Homer and Marge take us back to their romantic past in this week’s episode of “The Simpsons”, “That 90’s Show”. Read on to discover if it’s a “Future-drama”-level nightmare or a “Lisa’s Wedding”-level celebration.

Kredit Kookies: Chalkboard Gag: None. Couch Gag: The family is show on the couch, we zoom out to see this image as a painting, framed and with a plaque. A script-print caption reads “Ceci n'est pas une couch gag,” (This is not a Couch Gag), a reference to Rene Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images”.

We open on a snowy winter’s night on Evergreen Terrace. The Simpsons are in their jackets and gloves, shuddering in the living room before an open fire. It turns out that Homer’s neglected to pay the heating bill, assuming global warning would take care of them all winter (“Al Gore can’t do anything right!”). The family is burning whatever they can get their hands on to stay warm while waiting for the heating service to show up and turn the gas back on - Homer finally takes the sailboat painting from over the couch and sticks it in the flames.

Bart tosses a large pile of Good Housekeepings onto the fire – he picks up a cardboard box and nearly does the same with it. Marge stops him – it’s one of her memory boxes (Marge sure does have a ton of those). Searching through it, she pulls out her diploma from Springfield University. The kids are shocked, being ignorant of Marge’s college education; Lisa does some quick mental calisthenics to come up with the fact that Bart came along later in Homer and Marge’s relationship than she/we though.

Marge explains that the diploma and her graduation pictures come from  when she was dating Homer, and they gather before the fire to tell the kids about those old days…the ‘90’s.

We cut to an apartment complex somewhere in the 90’s (I've hazzarded a guess that it's the mid-90's considering some of the refferences) – Homer (sporting hair) and Marge (sporting a smoking Rachel cut) walk hand-in-hand through the gates of “Springfield Place” a singles complex. They’re surrounded by other Springfieldians in the early stages of their romantic entanglements – including Luanne and Kirk Van Houten, who are (of course) having a spat about her fidelity. Kirk’s got evidence, but it’s gonna take him six hours on dial up to get the picture – presuming no one hangs up the phone on him, which Luanne proceeds to do.

Marge narrates a montage of her early days with Homer, and we see them snuggling up on an air mattress and eating Top Ramen. Homer’s working at his dream job - unsurprisingly, it's a musical one, and he’s the fourth member in a suit-wearing, smooth-sounding, politically-correct and romantic R&B group that also includes Carl, Lenny and Lou The Cop.

Marge learns that she’s been accepted to Springfield U, but is sad to realize that their tuition’s out of her price range. To help offset costs, Homer unhappily works at Abe’s Simpson Laser Tag complex as a referee. Though he frequently comes home covered in burns, they’re incredibly happy together, even though the relationship remains unconsummated - taking the advice of a Sonic The Hedgehog billboard, they’re “saving it for marriage”.

On her first day at the university, Marge finds herself falling for the extremely politically-correct cultural history teacher, Professor August, whose extreme views challenge and tantalize her.

After the commercial break, the gas man has arrived and is bantering with Marge. He insists on listening as she continues with her story.

We return to the ‘90’s, where Marge’s feelings for Professor August begin to grow, distracting from her relationship with Homer. One night, treating Homer's burns from the Laser Tag complex, she sees August as she kisses Homer.  

Confused, she muddles through class the next day.  August divines what's wrong with her, and matters only worsen when he convinces Marge that her reliance on Homer is stunting her emotional growth.

Homer, who routinely picks Marge up after class, feels out of place and above his reason on campus.  After being called a “townie” by several denizens of the college, being sued for smashing a beatnik’s guitar (“SUCESSFULLY!”), and finally, ultimately, catching Marge in the arms of Professor August, he just wants to flee the scene of higher learning entirely.  Marge is nonplussed by Homer's arguement - his heart is broken by this difference between them, and he returns sadly to the recording studio.

Smooth R&B is the furthest thing from his mind. Determined to utilize his angst, he turns the bad into the flannel-wearing, guitar-crunching, crowd-surfing “Sadgasm”.  The band gets an impromptu campus gig, where they play "Politically Incorrect” (AKA: Kisses are Dirt), start off the grunge craze and send Springfield U into a frenzy.

Marge witnesses the chaos and is saddened – Homer rushes up to her and tries to get her to take him back, but she feels like they’re in different worlds. They argue, break up, and Marge runs off with the Professor.

In a montage set to Semisonic’s “Closing Time”, we see how far apart Homer and Marge have grown.  They eventually go their sepparate ways, both of them packing to move out.  Homer gives Marge every object emblematic of the future (Microsoft stock, a computer, the cds) and keeps everything emblematic of the past (tapes, a typewriter, the Enron stock). Marge mournfully asks him who should keep “Cutie-Puss”, a purple octopus Beanie Baby – Homer sadly asks for one tentacle. He rips it off and its plastic bead innards tumble over the floor,  the toy slowly deflating, his smile warping into a frown.

Homer takes to hanging at Moe’s (Cigar) Bar, and the proprietor can only offer him an expensive stogie to ease his pain. Barney inhales his entire cigar in one drag, resulting in a huge belch that fills the bar with smoke – and results in Moe's pickpocketing effort being mistaken for an attempted homosexual pass.

