Million Dollar Abie is the sixteenth episode of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons. It originally aired on April 2, 2006.
Chalkboard: I will not flip the classroom upside down. (The classroom is upside down)
Couch gag: A TiVo menu screen pops up and the “delete this recording now” option is selected
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Synopsis
When it is announced that the commissioner of pro football (Bud Armstrong) wants to expand the league, Homer leads the charge to get the new franchise in Springfield. At first his family doesn’t think he could do it, but Homer manages to put forth a surprisingly strong package for the Springfield Meltdowns and the new Duff Beer Krusty Burger Buzz Cola Costington’s Department Store Kwik-E-Mart Stupid Flanders Park.
The commissioner narrows down the choice of the two cities to either Springfield or Los Angeles. L.A. puts forth an anti-Springfield video hosted by Rob Reiner and features a song sung by celebrity impersonators that ends with them singing “Springfield Blows”. All the owners decide that Springfield is the lesser of two evils, and the Commissioner awards the new team to Springfield. The town gets “Meltmania” and “Downs syndrome” and quickly builds Homer’s new park and paints the town in the team colours (orange and purple) and changes all of the street names to football-related names.
On the day when Springfield is officially announced as the new team, the Commissioner gets confused by all of the new street names and gets lost. He stops for directions at the Simpsons’ house and is greeted by Grampa Simpson, who welcomes him in. However, Grampa starts to fear that the commissioner is a burglar and attacks him and ties him up. The rest of the family arrives home disappointed that the commissioner didn’t show and is shocked to find him tied up in their living room. The commissioner is so angry that he declares that the Meltdowns will never be and leaves, never to return.
The entire town starts to hate Grampa, and the expensive stadium has to be used for farmers’ markets. Grampa is so depressed that he decides to seek out a doctor who will help him commit suicide. The doctor tells Grampa to reconsider, and Grampa decides that if anyone calls him in the next 24 hours, he won’t go through with his plan. When Abe is waiting for someone to call him, the simulated time lapse effect and music parody the movie Koyaanisqatsi, a movie parodied less than seven years earlier in the episode “Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder”. The call never comes and Grampa goes back to the clinic the next day. Grampa comes very close to being killed but the police show up just in time to stop it.
Grampa thinks he’s dead and runs through the town, seeing “Hamburger Heaven” and a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. He soon learns that he isn’t dead, gets a new lease on life and decides to live it up. Meanwhile, the city decides to turn the unused football stadium into an arena for bull fighting. Despite Lisa’s protests, Grampa decides to become a matador. Grampa wins his first fight with a bull, but at home, Lisa tells Grampa that she is disappointed. Grampa tells her that people are cheering him for his success, but Lisa tell him that she always cheers for him until now. Grampa isn’t sure about that, but in the next fight he sees the bull that he’s about to kill and decides to spare its life. He releases all the bulls, which immediately start running through the streets of Springfield, causing a great deal of destruction. Lisa is proud of Grampa and the two reconcile, but they both became in danger by two bulls flying with balloons.
Cultural references
- The title of this episode is a play on the 2004 movie Million Dollar Baby.
- The celebrities who appear in the “Springfield Blows” video, a parody of the song ” We Are the World “, include Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Courtney Love, Jim Jam Bonks (The Simpsons’ parody of Jar Jar Binks), The Who, Keith Richards, Biff Tannen, Sting, Barbra Streisand, Sylvester Stallone, Freddy Krueger and El Kabong.
- The euthanasia center is a spoof of the one in Soylent Green.
- One of the options on the diePod’s menu is “Megadeath”, an allusion to the thrash metal band Megadeth.
- Dr. Egoyan, the doctor that helps Grampa try to kill himself an obvious reference to Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
- The name of the Glenn Miller Orchestra song that Grampa requested is Pennsylvania 65000.
- The song that plays when Abe goes down is “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” by John Lennon from the 1974 album, Walls and Bridges.
- The song that plays when Abe ‘lives it up’ is ‘Superman’ by R.E.M. from their 1986 album, Lifes Rich Pageant.
- The euthanasia clinic is right next to a Howard Johnson just like in Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome To The Monkey House.
- The song Lisa sings as she tries to convince Springfield citizens not to participate in the bull fighting is a parody of the song Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan.
- Wiggum says to the doctor that is trying to kill Abe Simpson that he’s a natural born killer: this is a reference to the 1994 film Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Dollar_Abie
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