On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister
"On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister"
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Episode Information
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"On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons' sixteenth season.
Contents
Synopsis
The students of Springfield Elementary School head for a field trip to the Springfield Glacier at 3:00am. Unfortunately, the glacier has melted heavily, and Lisa blames the melt on global warming, as a ranger tries to shut her up. Bart torments her as Lisa desperately asks the students to save the glacier, to no success. Meanwhile, while Homer and Marge go shopping at the Sprawl-Mart, Grampa loses his people greeting abilities and wants Homer to succeed him as the people greeter. Homer does a successful job of being the new people greeter that the manager says Homer can get a full time position without any form of advancement.
The next day, Lisa gets a restraining order filed against Bart. Under the order, according to Chief Wiggum, Bart is forced to be twenty feet away from Lisa at all times, or he will face more legal consequences. Wiggum shows the family a Gary Busey-hosted videotape, "Get Out of My Dreams and Also Out of My Car: A Guide to Your Restraining Order", which teaches Bart how to live with a restraining order. To make the restraining order more fun, Homer makes a 20 foot pole that can be used to keep them apart easier, but Lisa start's abusing the power of the restraining order and follow's him wherever he goes, he can't even enter the school and is forced to sit outside in the rain. Marge appeals in court to get the restraining order removed. Bart testifies that Lisa is bad and the judge has no sense of humor, but Judge Constance Harm only increases the restraining order to 200 feet (60 metres to the europeans in the back of the courthouse). Bart can now only live at the edge of the Simpson family property.
When he lives at the edge of the property, Bart takes a look at nature and embraces it. At Sprawl-Mart, Homer is forced to work overtime without being paid, and he cannot leave the store since he had a v-chip inplanted that will shock him painfully if he leaves, and lobby the associates at Sprawl-Mart to shut the store down, but they insist that they have learned to accept the things they cannot change and steal whatever is not nailed down, and Homer leaves the store on his own, along with several plasma TVs. Bart, still in the backyard, does a statue of Lisa using wicker. She actually likes it so much, she forgives him, and as it is being burnt, she throws the restraining order and the pole Homer made into the fire.
Trivia
- This is the first episode written by former Futurama writer Jeff Westbrook.
- Grampa was earlier seen working at Sprawl Mart in the episode The Fat and the Furriest.
- Gary Busey is the first celebrity this season to host a Troy McClure-esque video. A few episodes later, Robert Wagner would do the same.
- Bart Simpson is acting like an animal for the first time
Cultural References
- The title is taken from the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
- The episode's couch gag spoofs the 1977 science education movie Powers of Ten, which shows the house, Springfield, the continent, the planet, the Milky Way, the universe and back to Homer's body. This gag was first used in The Ziff Who Came to Dinner.
- The song played during the Lisa/Bart montage is "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police.
- The "homage" to Lisa from wicker is a reference to the 1973 ( and 2006 re-make) film. The Wicker Man.
Errors
- Samantha Stanky from Bart's Friend Falls in Love is clearly visible in the field trip however in her episode she was sent to a girls only school.