Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday. No, you didn’t sleep the last few weeks and wake up today, hoping for the end of the pandemic. I hadn’t done a post so, here it is. By the way, the pandemic will end but, we will have reminders of what it had given us for years to come, not to mention memory of all we had been forced to do, by government and public health. After all, we have lost some famous names to COVID and of course, the economy has been ravaged… much like our lives have been turned upside down. I will probably do something at the end of the last post for this year, which I found on Facebook a few weeks ago.
On the birthday front, singer, guitarist and song writer Ted Nugent turned another year older on December 13th. Of course, we know him for his music and great songs like Strangle Hold and Cat Scratch Fever, which was covered (respectfully) by Pantera in 1999. Ted even jammed on that song, during the end of the episode Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson, which I thought was really cool because I like both the original and the Pantera cover, equally. He also appeared on the Season 19 episode I Don’t Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, also with Dana Gould guest starring with him on both episodes. Hmm!
This week let’s go back to Season 12, for the 20th anniversary of the episode Skinner’s Sense of Snow, which had aired on December 17, 2000.. That is of course, the 11th anniversary of the premier episode “Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire” and I had talked about that episode last year. Now, it’s Skinner’s turn to shine and be shined… what ever that means. I will be taking a post from another blog which is weather related, or rather Weather Radio related for this one so, hold on and prepare to watch Skinner be the grinch.
The Simpsons attend a French-Canadian circus called Cirque du Purée, which is a play on Cirque du Soleil, when a demonic blizzard hits Springfield. Sideshow Mel points out “a storm is coming! I feel it in my bone!” One of the circus hands says “Mesdames et messieurs, it appears the Cloud Goddess is ripe with rain babies.”
A Springfield Channel 6 News weatherman says “well, sir, we’ve got ourselves a classic nor’easter meeting a classic sou’wester. Overnight, expect rain turning to freezing rain turning to sleet turning to snow – and then melting in the summer.” Okay, I know that is how some storms begin, as rain and so on, but is a “classic nor’easter meeting a classic sou’wester.” How winter storms form? I remember a cold front in February 1990 doing much the same thing, but not to the extent of the formation of a winter storm. In this case, we had mild air bringing rain and a cold front swept in and set the stage for freezing rain and even thunderstorms, 3 days later, but no winter storm watches or warnings were issued. Anyway, I digress.
Much to Bart and Lisa’s dismay, everyone has the day off, except for Springfield Elementary School. At school, Skinner shows them a boring Christmas film from 1938, called “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t But Then Was”. They watch the movie for hours until the DVD overheats and catches fire, but Skinner puts it out. When Skinner dismisses the kids, they find that they are snowed in, trapping them in the school with Skinner and Groundskeeper Willie, much to their horror. Skinner tries to call for help, but phone lines are down. On Channel 6 news, Kent Brockman says “roads closed. Pipes frozen. Albinos virtually invisible. The Weather Service has upgraded Springfield’s blizzard from winter wonderland to a class-three kill storm.” Marge says to the TV “I don’t like the sound of that “class-three.” Kent Brockman continues: “and where are the city’s snowplows? Sold off to billionaire Montgomery Burns in a veritable orgasm of poor planning.”
When the students become uncontrollable from cabin fever, Principal Skinner’s army instincts kick in, and he begins ruling them with an iron fist. At night, Bart tries to escape by tunneling through the snow, but Skinner catches him. Skinner tries to collapse the tunnel, but it caves in on him, burying all but his head. The kids tie him up in a dodge ball sack and gag him. They then run wild, even getting into a safe with all their permanent records. Upon learning that Skinner makes $25,000 a year, and knowing that he is 40 years old, they figure Skinner is a millionaire. (40 years x $25,000 / year = $1,000,000) When it’s pointed out that Skinner also makes money painting houses in the summer, they amend their estimate of his wealth to “billionaire”.
Meanwhile, Homer and Flanders use a “snow-plower” (Ned’s car with Ned’s roofing attached to the front as a plow) to save the kids. They get frozen in ice after hitting a fire hydrant, and Homer’s repeated gunning of the engine causes carbon monoxide to flood the car. Flanders and Homer get high from the fumes and wildly hallucinate. Homer hallucinates about belly dancing women who wait on him. They receive a message from Nibbles the school hamster, send out by Skinner, and head for the school. They crash into a salt silo, melting the snow and rusting up the car. The car exhaust makes Homer hallucinate again, making him see Lisa as a camel and Bart as a beautiful woman. As Homer tries to kiss the “beautiful woman”, Bart tries his best to escape, causing the car to crash. Lisa, (as a camel), then says “Merry Christmas from the Simpsons”.
There is a connection to both episodes in that, when Homer and Flanders go to save the kids, Homer is wearing his Mr. Plow jacket. However, he doesn’t remember his own Mr. Plow business after Ned points it out to him. Homer says “I think “I know my own life Ned.” Then, he sings the Mr. Plow jingle from the episode Mr. Plow.
With this episode, there is a direct Canadian connection as it was written by Canadian born Simpson’s writer Tim Long, who was born in Brandon Manitoba but grew up in Exeter Ontario.
As for the plot, I can relate to this because I went to a boarding school for the blind in Branford Ontario, as I may have mentioned before and I’ve been stuck there a couple of weekends because of the weather. Obviously, I didn’t like that. In fact, there was one weekend where I was stuck there in February 1988, When I was supposed to see Alice Cooper and Motörhead on February 12 at Mapleleaf Gardens. I had free tickets from a friend who worked at a radio station I listened to at the time and I couldn’t go, thanks to a winter storm which had dropped a lot of snow over a couple of days. I got teased, by people asking me how the concert was, the following Monday and I was not happy. At least I wasn’t snowed in during Christmas but, I imagine that some people probably were (in the past) and even worse, some people lived further away from the school than I did, like in another province.
This was one of the episodes I had watched during the summer of 2013 and I have had it on my iPhone since some time in 2014. I notice that one of the songs playing in Ned Flanders’s car was Feel Like Makin’ Love by Bad Company, whose singer had a birthday last Thursday. Yes, Paul Rodgers not only sang with Bad Company, Free, The Firm, but also Queen and that was cool. He is a Canadian citizen, thanks to moving here with his wife and they live somewhere in British Columbia. How cool is that?
Anyway, this episode is definitely one of my favourite Christmas episodes and I know I’ll be watching it at some point in the next few days. As for you all, let’s be safe and healthy and have as good a Christmas as you can and as good a holiday season as you can, given the pandemic. We will be out of this shit show at some point but in the meantime, let’s all follow public health regulations where we are and when the vaccine gets to us, let’s all get it and we can go back to normal. That is, unless something happens which is unforeseen but, let’s try to live in the moment and at the same time, look forward to the day when we can go out and get close to each other again, without the fear of getting sick from one another.
Simpsons on Sundays 