OTH: The Simpsons- "When You Dish Upon a Star" / "D'oh-in' in the Wind"
In which Homer fucks up in different ways with different celebrities.
Season 10, Episode 5
Aired November 5, 1998
Directed by Pete Michels
Written by Richard Appel
Synopsis: The family are enjoying a nice day at the beach, which includes renting out a boat so Homer can try parasailing. Unfortunately, his rope catches on fire and he soon floats away from the family and crash lands into a house on the outskirts of town, where he’s surprised to find Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger are resting. It turns out that the actors have found shelter in Springfield to bask in the simple life and avoid being consistently recognized. This means that they haven’t left their house, even to get groceries. Homer offers to run errands for the celebrities in exchange for being a part of their circle, and he enjoy the lifestyle, doubly so when Ron Howard comes by to stick around. Homer has a good time interacting with the celebs, who start to get attached to him, as well, but he still feels a little empty, not being able to let the cat out of the bag of his newfound connections. One night at Moe’s, Homer can’t help himself and lets the location of Baldwin, Basinger and Howard slip out, which results in the citizens of Springfield coming by en masse to meet the celebrities. The celebs are disappointed in Homer and force him out, which has him feel empty and unimportant again, until an idea clicks- he still has a car full of their junk, so why not host a museum dedicated to smearing the good names of his former celebrity friends outside of their house. This comes right as Baldwin, Basinger and Howard start to miss Homer and go out to find him, but they only find him parading Basinger’s bra. The celebrities race Homer, which doesn’t look good on his end- a jeep vs an RV, who do you think will win? All three jump out of the car to leap onto Homer’s RV, but fail to tag Homer, with Ron Howard even taking multiple dives and leaving the jeep on the road. The celebrities sue Homer, who seemingly is defending himself at court (Troy McClure is out for the moment… permanently), which results in him forbidden to be 500 miles away from any celebrity, dead or alive. We’ll see how long that will last.
The Simpsons has never been above securing celebrities to appear on the show, going as far back as embracing Albert Brooks’ talents twice in the first season* to having a baseball team’s worth of MLB players appearing in season 3. Generally, when the actor gets to play a character especially written for them, like Dustin Hoffman in “Lisa’s Substitute” or, more recently, Lisa Kudrow portraying Alex in “Lard of the Dance”, I think this practice works better. When the celeb is playing themselves with a nudge and a wink to the audience, however, I’m a little less impressed.
Whatever, celebrity appearances aren’t new on television. Going as far back as I can, Lucille Ball wasn’t afraid to use her Hollywood connections to have John Wayne, William Holden, and Harpo Marx, among others, appear on her show, back when 2/3 of those were among the hottest actors of the day, and The Simpsons has been able to achieve great laughs with any given athlete, musician, or actor being the butt of a joke. When the entire episode becomes about their celebrity, though, that’s when you’re liable to lose me unless you have a strong hook or script to balance it out. “When You Dish Upon a Star” is a pretty good script.
Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger were surprisingly perfectly-timed choices to be the celebrities featured here, with Basinger fresh off of an Oscar win for L.A. Confidential (which has been in the news recently for strange reasons), while Ron Howard, now a recognized director but will forever be Opie to most of the nation, is a similarly inspired choice- active and respected enough to demand attention, but intentionally out of the camera eye enough to invoke a couple of laughs. The show even briefly recycles the Happy Days theme song at the end for this effect.
I do think that the actors being game for making fun of themselves, like Basinger and Baldwin’s back and forth about their Oscars, or lackthereof, as well as having Homer confuse Howard for other members of the Happy Days cast, makes this just fun enough without being too self congratulatory. It also helps to make the episode stand out as a time capsule, back when Baldwin and Basinger were one of Hollywood’s hottest couples and the show wouldn’t bend over backwards to kiss the ass of their guest stars, like we’ll see when Elon Musk shows up.
“When You Dish Upon a Star” would be Richard Appel’s last Simpsons episode, before he would focus full-time on being an executive producer for King of the Hill and later co-creating The Cleveland Show and becoming Family Guy’s showrunner. He’s been very good to Fox (he’d also write for The Bernie Mac Show and Kitchen Confidential, among others), and they’ve been very good to him. At the end of the day, Appel only handed in a handful of teleplays for The Simpsons, but at least two of them are stone-cold classics, “Mother Simpson” and “Bart After Dark”. His departure isn’t quite that impressive, but it’s worth a couple of laughs, and that should be good enough, right?
