DYN:
...Another star of "Married with Children" stars in a fictitious movie/TV show? (David Faustino starred in "Talk to the Hand")
...Marge is neurotic enough to try to pair up Smithers and Patty, much the same way she paired up the cat/dog in a recent episode ("The Parent Rap"?)
...Maggie can apparently swing from pacifier to pacifier much the same way Tarzan swings from vine to vine?
Previous episode references:
"Trilogy of Error": two characters spinning around with the background going by in a blur
"Homer's Phobia": Gay steel workers
Music/TV/Movie References:
Percy Faith's "Theme from 'A Summer Place'" played during the safe sex float in the gay pride parade.
"Absolutely Fabulous" (British sitcom): "Fab Abs" float is a take-off on the show's moniker "AbFab", at least here in the States.
The endless threads:
Is this the first time Smithers has actually admitted to being gay? (Well, he's in the closet, but it's obviously his voice. And could the scene with John in "Homer's Phobia" be considered an admission of homosexuality? Everything else about Smithers' sexuality has been double-entendres.)
The whole question of Homer's not being the live wire could (and certainly will be by a lot of other a.t.s-er's besides me!) be thought of as the writers' answering hardcore fans' call for a less wacky Homer. The writers (intelligently, IMO) decide to show an utterly unwacky [sic] Homer, much the same way the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons became boring when Marge got them to be nonviolent in "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge". At least one poster (Benjamin Robinson?) has posited that the writers are doing this sort of thing deliberately in an attempt to show us fans that we have it better than we think. (At least, I think that's Benjamin's opinion.) In the previous DABF episodes, they did a poor job of it, if that is indeed what they were trying to do. In this episode, however, they did a better job of it.
Goofs:
Cars in demolition derbys are altered so that they can only run in reverse. This way, they can't go as quickly and cause less damage to the competitors.
Review:
I liked the first two acts more than the third, which seemed over the top. I didn't particularly like the send-up of Popeye, since it's something that doesn't really seem like fertile material for the Simpsons' brand of satire. (With the exception of Marge being compared to Olive Oyl.) The show had some good sight gags, especially involving Maggie -- how nice to see Maggie get a big role again, especially in something better than the awful "Hello Gutter, Hello Father". I give it a B+.