OTH: The Simpsons- "Trash of the Titans" / "King of the Hill"
200 episodes in, baby! This was a big deal for some reason.
Season 9, Episode 22
Aired April 26, 1998
Directed by Jim Reardon
Written by Ian Maxtone-Graham
Synopsis: Homer just misses the garbagemen and when he can’t catch them in time, he yells out some obscenities towards them. The garbagemen catch this and decide to ban the Simpson house from their routine. Rather than apologize, Homer doubles down and lets the outside of his household become a mini dump, until he wakes up one day and sees his trash cleaned up. It turns out that Marge wrote an apology to the sanitation department and forged Homer’s name. This infuriates Homer and he heads over to meet with waste commissioner Ray Patterson (Steve Martin) to explain things. While Patterson is willing to listen, Homer doesn’t fold and insists that he will run against Patterson for waste commissioner to prove that he’s better at the job. The problem is that Patterson is relatively liked, and Homer has no platform. Even an attempt to crash a U2 show does him no favors. Homer becomes despondent until Moe gives him an idea for a slogan- “let someone else do it”. Now, Homer is planning to make the town’s sanitation workers do much more, cleaning up for everyone in town, from their litterboxes to basic hygiene. It works, as does Homer’s smear campaign against Patterson, who refuses to play dirty pool with Homer, resulting in a landslide victory for Homer, and he promotes the victory with a rousing number sung to the tune of “The Candy Man” from Willy Wonka. However, a problem occurs early on when he spends the sanitation department’s yearly budget in the span of a month. It turns out that overhiring and expanding their jobs to degrees far beyond what’s asked of garbagemen is not a strong business strategy. Homer needs to find a way to keep money flowing, since he can’t ask for his employees to work for free. He does eventually find a way to bring the money in, but it’s not pretty- he takes money from other towns in exchange for letting them fill Springfield with their garbage, which Home has dig into the bottom of the town. This is not a feasible, or good plan, and soon Springfield is overrunning with garbage. Mayor Quimby’s initial plan is to reinstate Patterson and allow him to come up with a solution for this, but he returns to tell the citizens to go fuck themselves instead, which leaves the Mayor no choice but to resort to Plan B- moving the town five miles away. That was an option this entire time? Who knew!
The Simpsons making it to 200 episodes was considered some kind of miracle when “Trash of the Titans” aired in 1998. The Flintstones, America’s prior biggest primetime animated hit, stalled at 166 episodes and six seasons, which is still an impressive run, and little came close to topping it. The fact that not only is the series still running strong today, but numerous other animated sitcoms have hit 200 episodes in the years since proves that The Simpsons has made quite the impact that lasts.
It’s also worth noting that not many shows remain consistently entertaining when they hit 200 episodes and/or nine seasons- as someone who does still enjoy The Flintstones, the show was really starting to run on fumes shortly after Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were born, for instance. While I’ve mentioned that signs of wear and tear are starting to creep in, I do think that this landmark episode is a treat.
And that’s why the episode was chosen for this milestone! According to Scully, “Trash of the Titans” represents the show at its best- among other things, it has sharp social commentary on top of a wide variety of other humor and feature Homer’s trademark recklessness while finding room for the family to also have their moments and even has room for a couple of notable guest stars and a toetapping number. And he’s not wrong. In fact, I think the episode is a better fit than the 100th episode choice, “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Badasssss Song”, a good episode that didn’t really offer anything special for the occasion.
First, let’s look at the guest stars. Steve Martin plays sanitation commissioner Ray Patterson and does a fine job with it, going for the kind of droll reactionary demeanor used for works like Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Only Murders in the Building, rather than the wackier side he portrays in The Jerk or in particular Saturday Night Live performances which will eventually be covered on here. Patterson isn’t the most memorable character, but Martin does a good job with his material, selling the same kind of frustration with Homer most would share.
We also have U2 for a couple of scenes, offering more screentime than Aerosmith back in “Flaming Moe” or Aerosmith in “Krusty Gets Kanceled”, even making room for their then-manager Paul McGuinness and another part of their production team, Susie Smith. It’s a bit excessive, but anything to help their time from just being the Bono show is welcome. The band does fine with their lines but nobody seems poised to take Dan Castellaneta’s place. Still, Adam Clayton gets a good bit about a spoon collection that makes their use all the more welcome.
On top of memorable lines and guest stars, “Trash of the Titans” works as an environmental tale, one that reminds us that Springfield isn’t real life, we can’t just move a whole city to another part of town. Our resources are drying up and space is limiting. If we want to make a change, it has to happen now. There are no solutions offered to prevent our problems with waste, but that’s also not a TV show’s responsibility. Instead, The Simpsons aims to, and succeeds at, pointing out our hypocrisies in life.
“Trash of the Titans” was this year’s Emmy winner for Outstanding Animated Program, which is surprising because not only does the award seem to favor the show’s more sentimental episodes, but it beat the exciting new kids in town, King of the Hill and South Park. Although personally, I think I prefer the Dexter’s Laboratory episode that was submitted instead. But also, I kind of want to see Cow and Chicken win that year instead, because it being nominated in the first place is wild. Jim Reardon also won an Annie Award for his direction in the episode, which I think was deserved.
