I wonder how many sitcoms before this had a plot centered around a horny dog. This show has cycled through a lot of showrunners, so it’s fascinating to me how the show feels like it’s always building on what came before and evolving; this is another episode of pure comedy, with no interest in deep emotion or satire, which is refreshing after the past four or five episodes. The comedy feels so much looser and free-form in this episode, like a guitarist who has mastered multiple keys and casually switches between them in a jam session without missing a beat. That old idea of Homer becoming funnier when he’s pushed to the background shows up in full force, but it ends up applied to all the characters; Bart and Lisa take control of the narrative in the last act but this is more of an ensemble piece. If you’ll forgive me dissecting the frog here, the first minute of the episode alone has a truly dizzying moment where there’s a traditional ‘two normal things followed by something ridiculous’ joke (“My bongo drums!” / “My strobe light!” / “My Best Of Ray Stevens Featuring The Streak album!”), and all three things are so precisely chosen not just for character but for maximum ridiculousness (Homer’s line is slightly awkward, just enough to be funny but not enough to truly throw off the timing). And then it’s followed up by a bit of Marge ridiculousness reminiscent of “Look at Milhouse’s teeth!” (“So it was the dog who buried all our stuff!” / “Yes. The dog.”), simultaneously being a hilarious exaggeration of the kind of thing Mothers do and exactly something Marge would do. This is the kind of casual skill you can only develop over six years of working together, many individual skills (screenwriting, directing, animating, performing) coalescing into one show. It’s probably worth considering that showrunners and some writers have come and gone, but the directing team has remained very consistent in the show so far. Usually auteur theory is pushed as being philosophical – a point of view someone is trying to get across. In this case I think you could push it as a particular set of skills that serve a story.

Interestingly, the three acts of the story have very different internal structures and purposes. Traditional three-act structure is actually much clearer and less formulaic than its reputation suggests – act one, you introduce all the elements of the story and end in the introduction of some kind of conflict between those elements. Act two tracks the natural back-and-forth of that conflict as one element wins out over another, only for the other to come back, climaxing with some gigantic attempt to resolve that conflict. Act three tracks the final consequences of that last decision. The Simpsons isn’t above that kind of storytelling – I would argue last episode, “Lisa’s Wedding”, fits that structure exactly – but more often I find that acts define the theme of jokes the story will tell, with major decisions providing structure for the start and end of each act and pushing us to the next set of jokes (this tends to be more true of the ‘just comedy’ episodes as opposed to satirical and heartfelt episodes). Reduce this episode to its actions: Act one, Santa’s Little Helper rips up everything, Santa’s Little Helper fucks another dog. Act two, SLH’s girlfriend gives birth to puppies, Burns steals the puppies. Act three, Bart and Lisa rescue them. That third one is has the plottiest plot, with a traditional escalating conflict as Burns and the kids each manage to keep getting the upper hand on each other (and because this is a comedy, Burns can flagrantly cheat – “Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for explanations later!” is a laugh-out-loud line on second viewing, knowing he never will explain it).

Looking over what I just wrote, I think maybe when The Simpsons isn’t actively pursuing a goal like “explore Lisa and Homer’s relationship” or “satirise unions”, we’re gonna see a grab bag of everything it does well tossed at us as the simple story requires. Experimentation is a buzzword in art, but I think The Simpsons genuinely experimented with different storytelling techniques in about as literal a way as ‘experiment’ can be used, in that it tried out a specific technique, saw what the results were, and used the same technique more thoughtfully later, until those techniques have become second-nature. Act one is a slow riff on the quirks of being an upper-lower-middle type, act two has a bunch of gags about the town itself, and act three is another Semi-Ironic Kid Adventure story. I also love how the episode ends with a classic example of Simpsons cynicism but taken one step beyond, as Burns accepts the failure of his scheme like the supervillain he is, only to become even richer when he uses the puppies in, you know, greyhound races. Perhaps the conclusion to all these thoughts is that what makes up The Simpsons are sets of principles, both philosophical and technical, that are refined through experience.

Chalkboard Gag: The Good Humour Man can only be pushed so far.
Couch Gag: The couch and characters recede into the distance.

This episode was written by Mike Scully and directed by Bob Anderson, and for once Scully’s infamously cruel sense of humour actually stays within the show’s level of darkness. In another example of Groening not seeming to get why his show is so great, he was against the Rory Calhoun joke because he didn’t think anyone would know who he was, when the obscurity of the reference is what makes the joke so funny. The scene of SLH mating with She’s The Fastest got a big laugh at the censor screening.

The three-tonne rhino at the start is a dizzyingly brilliant double subversion. The Simpsons have apparently legally purchased cable. We get the first appearance of the Rich Texan, though with brown hair instead of white. Bart using the word ‘bitch’ correctly is such a great note on what kids do, but the really great part is Marge apparently being surprised by this. I’m a sucker for riffs on classic gags, so the cat knocking away catnip is great to me. For some reason it tickles me that Burns is going to kill the dogs with a 9mm.

The plot and title are a reference to One Hundred And One Dalmatians, with a specific reference to the scene of the dogs watching television (“Get that cat out of the way!”). They watch Models, Inc. Santa’s Little Helper melting out the car window is a reference to Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Four of the puppies are named after talkshow hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman and their bandleaders Paul Shaffer and Banford Marsalis.

Iconic Moments: 5. “Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of exposure to TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless.” | The dog melting out the window is a famous of example of how weird the animation on this show could be at times. | “On a completely unrelated note” has become a common joke construction (webcomic 8 Bit Theater built an entire style of humour out of it, for example). | “Rory Calhoun?” | “See my vest!”
Biggest Laugh: This is another joke that not only killed me on watch, I cracked up any time I remembered it all week.