This evening saw the debut of the 11th episode of the 36th season of The Simpsons, entitled “Bottle Episode” (a reference to the television trope of setting an entire episode in one location for cost-saving measures, though that tradition does not apply here– it just happens to be about wine), and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
“Bottle Episode” begins with a montage of Waylon Smithers (voiced, as always, by Harry Shearer) performing undesirable tasks for Mr. Burns (also Shearer), including closing down a children’s hospital, dumping dead ducks out of a helicopter so the wealthy old man can pretend he shot them, and using a private jet to take out the trash. Upon completion of his “to do” list, Burns reminds Smithers that his next task is to pick up an invaluable bottle of wine from the Springfield port. So Waylon enlists Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) to be something of a human airbag for the million-dollar wine that once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. But when Smithers is called away to take care of another “emergency” for Mr. Burns, Homer is left in charge of the wine, which any longtime fan of The Simpsons can tell you is probably a mistake. But the patriarch of Our Favorite Family takes it upon himself to “not do anything stupid” and manages to use himself as a shield for all manner of potentially bottle-breaking events that befall the wine around town.
When he finally (accidentally) makes it home, Homer rather wisely puts the wine in his garage safe, though he sadly forgets that he once punched a hole through the kitchen wall into the safe when Major League Baseball instituted a pitching clock: “I like my sports slow, and they know it!” So his wife Marge (Julie Kavner) used the wine to make an unusually delicious stew, which Smithers discovers when he comes to check on the status of the bottle. This leads Homer to sing an admittedly pretty catchy song about how adept he has become at covering things up when he makes mistakes, and then to the laboratory of Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) after a hilariously misguided stop at Moe’s Tavern for assistance. Frink hesitantly puts aside his efforts to give himself a six-pack to help Marge and Smithers synthetically replicate the makeup of the Napoleon wine, which they rebottle and deliver to Burns for a gathering of Springfield’s ultra-wealthy.
The fake wine passes the test at Burn’s mansion, which just inspires the pair of forgers to try it again, this time selling their output at an auction attended by luminaries such as wine critic Robert Parker (voicing himself), filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the Rich Texan (also Castellaneta). All the while our two forgers imagine themselves as Robin Hood and Maid Marion from Disney’s 1973 animated classic in a series of recurring dream sequences paying tribute to the film. But this time, upon successfully unloading the counterfeit alcohol, Marge and Waylon are immediately arrested and brought to Wine Jail… yeah, this is where things start to get pretty silly in this episode, though the jokes are funny enough that it doesn’t really matter. They’re put on trial in the French-inspired Wine Court– which is of course played all day in gay bars– and it’s ultimately found that their wine was in fact real, because Homer tipped off Mr. Burns, who in turn paid off the judge to save face.
At first Mr. Smithers is depressed by having gotten off scot-free just to return to working for his despicable boss, until Marge reminds him that being found innocent means they get to keep the money they made from the auction and use it for good causes, triggering another montage that mirrors the one we saw at the beginning, but this time they’re setting live ducks free and parachuting art teachers all over America. Like I said, the final third of this episode is incredibly silly but still amusing enough to work, unlike last week’s which might have had more logically sound ideas but didn’t make me laugh nearly as much. Plus I liked seeing the team-up of Smithers and Marge, which is a pairing that I’m honestly not sure whether we’ve ever seen before (there are still entire seasons of this show in the late teens and 20s that I have never seen, I’m not-so-ashamed to admit), but it’s an alliance that clicks because they can commiserate about having to get along with their respective others, be they husbands or billionaire bosses. Plus it brought to mind a great wine-forging documentary called Sour Grapes that I watched years ago (definitely track that down and check it out if you’re interested), and it was funny when Burns thought that Marge and Smithers were married.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.