Homerazzi

"Homerazzi"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.	Season 18
Directed by	Matthew Nastuk
Written by	J. Stewart Burns
Original air date	March 25, 2007
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	Global Warming did not eat my homework.
Couch gag	Homer goes from prehistory to modern history as he starts out as a unicellular being and evolves into many creatures until he finally reaches the modern day and evolves into the present Homer. When he comes in the house, Marge asks Homer, "what took you so long?” and Homer sighs in exhaustion.

"Homerazzi" is the sixteenth episode of the eighteenth season of The Simpsons, which was originally broadcast on March 25, 2007. It was written by J. Stewart Burns, directed by Matthew Nastuk, and guest starred J.K. Simmons as the tabloid editor, Betty White as Herself, and Jon Lovitz as Enrico Irritazio. The full-length opening sequence and couch gag ran for over 2 minutes and 20 seconds, making it one of the longest in the history of the show.

Plot

After failing to blow out all the candles on his birthday cake, an exhausted Homer falls asleep, igniting his party hat on the flames. The burning house is saved by the Springfield fire department who inspire Marge to purchase a fire-proof safe to protect the family's valuables. Each family member puts one special item inside the safe, Marge choosing the family photo album; Homer, an old bottle of cologne called "Scent of a Wookiee"; Lisa, an electric Malibu Stacy car (though not the one Ralph gave to Lisa as a gift); Bart, his Catch-A-Rising Krusty doll, a talking Krusty doll that performs stand-up. When they lock the safe, Bart's doll is switched on, which walks into the car, turning on its headlights which heat the cologne and ironically causes the fire-proof safe to explode and set the items inside on fire (which apparently, was what Homer naturally assumed had happened). Refusing to accept the loss of all their memories, Marge decides to re-stage all of the family's photographs, and when the family spot a celebrity dating scandal (Duffman dating Boobarella, despite Duffman being in a committed relationship with a homosexual man) captured in the background of one of their photos, the Simpsons strike tabloid gold. Tasting success and seeing money to be made, Homer takes to the streets as one of the paparazzi.

Overnight, Homer becomes Springfield's most valued tabloid photographer, staging incriminating photographs of, amongst others, Rich Texan's daughter, Paris Texan (a parody of Paris Hilton) beating Bart with a bottle then kissing them after he insulted her ("Hey, Paaaris! I saw a disgusting part of your body on the Internet--your face"), and Drederick Tatum punching Homer's cameras away while he keeps taking out more cameras and taking more pictures until Tatum knocks him out. After Homer gatecrashes Rainier Wolfcastle's wedding, the town's celebrities decide to give Homer a taste of his own medicine by having top paparazzi Enrico Irritazio make him look bad, such as Homer hanging Maggie on the car mirror then making her drive the car as he tries to grab Enrico, and him having a shower in the middle of the street with a fire hydrant. After seeing his own behavior published in a tabloid magazine, Homer gives up the paparazzi business temporarily. However, Lenny and Carl reinspire him to continue and Moe lends Homer a camera he had used in the ladies' bathroom to videotape women secretly, explaining that no women ever enter his bar. Homer leaves for the celebrity nightspot across the street, shortly after which two women enter the bar asking for a bathroom so they may trade bras and panties, infuriating Moe.

Bursting the decadent celebrity nightspot, Homer takes a slew of compromising photos, including ones of Paris Texan making out with Milhouse, Sideshow Mel eating an American flag, Drederick Tatum snorting the ashes of Secretariat as if they were cocaine, and Mayor Quimby and Kent Brockman scantily dressed in costumes for a bizarre sexual roleplaying game. Defeated, Rainier Wolfcastle meekly asks him what he is going to do with the photos. Homer replies "Nothing", providing that the celebrities start treating the public with more respect and not taking their fans for granted. Rainier agrees to Homer's conditions and, as a gesture of good faith, invites the Simpsons to a barbecue party on his "offshore party platform". Marge asks Rainier to look at a screenplay she wrote called "Mrs. Mom". Rainier says that he does not read unsolicited scripts, though his eyes dart back and forth suspiciously. In the next shot, however, Marge and Homer see a theatre marquee advertising the film, crediting Rainier Wolfcastle as the writer, leading Marge to sigh, "Well, at least it got made".

