Simpsons Did It!: “King Of The Hill”

It’s Halloween!  Let’s have…an episode about climbing a mountain?  Uh…

Well, the mountain is called the Murderhorn.  That’s scary, right?  Right?

Thanks a heap, John Swartzwelder,

We all know Homer Simpson is a fat man.  Do we need to know he can drink a beer off his stomach and then crush the can without using his limbs?  Probably not.  But when a game of Capture the Flag at the Church Picnic comes along, and Homer is recruited to be the lone adult on Bart’s team against Ned Flanders’ team, he almost wins the game.  All he has to do is outrun a group of children a short distance while he has a head start.

He fails miserably.  D’oh.

Humiliated and upset Bart watched him fail physically–again–Homer decides to get in shape.  And even Marge doesn’t believe him.  As it is, he’s actually really determined this time and manages to find an all-night gym (pronounced “gime” by Homer) where Rainier Wolfcastle is working out between movies where his character brutally dispatches evil Commie Nazis.

Homer also discovers Powersauce bars, the bar that releases the concentrated power of apples.  So, while packing on the muscle, he eats only the bars.  Granted, he still has some flab because weightlifting builds muscles but a different kind of exercise causes weight loss, but he’s stronger and soon impresses his whole family who apparently didn’t notice he was gradually getting healthier for two months.

That would be where Brad and Neil come in (voiced by Brendan Fraser and Steven Weber…whatever happened to those guys anyway?).  As representatives of Powersauce, they want Wolfcastle to climb Springfield’s highest mountain, the Murderhorn.  Wolfcastle says it’s suicide and refuses.  Bart, meanwhile, volunteers Homer and thinks nothing of it.

Yes, the Murderhorn, a giant mountain outside Springfield that somehow has never been seen or mentioned before or since!  No, not that one.  The one to the right.  That’s it.  The one next to that one.

Holy crap!

How is it we’ve never noticed that mountain before?  Even Homer seems to be seeing it for the first time!

But it’s been there!  Grampa tried climbing it with a partner named McAllister back in the 20s.  McAllister never came back.  Grampa claims that skunk McAllister pushed him off the mountain to get all the glory for himself.

Anyway, Homer starts the climb with a pair of Sherpas who drag Homer further up the mountain while Homer’s sleeping.  And when he finds out, he fires the two guy, both of whom happily dance down a vertical wall.  Even the news from a panicked Brad and Neil that Powersauce bars are nothing more than apple cores and Chinese newspapers will not stop Homer Simpson from reaching the top.  No, not weird hallucinations, not a goat stealing his radio, nothing.

OK, the top of the mountain will stop him.  It’s unclimable, but temporary since Homer hammering a Simpson family flag into the rock causes the top to fall away.  All he needs to get down is the frozen corpse of McAllister, whose journal indicates that that skunk Abe Simpson might have been the real skunk, and maybe a potential cannibal.

Now if only Homer hadn’t left his wallet up there.

As for the Sherpas, well, they managed to hitchhike back to Nepal.  Good for them.