Simpsons Did It!: “The Springfield Connection”

When Marge Simpson decides to step out into a more dangerous world than the one she knows, she doesn’t do it partway.

Yes, Marge finds life boring, so she decides to become a police officer.

The whole thing began when Marge and Homer, walking home from a concert in the park, pass through a rough neighborhood.  Naturally, Homer explains how streetsmart he is, and then demonstrates it by quickly falling for a three card monty scheme being run by Snake with an assist from what looks like Snake’s brother.  Though Marge exposes the scheme to the angry cries of the crowd, declaring Snake is giving three card monty a bad name, only Marge will pursue Snake when he makes a run for it.  Homer tries, but he gets tired very quickly.

One adrenaline surge later, and Marge has successfully captured Snake, though he probably won’t be in jail for long.  Chief Wiggum will see to that.  But given a taste of excitement, Marge is looking for more.  It all starts with deviled ham, goes into death sports magazines, and ends with her walking into a police station and telling the assembled cops she wants to join the force.  After some quick laughter, she is welcomed aboard and prepped for her intense weekend’s worth of training.  Wiggum ran it, but managed to keep one guy out who kept demanding his gun on account of Wiggum won’t give a clearly disturbed and disturbing man a gun until said man tells Wiggum his name.

Marge sails through training, aside from the wall obstacle since she missed the door at the bottom.  Now that she’s in, she’s doing police work all over Springfield. That means when she finds an ignorant jackass who parked over three handicapped spots to buy beer for underage kids and then swiped Marge’s hat to tease her, she has to arrest that man.

Yes, that man is Homer.

Now that the allure of Marge’s job has disappeared for both Marge (the folks at the beauty parlor are wary of her, including Moe) and Homer (there are only so many ways you can trick Ned Flanders into thinking his family was murdered), Homer realizes that while he thought Marge’s trip through the police academy would be a ton of laughs like that movie Spaceballs, instead it is a slow trod through misery like that movie Police Academy.

Then both Marge and Homer realize that Herman is selling counterfeit jeans out of the Simpsons’ garage.  Homer gets taken hostage, and Marge saves him through steely nerves and knowing where the secret entrance to Bart’s treehouse is.  The charges might have even stuck had the rest of the police force not been so corrupt to take the jeans for themselves.

Seriously, why were counterfeit jeans such a thing in this episode?

Marge quits the force.  The cops laugh again, but then express well-wishes.  She’ll have to go back to being a housewife.

Though that Glass Eater magazine sounded promising if she needs more thrills in her life.