In this week’s episode of the Simpsons, paranoia and possible murder factor into the disappearance of Martin Prince in the mini-film noir “Dial ‘N’ For Nerder” (no, I’m not kidding).

Kredit Kookies: Chalkboard Gag: None Couch Gag: The Simpsons are those novelty sponge pills that grow when you toss water on them (I so used to get these when I was a child). Professor Frink dots each of them with a dropper of water and they expand into colorful, larger sponge-shaped versions of themselves – except for Homer. Frink splashes him with a bucket of water and he finally grows to proper size.

We open on the Casa de Simpson, where Homer and Marge are getting ready for bed. Marge nuzzles up to Homer, trying to get a snuggle out of the deal. Unfortunately for Marge, the more excited Homer gets, the harder it is for him to breathe – he can’t even make the effort to roll across the bed and grab her. Marge responds by going to get him – rolling atop Homer, they smooch until he passes out. Marge is understandably alarmed by her husband’s worsening health.

The following evening, Homer happily returns home looking forward to dinner. Marge isn’t going to fulfill his dreams of steak, however – he’s on a slimming diet as of now. She introduces him to the nutritionist she’s hired, Betsey Bidwell (a neat combination of Sara Snow and Martha Stewart), who battled obesity by satisfying her every craving with bell peppers. Homer munches one, declares it good and says he’ll try the plan.

Homer apparently takes to bell peppers as a duck does to water. Despite seemingly substituting them for everything possible in his diet, he gains seven pounds over the course of a week. Marge is naturally suspicious, though Homer insists his aim is true. During her search of the living room for evidence she notices the program ‘Sneakers’, a reality show that spotlights infidelity. Marge shoos the kids out of the house so she can call ‘Sneaker’s for help; they quickly have a camera crew en route.

Lisa and Bart bike down to Springfield Park, which Bart had – and still has – no knowledge about, even after writing a report about it the week previous. They discover Martin there, digging up and quite carefully preserving arrowheads in a location that’s really rather too close to a gully below Mount Springfield. Lisa decides to help him, and Bart makes a series of mocking jokes that Martin answers most seriously.

Bart is distracted from his antipathy by Sideshow Mel, who’s sitting out in the sun nearer to the edge of the cliff and shaking out his hair in a slow-motion glamour shot. Once he’s distracted, Bart snags the bone and buries it, then rigs it to a rope and pulley system. He yells to Martin that he’s found an artifact, and Martin rushes off to uncover it. Bart yanks his end of the rope, the bone flies up out of the ground and smacks Martin upside his jaw, and the impact forcing him over the side of the railing. A horrified Lisa and Bart peer down into the canyon to see Martin hanging onto a twig. Lisa tries to help him back over the side by lowering a branch, but it snaps.  Lisa and Bart gape in horror as he disappears from view. 

They're guilt-wracked when they return home.  Even the pleasure of television don't help. Lisa tells Bart they should call the police, but Bart determinedly stares at Krusty the Klown until  Kent Brockman cuts in with a special report.  He tells Springfield of Martin’s apparent death, which has been declared a tragic accident by the SPD. Chief Wiggum announces that the victim was likely eaten by a cougar after falling (behind him the cougar is coughing up pieces of Martin’s red pants and white shirt).

Lisa realizes she’s an accomplice to murder and is overwhelmed by horrifying visions of a life behind bars (yes, Future!Hag!Dream!Lisa re-appears in her full glory). All the bookmobile has are Danielle Steele tomes!! Bart wants to turn himself in; Lisa quickly tells Bart that they have to hide their part in Martin’s death. “This is worse than a million A minuses!!” she wails.

Marge enters and senses something’s wrong, but both quickly hide their worries. She catches Homer trying to sneak out of the house in a trenchcoat, but he evades her questions and leaves the house to “go to work”…on a Saturday night. Marge immediately snitches his location to Sneakers, who follow him in a huge van with their logo emblazoned on the side. Sometimes I love Homer’s obliviousness…

At school the following Monday, there’s a memorial assembly. Lisa and Bart squirm as the AV club pays tribute to Martin to the strains of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You”. Bart weeps, Lisa orders him to buck up, and Skinner gives a speech about Martin’s accomplishments. From it, Nelson deduces that Martin was afraid of heights and it would have been extremely unlike him to be so close to the edge of such a deep drop.  As Willie empties out Martin's locker, Bart steals Martin’s things from the trash heap - Nelson spies this and becomes more suspicious.  He travels to Mount Springfield after school and, after burning some ants with his magnifying glass, discovers the discarded bone –and-string. You’d think Bart would be better at evidence tampering by now…

Back at the Casa De Simpson, it’s revealed how Homer managed to sneak his unhealthy eating habits by Marge – he’s been literally hiding food inside of other food, or inside of other objects. In this case, he’s hidden salsa and chips in his briefcase. Bart and Lisa nearly catch him snacking – all parties are so wound up by their own problems that they don’t notice each other’s suspicious behavior, nor do they notice Maggie playing video poker on the computer.

That night, Marge lies alone and sleepless in bed, Bart becomes further consumed with guilt as he reads through Martin’s journal and Homer as a wild assignation with a rack of lamb while the Sneakers crew looks on in disgust (at the Sleep-Ezee motel!).

The next day, Lisa panics when she bumps into Lou at the Kwik-E-Mart. When Bart comes in she screams at him that they can’t be seen together. Nelson, in cool, Columbo-esque mode, quietly grills the two of them as they nervously maintain their innocence. He taunts them with the bone – doesn't Bart loves pranks? Bart responds by insisting that everyone loves pranks “even Dr. Hibbert”, who quickly appears to sternly dress down Bart for suggesting such a thing.

