The Springfield Connection

Did You Know?

• The episode finished 58th in ratings for the week of May 1–7, 1995, with a Nielsen rating of 7.9.
• Robin Oliver rates the episode thumbs up in a review in The Sydney Morning Herald.
• Gary Russell and Gareth Roberts comment that the highlight of the episode is Marge's training, especially her sharpshooting on the firing range.

Plot

On the drive home from a concert, Homer and Marge end up in a rough neighborhood. Snake tricks Homer into losing twenty dollars at a Three-card Monte game. Marge exposes the scam, sending Snake running, then knocks him out with a garbage can lid. The thrill of the chase makes her realize how boring her daily life has become, so she decides to become a police officer.

At first she enjoys the job, but soon grows frustrated with lazy coworkers and citizens who constantly break the law—including Homer, who parks across three handicapped spots. When he grabs her hat and mocks her, she tickets him and then arrests him. After getting out of jail, Homer hosts an illegal poker game and discovers Herman running a counterfeit jeans operation in the garage. Marge shows up and arrests Herman and his men just as they are about to attack Homer.

While she is handcuffing the others, Herman grabs Homer and escapes to Bart's tree house. He tries to lower himself using a pair of fake jeans as a rope, but the shoddy stitching gives way and he falls. Marge knew the jeans would fail because she has bought so many pairs for her family. Chief Wiggum and the other officers take the counterfeit jeans for themselves, and Wiggum tells Marge the evidence has vanished, so they cannot hold Herman. Disgusted by the corruption, Marge quits the force.

Production

The episode was penned by Jonathan Collier and directed by Mark Kirkland. Collier drew inspiration from the wife of former executive producer Mike Reiss, who had once seriously pursued becoming a police officer but never followed through. David Mirkin came up with the extended laughing scene where officers mock Marge, which ends with a surprising twist as Wiggum says "welcome aboard." Mirkin enjoyed the bit so much he reused it at the episode's close.

Marge uses a hand puppet named McGriff the crime dog, who says "Help me bite crime." This puppet pays homage to McGruff the Crime Dog; the producers originally wanted the real McGruff but couldn't secure permission. The counterfeit jeans plot was suggested because the jeans market was booming at the time, and Mirkin felt it was ripe for satire. While animating the gun training sequence, Korean animators struggled to correctly depict a shell ejecting from a gun, as firearms were illegal in Korea.

They had to ask American animators for help, who told them to study movies for reference. Marge's police uniform was initially designed with her hair standing up as usual, topped by her hat. Director Mark Kirkland found this layout awkward for staging scenes, so the design was changed to have her hair pulled down. Mirkin later said that if the original design had been used, he would have requested a change because the goal was to show Marge as a serious officer.

Cultural references

The episode's title and Herman's criminal enterprise both nod to the 1971 film The French Connection. Its couch gag mimics the James Bond gun barrel sequence, particularly resembling Sean Connery's version. The police station briefing and the background and end credits music parody the 1980s drama Hill Street Blues. Marge appears on an episode of COPS, and McGriff the dog is a nod to McGruff the Crime Dog, a U.S. police public relations mascot.

Her training sequences pay homage to Police Academy, Bullitt, and Speed. Marge's struggle to climb the wall in the obstacle course mirrors a similar moment for the lone female cadet in An Officer and a Gentleman. The Springfield Pops perform the Star Wars theme at an outdoor concert; Homer, thinking composer John Williams is dead, complains about laser effects and mirrored balls. Frustrated with Marge's new job, Homer draws a line on the floor and says he is acting "a la I Love Lucy."

He also tells Herman that Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Antoine Bugle Boy are victims of the counterfeit jeans ring.

Analysis

Kurt M. Koenigsberger, in his essay within the collection Leaving Springfield, examines a scene from the episode where Homer comments on the Springfield Pops playing the Star Wars theme. Koenigsberger sees the joke as a mix-up between high art and popular entertainment: Marge views the Pops as high culture and assumes her uncouth husband will need coaxing to appreciate it. But Homer already considers Star Wars a "classic," which for him means its composer must be dead and the performance must lack light shows or glitter balls.

Koenigsberger uses this to argue that Homer is applying a tactic typical of literary modernism. In their study of Willy Russell's play Educating Rita, Rebecca Mahon and Nick Chedra point to Marge's wish to "enter the world" as an illustration of their concept "Into the World." They observe that the episode relies on comedy and parody to show Marge's frustrations, whether from corrupt coworkers, music that spoofs old police dramas, or the moment she has to arrest her husband.

They compare Marge's journey to that of Rita, noting that both women later come to regret stepping into that new world. In the book The Simpsons and Philosophy, Gerald J. Erion and Joseph A. Zeccardi use this episode as an example in their chapter on Marge's moral drive. They claim Marge possesses virtuous character traits akin to those described by Aristotle, pointing out that whether she is shutting down a counterfeit jeans operation in her garage in "The Springfield Connection," fleeing a cult in "The Joy of Sect," or standing up to a possessed house in a "Treehouse of Horror," she rarely lacks courage.

They add that her vigilantism in this episode and her escape from the Movementarian commune show she is genuinely brave without being reckless.