Helter Shelter
"Helter Shelter"
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Episode Information
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"Helter Shelter" is the fifth episode from Season 14 of The Simpsons that aired December 1, 2002.
Plot
After Homer suffers a brain injury at work, Mr. Burns offers his family tickets in a luxury sky box at a hockey game as compensation. Lisa receives a player's hockey stick for shouting advice to him during the game. However, termites, which were living in the stick, end up eating away at the entire Simpson house. An exterminator says their house should be tented and fumigated, and they cannot return for six months. However, the family has no place to go. They tried to stay with Lenny and then Comic Book Guy but their apartments were too weird. At Moe's, their last resort, Barney and Carl inform the Simpsons about a reality show, where a family is put in a Victorian house, where they must live like it was the year 1895. Homer is reluctant at first, but then they go to the reality show.
At the studio, the executives screen many families and finally they settle on the Simpsons, after viewing Homer's overreactions over nothing. They are taken to the Victorian house and shown around by the Network Executive, who says that they will be filmed round the clock. The only thing of the 20th century there is a "Confessional Room", which is a small room with a video camera where they say what they feel about the lifestyle. The family struggles with all of the drastic changes in their daily life and are pretty miserable, much to the delight of the show's audience. Homer tries to lighten up the family, saying they should be glad on TV, and begin to conform to their new lives cheerily. This is not deemed as entertaining, however, and viewership begins to drop. In attempts to save the show, the executives decide to introduce Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley into the household. But even his presence (and that of a taser which he uses on Homer) does not boost the ratings. Finally, one of the executives comes up with an idea. The house is airlifted at night and put into a river.
The Simpsons are shocked to find what had happened the next morning, and the house finally washes up on shore and falls apart, with Squiggy in it. The network crew is filming it and loving the drama that unfolds. They then break for lunch, but deny the Simpsons any of it. Later on, the family is confronted by a bunch of savage-looking people, who turn out to be contestants in other reality shows, whom the network ditched after they failed in their tasks. They decide to overpower the crew and return to civilization. Together with the Simpsons they attack the crew, overpowering them with sticks & small stones, destroying their banquet and filming equipment and pushing one of the executives over a cliff to his death. Homer then tried to crush the helicopter with a giant boulder but he was pushed into the ground. Finally at home, Homer decides to watch scripted TV shows, as he has had it with reality shows, but the family finds more pleasure in watching him continually spraying himself in the eye with the hose.
