The Monkey Suit Capsule Submission

No review here, although it's obvious that the Simpsons is running out of ideas by reusing one from nine years ago (science vs. religion) and having it air in one the Sunday between two Sundays in which the plot involves "Homer and Marge's marriage is on the rocks".

S P O I L E R

S P A C E

DYN'S

-Jimbo playing a PSP when the nerds try to figure out who "L.M.S." is?

Refs.

Scopes "Monkey Trial" -Title -Plot (court case over religion vs. evolution) -Whole "controversy incident" done in order to get attention (Scopes trial to put a small Tennessee town on the top, Springfield in order to boost church attendence) -Southern lawyer in the case spoofs Clarence Darrow

The Natural -The fireworks going off when Bart hits the game-winning home run

Men in Black -Summer film Bart sees

Get Smart -Puzzle piece fades similar to the ones used in the last two seasons of the show

Goofs.

In the original case, Darrow, who is spoofed with the Southern lawyer, sided for evolution, not religion (in fact, one of his key moments in the case involved him calling rival laywer William Jennings Bryan to the stand and trying to prove, through his testimony, that various events in the Bible just couldn't happen in real life).

Comments

MUSIC ALERT -"What a Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers (music during the Myth of Creation part of Hall of Man exhibit)

Joe Klemm

The baseball team that Bart played for spoofed that movie about those Bears that were bad news, but I can't seem to remember the name of the movie! And the manager was Walter Matthau, who joins the curse, if he wasn't there already.

Ralph doesn't know where the Earth goes when you close the drapes (the fake kidnapping episode, which I saw in syndication over the weekend), but he knows who George Will is?

Didn't Homer once prove that G-d doesn't exist?

That "expert witness" had a Ph. D. from Christian Tech.

The jigsaw puzzle segue was a spoof of "Get Smart".

"Bear with pants on." Smokey the Bear?

Aaron Space Museum

On 14 May 2006 17:37:30 -0700, "Joe Klemm" wrote:

I don't think so (but having never seen Clarence Darrow I can't say for sure. I did see Spencer Tracy in the movie though.)

You know, the lawyer reminded me very much of the chicken lawyer we used to see in Futurama. I think the voice was exactly the same.

WJB was a 'populist' Democrat and just extremely popular. He is said to have been one of the greatest speakers of the century. He ran for president three times in a row and lost each time. I heard a recording of him once, made in the early 1900s when he was probably past his prime.

The recording was a speech about how the watermelon proves that God exists. The watermelon weighs many pounds, has a fairly complicated structure with seeds and all, but is constructed through a stem as narrow as a pencil. To Bryan this was a proof that God existed. Like Lisa said (one of the greatest lines in the episode) the answer to every question on the test was 'God did it.' The other great line was 'More meat in the seats'. 8^)

I think the Southern lawyer was more like Bryan than Darrow, who was very clever and urbane. Also the Southern lawyer was on Bryan's side, arguing for creation.

blazing laser wrote:

Bryan gave his famous "Cross of Gold" speech, first delivered at the Dem Natl Convention, 1896, when WJB got his first nomination as the Dem candidate, across the US. Remember this was before radio & TV.

There's some controversy over the election with some claiming it was stolen by big $$ folks, Morgan, Rockefeller & the like, to insure a McKinley victory.

http://www.agribusinesscouncil.org/bryan.htm

An early reference to "Intelligent Design"? What might he have concluded if he'd contemplated a baby whale?

Joe Klemm wrote:

Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a reference to Inherit the Wind by [someone, I'm blanking on the name and don't have a copy around] and Robert E. Lee (Not the general in the Civil War). The play is basically a dramatization of the Scopes monkey trial, and the character who argues for God is named Brady, which was that name they mentioned of this character.

Joe Klemm wrote:

Why not Wm Jennings Bryan?