. Marge admits that she was trying to keep Homer from attending because of his drunken antics at the previous year's event, so she only allows Homer to go on the condition that he does not drink any beer. At the cook-off, Homer demonstrates an extraordinary ability to withstand hot foods, until he fails against Chief Wiggum's chili. Sobbing about his humiliation, he drinks several cups of water.

After nearly accidentally drinking melted candle wax, Homer decides to coat his mouth with wax, enabling him to eat several of the peppers. The peppers bring on a hallucination in which Homer is trapped in a bizarre fantasy world. He encounters a snake, a butterfly and a tortoise, and he accidentally destroys the sun. He finally arrives at a large Mayan pyramid and meets his spirit guide in the form of a coyote. The coyote advises Homer to find his soulmate, and questions Homer's assumption that he has already found her in Marge. Meanwhile, Marge hears of Homer's strange behavior and, believing he has broken his promise, drives home.

The next day, Homer regains his senses while lying in a golf course. After returning home, he finds Marge angry with him for his embarrassing behavior at the cook-off. This leads to Homer making note of their fundamental personality differences, causing him to question if Marge is truly his soulmate, and he leaves. Filled with doubt, he searches elsewhere for a soulmate, yet fails in each instance. Eventually he becomes convinced that a lighthouse keeper might be his soulmate, since they would both be theoretically lonely individuals; he instead finds the lighthouse is operated by a machine. Seeing an approaching ship, Homer destroys the lighthouse's light in hopes that the people inside will befriend him. An apologetic Marge arrives, having known exactly where Homer would go, and the pair realize that they really are soulmates. Marge fixes the lighthouse so the ship will not run into them, but it runs aground nearby, spilling its precious cargo of hot pants. The citizens of Springfield happily retrieve the pants while Marge and Homer embrace. ^[3]

Production

The butterfly in Homer's hallucination was created using 3D computer animation.

The episode was pitched as early as the third season by George Meyer, who was interested in an episode based on the books of Carlos Castaneda.^[5] Meyer had wanted to have an episode featuring a mystical voyage that was not induced by drugs, and so he decided to use "really hot" chili peppers instead.^[5] The staff, except for Matt Groening, felt it was too odd for the show at that point.^[6] Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein resurrected the story, and decided to use it for season eight.^[5]

Most of the hallucination sequence was animated completely by David Silverman. Silverman did not want the risk of sending it to South Korea, as he wanted it to look exactly as he had imagined it, including rendered backgrounds to give a soft mystical feel to the scene.^[7] The coyote was intentionally drawn in a boxier way so that it looked "other-worldly" and unlike the other characters.^[8] During Homer's voyage, the clouds in one shot are live-action footage, and 3D computer animation was used for the giant butterfly.^[2] During the same hallucination, Ned Flanders' line was treated on a Mac computer so that it increased and decreased pitch.^[2] The Fox censors sent a note to the writers, questioning Homer coating his mouth with hot wax. The note read: "To discourage imitation by young and foolish viewers, when Homer begins to pour hot wax into his mouth, please have him scream in pain so kids will understand that doing this would actually burn their mouths."^[9] The scream was not added; however, they did add dialog from Ralph Wiggum, questioning Homer on his action. The director also created a "wax-chart" for Homer for the animators to follow during the sequence when Homer's mouth is coated with candle-wax.^[6]

Homer waking up on a golf course was a reference to something that happened to a friend of the producers, who blacked out, waking up on a golf course in a different town and state. He had to buy a map from 7-Eleven in order to find out where he was. He then had to walk several miles in order to get back to his friend's house, which was the last place he remembered being the night before.^[2]

Casting

Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan were the writers' top two choices to play the coyote; the writers had wanted to use one of The Highwaymen as the voice of the spirit guide.^[2] Bob Dylan had turned the show down many times, having previously been offered a role in the season seven episode "Homerpalooza".^[10] Johnny Cash was offered the role, which he accepted. Matt Groening described Cash's appearance as "one of the greatest coups the show has ever had".^[6]

Cultural references

The main plot of the episode is based on the works of Carlos Castaneda,^[5] with some of the Native American imagery being similar to that used in the film Dances with Wolves.^[1] The lighthouse keeper actually being a computer is a reference to the episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Old Man in the Cave", in which a man in a cave turns out to be a computer.^[3] The main theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is used during the scenes when Homer walks into the chili festival,^[3] and the song "At Seventeen" by Janis Ian plays in the background as Homer walks through the town of Springfield looking for his soul-mate after he wakes up from his vision.^[2] The scene at the end of Homer's hallucination, when the train is heading towards him, is a reference to the opening titles of Soul Train.^[2] Homer's record collection features albums by Jim Nabors, Glen Campbell, and The Doodletown Pipers.^[1]

Reception

In its original broadcast, "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" finished 34th in ratings for the week of December 30, 1996 – January 5, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 9.0, equivalent to approximately 8.7 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, beating Millennium.^[11]

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, said: "Homer's chili-induced trip is brilliant, complete with the surreal tortoise and Indian spirit guide."^[1] The episode was placed eighth on AskMen.com's "Top 10: Simpsons Episodes" list,^[12] and in his book Planet Simpson, Chris Turner named the episode as being one of his five favorites, although he found the ending too sentimental.^[9] In 2011, Keith Plocek of LA Weekly's Squid Ink blog listed "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" as the best episode of the show with a food theme.^[13] IGN ranked Johnny Cash's performance as the 14th-best guest appearance in the show's history.^[14] Cash also appeared on AOL's list of their 25 favorite The Simpsons guest stars,^[15] and on The Times' Simon Crerar's list of the 33 funniest cameos in the history of the show.^[16] Andrew Martin of Prefix Mag named Cash his third-favorite musical guest on The Simpsons out of a list of ten.^[17] Fred Topel of Crave Online named it the best episode of the entire series.^[18]

References

Bibliography

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer"

• "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer" at The Simpsons.com
• "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive. 
• "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer" at TV.com
• "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer" on IMDb