Difference between revisions of "I Am Furious (Yellow)"

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"I Am Furious (Yellow)" is the eighteenth episode of season 13 of The Simpsons and the two-hundred and eighty-seventh episode overall. It originally aired on April 28, 2002. The episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Chuck Sheetz. It guest stars Stan Lee as himself.

Synopsis

"Bart is inspired by one of the school's motivational speakers to become a cartoonist, in which he creates a popular comic and later internet series titled "Angry Dad", which is based on Homer's anger problems. Homer becomes the town's laughing stock, and decides to give up anger completely."

Plot

A career day is being held at Springfield Elementary School where Kirk Van Houten gives a talk about his job. The talk doesn't go down well and Principal Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel discuss how to improve career day in Skinner's office, with Lisa giving her input. Lisa and Skinner then go to the Springfield Speakers Bureau to find someone successful to come and speak at the school. They get cartoonist Geoff Jenkins in to give a talk about how he made his cartoon, Danger Dog. During the assembly, Jenkins shows a clip from the Danger Dog Easter Special then tells the students about how he doesn't consider what he does as real work and only doodled in class rather than doing any work. Upon hearing this, Skinner pulls the fire alarm to end the assembly early.

In class, the kids all draw their own cartoon characters, all of which are parodies of Danger Dog. Bart is impressed with the comic he makes and goes to The Android's Dungeon to get Comic Book Guy's opinion. Comic Book Guy calls Bart's comic "lame and derivative" but then Stan Lee comes in and offers to look at Bart's comic too. Stan Lee also doesn't like Bart's comic but tells him to keep trying to come up with ideas. Back at home, Bart tries to come up with an idea for his comic. After only coming up with existing ideas, he notices Homer outside struggling with a lawn chair. Bart then draws that and calls his new character "Angry Dad". Bart follows Homer around his day-to-day life until he gets enough ideas to make a comic.

At school, everybody loves Angry Dad, although Lisa complains about the character just being their dad. Bart then takes the comic to The Android's Dungeon where Comic Book Guy deems it "rack-worthy". Bart then notices that Stan Lee is still at the store, and Comic Book Guy tells Bart that he never left. Stan Lee then upsets Database by cramming a The Thing figure into his Batmobile toy. Later, during a signing session at school, Todd Linux from BetterThanTV.com approaches Bart and tells him that he wants to make Angry Dad into an Internet cartoon. Bart takes Lisa to go and meet Todd Linux at the BetterThanTV.com office. Linux shows them around the office and takes them through the creative process before he releases the first episode of Angry Dad onto the Internet.

Angry Dad quickly becomes a hit and everyone in town loves it. Homer finds it funny himself until he realizes that Angry Dad is based on him. Upon realizing that Bart made it, he goes home to confront Bart about it. On the way home, Homer is spotted by fans of Angry Dad who stop his car and force him out of it, before Moe crashes the car. Homer gets home and immediately starts strangling Bart. Lisa then points out that Homer has anger issues, which he accepts having and decides to do something about. Homer tries to keep himself calm throughout the day, which means that Bart can't get any more content for Angry Dad. However, whenever Homer starts to get angry, he gets a boil on his neck, which he then pushes back in. Bart then sets up a trap to make Homer angry then he and Milhouse go to BetterThanTV.com to tell them that he'll have new content soon. However, when they get there, they find that he company went out of business and Angry Dad was cancelled as a result. Upon hearing this news, Bart rushes home to try and stop Homer from falling into the trap.

Homer arrives home first and notices a note taped to the door saying that there's free donuts in Bart's treehouse. Homer goes up to the treehouse but falls into Bart's trap. He is put through pain and ends up falling into a pool of green paint. Homer starts rampaging through town and people think that he is The Incredible Hulk. When Stan Lee sees this, he claims that he is the Hulk and tries to transform. Eventually, Homer is tackled to the ground by the police and sent to Springfield General Hospital. At the hospital, Dr. Hibbert tells the family that Bart's prank probably saved Homer's life because his anger would have overwhelmed his systems if he kept trying to bottle it. When Homer gets discharged from hospital, he and Bart go fishing where Bart keeps trying to rile Homer up.

Production

The episode idea came from Matt Selman, who was inspired by Matt Groening who would tell the story about how he was considered the class clown and would always be cartooning and never paying attention in school. Selman thought that if Groening went to school to tell the story that it would be the last message that the teachers and principal would want to hear.^[1] The episode was partially inspired by web cartoons that the producers themselves had done, including Queer Duck and Hard Drinkin' Lincoln, both created by Mike Reiss.^[2]

The Angry Dad and other BetterThanTV.com cartoons were originally going to be done as Flash animations. However, the Film Roman Flash animation department wouldn't have been able to get it done in time for the episode. Director Chuck Sheetz then drew everything himself in a style that mimicked Flash animation.^[3] Producer Matt Selman wanted Homer to fall into blue paint, which would mix with his yellow skin color to become green, rather than just green paint. However, nothing came of this idea.^[1]

Reception

Nathan Ditum (from Total Film) ranked Stan Lee's appearance as the 12th best guest appearance in the show's history.^[4] Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide called the episode one of the better installments from season 13, referring to it as "very good" and saying that "the series has milked Homer's rage as one of its chief sources of humor for years, but it does so in creative and satisfying ways here".

References

Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to "I Am Furious (Yellow)".