The Springfield Connection
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"The Springfield Connection" is the 23rd episode of the sixth season, and the 126th episode of The Simpsons. It's commonly known as, "the one where Marge becomes a police officer." The title comes from the movie The French Connection.
Synopsis
Marge becomes a police officer. Herman appears and sells counterfeit jeans from the Simpson garage.Plot
Homer and Marge, on the way back from an orchestra, pass through a seedy part of town. Homer cautions Marge, but gets enticed by Snake's card game (Three-card monte). Snake cheats Homer out of $20, which makes Marge mad. When she exposes the con, Snake takes off. Marge, not wanting to let a crook run and not getting any help, chases after him, with Homer following laboriously. Snake, trapped in a dead end, tries to attack Marge, but a panicked Marge manages to knock him out. She begins to feel that the whole (mis)adventure has given her a sense of exhilaration.
Soon, she begins to find that her routine everyday is dull and boring. In the grocery store, she starts rolling around on her shopping cart till it crashes, exciting her more. She begins to lose interest in her previous magazines (Sponge and Vacuum), and checks out the Death Sports section. She decides to spice up her life by joining the Police Force (much to the amusement of Chief Wiggum, although he agrees after a while).
Homer, however, is less than enthused about his wife being a cop, but she assures him that he will remain man of the house. Marge reports for police recruit training. She does well in the obstacle course, pretty well in the shooting range (although she did miss the baby and blind man) and nails the high-speed driving test (although Wiggum asks her to redo it as he wasn't watching). Finally she goes home to her family, and announces herself to be a cop.
The next day, after a breakfast of donuts and coffee (a cop's necessary sustenance), Marge reports to the station for work. Wiggum (after assigning some cops to stake out a donut place and some cops to sleep in), sends inexperienced and vulnerable Marge to JunkyVille and Bumtown for her beat.
On her beat, after encountering Lionel Hutz rummaging in a dumpster, she goes to the Kwik-E-Mart, where Apu (who knows the drill) tries to bribe her. She then settles a domestic disturbance in the Skinner residence.
On her day off, she orders Bart to wear safety gear when riding a skateboard, which gets him beaten up by the bullies. She goes to the hairdressing salon, where the people there are a little skittish around her. Lisa tries to encourage her mom to "attack the roots of social problems" but fails when Marge doesn't understand what she means and changes the subject.
That night, Homer and his friends (Lenny, Carl, Moe and Herman) are playing cards. Herman excuses himself to get some fresh air. Home fires up a Cuban cigar. Marge comes in and finds them gambling illegally. Homer's friends beat a hasty retreat. Homer is a little mad at her for not being home more often.
The next day, she seems rather unenthusiastic as everyone seems to be breaking the law, especially Homer, who has parked illegally and is buying liquor for the underage bullies. She tells him to move his car, which he refuses to do, leading her to write him a ticket. He gets even more aggressive, which prompts her to arrest him. Later, he is released (after eating Hans Moleman's Last meal) but he is pretty mad at Marge.
When he gets home, he finds a jean-smuggling operation going on in his own garage and his friend, Herman, is involved. As Herman and his cronies are about to tune him up, Marge busts in to save the day!!! As she is cuffing the rest of the crooks, Herman takes Homer as a hostage and runs to Bart's treehouse, with Marge in hot pursuit. She manages to evade getting shot, by coming in through the secret entrance. Herman tries to escape using a pair of knock-off jeans to slide down a rope. But the jeans are so lousy, they tear up and Herman falls to the ground.
Later, Wiggum informs Marge that they can't hold him for lack of evidence. Marge retorts saying that there is a garage full of counterfeit jeans. But Wiggum says that they have "mysteriously disappeared"! True, considering all the cops are wearing them now. Marge get mad and says that there is too much corruption on this force and she quits!! After a hearty laugh, Wiggum accepts her resignation.
Quotes
- Chief Wiggum: All right, you scrawny beanpoles: becoming a cop is not something that happens overnight. It takes one solid weekend of training to get that badge.
- Homer: (With a radar gun pointing at Lenny, clocking his shuffleing speed.) Hey Lenny, you're clocked at two miles an hour better hurry up.
Lenny: Get that thing away from me, those give you cancer.
Homer: All the more reason to hurry up.(Checking the Radar screen) Hey, what could be going a hundred miles per...OW (As Lenny punches him) - Barney: Hey Homer, I'm worried about the beer supply. After this case, and the other case, there's only one case left! [pretending to be the other people in the room] Yeah, yeah! Uh, Barney's right. Yeah, let's drink some more beer. Yeah! Hey, what about some beer? Yeah, Barney's right.
Homer: All right, guys, pipe down. I got some more in the garage.
Herman: [quickly] Uh, I'll, I'll get it for you, Homer.
Homer: Hmm. I wonder why he's so eager to go to the garage?
Moe: The "garage"? Hey fellas, the "garage"! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man.
Homer: Well what do you call it?
Moe: A car hole! - Homer: [checking up on Herman, stops when he enters the car hole and sees Herman with boxes of counterfeit jeans] Herman, how could you? We've all thought about counterfeiting jeans at one time or another, but what about the victims? Hard-working designers like Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, or Antoine Bugle Boy? These are the people who saw an overcrowded marketplace and said, "Me too!"
- Marge: That's it. There's too much corruption on this force. I quit. [all the policemen laugh for a long time]
Trivia
Car Hole
Because of Moe's ridicule of Homer for using the word "garage", fans jokingly refer to a garage, or garage-like structure as a Car Hole. As Moe does.Extended Laughing
Almost one minute of the episode features an excessive amount of laughing: when Marge joins the force, when she quits the force, and when Homer pranks Flanders.Springfield's large police force
The show often implies that Wiggum, Lou, and Eddie are the only cops in Springfield. This is specifically stated in one episode as well. However, in many other episodes a much larger police force is seen such as in this episode. The nature of this conflicting canon is most likely attributed to the series' very loose continuity.External links
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