Meanwhile, Marge is drinking in Augusts’ wisdom (she confesses to "wanting his wisdom inside of (her)"). They draw closer and closer together, and finally end up at Augusts’ apartment in the University where a seduction begins.  In mid-makeout, he soon begins to sob - a football game is playing in the background.  Marge surfs the channels to find something comforting and discovers Homer’s become a megastar with his song “Shave Me” (which has gotten so big that Weird Al had covered it as “Brain Freeze”). Marge is still attracted to August, but as he crawls into the fetal position whining that the only thing that can soothe him is whale calls, a seed of doubt has been planted.

Sometime later, Marge and the Prof are walking together on a beach. She sighs at the sight of a wedding, and August expresses his disgust at her desire to one day be in wedded bliss. Marriage is an antiquated notion to him - Marge protests that she just plain LIKES some of her antiquated notions. They break up, leaving him in tears.

Alone at a bar, Marge sees Sadgasm’s latest video, “Margarine,” Homer’s open tribute to their lost love. She realizes how much she loves Homer and breaks down.  Her tearful epiphany is interrupted by “Kurt Loader, reporting from the ‘90’s” – Sadgasm has broken up; Homer may be a drug addict, and he’s holed up alone in his mansion.

Marge rushes off to the mansion, pushes her way through the weeping throngs of Sadgasm fans, and finds Homer sitting limply in his easy chair – with a needle in his arm. No, he hasn’t overdosed, to her relief.  We learn that se pulled him out of his downward spiral and slowly nursed him back to health.

We cut back to the present, where Homer explains that he had been taking his insulin when Marge broke in – he’d become diabetic after drinking too many frappachinos. Apparently, Marge's love can cure more than diabetes - closer than ever, the two of them soon experienced the “magic night” where they joined the castle (windmill?) club, leading to the birth of Bart. Marge reveals that she’s happy that things ended the way they did “Home is where (her) Homey is”.

We pan back through the window to the sidewalk outside Casa De Simpson, where the Professor who once sneered at Homer at the Springfield U campus watches them, shaking his head in disgust. “Townies”! he remarks, and we head to the credits.
 
Red Dress Press: This is a conflicted, complex episode – your likely enjoyment of it hinges on your ability to ignore past show canon and embrace the course of events portrayed here.  It is an admittedly difficult task, as the episode transplants Marge and Homer's love affair from the late '70's to the mid-90's.  The episodes "The Way We Was", "I Married Marge" and "Lisa's First Word" are all trenched in solid information that set them firmly in certain eras - there's no way getting around the fact that Bart is clearly concieved in 1980, born in 1981, that Bart and Homer and Marge live together in an appartment in 1983 and Lisa is definitively born in the summer of 1984 (during the '84 Olympics, which even narrows it down to August).  Therefore, it requires the understanding that if you want to accept the episode, you're going to need to be willing to make a leap of faith to get there. 

Canonical difficulties aside, it’s worth noting that it is indeed possible for several years to have passed between “The Way We Was” and “I Married Marge” – the former takes place during Marge and Homer’s senior year of high school, the later takes place in their early adulthood.

Additionally, between this episode and season 18’s version of Homer and Marge's courtship as portrayed in “Springfield Up,” canon has been bent out of shape anyway - did Marge go to college or work in a photo studio?  Did she work in Berger's Burgers as a carhop?  The answer is that there is no answer - and thinking too hard about it will only result in your blood getting angried up.   Compared to "Bart to the Future" and "Future-Drama" this is the least offensive addition to the expanded show canon in awhile, and it ultimately proves itself a worthy if totally idiosynchratic piece. Consider this alternate history, if you like. 

Though it completely negates canon, you’ll find a few nice surprises if you're willing to relax and go with the episode, among them the emotional impact it makes, a number of cute cultural references, the dead-on grunge-era music parodies (and the workable Boyz II Men parody "I'll Make Rub To You"), and the rock-solid base of the show that’s Marge and Homer’s fraught relationship. I personally liked the addition of Marge’s college graduation and Homer’s participation in the grunge boom, which is no harder to swallow in the plausibility department than the Be-Sharps were.

Characterisation is excellent.  Marge is believably naive here, and Homer is understandably angry, while Professor August is irritating.  That is at least his purpose in the episode. Homer is midly jerkassy in the book-ending material.

My biggest gripe – putting aside the continuity headaches – would be the existence of a few of the dopey IT’S THE 90’S references. A few could have comfortably landed on the cutting room floor without a whimper.

It's also arguable that the show already did a grunge parody (Homerpalooza), and chasing that thought, That 90's Show points up the difference between who Homer used to be (an out-of-touch old-school rock fan who just doesn't get what the heck the kids are into) to who he is now (wildly adaptable to whatever the plot calls for him to do).

Did It Fail At Masonry?: A decent episode by normal standards, but a difficult one to like or enjoy when held up to past canon.  Don't want it in the company of hardcore oldschoolers who find diviation from the golden era unforgivable.  Take it upon your own judgment in the watchability department – I enjoyed it, but I had to firmly force myself to ignore past episodes to get to that plateau of joy. Your own mileage may vary - consider your opinion of the show before you pop this one in.  If you’re a child of the ‘90’s, it might be worth it for the kitsch value.

What The Screwballs Think: It ended up with a 7.6, right on par with recent ratings and showing the series’ marked ratings decline.

Springfield Shopper: This is a Krusty Klassic Rekap of a past Season 19 episode. Keep an eye out for my recap of “Love, Springfieldian Style”, which should be posted by the time the afternoon’s over.