Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?
"Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?"
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Episode Information
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"Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" is the third episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons. It aired on October 24, 1999.
Plot
Springfield Elementary School takes a trip to The Springfield Shopper headquarters and there Homer goes off the tour where he was supposed to with Bart and Lisa when he smells food. Homer then finds out the newspaper food critic Mimi is leaving and Homer eats the food at the party and sings a song about food and the editor is so impressed he hires Homer to be a food critic. Homer starts by writing an example review on the typewriter but it is terrble at it so Lisa decides to type up reviews on her computer by taking the nonsense Homer says and turning it into actual words which Homer would then send in. (just like what Bart and Lisa did with Grandpa in The Front.). However, Homer gives all the restaurants good reviews, resulting in a massive surge in obesity of town residents including the Flander, Lenny and Mr Burns (those shins break under his new weight). He later talks to his fellow critics who say they sometimes have to give bad reviews. Homer being how he is takes this too seriously and gives every restaurant (and Marge) bad reviews, anering Lisa who quits ghost writing for Homer. Homers unjust review anger every resterant owner in Springfield, making them want to kill him. Their plan is that a french chef/ assasin will bake a poison éclair for Homer who will eat it once he reach's his stand at the eat-off reviewing all the restaurant stands. There, Homer sees the éclair but it is a good thing Lisa discovers whats going on, she tells him the éclair is going to kill him. Homer would rather die than not eat the pastry but thenLisa says it is low fat and Homer screams in horror and drops it in Moleman's gruel and then Homer destroys the eat-off and everyone chases him.
Cultural references
- The title references the 1967 film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
- Homer's song about food resembles, in part, the tune "I Feel Pretty", from West Side Story.
- The typewriter without an "e" refers to the film Misery
- Props seen at Planet Springfield: Herbie from The Love Bug, the coffee mug from Heartbeeps, the cane from Citizen Kane, a script from The Cable Guy, an alien resembling one from Mars Attacks! (but pink), a model of the Titanic, models of an X-Wing and TIE fighters, and a statue of C-3PO.
- When Lisa and Homer discuss the language to use in his first review Homer attempts to augment nouns with "groin-grabbingly". Lisa offers the word "transcendent" to which Homer replies "What about groin-grabbingly transcendent?". "Groin Grabbingly Transcendent" is the name of a song by Jason Becker on his album The Blackberry Jams.
- The episode was also the second episode of The Simpsons to feature a reference to the movie The French Connection (The first was "The Springfield Connection").
- Luigi references the "horse head" scene from The Godfather.
- Homer typing the same thing over and over spoofs the 1980 film The Shining.
- Citizen Kane is referenced multiple times throughout the episode, such as the "cane from Citizen Kane" and the scene where Homer tells Lisa "people will think what I tell them to think", and that she "can't do this to me, I'm Homer Simpson!" as she leaves the room.