If you buy into the premise, and allow a little flexibility for the CTU stuff, this was a pretty amusing adaptation of the 24 style (though I have never seen a real episode of 24), even creating a certain amount of suspense, and it was also relatively funny. I don't know if it was meant to be a surprise or if we weren't meant to speculate, but originally I thought Martin was doing it because his own mom's baked goods were awful, and so the ant farm was an odd twist. The "here comes the 24 squad" ending was kind of silly, and I still have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth from the credits (thanks Fox)... but overall rather enjoyable, more so than the 400th in fact.
DYN: ...special opening and special credits font (only 5 other episodes have an alternate font, and they were in seasons 10 and 11)? ...Homer is a devoted father of *two*? ...Milhouse's paper contains a small article about the bake sale? ...the running credits in act 1 take almost the entire thing (all but about 40 seconds)? ...despite the special credits font and music, and the whole special night, the credits were once again cut off? (Not even for a 400th episode promo!)
Previous episode references 7G02: Bart makes Skinner graffiti with "wiener" 3F17: Marge said to be unemployed; Bart drives 9F09: Moe's home dentistry book reminiscent of Homer's surgery book 7F19: Martin uses Asimov as the "A" in an alphabetical list 2F18: Fake self-hanging (Martin on hook, Homer swatting at light bulb) 2F16/2F20: Episode revolves around a 3 pm time frame
Other references Catcher in the Rye: Lisa, like Holden Caulfield, hates phonies TCBY: I haven't seen any of these in years, but it was (is?) a chain of frozen yogurt stores, which stood for "The Country's Best Yogurt"
A note about the timing Episode title: 24 Minutes Episode runtime: about 22 minutes Amount of episode devoted to story: about 18 Range of time covered in episode: 30 minutes (the commercials counted for much more time) But as any good Simpsons nerd would, I noticed that the timings within each act was exact - to the second, even, for example, when the kitchen clock ticks to 2:47 - although it didn't get quite to 3:04 pm. That is, except for the stink bomb! Somehow it managed to follow standard slowdown time, with even the last 8 seconds drawn painfully out (overall about a 30 second delay). Ugh.