Casting

In the original Fox press release, Peter Wolf and Harry Hamlin were announced as guest stars for this episode. However, neither of them made an appearance in the broadcast version. This episode marks the return of several guest stars; it is the ninth appearance of Jon Lovitz and the second of J. K. Simmons and Betty White. J. K. Simmons had previously guest-starred in "Moe'N'a Lisa", playing another editor. In both episodes his character was a parody of his J. Jonah Jameson character from the Spider-Man films, though the one in this episode does not bear any physical resemblance to Jameson.

Cultural references

• The title is a portmanteau of Homer and paparazzi.
• The couch gag shows Homer as the subject of human evolution. The scenes beginning from the single-celled organisms until the extinction of the dinosaurs parody The Rite of Spring segment in the Disney movie Fantasia. The panning style of the mammal segment loosely resembles the music video for Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now." The music and the overall concept are based on a similar sequence used as the opening titles of Richard Dawkins' 1991 lecture series Growing Up in the Universe.
• The Krusty doll references The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, iPods and iTunes.
• The "Happy 1987" restaged picture shows Homer, Lisa and Bart as they were from the Tracey Ullman Show.
• The song playing in the nightclub is Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head". The song during the photo restaging montage is, appropriately, "Freeze Frame" by The J. Geils Band.
• All the celebrities that Homer photographs going in and out of the laundry have made previous appearances in The Simpsons episodes (prompting Homer to say, "Look at those celebrities! I've met them all, and yet they don't even acknowledge my existence"), like Paul McCartney ("Lisa the Vegetarian"), Mr. T ("Today, I am a Clown"), Yao Ming ("Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass"), Elton John ("I'm with Cupid") and José Canseco ("Homer at the Bat").
• When the family re-enact the Star Trek: Voyager series finale party, Lenny is dressed as Seven of Nine and Dr. Hibbert is dressed as Tuvok. If listened closely, music from Deep Space Nine can be heard.
• Paris Texan, with her blond hair, long nose, flirtatious behavior, the fact that she's from a rich family (and is famous for that sole reason), and pet chihuahua, is a parody of Paris Hilton. Her name is also a parody of the city of Paris, Texas.
• The title of Marge's script "Mrs. Mom" is a reference to the film Mr. Mom.
• At the wedding scene, Pachelbel's Canon in D can be heard on the background.
• Homer's arrival by helicopter to the island where 's wedding is being held references Jurassic Park, even having similar music.
• When Wolfcastle sees the photos of Homer, he says "Ausgezeichnet", which is Mr. Burns' catchphrase "excellent" as translated in the German adaptation.
• The Chief Editor of the magazine company is a reference to the chief editor of the magazine Peter Parker takes pictures for in Spider-Man.
• The sensationalist magazine showing Homer's scandalous photos is a parody of Spanish magazine ¡Hola!.

Couch gag

This episode's couch gag, often known as "The Homer Evolution" by videos on YouTube, is the longest Simpsons couch gag to date, running one minute and 30 seconds (this, added with the full opening, made the entire opening run for two minutes and 20 seconds). This is much longer than the typical theme song, which runs one minute and 20 seconds. This couch gag was repeated on the season 19 episode "The Homer of Seville", but instead of Marge saying "What took you so long?" after Homer comes home, she says "Did you bring the milk?". Another season 19 episode, "Mona Leaves-a", has the original line, "What took you so long?".

Reception

Robert Canning praised this episode, calling it clever, ingenious, and one of the most memorable of the season. The episode scored a 9.0 on TV.com, an equivalent to a "superb" rating.

External links

• "Homerazzi" at TV.com