Part of Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein’s vision as showrunners was to have about fifteen or so mostly realistic stories about the family, plus scattered yearly themed episodes, with one episode specifically set aside to be about Itchy & Scratchy, and here we have this year’s offering. I&S is always used as a commentary on the animation industry itself, with the show standing in for literally every American cartoon that’s ever been made. In this episode, it goes into animation’s sleazy past. It’s always kind of a cheap gag to say “this sweet and innocent thing is actually corrupt”, but here we have the dual ideas that a) Itchy & Scratchy was never innocent and b) neither was the animation industry, and all the stuff the episode goes into was basically what happened in reality (except Walt Disney wasn’t actively racist or anti-semetic and his head probably wasn’t put in cryogenic stasis, probably). Chester J Lampwick is interesting because he’s another bum who fell from a massive fortune (like the ones we met last time we saw Unky Herb*), but this time he’s one of history’s animators who was cheated out of a fortune by a talentless hack. It’s common to lament how the Mouse House has kept Steamboat Willie in perpetual copyright to stop their beloved mascot from falling out of their hands despite the fact that every single person who actually worked on the cartoon and Mickey’s creation has been dead for decades – not only for the basic principle of people who created nothing making lots of money off people who did, but for the knock-on effect the company’s lobbying has on copyright law. But looking back at the Wild West era of early animation (as well as other creative fields around the same time), I can see stories much like that of Chester’s, where ideas were out-and-out stolen by people who were savvier businessmen than they were artists. One of the interesting things about being a creative in the internet era is how it’s easier than ever to play with other people’s ideas and harder than ever to plagiarise them, and how obvious the distinction has become. 

(*Writing that sentence made me realise how strange it is that a show so heavily invested in Archetypes so rarely shows variations on them. Like, one of the things I like about The Shield is that because the show is so intently focused on being about murderers and because it obviously burns through them so quickly, it manages to find a million plausible reasons why a person would choose to kill another human being, with the vast majority being pointless, stupid crimes of passion, and it develops four very different kinds of serial killers over the course of its run. The Simpsons is more likely to recycle an already-existing character when it needs a Type of person, which lets it build emotional connection but sacrifices thematic breadth.)

But it also delves into the pleasure of being an animation fan. Overall, I much prefer living in the internet age where everything that has ever existed is accessible to some idiot who’s been stuck on a rock in the armpit of the world his whole life, but this episode shows the joy of being the first to stumble across old filmstrips, bootleg videos, and obscure but historically important people in ways that I suspect are becoming a lot harder – the internet has made being a repository of information a less interesting personality trait than it used to be. I especially like Bart and Milhouse watching Chester’s cartoon on a school projector; aside from getting a familiar laugh at the expense of underfunded schools, I enjoy the sense of having to improvise when you’re working with outdated technology (if anything, it actually reminds me of having to adapt when I made movies as a kid). I feel like this episode conveys the kind of inspiration that goes into making this show – this show is very much the product of a bunch of nerds who sat down and thought about pop culture and what it meant. If I may be so arrogant, I would say that Bart’s actions this episode show the initial soaking up of information, my essays show the processing and interpolation of that information, and The Simpsons itself shows the end result, the action at the end of a thought.

The final third shifts into an interesting case of self-parody. I have talked often and at length about the show’s Semi-Ironic Kid Adventures, where Bart or Lisa solve Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys problems; this appears to show them delving into just such a plot, with Marge even referencing many of their past exploits to motivate them, only to swerve at the last second and have a completely different pair of kids save the day. It feels like a deliberately half-assed solution, but I love that we’ve reached the point where it can genuinely make a massive joke about its own mythology like that. In retrospect, it points the way to the show eventually becoming genuinely half-assed instead of amusingly half-assed, but it also suggests an alternate future version of the show that pulls this kind of stunt even earlier as a way of circumventing a plot they’ve already done a la the way Homer sacrificing something for Lisa shifted over time. At its best, this is a show that’s always learning, growing, and experimenting, and the disappointment of the later seasons is how they regress instead of building on what came before. 

Chalkboard Gag: N/A
Couch Gag: The family run in as grey blobs that are then painted by robots.

This episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Wes Archer. Matt Groening was not a fan of the running gag of Bart asking Homer for money. Originally, the “Amendment To Be” cartoon was going to be a parody of The Simpsons itself, but they couldn’t get it to be funny. Lester and Eliza were based on the original Tracey Ullman Show sketches. Kirk Douglas guest starred as Chester, and he was impatient and fast with the process, refusing to do more than two takes. Suzanne Somers guest stars as herself, and Alex Rocco returns as Roger Meyers Jr.

I get a real kick out of Krusty apologising to the kids for showing educational programming and promising some ‘real good toy commercials’. This has one of Lionel Hutz’s finest moments (see below in iconic moments) but I also get a possibly undeservedly massive laugh out of him assuming Roger Meyers Jr is under oath. I’m also tickled by the shot of Roger Meyers Jr sitting at a cardboard box like it’s a desk.

The episode’s title is a reference to the line “the day the music died” from “American Pie” by Don McLean. Roger Meyers Jr lists multiple animated shows that ripped off live action comedies – The Flintstones to The Honeymooners, Top Cat to Sgt Bilko, Huckleberry Hound to Andy Griffith, Chief Wiggum to Edward G Robinson, and Yogi Bear to Art Carney (“What was that middle one?”). Manhattan Madness is a reference to Gertie The Dinosaur. “Amendment To Be” is a parody of “I’m Just A Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock, which even brings back Jack Sheldon to sing it. There’s a reference to 1972 film Fritz The Cat. Steamboat Itchy is a reference to Steamboat Willie. John Swartzwelder shows up in Hutz’ list of surprise witnesses.

Iconic Moments: 3. “Look out, Itchy! He’s Irish!” | “Works on contingency? No, money down!” | “We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks.”
Biggest Laugh: