Simpsons Did It!: “Milhouse Of Sand And Fog”

Luann and Kirk VanHouten’s divorce seems to be one of the more permanent changes made to The Simpsons.

And then this episode happened.

You know, for once we don’t open with the Simpsons in an unlikely place.  They’re in church, and Maggie is itching like crazy, scratching herself with anything she can get her hands on, like the hymnal.  That’s no way to treat such a book.  Homer using the placeholder to floss isn’t much better.  Marge needs to see Dr. Hibbert, but he changed to a new church.  The Simpsons then go to said church where it seems like every African American character to ever appear on the show is worshipping in a more Bart-approved way.  Hibbert diagnoses Maggie on the spot with chicken pox.

Downside for Homer:  he has to avoid Maggie because he never had the chicken pox and it’s dangerous for adults.  The Homer learns from Flanders that letting kids get exposed to the pox is a popular way to keep kids from getting it when its more dangerous as an adult, so you know Homer’s going to charge admission to let Maggie sneeze on other children.  Among those other children is Milhouse.

The adults hanging in the kitchen are enjoying some Marger-uritas.  That includes Kirk, and then later Luann stops by and after a bit of booze, the two start making out to Milhouse’s delight.  They’re going to try a trial reconciliation, and that means Milhouse has a nice daydream, his first in color in years, where he sees his mom’s various boyfriends, his dad’s various failed suicide attempts, and then he gets to marry Lisa.  All this seems good until he realizes his parents won’t be fighting each other over him anymore, and Bart liked the spill-over of all the gifts.  So, the boys decide to break the VanHoutens up again.  And it isn’t going too well, until Bart gets an idea from The OC of leaving another woman’s bra out on Kirk’s bed.  And what woman’s bra does Bart use?  The only one he can find, namely Marge.

It doesn’t quite work as planned because instead of getting mad at Kirk, Luann gets mad at Marge and tells Homer.  Homer and Marge fight, and Marge kicks Homer out.  He goes off to sleep in the park.  Even Bart confessing to Marge what he did doesn’t fix that, since it wasn’t about the bra so much as the trust.

Can Bart fix this the way Lisa thinks he should, by getting his folks into long term therapy?  Of course not.  Bart and Milhouse come up with another plan where his parents will have to rescue a dummy that looks like Bart.  Getting Marge to meet at a spot for an apology and Homer to meet at the same spot for a bucket of potato salad works, but then Milhouse pushes the real Bart over the cliff the boys were using and into the raging river below.  Homer and Marge freak out.  Homer dives in and grabs Bart, and then Marge rescues both guys before they go over a waterfall.  Obviously Homer trusts Marge.  Reconciliation over.

Milhouse, however, thinks he killed Bart, so he jumps into the river himself.  Can he swim?  What do you think?

But say, did Kirk and Luann break up again?  We never did find out…