Here we are, people. You ask me to pick my favourite episode of The Simpsons ever – not my top five, not my top three, my favourite ever – and I’ll point directly to this one. There are episodes with bigger laughs, more interesting ideas, more poignant insights, and bigger emotions, but this one is the one that hits at my soul in a way no other episode has – the one I think of as the strongest influence on me, having affected the way I think and the way I want to write, both in terms of plotting a story and in terms of finding funny ways of putting words together. On a micro level, each individual sentence is a journey on its own, comedically tripping up the entire meaning using only one carefully-placed word (“Prohibition! They tried that in the movies and it didn’t work!”). They say you have to be very smart to successfully feign stupidity, and this is some expert stupidity, like watching a brilliant dancer moving from beat to beat. It follows through on a macro level; the plot is made up of absurd moments, but the logic that holds them together feels plausible even when it’s ridiculous. My favourite example of this is the initial escalation that brings in Rex Banner – rather than bringing him straight in, the show has Moe try and get away with just pretending to be a pet shop, and so of course the town prudes catch them, and of course Wiggum is there and tries to smooth things over, and of course he fails miserably and gets tossed on his ass, bringing in Banner. It isn’t just stupidity for the sake of stupidity, it’s stupidity with some sound reasoning behind it, and that only makes it so much funnier. This shouldn’t be logical, but it is; this should just be stupid, but it makes sense.

I like how this extends to the plot details themselves. This episode lacks an emotional core (though it does have a power to it, more on that later), but this is another one of those stories driven forward by the crew’s love of old-timey America. Much of the humour of the episode, much like the individual lines, comes from perfectly presenting a particular cliche or idea and making a sharp left turn at precisely the right time in precisely the right way – Rex Banner saying “Remember!” as if he’s about to warn them about his continuing crusade against drinking only to shift to a lecture on baby alligators is probably the best example of this, but him choosing to eat a Banana Kaboom is the one I laugh hardest at. The ironic thing about writing comedy is that it’s always most effective when targeting something you take totally seriously; the more serious the setup, the funnier the punchline, and the crew take the Prohibition details seriously enough that they could genuinely deliver a compelling, serious story on the subject and that only makes the fact that they choose to undercut the seriousness constantly that much funnier.

Really, that’s what allows the witty writing to emerge – by sweating out the plot details and making them make a rigid, logical sense, the story allows many individual observations to emerge from individual moments without them having to all connect into one big idea. Rex Banner is a humourless authoritarian, the prohibition supporters are tedious scolds, and Homer is a boorish hedonist breaking the law because he likes drinking beer (and later, because he likes the power and money), and none of this feels like a contradiction or a moment of hypocrisy in the show’s worldview. Perhaps this is what gives that final line its power – it really does seem to accurately sum up the events we’ve just watched unfold. Alcohol really isn’t good for us, individually or as a people; the characters casually mention how violence and hospitalisations related to drinking have ceased since prohibition began, which contrasts with the violence and indignity the characters do get up to when drunk. At the same time, alcohol is such an integral part of human culture worldwide that it seems like it’ll be impossible to remove it; it’s a fundamental part of so many traditions to the point of forming the basis of most people’s social lives, and entire industries exist to maintain those traditions. Alcohol as a cultural force can’t be destroyed, only contained and managed. It’s a very cynical statement that feels appropriate for The Simpsons.

Chalkboard Gag: N/A
Couch Gag: The family are cowboys who sit on the couch out in the desert. The couch takes them away like a horse.

This episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Bob Anderson. The story goes that, once the rest of the writers saw the final line of the script, they sat back in awe at the skills of Swartzwelder. Dave Thomas of SCTV guest stars as Rex Banner, and honestly, he’s one of my favourite guest stars because he embodies Banner so perfectly that I grew assuming he was some random actor from a long-running cop show I’d never heard of (a la Harry Morgan in “Mother Simpson”).

Revealing the St Patrick’s Day situation in the first act via Bart discovering everyone wearing green is such a great use of a random bit of kid culture – they could have just said it was St Patrick’s Day, but they went that extra mile. This was the first time I noticed the “No Irish Need Apply” sign in the background of the St Patricks’ celebration in Moe’s. Normally, this is where I put scattered notes that I otherwise couldn’t fit into the main essay, but this time, my remaining notes are nothing but quotes I loved. 

The episode is a parody of the original TV series of The Untouchables, with Rex Banner being a parody of Robert Stack as Elliot Ness and the narrator being a parody of Walter Winchell. Barney leaving a flower for Duff Brewery is a reference to people leaving flowers at the graves of Hollywood figures like Marilyn Monroe. A shot parodies Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. 

Iconic Moments: 7. “Well I’ll be darned. Long pants.” | “Yeah, that was a scary coupla hours!” | “If we don’t come back, avenge our deaths!” | “I’m not gonna lie to you, Marge. So long!” | “You’re out there somewhere Beer Baron. And I’ll find you.” / “No you won’t!” | “Tubby?! Oh, yes, tubby.” | “To alcohol! The cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems.”
Biggest Laugh: God help me, this was an impossible pick. “I filled the balls with a funnel,” was my biggest actual laugh in the moment, but I have to go with this as the one I kept laughing about when it popped into my head this week.