$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)
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"$pringfield" (full title: "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)") is the tenth episode of The Simpsons
Synopsis
The economy of Springfield is in decline, and Mayor Quimby tries to listen to the citizens' ways to improve the economy. They suggest that legalized gambling has helped rejuvenate run-down economies, and it can work for Springfield as well. Even Marge agrees to the idea. Mr. Burns and Mayor Quimby work together to build a casino, but Burns objects to several prototypes until he develops his own design: "Mr. Burns' Casino", with "sex appeal and a catchy name".
The casino opens, and Homer gets a job as a blackjack dealer at the casino, and loses, because the numbers of the cards he dealt himself were 18, 27, and 35. Also visiting the casino are Marge and Bart. Bart wins a jackpot, but is kicked out (as minors are not allowed in American casinos). He starts his own casino for his friends to play in his treehouse, featuring Milhouse and Jimbo as entertainers. While Marge waits for Homer's shift to end at Mr. Burns' casino, she finds a quarter on the floor and uses it to play a slot machine. She wins and almost immediately becomes addicted to gambling. Meanwhile, while Burns' casino is a success, he becomes even more reclusive and eccentric, developing a profound fear of microscopic germs.
Due to her addiction, Marge spends every waking moment at the casino and neglects the family. When Lisa wakes from a bad dream of the boogeyman, a gun-toting Homer hides himself and the children behind a mattress in terror. Meanwhile, Bart books Robert Goulet to perform at his casino; Goulet is a hit, despite accidentally smacking Milhouse with his microphone. Marge did not help Lisa make a costume for her geography pageant as promised, so Homer makes a primitive costume of "Floreda" for her (which isn't just misspelled; it's also shaped like California). Lisa, along with Ralph Wiggum who dressed up as Idaho using nothing but looseleaf paper, both receive special awards for being 'children who obviously had no help from their parents'.
Back at Burns' casino, Mr. Burns has mentally degenerated a la Howard Hughes' later years, wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet and designing a plane called the "Spruce Moose" (a pun on Hughes' "Spruce Goose" aircraft). Smithers admires what appears to be a scale model of the plane, but Burns insists that it is the full-sized version. He orders Smithers at gunpoint to board the plane.
With abject begging and earnest attempts at support and understanding, Homer persuades Marge to admit that she has a gambling problem. She finally realizes the neglect the family has been suffering and returns home.
Trivia
- The dollar sign in the title is a reference to the 1978 television series "Vega$"; the subtitle is a reference to the1964 Stanley Kubrick film .
- Homer quotes what he thinks is the Pythagorean theorem, thinking it is for an isosceles triangle using square roots, when it actually works for a right triangle using squares. Near the end of The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow recites the exact same thing, making his statement one of the film's goofs.
- The Las Vegas blackjack table scene in Rain Man is spoofed: Homer is impressed by the abilities of a player who resembles Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt, while a character resembling Tom Cruise is seated next to him. "Raymond" tries to leave the table ("Gotta watch Wapner!"), and screams when Homer tries to restrain him. Homer ends up screaming and beating the palm of his hand against his head, just like "Raymond." Fans complained that this scene was tasteless and directed their complaints to Fox. Although this scene has been cut from most circulated broadcasts (including syndicated broadcasts in North America), it is intact on the Simpsons' Season 5 DVD.
- According to the season seven episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", there is a cut scene where Homer is a blackjack dealer in a game between James Bond (the Sean Connery incarnation) and Bond's enemies Oddjob, Blofeld, and Jaws. Because of Homer's ineptitude (he deals Bond a joker, and then a card explaining the rules for five card stud poker), Bond loses and is captured.
- Lisa's "Floreda" costume appears in the video game The Simpsons Hit & Run as one of her alternate costumes.
- Mr. Burns' paranoid obsession with germs and cleanliness, and his refusal to leave his bedroom once the casino opens, is a parody on the 20th century American magnate Howard Hughes. The latter suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, an irrational obsession for cleanliness.
- Homer wearing the glasses and telling Bart (who he mistakes for Lisa), "Lisa, just because you're ten feet tall doesn't mean you can tell me what to do," is a reference to Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, which has the lyric Go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall.
Quotes
- Newsreel Announcer: News on Parade Corporation presents: News on Parade Corporation News!
- Newsreel Announcer: So watch out, Utica—Springfield is a city on the...grow!
- Homer: (finding a pair of glasses in a toilet, which appear to be Henry Kissinger's) Anyone lose their glasses? (no response) Last chance! (no response) Woo hoo! (Homer puts the glasses on) The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.
Man in bathroom: That's a right triangle, you idiot!
Homer: D'oh! - Smithers: Sir, bad news from accounting: the economy's hit us pretty hard.
Mr. Burns: Heh, tough times, huh? I've lived through twelve recessions, eight panics, and five years of McKinleynomics. I'll survive this.
Smithers: Well even so, sir, we could stand to lay off a few employees.
Mr. Burns: Oh, very well... (pointing at people on monitors) Lay off him, him, him, him... (he points at Homer, who is wearing glasses) Hmm, better keep the egghead. He just might come in handy. - Lisa: Mom, we're having a geography pageant at school, and I don't know which state to go as.
Marge: In honor of legalized gambling, why not go as the state of Nevada?
Lisa: No, Nevada makes my butt look big. - Mr. Burns: (holding a model-sized plane) Smithers, I've designed a new plane. I call it the Spruce Moose, and it will carry 200 passengers from New York's Idlewild Airport to the Belgian Congo in seventeen minutes.
Smithers: That's a nice model, sir.
Mr. Burns: (confused) Model? - (Mr. Burns watches Homer's progress across the casino monitors)
Mr. Burns: Smithers, I don't want that unpredictable lunatic working in my casino.
Smithers: Fine, we'll transfer him to the nuclear plant, sir.
Burns: Ah, my beloved plant. How I miss her... Bah! To hell with this! Get my razors! Draw a bath! And get these Kleenex boxes off my feet!
Smithers: Certaintly, sir. And, uh, the jars of urine?
Burns: Oh, we'll hang onto those. Now, to the plant! We'll take the Spruce Moose. (picks up the model) Hop in!
Smithers: But, sir--
Burns: (pointing a gun) I said, "Hop. In." - Germs: (imagined by a paranoid Mr. Burns) Freemasons rule the country!
- Lisa: I'm not a state, I'm a monster!
Homer: No, Lisa. The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him - Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws! - Ralph Wiggum: I'm Idaho!
Principal Skinner: Yes, of course you are. - Bart plays a slot machine with a quarter he finds
Bart: Woo-hoo! Jackpot.
Kid: Wait a minute: are you over 21?
Bart: Are you?
Kid: I'm not authorized to answer that.
Bart is tossed into the street
Bart: By the way, your martinis suck!
Kid: Oh yeah? What are you going to do? Start your own casino in your treehouse and get all your little friends to come? I'd like to see that. Ah ha ha ha...
Kids pile into Bart's new casino in his treehouse
Bart: Hi, yeah, welcome. Have a lucky day. Mm hmm...
Kid: Well, he certainly showed me.
External links
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