Difference between revisions of "Special Edna/References"

Revision as of 07:58, June 14, 2010

Trivia/Goofs

• According to a sign Skinner passes on the edge of town, Springfield is 2,653 miles from Orlando.
• The original title for this episode is "Love and Marking".
• At the point in the episode where Edna confronts Principal Skinner in front of the hotel about his mother, Principal Skinner informs her that he was in fact in his mothers womb for over nine months. However, it was revealed in "The Principal and the Pauper", that in fact Principal Skinner is a fraud that has been impersonating the real Principal. In that episode, they meet and eventually the town decides they like fake Skinner better than real Skinner.
• The Simpsons visit EFCOT (a parody of Disney's EPCOT Center) in Orlando, Florida to attend the "Teacher of the Year" award, but in the season eleven episode, Kill the Alligator and Run, the Simpsons were banned from setting foot in Florida.
• A member of the Teacher of the Year foundation looks suprisingly like Skinner but with slightly darker skin, black hair, and a gray suit.

• A member of the Bully of the Year foundation looks suprisingly like Superindtendent Chalmers, only with a bigger nose.

Cultural references

• This episode features a parody of the EPCOT Center. A sign outside the park reads "When Every Other Place is Booked," and Homer moans that EFCOT is "even boring to fly over!"
• The references to EPCOT Center being different from Walt Disney World is confusing, since EPCOT is indeed one of the four Disney theme parks in Orlando that makes up Walt Disney World. Homer's reference to Disney World and the location to which he escapes at the end is most likely a reference to the Magic Kingdom park. Alternatively, it may be an indication that EFCOT is a distinct entity from Walt Disney World's Epcot.
• The "Ride Of Broken Dreams" may be a mockery of the Enron scandal. The ride goes up for quite a distance, then suddenly drops steeply and levels out for a while and then drops down into a poor house shed.
• The attractions shown in the episode are:
  • Honey, I Squirted Goo on the Audience! - A parody of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!
  • Great Moments with Mr. Eisner - A parody of Disneyland's Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln
  • The FutureSphere, - A parody of Epcot's Spaceship Earth and Magic Kingdom's If You Had Wings
  • The Home of Tomorrow - A parody of Disneyland's Monsanto House of the Future
  • The World of Tomorrow attraction has some basis in the former Magic Kingdom attraction If You Had Wings, which was sponsored by Eastern Airlines
  • The building where the award ceremony is held is an exact likeness of Epcot's Horizons.
  • The Electric Car of the Future, a parody of World of Motion, which was sponsored by General Motors (its replacement, Test Track, still is sponsored by General Motors).
• The nighttime fireworks/laser display being watched by Homer and Marge is a parody of Epcot's Illuminations show, taking place in a facsimile of Epcot's World Showcase.
• The "World of Tomorrow" ride parodies the fact that most of Epcot's attractions were sponsored by huge corporations (General Electric, AT&T, Exxon, United Technologies) that used their attractions to offer a very clean version of themselves and how they were bringing the future to the American public.
• The teacher who was awarded the title "Teacher of the Year" was reminiscent of Jaime Escalante and the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, where Escalante indeed taught inner city school students that differential equations were more powerful than bullets.
• When Homer and Bart ride the electric car, the gay robots say "One of us! One of us!" This is homage to the classic line from the 1932 film Freaks. The ride, sponsored by "gas producers of America" exhibits a veiled parody of smear campaigns and conspiracies by oil companies (such as the Streetcar Scandal) to squash alternative transportation (such as mass transit and electric cars) and expand the use of gasoline-powered automobiles.
• Edna mentions that she accidentally showed the "R-rated version of Romeo and Juliet", which is the 1968 film adaptation.
• The opening music to the documentary on holes is the beginning of "Fragile" by Sting. This is a reference to the IMAX documentary The Living Sea, whose soundtrack featured the same song.
  • EPCOT had an attraction called The Living Seas from 1986 until 2006.
• When Lisa mocks Bart for befriending Edna, she quotes "put mothballs in the beef stew", a line from the Simpsons' hit single "Do the Bartman".

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