Sunday, Cruddy Sunday
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"Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" is the twelfth episode of The Simpsons' tenth season. The episode aired on January 31, 1999, on the same day as Super Bowl XXXIII and the series premiere of Family Guy.
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[edit] Plot
When Bart and Lisa go with the students of Springfield Elementary on a field trip to the post office, Bart gets a piece of undeliverable mail as a souvenir, which is a Val-U-Qual coupon book, which he gives to Homer as a birthday present. He uses one of his coupons at a tire business on a free wheel balancing, and is told by the "customer care specialist" that his car will not take a balance. This man informs Homer that he will need four new tires because legally they cannot let customers drive off with faulty tires. Homer reluctantly accepts. He meets a man named Wally Kogen, a travel agent who only came into the business to use the phone and ends up getting the "road king package". He shares with Homer how he got shafted and the two form a bond. They go to Moe's for a beer, watching a special on the Super Bowl. Wally says his travel agency has a charter bus going to the game and suggests to Homer that he can fill the bus and ride for free. They ask Moe to come to the Super Bowl, and he agrees (knowing that his "favorite team" the Atlanta Falcons is in it), as do Lenny, Carl, and other prominent men of Springfield. This episode was animated long before anyone knew who would go to Super Bowl XXXIII. The producers emphasized this by the deliberately obvious audio splicing in Moe's Tavern, and the awkward way the men held the beer mugs in front of their mouths (so you could not read their lips).
The posse, led by Homer, along with Bart, go to the Super Bowl at Miami's Pro Player Stadium on the bus and arrive for pre-game festivities with Rosey Grier (offering sermons), "Take a leak with NFL greats", Troy Aikman (drawing caricatures of everyone he sees on a dune buggy), and catch a pass from Dan Marino. Expecting to get in the game, they are stopped when a scalper offers them tickets. Homer threatens to give the man a caning. They check in, but realize that the tickets they have are made of some sort of cracker. When Bart sees the halftime show costumes they use them to knock over the guards and rush into the stadium. However, stadium security confronts them, and they are locked up in the stadium jail.
Homer's posse, in jail, is freed when Dolly Parton (whom Kogen knows) uses her extra-strength makeup remover to dissolve the lock and release them. As they are freed, they run into a skybox suite and get a view of the game (and plenty of snacks), until Rupert Murdoch arrives and confronts them, as he owns the skybox. He gets guards to seize them, but Homer's posse runs away and head to the field, until they get lost in the sea of players when they win the Super Bowl. The group ends up in the locker room, and everyone has a Super Bowl ring on one of their hands at game's end. Homer is hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa try to find their own activity at home. They use the crafting kit, "Vincent Price's Egg Magic", for their activity time. They succeed, until they realize that the product was shoddy because the feet were not included (even though the box states, "Feet Included"). Despite the kit originally being from 1967, Marge decides to call the help-line number listed on the box. Surprisingly, she is greeted with the voice of Vincent Price — who, in a slightly unsettling manner, assures her that his grandson Jody will bring the missing feet to them. Lisa expresses surprise, believing Price to be dead.
The episode ends with John Madden and Pat Summerall analyzing the events of the episode. Despite endorsing the character Wally Kogen and the subplot, they are infuriated by a Super Bowl episode guest starring Dolly Parton that does not feature "any football or singing". Madden declares the episode a slap to the show's fanbase, who he says have taken "so much nonsense" from the program. They eventually leave on a bus, nonsensically (as Madden comments) driven by Vincent Price.
[edit] Trivia/Goofs
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- Homer owns the Denver Broncos after receiving them as a gift from Hank Scorpio in "You Only Move Twice". Coincidentally (intended or not), Homer wanted the Denver Broncos to win the Super Bowl.
- The people Homer brings to the Super Bowl are:
Bart, Comic Book Guy, Bumblebee Man, Ned Flanders, Lenny, Carl, Moe, Barney, Apu, Squeaky Voiced Teen, Reverend Lovejoy, Krusty the Clown, Dr. Nick Riviera, Sideshow Mel, Jasper, Kirk Van Houten, Dr. Hibbert, Captain McCallister, The Blue-Haired Lawyer, Charlie, Chief Wiggum, Principal Seymour Skinner, Crazy Old Man, Kent Brockman, and Hans Moleman.