Season 9, Episode 23
Aired May 3, 1998
Directed by Steven Dean Moore
Written by John Swartzwelder
Synopsis: The church holds a picnic for its regular attendees (ie basically everyone in Springfield but Krusty and Apu), where Bart and either Rod or Todd Flanders lead a game of capture the flag. The Flanders boy invites Ned to join their team, which causes Bart to invite Homer. Unfortunately, Bart’s old man embarrasses him with his lack of energy or upper muscle strength, causing Homer to konk out early during the game. Homer is humiliated to see how he disappointed his son and decides to get into shape. His initial attempt is a disaster, as Homer can’t even jog past the neighbor’s house, but he remains insistent and eventually is able to pace himself over to the Kwik-E-Mart and treats himself to a Powersauce bar, a new energy snack promoted by Rainier Wolfcastle. The bar gives Homer enough energy to make his way to a “guy-em”, where he meets Wolfcastle and convinces the Schwarzeneggar-esque actor to be his personal trainer. After some time going to the gym before work, Homer eventually tones up and loses some, but not all, of his flab, which impresses the family. One day while training with Wolfcastle, a couple of executives for Powersauce (voiced by Brendan Fraser and Steven Weber) attempt to convince the actor to climb the Murderhorn, Springfield’s biggest and deadliest mountain, which he refuses. An enthusiastic Bart, who came to spot Homer, volunteers his dad to climb up the mountain, which the executives like, noting how big of a fan Homer is of their bars. It’s a risky venture, but Homer agrees to do it for the sake of his boy. Before the expedition, Grampa tries to talk his son out of it, informing Homer of his own attempt to climb the mountain eons ago, where his cohort, C.W. McAllister, betrayed Abe and pushed him down. But Homer doesn’t listen and goes up with two Sherpas who follow Homer along. It turns out that while he sleeps (which is often), the Sherpas will push Homer up the mountain and will help make sure that Homer reaches his goals, a fact that he doesn’t appreciate during one rise when Homer wakes up and notices. He cuts his assistants free and goes up the mountain himself, which proves to be doubly risky when he learns that Powersauce is actually junk that doesn’t help Homer at all. Still, he preservers and makes it to a little cave underneath the very top of the mountain, finding McAllister’s long-frozen body, along with a diary which details how Abe screwed him over, even trying to eat McAllister, with the bite mark to prove it. Homer is disappointed in his father, but is more disappointed to learn that he has a little more to climb, so he prematurely raises his flag, causing the top of the mountain to crumble and decrease. Homer has officially made it to the top of the mountain, and is lauded by the people of Springfield, who come out to check his victory. He slides down by using McAllister’s body as a sled and claims validation from his family, even if his flag falls off.
Like a bad bout of gas, Homer’s weight is a subject that the show frequently returns to. While that often results in him being the butt of many a fat joke, there’s been more than a couple of episodes where he tries to challenge the scale. The status quo will always have Homer return to his regular weight, even in “King-Size Homer”, where he purposely gains nearly 100 pounds.
It makes sense, animation relies on models, and changing the status quo is a costly and time-consuming method. While most series have subtle character design changes over the years, including this one- compare a Klasky-Csupo era episode to something from this season, or even take this episode and compare it to a more recent one for a quick example- it’s hard to imagine the show wanting to have Homer lose weight. That would be almost as much of a shock as it would be to see Marge get a normal hair style. This just doesn’t happen.
Anyway, not only does it not matter if Homer stays fat or not, he didn’t even lose that much weight in “King of the Hill”. The family is still able to find numerous examples of flab throughout his body, after all. Still, he loses just enough to give the episode the momentum it needs. At least the episode remembers Homer and the family, the guest stars, including recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser are largely left hanging.
“King of the Hill” is a fun time, but it’s not peak Swartzwelder, a fact that seems to be noted, since it’s saved for the end of the season instead of the crucial middle. Simpsons fans have probably made note of this by now, that while you want to start and end on high notes, to keep fans happy, you need to front load the middle. Lesser concepts tend to be saved for the near-end of the season, with a recovery reserved for the last couple of episodes. A few solid ideas are scattered about, but this is at best slightly-above-average.
Homer’s Bar Tab:
“Trash of the Titans” wins for couch gag AND chalkboard gag, combining them for “I will not mess with the opening credits”. Although “King of the Hill'“ has a cute couch gag, putting the family in a snowglobe.
I love how everyone just assumes that Homer made money from dealing drugs. That would be my guess, too.
What the hell is a stink bone?
Do you want to know why Patterson walked out to the Sanford and Son theme song? His immediate entrance and exit is a reference to a performance of Redd Foxx, where he walked in and out of a mostly empty auditorium, with the theme playing. This isn’t the first time this incident was referenced, which makes sense as Foxx was a comedian’s comedian.
Maybe I need to lose some more weight myself, but ice cream covered with mini-pies do sound pretty good…
“My dad’s a disgrace, just like Bart’s dad- me.”
Next Week: We finish season 9 with Lisa getting lost in a different part of town, then Homer and Marge reconnect by… fucking in public?