Difference between revisions of "Take My Life, Please"

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"I'm going to find out what Dondelinger did last summer! Twenty-two years ago! In the winter!"

―Homer Simpson

"Take My Life, Please" is the tenth episode of season 20 of The Simpsons and the four-hundred and thirtieth episode overall. It originally aired on February 15, 2009. The episode was written by Don Payne and directed by Steven Dean Moore.

Synopsis

"Vance Connor is inducted into the Springfield Wall of Fame, and Homer recalls how he ran against Vance for school president. After discovering that the real ballot box was hidden, Homer searches for it and finds it - only to discover that he should have won. The family go to Luigi's restaurant, and meet a man who can tell people's fates by stirring tomato sauce, and Homer sees what his life would've been like had he been class president."

Plot

A man named Vance Connor is inducted into the Springfield Wall of Fame, and Homer recounts how he ran against Vance for class president in high school and lost. Later, at Moe's Tavern, Carl and Lenny confess to Homer that his old high school principal had ordered them to bury the ballot box containing the votes to the election. After Homer and Lenny dig up the ballot box, Lisa counts the votes, and Homer is shocked to see that the votes put him as the winner. Outraged, he meets his old principal in a retirement center, who explains why he had to hide the ballot box: Two student athletes had talked their classmates into voting for Homer so that, after he had won, they could laugh at him all the way through high school and at every reunion. Al Gore, himself, appears in Moe's Tavern and told Homer how he had felt when he had the 2000 presidential election stolen from him. The Simpsons later have dinner at Luigi's, where Homer remains miserable. Luigi Risotto introduces him to his saucier, who he claims can tell what someone's life could have been like by stirring tomato sauce in a certain way. By using his magical tomato sauce, he helps Homer see what his life would have been like if he had won the election: Homer would have been rich, he would have had a better position at the nuclear plant, would have lived in a mansion on the site where the Flanders now live and wouldn't be bald. The kids would not have been born because Homer would have remembered to use protection before sex. Homer is depressed after seeing that his life would have been a lot better if he had won, even leaping into the pot to try to "live in the sauce".

Homer later agrees to take a walk with Marge to the Springfield Wall of Fame where his name has been put up (replacing Seymour Skinner). A boy then has his picture taken with him. Homer, now much happier, goes to a Korean restaurant that Bart says 'sells beef that spells the date of your death'.

Production

It was the first episode of The Simpsons to air in 720p high-definition television, though not the first time the show has appeared in high-definition, as The Simpsons Movie was rendered in HD.

Reception

"Take My Life, Please" was nominated for a 2010 Writers Guild of America award in Animation, but it lost to "Wedding for Disaster".^[1]

References

Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to "Take My Life, Please".