Days of Wine and D'oh'ses

"Days of Wine and D'oh'ses"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.	Season 11
Directed by	Neil Affleck
Written by	Deb Lacusta and Dan Castellaneta
Original air date	April 9, 2000
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	"I was not touched 'there' by an angel."
Couch gag	The crudely drawn Simpson family from The Tracey Ullman Show shorts are on the couch. The Simpsons, as they are currently drawn, come in. All ten of them scream and run out the living room.
Commentary	Mike Scully George Meyer Ian Maxtone-Graham Dan Castellaneta Deb Lacusta Neil Affleck

"Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" is the eighteenth episode of the 11th season of The Simpsons, which originally aired on April 9, 2000. It is the first of five episodes written by voice actor Dan Castellaneta and his wife Deb Lacusta.

Plot

After watching his embarrassing birthday party video and being mocked by his friends with gag gifts, Barney sees he is a hideous drunk, and he promises to get sober. At first, he finds sustaining sobriety tough, but he finds his way to an AA meeting with Homer's help. Meanwhile, to get their picture on the cover of the new phone book, Bart and Lisa decide to enter an amateur photo contest. In the closet, they find an old camera and start to take snapshots.

Barney makes plans to change his life now that he is clean and sober. The Springfield Flight School is his first stop, where he takes helicopter-flying lessons. Back at Moe's, Homer is treated as the new Barney and forced to perform drunken antics by Moe, Lenny and Carl. Barney gives Homer a ride in the helicopter a few lessons later. While in the air, the two men fight about Barney's new sobriety and Homer's unhappiness that they no longer have ridiculous adventures.

Bart and Lisa are taking pictures atop Mt. Springfield when Bart starts a forest fire by carelessly discarding a hot flashbulb. The children are in imminent danger, and Barney and Homer must band together to save them. They hop into the helicopter, but land in the middle of a bridge when Barney panics over the task before him. When a Duff beer truck comes to a sudden stop, spilling its contents in front of a weakening Barney, Homer refuses to let him give up on sobriety and drinks an entire six-pack in his place. Together, Barney and a drunken Homer save the kids. The next day, at the Simpson house, Marge tells the kids that the new phone books are here, and they have Bart and Lisa's picture on the front cover. Bart and Lisa come down, only to realise that the picture on one of the phone books is not the one of the fire on Mt. Springfield; it is actually a photo of baby Bart and Lisa naked on the toilet, causing them to scream in horror. Marge says that the shot was actually in the film on the camera, and that since she had taken it, she won the prize for them. Bart and Lisa, after accepting that they will be the laughingstock of the entire town, happily hug their mother. Meanwhile, Barney's confidence and his relationship with Homer are restored, and he looks forward to an alcohol-free future, although he is now addicted to double-tall mocha lattés, supplied by Moe Szyslak himself, who then proceeds to maliciously remarks "No one escapes from Moe--NO ONE!" (and thus suggesting that he spiked alcohol in Barney's drink) and laughed maniacally as the credit appears on.

Production

Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer, Barney, and many others, had conceived the idea to do an episode in which Barney sobers up. He told his idea to his wife Deb Lacusta, who wrote a draft and then both revised it. They presented their script to Al Jean when he and Mike Reiss were running the show. Though Jean liked the story, he turned it down because the staff was already working on a similar episode where Homer gives up beer—"Duffless". Castellaneta and Lacusta waited several years and presented their script, which they updated, to then-executive producer Mike Scully, who liked it and had them make some changes.

Castellaneta altered his voice for Barney when he is sober by slurring. The animators gave Barney slicked-back hair to indicate his sobriety, a look which Barney maintained in subsequent episodes until he relapsed in "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" during the part where Lisa trains for the spelling bee.

Much of the staff, including Matt Groening, was against the episode as they felt Barney being sober was not funny.

Cultural references

• The episode title references Days of Wine and Roses.
• The She-Hulk shown in the episode is blond, while the Marvel Comics She-Hulk has greenish hair.
• Comic Book Guy complains that he cannot sell comic books where She-Hulk battles Leon Spinks. Leon is the brother of heavyweight contender Michael Spinks, and his career started off with some impressive upset wins before spiraling into addiction and increasingly poor performances.
• The chalkboard ("I was not touched 'there' by an angel"), is a reference to CBS' TV series Touched by an Angel and "touched 'there'" is a euphemism used in association with children being sexually molested.
• Barney's drunken monologue to Lisa at the party (and his comments about different planets for different nationalities) was inspired by a Michael Moore TV segment that interviewed avowed racists.
• At one point, Homer says, "Get out of my dreams and into my car." This recalls the title of a 1988 hit song by Billy Ocean.
• One of the pictures that Bart and Lisa took had some dogs sitting at the dining room playing a card game, a reference to the painting Dogs Playing Poker.
• Bart and Lisa can see the defunct monorail ("Marge vs. the Monorail") from atop Mt. Springfield.
• Rainier Wolfcastle's massive weight gain for an upcoming movie role was inspired by Sylvester Stallone's weight gain to play a un-threatening police officer in the movie Copland.

Reception

In 2001 "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" received a commendation from the Prism Awards, which "recognize[s] the accurate depiction of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use and addiction".

External links

• "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" at The Simpsons.com
• "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.
• "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" at IMDb