Helter Shelter (The Simpsons)

Plot

After a falling girder at the plant gives Homer a mild head injury, Mr. Burns bribes him with luxury skybox tickets to a hockey game to avoid a lawsuit. Inside the box, Homer, Marge, and Bart ignore the match to enjoy the perks, while Lisa goes down to watch from rink-side. A grateful player gives her his hockey stick for her helpful advice, and Homer mounts it above her bed that night. This act releases a termite swarm that destroys the house overnight, forcing the family out for six months of fumigation.

With every hotel in town booked, they fail to crash with Lenny, Comic Book Guy, or Moe. Barney and Carl then tell them about The 1895 Challenge, a reality show where a family lives in a Victorian house and follows 1895 customs. Homer initially resists but brings the family to audition, and the producers pick them after seeing his over-the-top reactions to minor problems. The Simpsons struggle with the drastic lifestyle changes, which boosts ratings as viewers enjoy their suffering.

Homer eventually lifts their spirits, and they start adapting to the old-fashioned life. When ratings drop, the producers bring in Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley, letting him use a Taser to stir up conflict. That fails to revive interest, so the producers secretly lift the house off its foundation and drop it into a river while the family sleeps.

Production

"Helter Shelter" is a Season 14 episode of The Simpsons, penned by Brian Pollack and Mert Rich with Mark Kirkland directing. It features David Lander reprising his Laverne & Shirley role as Squiggy and boxer Larry Holmes playing himself. This installment holds a technical distinction: it’s the last episode aired that was made with traditional ink-and-paint animation. The very next episode, "The Great Louse Detective," switched to digital ink and paint, a method previously tested in a few earlier episodes like "Radioactive Man" and the "Treehouse of Horror" from season 14.

In the story, the family searches for housing, and Lisa suggests a youth hostel. Bart objects, saying he doesn’t want another lecture from a German backpacker about failing to appreciate the National Park System. A later episode, "The Heartbroke Kid," would see the Simpsons actually turning their own home into a youth hostel to cover Bart’s weight loss camp expenses.

Cultural references

The TV show the Simpson family goes on is a parody of a PBS TV show called The 1900 House, which had a family live in a Victorian house as if it were the year 1900. The scene in which the Simpsons wait outside their house for time to "fly by" is a parody of the opening sequence of King of the Hill. The poison bottle has a face of James Coburn on it. This is the third time Bill Cosby has been parodied on The Simpsons.

There is an extra gag in that the Cosby family are losing ratings on their reality show, so the producers decide on the Simpsons; in the early years, The Cosby Show was a ratings rival with The Simpsons. "Squiggy" being sent to boost The 1895 Challenge ratings is another reference to The Cosby Show, who sent "Smitty" (Adam Sandler) to the Cosby's house. Following Cosby's initial conviction of multiple sexual assault cases in 2018, the scene which parodies Cosby in the auditions for The 1895 Challenge has been cut out of some television airings of this episode.

The episode title is a reference to The Beatles song "Helter Skelter". Bart laments having access only to Mutt and Jeff comic books, though Mutt and Jeff was not created until 1907. Exterminators "A Bug's Death" is a parody of the 1998 Disney/Pixar film A Bug's Life.

Release

The Simpsons episode "Helter Shelter" first aired on Fox in the U.S. on December 1, 2002. That night, about 8.75 million homes tuned in, earning it a Nielsen rating of 8.2 and a 22nd-place finish for the week of November 25 to December 1, 2002. It was Fox's top-rated show that week, outperforming Boston Public, King of the Hill, 24, and Malcolm in the Middle. On December 6, 2011, the episode came out on Blu-ray and DVD as part of The Simpsons – The Complete Fourteenth Season box set.

The set includes an audio commentary featuring staff members Al Jean, Dan Greaney, Carolyn Omine, Kevin Curran, Mark Kirkland, David Silverman, J. Stewart Burns, Allen Glazier, and Steven Dean Moore, plus deleted scenes from the episode. Critics have generally panned "Helter Shelter" since its release. Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide said the premise is "not a terrible idea for an episode, but it's not a particularly exciting one, either." Ryan Keefer of DVD Talk called it "a prime example of [the show's writers] trying to do something funny and falling flat."