Season 10, Episode 6
Aired November 15, 1998
Directed by Mark Kirkland, Matthew Nastuk
Written by Donick Cary
Synopsis: After starting in a commercial for the powerplant, Homer decides to sign up for his true calling- the Screen Actor Guild. There’s a snag, though, since his full name is required, and Homer only knows his middle initial. Grampa turns out to be a dead end, since naming Homer was his mother’s job, and Mona is still on the lam. However, he has one potential lead, and the two Simpson men drive down to Mona’s old commune, where Munchie and Seth (George Carlin and Martin Mull) reintroduce themselves and their hippie lifestyle to Homer. Homer even learns that he was at Woodstock! Homer Jay (yes, his real name) Simpson is now going to embrace the hippie life. He stops working, speaks righteous nonsense and sunbathes nude on his front lawn, but this isn’t enough. He goes back to Munchie and Seth, hoping to get some of their peaceful nature rubbed off on him, but he finds the two to be sellouts, as they mass produce their organically-grown vegetable juice. Hey, even hippies have to pay the bills, but this won’t stand for the newly liberated Homer, so he has the three go to town and partake in an old-fashioned freak out. While Homer and the hippies parade town, they return to the factory to find an overload- it turns out that Homer’s frisbee was stuck in the machine that produced the juice into bottles, leaving hundreds of bottles broken and unfilled, leaving their order massively unrepresented. Homer is kicked out of the commune and goes home distraught, until he decides to go back and refills the juice bottles by going through all of their crops. It turns out that Munchie and Seth don’t have enough regular veggies to finish up their order… except for the blocked off greens that Homer finds hidden off. That happens to be Munchie and Seth’s “special” veggies. Yeah, so Homer basically spiked the veggie juice, and Chief Wiggum soon discovers this in a time where weed was still very much illegal in America, attempting to take the hippies in with brute force. Homer forces them to stand up, but the other two are reluctant to. Homer won’t give up, though, and puts daisies in the cops’ guns, when Wiggum fires. Homer doesn’t get hit with a bullet, but the daisy is lodged into his forehead.
First of all, I love why Homer’s middle name is Jay, as a nod to Rocky and Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward. Not only is that the creator’s name, but Ward gave his moose and squirrel J. as their middle initials, which Matt Groening did the same for Homer and Bart as a nod to one of his favorite cartoons. I’ve mentioned before that although The Simpsons likely wouldn’t have existed without The Flintstones, it’s really the Looney Tunes and Rocky and Bullwinkle are the show’s biggest inspiration in terms of animation. Personally, I think you can find the influence of all three in the series even to this day.
This is a rare case of two directors handling the episode, for a not very happy reason- Mark Kirkland was going through a divorce (one that he “didn’t see coming” based on the commentary) and asked if Matthew Nastuk, who was being trained to become a director, could take over for him, while an overwhelmed Nastuk eventually got Kirkland to return. It turned out well, and Nastuk became a regular director for the series, still going to this day.
The funny thing is that Kirkland’s influence can be felt all over in “D’oh-in’ in the Wind”, as he also grew up on a hippie commune with relatively close proximity to where Woodstock took place. He even returned to Vermont, home of many ex-hippies like Ben, Jerry, and Bernie. This gives the commune, as well as the look and attitude of Munchie and Seth a respectable lived-in feel.
The casting of Mona’s hippie friends took a little more deliberating, at least for Munchie; legendary actor and comedian Martin Mull was planned for Seth since day one. However, luckily the possible GOAT of stand-up, George Carlin, was decided on for his paraphernalia-themed partner, and the two got off like the long time buddies they were, recording together and making their washed-up appearance come off as authentic. Frankly, there’s never enough Carlin to listen to, so I’m glad that the show got him for at least one episode, even if he doesn’t get to say the seven words.
“D’oh-in’ in the Wind” is an episode that I wasn’t sure about rediscovering, as hippie jokes are a dime a dozen, and the show has dug at this well before, but I see this episode takes a slightly different direction, focusing on a nostalgia that Homer didn’t know he had as he tries to return to a life his mother tried to embrace him with but was denied. Even though we only briefly see Mona in the Woodstock flashback, her presence looms large a few years removed from her return into Homer’s life and fills the episode with a sense of wonder and yearning that I was surprised to discover.
But that requires a little bit of digging, and otherwise “D’oh'-in’ in the Wind” is entertaining but not that deep. The episode is ultimately more interested in making hippie and drug jokes, and those are funny enough but it does feel a little light, like the show would have aimed higher just a couple of years ago.
Homer’s Bar Tab:
*Oh yeah, apparently Jacques from “Life on the Fast Lane” recently returned, complete with Brooks reprising the character. Maybe I’ll cover that episode in 27 years.
Chalkboard Gag Wars- “Butt.butt is not my email address” vs. “No one cares what my definition of ‘is’ is.” ha, Clinton jokes. That hasn’t aged at all.
Couch Gag Wars- Marge hanging up the family to dry vs. the couch as a roller coaster. I like coasters.
So Homer dreams about being Hanna-Barbera characters but extra vicious.
It seems kind of silly for Moe and his patrons to fawn over their local news host, especially when we see local celebs like Krusty on a daily basis around town, but I’m reminded of when the DJ of my hometown’s top 40 station came to my school in seventh grade and I asked for his autograph. On a random blank sheet of paper. Who knows what I did with that.
And of course, I’d be remiss to not mention this. Was this a real prediction or the crew being snarky? Who knows! Which of these celebrity’s shows do you think is likely to become a Heritage series next- The Andy Griffith Show or Happy Days, featuring Ron Howard, his narration and production work for Arrested Development, or Alec Baldwin’s Emmy-winning turn as Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock? Well, he was a regular feature for SNL during the beginning of the Trump era, even winning another Emmy from his tenure…
“The Springfield two” is a weird way to refer to Marge’s breasts…
“Peter Fonda must be spinning in his grave.” It’s funny because he’ll actually die in 21 years.
Barney’s hallucination is why you don’t mix booze and weed.
Fun fact- indie legends Yo La Tengo did the end credits for “D’oh-in’ in the Wind”, which is pretty surprising since the show usually goes for more mainstream acts, but who else could have done a clever send-up of “Tomorrow Never Knows” at this point besides Flaming Lips? Apparently, Yo La Tengo were friends of writer Cary, so that explains that.
Next Week: Lisa fails a test for once, and that’s good! And Grampa needs a new kidney, which is bad.
