Yokel Chords

"Yokel Chords"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.	Season 18
Directed by	Susie Dietter
Written by	Michael Price
Original air date	March 4, 2007
Episode features
Couch gag	The couch is replaced by a vending machine filled with some secondary characters (Apu, Selma, Mr. Burns, Smithers, etc) and the Simpson family. Ralph Wiggum selects C5 and a Homer figurine falls. Ralph retrieves his Homer figurine and bites its head off before leaving.

"Yokel Chords" is the fourteenth episode of the eighteenth season of The Simpsons, which was originally broadcast on March 4, 2007. It was written by Michael Price, and directed by Susie Dietter. Guest starring Meg Ryan as Dr. Swanson, Peter Bogdanovich as a psychiatrist and Andy Dick, James Patterson and Stephen Sondheim as themselves. This also marked the return of director Susie Dietter who had taken a hiatus to work on Futurama and the film Open Season. This was her first episode in nearly nine years. It won the 2008 Annie Award for Music in an Animated Television Production.

Plot

Marge oversleeps, and not having made the children's lunch for the day, Homer makes the lunches instead. Lisa gets a drawing of a sandwich, Bart gets Grandpa's medication, and even these are mixed up. Bart decides to scare an alternative lunch out of his friends by making up a story about a cannibal cafeteria worker named Dark Stanley, who killed all the students in the cafeteria and put them in his kids' head soup when their teasing of his inability to graduate from college had taken its toll on his sanity. At lunchtime, Bart pretends to be killed by Dark Stanley, causing all of the students to run screaming into the woods while he takes their lunches. Groundskeeper Willie is sent to fetch them all back, but he brings seven extra kids who are Cletus's children. Their names are Whitney, Jitney, Dubya, Incest, Crystal Meth, International Harvester, and Birthday. Principal Skinner tells Superintendent Chalmers that the kids have been refused education in fear that they will lower test averages and cost the school state funding, which Lisa overhears. To appease Lisa, Skinner and Chalmers appoint her tutor of the children.

Meanwhile, Skinner punishes Bart by having him spend five sessions with a qualified psychiatrist. Bart develops a close bond with his psychiatrist, Dr. Stacey Swanson (Meg Ryan), who uses a Mad Libs-like game and violent video games to get Bart to open up (Skinner was going to use the school psychiatrist, but she also had run to the hills in fear of Dark Stanley). When his sessions end, Bart starts to miss the time he spent with her and enters into a state of depression in which he talks about his problems to an empty chair while lying in bed. He peeks into her window and sees her counseling Milhouse. He hangs his head while biking in the rain when he looks through a window and sees her dancing with the married owner of the Chinese restaurant that Homer had visited earlier in the episode. Marge, worried, pays for one more session with Dr. Swanson. When it ends, Bart feels that he has been able to get everything off his chest, and Dr. Swanson begins to obsess about him and goes to see her own psychiatrist (Peter Bogdanovich). It is revealed during this discussion that "Dark Stanley" was in fact real, and had killed her own son: the therapist believes Swanson is projecting onto Bart.

Lisa's initial tutoring efforts are unsuccessful and so she decides to take the children to downtown Springfield to introduce them to culture in the outside world. However, Lisa's plans are diverted when Krusty spots the kids singing, decides to use them as a musical act for his show, and offers them a contract, which Cletus signs with an "X" (in sharp contrast to his elegant signature in the episode "Sweets and Sour Marge"). Lisa is worried about the way that Krusty and Cletus are exploiting the children, so she sends an e-mail to Brandine, who's currently a soldier in Iraq, and trying to 'stop 9/11' as said by Cletus. She arrives by helicopter to tell Krusty that the contract Cletus signed is null and void, since he is only the father of the two untalented ones, and that he signed the contract with an X mark rather than a real signature. The story ends with Cletus telling Brandine that they owe Krusty $12,000, but Brandine tells him that they can live on that.

Cultural references

• The whole storyline involving Lisa shows many references to The Sound of Music.
• The relationship Bart shares with his psychiatrist is reminiscent to the way that Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist form a unique bond.
• The style of the artwork in the sequence in which Bart tells his classmates a story about a murderous cafeteria worker resembles the work of Edward Gorey. A piece of music is used in this scene that is reminiscent of a piece of Astor Piazzolla's music from the suite "Punta del Este" used in the film 12 Monkeys.
• The music played when Groundskeeper Willie rounds up the kids is the main title theme to the 1965 John Sturges film The Hallelujah Trail, composed by Elmer Bernstein.
• The video game, Death Kill City II: Death Kill Stories, played by Bart and the psychiatrist has a reference to the Grand Theft Auto series of video games, notably the city stories prequels (Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories). The rating for Death Kill City II is "Bad for Everyone," which spoofs the ESRB rating, "E for Everyone". The game's cover artwork is also very similar to the cover artwork of said series.
• During "My Favorite Things," the beginning of the surrealist film, Un chien andalou plays.
• Krusty the Clown mistakenly thinks Stephen Sondheim wrote the musical Cats, which was actually written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
• During the musical number, Agnes Skinner is shown starring in the titular role in a production of Auntie Mame.
• When Krusty asks Stephen Sondheim to write something "peppy," he plays a vamp similar to one from the Broadway musical Pippin, written by Stephen Schwartz.
• The ending, with Cletus saying, "Baby, you're the greatest," Cletus and Brandine kissing, the pan to the skyline and moon, with Cletus's face, and the music are all a direct reference to the 50's sitcom The Honeymooners.

External links

• "Yokel Chords" at IMDb