QUICK SYNOPSIS

Homer must travel to New York to get his car back, which is illegally parked at World Trade Center Plaza.

POINTLESS GUEST STAR(S)

None! Not one! Not even in the Broadway musical! I can’t even ding the episode for an erroneous cameo by Cameron Diaz or *checks most popular people of 1997* Austin Powers, yeah baby.

WHY THIS EPISODE SUCKS

OK, I guess a bad way to start a new feature about the shittiest 25 years of The Simpsons is to spotlight the best episode of the post-classic era. This episode doesn’t suck at all! It’s actually quite good, and if you’re willing to go out of your comfort zone and watch the family in an exotic locale à la “Bart vs. Australia” or “You Only Move Twice” (which, I will admit, is sometimes tough), then “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” will be your jar of pickled eggs! Minus the black one.

So, in the absence of things that actually suck about “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”, mayhaps I’ll point out the highlights. The story is coherent all the way through, with a first act that logically flows into the actually meat of the story. The B-story with the rest of the Simpson family seeing the sights of New York City contrasts nicely with Homer dancing around needing to pee, confined to the Twin Towers plaza in a city he would actually like if he got to go to a Broadway show and visit the MAD Magazine headquarters.

The problem with this episode is that it’s lumped in with Season 9, the marked decline of the show. It would have been a fucking GREAT Season 8 finale! And then it wouldn’t have the vibe of a mediocre season with episodes like “All Singing, All Dancing” in it.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Due to the prominence of the World Trade Center in the plot, the episode was removed from syndication after the September 11 attacks. By 2006, the episode had come back into syndication in some areas; however, parts of the episode were often edited out. (Mainly when it cuts to any exterior shot of the towers is now not shown). One previously such edited item is a scene of two men arguing across Tower 1 and Tower 2, where a man from Tower 2 claims, “They stick all the jerks in Tower 1.” Bill Oakley commented in retrospect that the line was “regrettable”.
Yeah, this is some dumb shit. If you were born near or after 9/11/2001, then you may be completely unaware of just how much this American terrorist attack broke all the Boomer brains. They started editing out scenes with the Twin Towers from every movie and TV show that featured them. When they couldn’t remove scenes, they would airbrush out the towers. Episodes of TV shows were pulled from syndication. It was as if everyone was trying to pretend that they were never there in the first place, or that looking at a couple of buildings might be triggering. Any references to or depictions of terrorism, bombs, explosions and burning buildings were rewritten. It was an incredibly stupid period of an overly-frightened and coddled nation trying to be overcompensate by scaring everyone into staunch patriotism. Or something. I don’t even fucking know. Also, Bush’s approval rating soared to 90%! 90%! 90%! Anyway, calling jokes that you wrote four years before a terrorist attack “regrettable” is also stupid, especially since they weren’t “I’M GOING TO BOMB THIS BUILDING”-type jokes. Again, broken brains. What are ya gonna do?

The animators were told to make a detailed replica of the city. David Silverman was sent to Manhattan to take hundreds of pictures of the city and areas around the World Trade Center.
This was back in the days of Polaroids and Kodak disposable cameras! You had to take cameras and film into a drugstore and have them develop it for you. Isn’t that nuts?! ’90s!

The celebrity on trial in the Broadway musical “Kicking it” that Marge and the kids go see is based on Robert Downey Jr.
Oh, ok. I thought he was supposed to be Luke Perry. Let me check his Wikipedia page for a moment… … …no drugs, but cancer! No Betty Ford Center for you.

This is the first time that Lisa shushes.
Huh. Well I’ll be damned. She seems like the shushy type.

FINAL GRADE
A