Simpsons Did It!: “The Wreck Of The Relationship”

So, the basic premise here is Bart and Homer’s personal relationship is so bad that Marge arranges for them to be shanghaied onto an old-fashioned sailing ship to fix their problems. Is that, like, a thing people can do? I mean, it sounds made up, but I wouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.

Where does this sailing ship come from? Well, not from Bart and Milhouse somehow getting around the Simpsons’ parental blocker to watch a Red Band Trailer (dum dum DUM). That was weird because that blocker is so good it won’t let Marge make a mammogram appointment. That just makes Homer more upset, and then comes the broccoli incident.

Bart won’t eat it.

Homer won’t let either of them leave the table until he does.

Who will outlast the other?

Um, good question.

This being a Friday, it bleeds into Saturday, and they still haven’t moved. Homer is called to his fantasy football draft. He won’t budge. He sends Marge to do it for him. (It’s football. She drafts nothing but kickers.)

Then Bart stays put and misses Martin beating up Nelson in the Simpson front lawn. You know that won’t be happening again.

More time passes and Lisa tries a compromise. She takes the broccoli and mixes up two smoothies. One has the broccoli. Neither Bart nor Homer know which fruit smoothie has the broccoli. Bart can drink a random one and no one will know if he ate the broccoli. Bart agrees…then spills both smoothies. Homer is furious and that leads to a strangling.

That night, some guys show up and take Bart and Homer away. It seems Marge arranged for them to take a therapy cruise on a sailing ship run by one Captain Bowditch (guest star Nick Offerman). The idea is to help fathers and sons get closer, and the other dads on the ship include Ned Flanders with Rod and Tod, Apu with one of his kids, and Cletus with one of his. Will this make Homer and Bart bond?

Um, not really. Homer gets scurvy due to not getting any citrus in years and is confined to a lemon bucket. Bart, meanwhile, takes to sailing like a metaphorical duck to some more metaphorical water.

While all this is going on, Marge finds herself filling in for Homer in the fantasy league. She doesn’t care for the trashtalk, which happens even in church from Reverend Lovejoy. She gets even, though, because Lisa helps her set her line-ups to take advantage of windy stadiums produced by climate change. That will teach Moe to send death threats!

But when Homer is finally healthy again, he finds out Bart has been given an officership, and that doesn’t work since he won’t take orders from his son and gets chained up. Well, Homer does have a flask. Too bad Bowditch is a recovering alcoholic. Yeah, they both get drunk and the ship goes off course in a bad storm, and since Bart is the ranking officer, he alone can save the ship by guiding it to shore, but he needs Homer to do some things, and Homer won’t until…Bart eats his broccoli.

Yeah, he had it the whole time.

So, they get the ship back, and the Sea Captain wants to know why the Simpsons didn’t ask him to come along. The Simpsons respond by running away.

And then this song happens: