Simpsons Did It!: “Homer Goes To Prep School”

Homer decides he needs to prepare for the coming apocalypse.

You know, this time.

Things go weird for the Simpsons.  The family visits a fun center, but when a child wanders outside, there’s a lockdown that could get ugly.  Marge calms the mothers down by asking them relate stories of childbirth.  That works.  Homer is locked in another room with the fathers, and they are going nuts.  They calm down only when Rainier Wolfcastle tosses Homer through the door and lets everyone out, but Homer is so traumatized he only sees himself being run over by apes.

He’s seeing apes everywhere after that.  Flanders becomes one with three heads.  The only thing to do is go to Moe’s, and that’s where Homer meets Lloyd (guest star Tom Waits).  Lloyd shows Homer a video explaining civilization will collapse any day now, and if Homer wants to survive, he needs to prep for it.  Obviously, this is Homer, so this pitch works, so Homer joins in with the other doomsday preppers in town.  Besides Lloyd, this includes Herman, Lindsay Naegle, Superintendent Chalmers, and Lt. Smash.

What an eclectic group.

As it is, Lloyd tells Homer he needs to keep everything secret, and Homer manages to most keep it a secret.  He does eventually tell Marge, though Lisa was very suspicious.  Marge only found out when she saw all her dry goods were missing.  Will the apocalypse come?

Um, maybe.  Homer’s so wrapped up in a doomsday video he fails to notice a problem with the reactor at his job and that sets off an EMP that knocks out all electric devices in Springfield.  Oddly, no one seems to be panicking over this, but Homer sees his chance and hustles his family out to the prepper compound, with Grampa tied to the roof, though Grampa does not appear for the rest of the episode, so I wonder why.

But then there’s Marge telling Homer he needs to care for other people, so Homer steals some supplies and goes to hustle them back to Springfield to help everyone there.  He’s chased out by the other preppers using a wood fire-powered car, a car pulled by horses, and Lindsay Naegle just fires a machine gun from the back of an office chair.

But there’s a downside, because once they get to Springfield, everyone is fine.  The power was only out for a couple days, and people helped each other out until then.  No apocalypse at all.

Unless you count those brain-eating zombies riding in on that comet…