- The episode along with many others features a deliberate obfuscation of the location of Springfield. When Marge is on the phone with the Vincent Price's Egg Magic people, she is instructed to leave her address in order to get the missing feet that were advertised on the box as being included. Marge gives the beginning of the address but when she gets to the city and state, Maude walks into view causing Marge to say, "...Springfield, Oh-hiya, Maude!" This lead the viewer to think she was about to say Ohio, one of many states with a town called Springfield.
- The episode claims that the extra four digits in ZIP codes are used as "citizen relocation codes".
- At "High Pressure Tire Sales" (the place where Homer meets Wally), Wally states he fell for the "stem lube scam". In response, Homer says "Even I didn't fall for that; although winter is coming." This episode takes place around a week before and during the Super Bowl, which takes place in mid-winter. This can be regarded as a goof, or an act of Homer's stupidity
[edit] Censorship
At the beginning of Act III, there is a Super Bowl commercial where it shows sexually attractive women servicing a man's car. At the end of the commercial (where a woman is shown wearing a cross necklace next to a cleavage-revealing top), the tagline is "The Catholic Church: We've made a few...changes". In later FOX airings, the line was changed to "The Church: We've made a few...changes" due to complaints from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The Latin American dub of this episode also changed "The Catholic Church" to just "The Church" when this episode was translated into Spanish. The syndicated version in America has the original "Catholic Church" line. The season 10 DVD set version has the original "Catholic Church" line as well, but the closed captioning shows the line from the edited rebroadcast (where it's just referred to as "The Church").
[edit] Cultural references
- The title of this episode comes from the 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday as well as the 1983 U2 song of the same name.
- The name Wally Kogen is a nod to Simpsons writing team Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky, who penned the previous Super Bowl episode, "Lisa the Greek". Football players named Kogen and Wolodarsky were also mentioned in "The Telltale Head", "Bart vs. Thanksgiving" and "When Flanders Failed".
- Vincent Price's inclusion in this episode is a reference to rumors that Coca-Cola was going to use spliced together audio clips of Price from his various roles to endorse Coca-Cola.
- The "Vincent Price's Egg Magic" kit is a reference to the "Vincent Price's Shrunken Head" kits, which were a popular toy in the 1970s. The set allowed you to turn a peeled apple into a "shrunken head" of sorts using the provided tools and some household items.
- Marge describes one of the eggs as "egg-cellent", which is one of the catchphrases of Egghead, a Batman villain who was played by Vincent Price.
- When Marge is speaking to Vincent Price she mentions The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
- When Rupert Murdoch demands Homer and the other VIP-box tresspassers to be seized, Homer and the others run away in Three Stooges fashion.
- When Dolly Parton goes to the half-time show, she wears a mask of a white-eared Snoopy and flies on a jet pack.
- The coach in Homer's fantasy about going to the Super Bowl bears a striking similarity to long-time Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.
[edit] Soundtrack
- The song that is played while Homer waits for his car is the popular "Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Coincidentally, Julius Wechter, who wrote that tune, died the day after this episode aired.
- The song that plays while Homer and the guys are horsing around in the bus, and briefly at the beginning of the end credits, is "Wild Weekend" by NRBQ.
- The song that plays while Homer and the guys run through the stadium is "Song 2" by Blur.
[edit] Uniforms
The winning team in this episode is wearing red uniforms. In Super Bowl XXXIII, the Denver Broncos (who wear blue uniforms, and white uniforms in the Super Bowl) defeated the Atlanta Falcons (who wore red uniforms until 1990, and from 2003 to the present). However, in the episode "You Only Move Twice", which aired in 1996, the Denver Broncos are seen wearing red uniforms also. That may be a variation of their old uniforms, which were actually orange in color, and used until 1997.
[edit] External links
- "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" at the Internet Movie Database