Later in the day, Lisa enters Bart’s room to assuage her own guilt, but Bart’s left only a note behind; he’s headed to Martin’s place to “end it all” and she rushes off to find him. Downstairs, Homer’s calling his luscious lamb rack and telling her that he has to see her again (creepily the rack of lamb is seen lying on a bed “listening” to the phone).

Lisa arrives at Martin’s house and finds Bart in their friend’s greenhouse, apparently hanging a noose from the rafters. She cries out, but a light flicks on – Bart’s just hanging a flood light to help Martin’s fledgling butterflies. Reading Martin’s journal inspired Bart to finish off his friend’s project, so that something good could come of what happened. Lisa finally cracks under the stress; they struggle. The sound of Martin’s voice cheerily encouraging the butterflies fills the room, followed by lute music. They’re momentarily stunned by the music and the hundreds of emerging butterflies.  Lisa realizes that Martin’s voice and the music are emanating from a tape recorder and turns it off – the music stops momentarily, but then resumes, to their fear.

The Sneakers crew takes Marge to an in-the-act rendezvous with Homer, who’s cheating at a restaurant called “Pudding on the Ritz”. She and the crew burst in as he orders a “Butterscotch Stallion”; after trying to hide under the massive skin of his pudding dish, he apologizes. Marge, to his surprise, turns on the host of “Sneakers” and the crew themselves – she realizes they’re all trying to exploit her husband’s eating issues and her marital problems for ratings.  Their footage now useless, the host announces he'll make Marge look crazy in the editing; the entire resteraunt empties out in his wake. Marge doesn't seem to mind, as she happily gets a night out with Homer.

Lisa and Bart can’t find the source of the lute music and Lisa's going slowly mad.  In her search she knocks a jar of nectar over in her head – she’s saturated, and soon covered in butterflies.  One has its leg stuck in the buckle of her shoe, and she nearly flicks it off.  Her near-amputation of the butterfly's limb brings about an epiphany about what sort of cutthroat she’s become. "We've become monsters!" she cries to Bart.  "Cool!" he retorts.  She shouts aloud that she and Bart killed Martin. Nelson emerges from the shadows, strumming happily on the lute; he tells her that’s just what he wanted to hear. Over his shoulder, a mysterious figure stands, still shrouded by darkness.

Nelson announces he’s ready to turn them both in - Lisa tries to flirt her way out of it ("I never let you cherry bomb my Malibu Stacys...").  But Martin has recovered from his death – he emerges and explains how he managed to survive. It seems the waistband of his underwear (which was wedgie-proof!) hooked on a branch and managed to keep him from hitting the ground at full speed. He was left hanging directly in front of the cougar’s lair – the cougar snagged and bit at Martin’s clothing, and when the material ripped the force of the action sent him flying through the air, over the town of Springfield and to an island (?!). Eventually, he crafted a raft and floated back to civilization (I am not making this part up).

So, everyone’s learned something: Bart’s learned about his conscious, Lisa’s learned about her dark side, Martin’s learned how to make a raft, and Nelson has discovered his natural curiosity. We close on a close-up of Nelson and a tribute to the NBC Mystery Movie’s credit sequence.

Red Dress Press: “Dial N For Nerder” is an incredibly unusual episode, mostly because of the bizarre combination of noir and reality show present.

The role reversal present in Lisa and Bart’s dilemma is the most interesting twist in their subplot.

This season has explored Lisa’s dark side quite heavily, and never has she seemed more complex than here as, with her very sanity in question, she seeks to conceal the truth rather than reveal it. For Lisa, the outspoken activist, this is quite an interesting step.

This episode also wisely mines Bart’s inherent guilt complex to great effect. He’s always weighed his dark side versus his ability to be goaded into doing the right thing; his caring for Martin’s butterflies mirrors his similarly guilt-induced care of Chirpy Boy and Bart Junior in Bart the Mother, and recalls the depth of his early character.

Nelson investigating the two – versus Milhouse or the more obvious Seymour Skinner- shows innovation. There were lots of nice Quincy and Columbo-esque touches added to his actions in this episode.

Martin was delightfully himself – a resourceful sort, he would be the kind to make his own raft and end up surviving his near-death experience.

The B-Plot was a delicious skewering of the syndicated reality show “Cheaters” – the host is even a terrific take-off of theirs vocally and visually.  Homer’s love affair with food – taken to ludicrous extremes in this episode – is as it always was and fits his character. Portraying the rack of lamb as a sentient being, however, was rather unusual and off-putting. Ultimately, it's not up there with “Brush with Greatness” in the Homer Goes on a Diet pantheon, but fun nonetheless.

Together, the elements come together very well – it’s a cloak-and-dagger show from start to end, and a load of fun from start to finish.

Fun fact: The working title for this episode was ‘N is for Nerder’. The Hitchcock theme was a running one for sure!

Did It Fail at Masonry?: One of the better episodes of the season – worth recording and keeping. Skip the Homer/lamb portions if you can’t stand an over-the-top plot.

What The Screwballs Think: The episode pulled in 7.3 million viewers, up a few hundred thousand from The Debarted.

Springfield Shopper: This is a Krusty’s Klassik Rekap of an episode that aired previously in Season Nineteen. Keep your eyes peeled for a recap of “Smoke On The Daughter”, which should be posted very soon!