The Way We Weren't
"The Way We Weren't"
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Episode Information
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"The Way We Weren't" is the twentieth episode of The Simpsons' fifteenth season. The episode aired on May 9, 2004.
Contents
Plot
When Homer and Bart fight over the use of a beer bottle Milhouse wants to use, it lands them in the Simpson family court, with Lisa presiding as judge. Marge, giving a testimony, tells the kids that when she was in high school, she had her first kiss with Homer, but Homer confesses that it was not his first kiss. Homer recalls that when he was 10, he went to a camp for underprivileged boys, Camp See-A-Tree, where Homer meets Lenny, Carl, and as a counselor, Moe. It turns out the summer camp is more like a prison and they go to work in the kitchen at a rich girls' camp across the lake. Homer finds a retainer and returns it to the girl who lost it, though he cannot see her (they are separated by the kitchen wall). She wants Homer to see her later that night. He does so, even though due to an accident with a switchblade he is wearing an eye patch. He tells Bart and Lisa that she was the prettiest girl he had ever met until he later met their mother, but Marge admits that she was that girl Homer met.
Marge gives her side of the story, saying that she was with Patty and Selma, Helen Lovejoy, Luann Van Houten and Cookie Kwan at their camp, "Camp Land-A-Man". At camp, Marge burns her hair with an iron by accident, turning it brown and she explains that is why Homer did not recognize her in high school. She meets Homer (who gives her a false name, Elvis Jagger Abdul-Jabbar) and they kiss. They agree that the following night they will meet again, but Homer does not come. Marge mentions that she could not trust another boy for years. Homer says he did not return for another date because he fell off a cliff into the lake and drifted to a fat camp, "Camp Flab-Away", which counted Mayor Quimby, Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy as its participants. Although Homer escapes the fat camp and makes his way to Marge's camp, Marge has left the camp only seconds before he arrives, leaving Homer to be sexually harassed by Patty and Selma. Marge now knows the truth and forgives him, but she thinks that Homer won't be able to preserve their love for long. Homer disproves it by showing half of the heart he kept. Marge also kept hers (though for different reasons), and the two kiss until the light fades.
Cultural References
- Marge claims she enjoys Parliament but not Funkadelic in reference to the funk collective popular during the 70's.
- The song played during the kissing fantasies of young Marge and Homer is "Happy Together", by The Turtles.
- The episode title echoes that of the 1973 film The Way We Were.
- Homer's imagined perfect world includes Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Quisp flying by in his spaceship, and the Kool-Aid Man -- whom Homer kills by drinking him.
- Before meeting the Sea Captain by the docks, Homer says "I guess it's Roe v. Wade, and it's my right to choose." This namechecks the landmark American supreme court decision on abortion.
- When the Captain rows Homer across the lake to meet Marge, he sings: "I met her on the mountain, there I took her life. I met her on the mountain, Stabbed her with my knife." These are lyrics from the folk song Tom Dooley, as made famous by The Kingston Trio.
- This episode shares the same major storyline as the Who's The Boss? episodes It Happened One Summer I & II, where Tony and Angela discover they shared a kiss while at camp.
Awards
This episode was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Animated Program (for programming less than one hour) selection.
Trivia
- The three girls Bart has kissed are one of Lisa's friends, Emily, who kissed Bart on a dare (his first kiss, in "Flaming Moe's"), Jessica Lovejoy ("Bart's Girlfriend"), and Gina Vendetti ("The Wandering Juvie"). He would later kiss Darcy in "Little Big Girl", as well as an unnamed girl in "The Monkey Suit".
- The scene where Young Homer tumbles down the cliff and into the lake is strikingly similar to the grown-up Homer's legendary fall down Springfield Gorge in "Bart the Daredevil".
- Moe breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera, saying "And that's the origin of that!" before Bart's prank calls when Marge asks for Homer's false name, in which Moe backfires.
Errors
- In this episode, Milhouse states that his kiss with Homer in the treehouse was his first kiss. However, in the season 3 episode, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" Milhouse shared his first kiss with Samantha Stanky.
- In the Season 19 episode Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind, while traveling through his memories, Homer (literally) destroys the memory of his first kiss in this episode. Bart then makes him believe that Homer's first kiss was with Apu. But this does not count because Frink's machine malfunctioned and Homer now believes it is with Marge again.
