Simpsons Did It!: “Hurricane Neddy”

What would it take to anger Ned Flanders?

Let’s find out.

There’s a hurricane coming towards Springfield, which has never happened on record.  Of course, the Hall of Records mysteriously blew away in the 70s, so that could mean anything.

Homer does his usual terrible job battening down the house.  The shutters are blowing all over, and the one window he covered with boards, he used the back door.  There’s just enough time for the family to hustle on down to the basement where the Giant Olmec Head is to wait out the storm.  And the Simpsons are in luck, because their house is more or less undamaged.  In fact, most of the town is undamaged.  The biggest change is the Bowl-O-Rama is not on top of a perilous cliff where the storm left it.

Oh yeah, and the Flanders house was completely destroyed.

The Flanders family itself is alive and well, but the house is gone.  And it looks like the Flanderses were the only ones in that situation.  Camping out for the night in the Church basement, Ned asks Reverend Lovejoy for comfort since not only did his house get trashed but it looks like Ned’s Leftorium is the only business getting looted.  So, Ned’s home and business are wrecked.  He considered insurance a form of gambling, so naturally super-Christian Ned didn’t have any.

It may have gone better had things stopped there.  They did not.  The rest of Springfield decided to rebuild the house.  You know, without the best tools or supplies.  The further Ned gets in the tour, the worse the house looks.  Bad nails, only one room with electricity and far too much, a toilet in the kitchen, hallways that led to tiny doors to the master bedroom, it was a mess.  And then the house collapses a second time when Ned closes the door behind him.

Then a lens falls out of his glasses and Ned loses it.  He screams, shouts, says a lot of “diddlies”, and makes some rather pointed, mean criticisms of Marge, Bart, Lisa, Chief Wiggum, Krusty, Lenny (who just got there and didn’t know what was going on), Moe, and finally Homer.  Homer, said Ned, was the worst human being Ned had ever met.  Homer thinks he got off easy.

Then Ned got in his car and checked himself into Calmwood Mental Hospital.  It turns out he used to stay there ages ago.  A call to his former doctor reveals the rest…it seems Ned was a problem child.  His beatnik parents wouldn’t discipline him, and so a radical therapy was called for in the form of an eight month spanking.  After that, Ned started the diddly-talk instead of getting angry.

To fix Ned, he needs to get angry.  That means calling the most annoying man Ned knows.

Cue Homer.

While the rest of the family wanders the halls, seeing other inmates like the Babysitter Bandit, a cartoon John Swartzwelder, and Jay Sherman, the Critic, who just seems to be there to get Jon Lovitz to say how everything stinks.

But Homer comes through.  Reading off the script he is given doesn’t work, so he eggs Ned on himself, getting Flanders to admit there are some things he doesn’t like, such as the rush of the post office, and his lousy beatnik parents.  Oh wait, now Ned’s cured!

Will Ned get angry again?  I dunno.  At least now we know what all those diddilies are for.