Tennis the Menace
"Tennis the Menace"
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Episode Information
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Synopsis
The Springfield Retirement Castle holds a talent show, which the Simpsons attend. Grampa wins the show after signing a bad version of "What's New, Pussycat?" His prize is a free autopsy, so the Simpsons go to a funeral salesman. Instead, Homer realizes that a certain kind of cemetery monument uses the same amount of cement as a tennis court, and so Homer decides to get the house a tennis court, even though Homer mistook tennis for foxy boxing and, as it is, The Simpsons can hardly afford their own house. The court is very popular with Springfield's residents, and yet, these residents mock Homer and Marge for losing all the time due to Homer's absent-mindedness. (Lou calls them the "L.A. Clippers of backyard tennis"). Homer tries to please Marge by entering Krusty's celebrity tournament, the "Krusty Kharity Klassic". However Homer is a hopeless tennis player and so Marge "dumps" him and enters with Bart as her new partner. Homer is outraged that he was abandoned for a ten year old. He receives a nightmare where Bart and Marge are married and he is a wall trophy, after being shot at a guillotine factory. Homer enters the tournament with Lisa as his partner. The tournament takes place and in the stands are leading tennis pros Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Venus and Serena Williams. At the tournament, Homer dumps Lisa for Venus. In response, Marge replaces Bart with Serena as her partner. Ultimately, Serena and Venus replace Marge and Homer with Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, respectively. This forces the family to go back to the bench and resume their normal places in the family; as they enjoy the exhibition of top-class tennis, they agree that it is better to watch things than to do things and Homer offers to go eat dinner with money he took from Pete Sampras' wallet.
Cultural References
- The title is a play on the comic strip and movie Dennis the Menace.
- The episode is notable partly for the competition that emerges between Homer and Bart over Marge, and Lisa indeed makes a reference to Oedipus.
- When Andre Agassi introduces himself at the tennis match, Homer comments "The wrestler?", confusing him for professional wrestler André the Giant.
- Grandpa sings the "What's New Pussycat?" theme by Tom Jones at the talent show, replacing "whoa whoa whoa" with "ow ow ow," and "oh, god, no," having injured himself attempting to dance.
- When Homer is in the shower, Bart makes him scream in the style of Mary Had A Little Lamb, then Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Goofs
- Homer mistook tennis for foxy boxing, but didn't know the name. He called it, "the sport where the chicks whale on each other", but in Lisa on Ice he knew the "sport" had a name.
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Production
- This episode is also the second episode to be digitally colored instead of colored traditionally through cel animation, a practice that would later be used starting with the season 14 episode, The Great Louse Detective.The first was season seven's "Radioactive Man"
