Our daughter and youngest just turned two recently. It made me think of something.
The Simpsons has always been big, essential really, in shaping my sense of humor with its best era in my formative years. While I don't watch it much these days, certainly not the stuff they're making new mind you, I still remember it, I still quote it and it still makes me laugh as I encounter situations in my own, real life. I probably, to be honest, should give it more of a rewatch, as my perspective is so different now and it'll be fascinating to identify more with the parents than the children. Already it was less the humor and more the touching moments that are most memorable, and that will only continue. My favorite episode is called And Maggie Makes Three, on which I did a post a while back. Today is about another like that.
For a refresher, Homer and Marge Simpson have three children. Bart, the oldest, cares little for school and is a rascal. Lisa, the middle child, is quite smart and has big ideas about how to do good in the world. She's now a caricature of a preachy know-it-all but she wasn't always that annoying. (Nuance, as often happens, is lost with time.) Maggie is a baby who never grows up, none of them ever ages, and only on one occasion even says one word.
Bart and Lisa frequently do not get along and fight. Sometimes this is literal. Their differences, boy and girl, oldest and second born, mischievous and well behaved, better at sports and better at school, results in a ton of conflict, often where Lisa does in fact come up with the short stick. It's a default situation. In playing off this it becomes incredibly effective, and emotional, when they do something special for each other. Early in the show's run (seasons 2-3 most of all), this happening was more common.
At the beginning of season 3 (Stark Raving Dad, s3 e1 - Sept 1991) Homer wears a pink shirt to work, the result of something red getting into the white laundry, and gets sent to a mental hospital. There he meets a large white man who speaks in a high pitched voice and claims to be Michael Jackson (and was actually voiced by him). Homer does not know who Michael Jackson is and they become friends. After being declared sane, with the doctors learning that Bart, the cause of all his anger and distress, is in fact real, Homer gets released. Word spreads he's on his way home with 'Michael,' who was checked into the hospital voluntarily. After a man who is clearly not Michael Jackson gets out of the car, the whole town gets mad at Bart for spreading a false rumor.
Meanwhile it's Lisa's birthday. Bart had told her he would get her something but clearly forgot in the hubbub, to her profound disappoint. 'Michael' sees that Lisa is upset, grabs Bart, and the two of them write a song. In the morning they wake her up and perform it.
The song is just the best, and their singing it is another one of those scenes that'll stick with me forever. I totally sang it to my daughter on her birthday.
One last bit. You won't find this episode on Disney Plus, or elsewhere streaming I imagine, because it features Michael Jackson. Yes he seemingly did some bad things. But this kind of (self) censorship, making the perhaps uncomfortable past disappear, is dumb. This episode, and its ending especially, is great. Buy physical media.
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