We probably should, you know, rock the Casbah
Natural Born Kissers aka Margie, May I Sleep with Danger?
I was not the inspiration for “Kramer”
Director: Klay Hall
Couch gag: The Simpsons are frogs (Maggie is a tadpole). They jump onto a lilypad and Homer flicks on the TV using his tongue.
Synopsis: Homer and Marge’s love life is a bit dull but they discover the secret to spicing things up is making love in public. Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa find Grampa’s old metal detector and find a whole bunch of useless trash.
Discussion: This episode is a sequel to the season 6 ep ‘Grampa vs Sexual Inadequacy‘. Homer and Marge are again experiencing some “technical difficulties” in their love life. Marriage and sex just aren’t as exciting as Marge pictured it.
As with the season 6 episode, this is a real-life situation faced by many couples. Not everyone, however, gets to have a literal roll in the hay or the chance to land naked in a packed football stadium in their quest to be a little more spicy. (I do hope that the blog search for “overcoming sexual problems” which led to my earlier post about Homer and Marge’s sex life was valuable to the person who read it…)
This is classic Simpsons: take an everyday experience and turn it into a complete spectacle. I’ve mentioned here several times that the original idea of the show was to show a typical American family: 2.4 children, financial problems, marital problems, house falling to pieces… and this is yet another example of the realism but also of the classic sitcom format to elicit laughs from extraordinary situations. Win!
Regular readers will also know that one of my favourite topics is the Production Code. I shall just briefly mention it here, and there’s a point to it so please bear with me. Bart and Lisa find an alternate ending to Casablanca, one of the most well-known classic films known to man. In this version, Hitler pops up, tries to kill everyone and is thwarted by a parachuting Ilsa, whom Rick then marries. Although the original ending to Casablanca may be unsatisfying to some viewers, it was wholly necessary in order to comply with the Code. Ilsa was not allowed to commit adultery, and in fact all direct references to Ilsa and Rick having sex were omitted from the final script.