The Clown Stays in the Picture

"The Clown Stays in the Picture" is the 14th episode of season 30 of The Simpsons. It aired on February 17, 2019. The episode was dedicated in memory of former production manager Trista H. Navarro, who died on February 6, aged 42.

Plot
At a road block, Bart's phone battery dies so he tries to listen to what Lisa is listening to, and finds Marc Maron's podcast and discovers he interviewed Krusty, where he gets upset once Marc mentions the movie The Sands of Space and starts narrating the story around the movie.

Krusty started his work on the set as a star on the movie Good Cop, Dog Cop. At the idea of a sequel, Good Cop, Dog Cop 2: Golden Revolver, Krusty proposed to produce the movie of the book The Sands of Space.

In the crew, Marge and Homer as production assistants, were hired along other Springfielders, and are going to shoot it in Mexico. But the production of the movie isn't going too well when Krusty argues with the director and he leaves the set, so Krusty becomes the director, but doesn't know how to do it and starts crying.

Krusty starts falling apart, so Marge goes to help him and so he hires her as assistant to the director to decide for him. Her work though interferes with her love with Homer, and Krusty tries to break them, and appear to give in, but once alone, he plots to take him down, giving him hard and dangerous jobs on the set.

Homer is sent to grab a lizard in the middle of a sandstorm and gets unconscious down a ravine, and awaits death down there, but cacti versions of Bart, Lisa and Maggie appears making him change idea, but he gets captured. Krusty refuses to save him, but the crew doesn't give up and goes to save him, using weapons from the movie, which are all fake. The only way to stop it is Marge selling the movie itself to the captures. And after that Krusty's career ended and he went back to kids TV.

Back home, Bart and Lisa asks Homer and Marge how it was to work for the movie, asking what happened to the movie and if Krusty ever saw it. In Mexico, at the El Bozo Loco theater, the movie is shown and Krusty finds out people thinks its a comedy and laugh at the ending.

Production

 * A joke we cut about about movies in the late '80s was Krusty saying: "Nowadays, movies are all made by giant corporations, but back then, movies were made by medium-sized corporations."
 * A song for to sing over was going to be written but the team forgot to.