“The Sweetest Apu” is the nineteenth episode of The Simpsons’ thirteenth season. It is the first episode where Jan Hooks does not provide the voice of Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon since "Much Apu About Nothing", instead featuring Tress MacNeille in the role.
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Plot
Apu sells Homer a beer keg for the American Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Springfield. At the reenactment, Principal Skinner watches as Springfielders disobey him and hold a rather inaccurate battle. After the battle, Homer brings the empty, dented keg back to Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart in an attempt to get the deposit. There, he hears a giggle coming from a closet and finds Apu making love with the woman who delivers Squishees to Kwik-E-Mart. He then walks backwards in shock all the way home to his bed.
Marge figures out what Homer saw from the movements of his pupil. They decide not to tell Manjula but while they are playing Badminton Homer and Marge act awkwardly with Manjula and Apu looking at them, trying not to give out hints Apu cheated on Manjula. They then confront Apu and he says he will break up with the Squishee Lady named Annette. However, he cannot help it, as it gets his mind off the octuplets. Later, Manjula watches the surveillance footage of Apu cheating. To help get them together, Homer and Marge invite them both, but do not tell them that the other one is coming. Manjula then demands a divorce.
Kicked out, Apu moves into the apartment complex where Kirk Van Houten lives. The octuplets then speak their first words, which put together, say “Mommy, will you let daddy come back...cookie!” Marge and Manjula go to Apu’s and arrive in time to prevent him from hanging himself. Apu is then subjected to several tasks to redeem himself, though Manjula says it will take time for everything to get back to normal. In bed, Manjula, finally satisfied with what he has done, kisses Apu while Homer watches from the window, on a ladder. The couple continues and Homer, traumatized, hops backwards on the ladder all the way home, without falling, mimicking what he did earlier.
Cultural references
- Catch-22—Homer refers to the punctured keg of beer as being “so cold...so cold.” These are the words Snowden uses when hit and bleeding, in the novel Catch-22. (Milhouse also says these words in the season seven episode "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily" after Bart complains that nothing happened to Milhouse after playing with the monkey in the Pier One wicker basket.)
- Wild Wild West—Dr. Loveless' giant mechanical spider.
- The title is a pun on the Sade song, “The Sweetest Taboo”.
- When Marge is watching the video of Apu’s wedding, Homer gets up with the band and tries to sing the same song from the wedding scene in The Godfather.
- Apu’s cartoon appears in The New Yorker, which Homer says he purchased only for the photos of Richard Avedon, featuring Lenny.
- Apu and his octuplets reenact My Fair Lady as part of Manjula’s list.
- Moe uses a generic Windex brand called Windel for his Windex drink (even though a real Windex drink is made of vodka, triple sec, and blue curacao).
- At the Civil War reenactment, there is a confederate soldier who bears a striking similarity to General Robert E. Lee.
- When Apu's wife first kicks him out of the house, his children hiss at him. This is a reference to the hissing children in the David Cronenberg film The Brood.
- On Apu's reincarnation poster, one of his past lives was "a clod" (MAD Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman) and an assistant to Saturday Night Live executive Lorne Michaels (who hired such Simpsons writers as George Meyer, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Conan O'Brien, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Joel H. Cohen as sketch writers in the mid-1980s into the 1990s, and hired voice actor Harry Shearer as a season five cast member in 1979).
Reception
The episode has become study material for sociology courses at University of California Berkeley, where it is used to "examine issues of the production and reception of cultural objects, in this case, a satirical cartoon show", and to figure out what it is "trying to tell audiences about aspects primarily of American society, and, to a lesser extent, about other societies." Some questions asked in the courses include: "What aspects of American society are being addressed in the episode? What aspects of them are used to make the points? How is the satire conveyed: through language? Drawing? Music? Is the behavior of each character consistent with his/her character as developed over the years? Can we identify elements of the historical/political context that the writers are satirizing? What is the difference between satire and parody?"[1]
References
- ^ Thomas B. Gold (2008). "The Simpsons Global Mirror". University of California Berkeley. http://sociology.berkeley.edu/documents/undergrads/syllabi/Soc190_1.pdf.
External links
- "The Sweetest Apu" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
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