Last Tap Dance in Springfield

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

The Simpsons episode
"Last Tap Dance in Springfield"
Episode no.	246
Prod. code	BABF15
Orig. airdate	May 7, 2000
Show runner(s)	Mike Scully
Written by	Julie Thacker
Directed by	Nancy Kruse
Chalkboard	"I will not dance on anyone's grave."
Couch gag	The living room is a jungle. Marge, Lisa, Bart, and Maggie swing in on a vine gracefully, like Tarzan. Homer, however, swings past the couch and crashes, like George of the Jungle.
DVD commentary	Mike Scully George Meyer Ian Maxtone-Graham Julie Thacker Yeardley Smith Nancy Kruse
Season 11 September 26, 1999 – May 21, 2000 "Beyond Blunderdome" "Brother's Little Helper" "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" "Treehouse of Horror X" "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" "Eight Misbehavin'" "Take My Wife, Sleaze" "Grift of the Magi" "Little Big Mom" "Faith Off" "The Mansion Family" "Saddlesore Galactica" "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" "Missionary: Impossible" "Pygmoelian" "Bart to the Future" "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" "Kill the Alligator and Run" "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge" "Behind the Laughter" List of all The Simpsons episodes
Seasons 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21

"Last Tap Dance in Springfield" is the twentieth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons and the second one written by (then) showrunner Mike Scully's wife, Julie Thacker. It aired on May 7, 2000.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 3 Cultural references 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Plot

On a trip to the mall, Homer sees an optometrist to get his eyes examined, and at the same time, Marge and Lisa find items for a camping trip Bart is going to take. Marge sees a marquee for the film Tango de La Muerte and she and Lisa decide to see it. Lisa identifies with the main female character, a bookworm named "Lisabella" whom the Tango champion asks to be his partner. This interests Lisa, who wants to take dance lessons. She eventually does, but her hopes of being a dancer are crushed when she's forced to take tap lessons from a former Shirley Temple-esque child star named Vicki Valentine and made worse by the fact that Lisa isn't very good at tapping (while the socially inept Ralph Wiggum is so professional that he's made the show's star) and is relegated to pulling the curtain to open the show.

Lisa's recital is coming up, and she has a problem. That is, until Professor Frink attaches a device to her shoes, making them automatically tap at any percussive sound. She becomes a star at the show, but when the audience applauds her, her shoes go out of control. Homer stops the shoes from going haywire by merely tripping Lisa. Lisa confesses that she's not cut out for dancing and Homer suggests that Lisa become a playwright in the same vein as David Mamet (by writing a play about people coming to terms with themselves and loading the play up with "lots of swears").

Meanwhile, Bart and Milhouse sneak out of their camping trip after discovering that Nelson Muntz will be there with them. They decide to hide in the mall and spend a week there, having shoe fights and filling their stomachs with candy and cookie dough. This prompts Chief Wiggum to do an investigation of the shenanigans at the mall, which Wiggum at first thinks is caused by a giant rat. He then releases a puma inside the mall to catch the rat, but Bart and Milhouse use a ball of yarn to distract the puma. Chief Wiggum, seeing the a piece of yarn hanging from the puma's mouth think it's the rat's tail and decides the case is closed.

[edit] Production

According to the DVD commentary, episode writer Julie Thacker came up with the story when she started enrolling her five daughters into dance classes during the summer. She noted that she didn't particularly like the teachers' methods and the other children's rude parents.

[edit] Cultural references

• ACME Corporation — Chief Wiggum uses rat traps (to catch whom he thinks is the culprit of the mall vandalism) from the same company Wile E. Coyote patronized.
• Jaws — Wiggum's remark about being "crazy about the safety of the public" is taken from the 1975 thriller.
• Korg and Moog synthesizer — The "MORG" synthesizer at Stan's Keyboards (a store at Springfield Mall) combines the brand names of the synthesizer and keyboard.
• Last Tango in Paris — The episode title is a play on the movie.
• RoboCop — The "Cyborganizer" show Homer watches is a spoof of the 1980s science fiction-police movie.
• Shirley Temple — Former child actress Lil' Vicki Valentine is based on Temple.^[1] Like Temple, Valentine has remained active in her profession and starred in a series of 1930s films where she dances with an African American man who looks like Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Other Temple references:
  • "On the Good Ship Lollipop" — "Spaceship Lollipop" is a parody.
• Vicki Valentine's line about tapping Morse code until her feet bled is an obscure reference to a 1970s Saturday Night Live sketch where an adult Shirley Temple (played by Laraine Newman) uses the tap-dancing that made her famous as a child as Morse code to save a ship from sinking [1].
• The film "Tango de La Muerte" is loosely based on the Baz Luhrmann film Strictly Ballroom, most notably the characters costumes during the dance-off.
• One of the thing marge says she bought for bart is blair-witch repellent in a reference to blair-witch project

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: "Last Tap Dance in Springfield"

• "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
• "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" at the Internet Movie Database