My Fair Laddy/References
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Trivia
- In the show's entire 17-year run, this is the very first full-length episode centered around Groundskeeper Willie. He was however, the central character in "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace", one of the three segments of "Treehouse of Horror VI", and had a large amount of screentime devoted to him in "Girly Edition"—in which his shack was also destroyed by Bart's shenanigans and left him temporarily homeless.
- Connections: This episode covers the same topic as My Fair Lady. This episode is also somewhat similar to the season 11 episode "Pygmoelian", in the sense that it features another secondary character getting a 'makeover' or 'new look'; the last time it was Moe Szyslak. My Fair Lady is in turn a retelling of Pygmalion.
- Coach Krupt's datebook has "Bombardment" listed as the planed activity for every day, with "Double Bombardment" on Christmas Day.
- The episode was rated TV-PG for drug references, violence, coarse language and sexual references.
- In this episode's end credits, instead of the normal music there was a medley of the songs heard.
- The man in the commercial sits down and the music stops, but when Homer and Eli Stern VI are have stopped talking, he is up again and the music is playing.
- Bart has D- and Lisa B+ on a book report in the song "Adequate".
- Starting with this episode, Anke Engelke took over as the German voice of Marge after her predecessor Elisabeth Volkmann's sudden death.
- When Lisa is singing with Groundskeeper Willie in her bedroom, it is the same as when Stewie from Family Guy sang with a girl that he was teaching to be polite.
Cultural references
- The episode title is a pun on the musical My Fair Lady.
- The musical is referenced throughout the episode, with Lisa in the role of Professor Higgins and Groundskeeper Willie as Eliza Doolittle.
- The episode also features songs similar to the style of the musical.
- Coach Krupt's saying "What is your major malfunction, Simpson?" is a reference to Full Metal Jacket. In fact, the entire scene is modeled after a similar scene in the film, from camera angles to Bart's facial expression.
- The wager that Jimbo Jones makes with Kearney is a reference to Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne.
- The music heard in the Super Bowl commercial for Blue Pants is "Baby Elephant Walk", composed by Henry Mancini for the film Hatari!. This song was previously prominently featured in "Dancin' Homer".
- Various musical numbers from My Fair Lady, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, are parodied in this episode:
- "Adequate" is a parody of "Wouldn't It Be Lovely".
- "Not On My Clothes" is a parody of "The Rain in Spain".
- "Blue Pants Mornin'" is a parody of "Get Me to the Church on Time".
- "Indoors All Night" is a parody of "I Could Have Danced All Night".
- "Longing for the Shack" is a parody of "On the Street Where You Live".
- Willie starts to sing and dance to Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" from the 1935 Fred Astaire film Top Hat, when he gets his groundskeeper job back.
