Fear of Flying
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"Fear of Flying"
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Episode Information
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"Fear of Flying" is the eleventh episode of Season 6, which aired on December 18, 1994. The episode was written by David Sacks and directed by Mark Kirkland. Anne Bancroft, Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, George Wendt guest star.
The family discovers Marge's fear of flying after they try to go on vacation with Homer's free airline tickets. On Lisa's advice, Marge visits a psychiatrist to get down to the bottom of her seemingly unexplainable fear.
Plot
Lenny, Carl and Barney pull life threatening pranks on Moe, who laughs off each one. When Homer pulls a harmless and quite lame prank on Moe, he gets booed for it and is banned from the bar. Homer visits all the other bars in Springfield, but finds none of them to his liking.
The last bar in Springfield he comes to is "The Little Black Box", a private bar only for airline pilots. Homer pretends to be one, but is shortly rushed onto a plane when a temporary pilot is needed. Not knowing how to operate it, Homer accidentally damages the plane. In exchange for his silence regarding the inciednet, the carrier (Crazy Clown Airlines) offers Homer and his family a trip to anywhere in the United States (except for Hawaii and Alaska).
Homer eagerly tells his family about their free trip, and everyone seems overjoyed, with the exception of Marge. On the plane, Marge freaks out, revealing to Homer that she has a fear of flying, and demands to be let off. After the traumatic incident, Marge begins to show bizarre behavior, which Lisa sees as suppressing her fear. Homer suggests ignoring Marge's behavior, but this soon reaches the point where he takes her advice and Marge goes to a psychiatrist (played by Ann Bancroft) to deal with her problems. Homer accepts but is opposed to this, because he thinks the shrink will tell her to break up with him.
Through the psychiatrist, Marge begins to explore more about her past. The psychiatrist has Marge remember one of her earliest traumatic experiences, causing Marge to remember her first day of school. After Patty and Selma upset her about scary things to expect, Marge was later ridiculed on the bus for liking the band, The Monkees.
Some time afterward, Marge relates about a dream in which she played the Mother from the TV show "Lost in Space," with Homer playing Dr Smith, and Lisa as Robby the Robot. At the end of the dream, as a spacecraft lifts off, Marge remarks how she yelled for her Father not to go.
When the psychatrist tries to press Marge for more information, Marge is hesitant and tries to change the conversation. After some time, Marge relents, and explains how she saw her Father board a plane, while her Mother explained that he was a pilot. Marge eagerly goes into the plane, only to see that her father was a steward (or to her, a "stewardess") and not a pilot as she was told.
This upsets her, until the psychiatrist explains that Mr. Bouvier helped make male flight attendants common. Even though the psychiatrist feels this is the root of her mental issues, Marge also remembers other things (a relative trying to feed her as a baby and failing, playing as a child with a small airplane that catches fire, Marge and her mother being attacked by a plane in a cornfield).
Cured of her anxiety, she finally gets on a plane filled with confidence; this turns to annoyance as the plane overshoots the runway and lands in the sea.
es:Fear of Flying
