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 20th episode of The Simpsons' fifteenth season. The episode aired on May 9, 2004.
Plot
In the morning Bart, Milhouse and Ralph are introduced to cousin of the twins Sherri and Terri, and all go to play spin the bottle in Bart's treehouse. Milhouse gets to kiss the girl, but she backed away and he accidently kissed Homer. Then Homer and Bart fight over the use of a beer bottle Milhouse wanted to use (the beer actually landed "safely" into Homer's mouth, who drank it while napping), 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, and if she'd known that he was that boy al those years ago then she never would have married him.
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, the directors refused to believe he wasn't ateending the camp and strap him into an excercise belt machine for hours. Although Homer escapes the fat camp and makes his way to Marge's camp, Marge has left the camp only seconds before he arrives. When he arrives he was told by Marge's sisters that she hates him, Homer says that what they had was special. Patty kisses Homer and asks sarcasstically if that was special, to which Homer says no.
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 shaped stone he kept. Marge also kept hers (though for different reasons), and the two kiss until the light fades.
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.
