Before the Superdome

After "Kamp Krusty", the next episode was also a holdover from the third season, the Streetcar sendup "A Streetcar Named Marge". The story arch was easy: Marge as Blanche and Homer as Stanley. Homer in this episode in particular is an incredibly big asshole, far worse than we normally see.

Certainly on occasion he is neglectful and selfish, and definitely crude, but an outright asshole? Not like in this particular episode. There were two sight gags that I loved as well. The first I mention happens near the end, when Homer is watching the show, before he becomes engrossed in the drama, he has torn his playbill in the exact same way as Leland, played by Joseph Cotten in Citizen Kane, does when bored at Dorothy's performance.

The second sight gag is smaller and closer to the intimacies of a household. Homer's on the couch watching television, and Bart and Lisa are also there. They're each on their backs with their feet facing each other, and they're playfully horsing around with their touching feet. It's so natural and small and fleeting and honest.

The Streetcar... payoff is what you expect: Homer figures out he needs to appreciate Marge more and be less of an jerkass.

While Marge is off at the rehearsals the Jon Lovitz-voiced director has her leave Maggie at the Ayn Rand-inspired daycare run by his sister. "We do not rely on pacifier crutches," the Jon Lovitz-voiced daycare owner lady tells Marge. The final scene in the day care, after the Great Escape homage, is lifted from The Birds. That eerie echoing of the pacifiers really nails the ethereal terror of Hitchcock's classic.

A Streetcar Named Desire isn't my favorite William's play, but it is important. The name of this post is based on a line from the musical in the episode. Apparently the producers of the Simpsons couldn't get the rights to do the actual play, so they needed to make it a musical, and in the opening number the major set piece is the Superdome, and at the end of the number, it spins around to reveal their other set-piece, a period look at a Quarter neighborhood. The song itself has some very clever lines and word play, so much so that the fine folks who live in New Orleans got very upset. Bart is seen writing an apology of sorts on the chalkboard in the opening credits of the next episode.

The Big Easy is described as being full of "tacky, overpriced souvenir stores" as well as being "stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile." There were another eight similar adjectives used. In my visits, I can say that those twelve adjectives aren't entirely inaccurate, at least in the French Quarter. In the Quarter it regularly smells like urine and vomit. It just does. It adds to the mystique, the character.

It's still a great town, a historic city with a pulsating feel, even with the strange football arena polluting up the skyline.