1. Plot

2. Production

3. Cultural references

4. Reception

5. References

6. External links

"The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons' eighth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 19, 1997.^[1] It was written by Jennifer Crittenden and directed by Chuck Sheetz.^[1] The episode guest stars Jack Lemmon as Frank Ormand and Joe Mantegna as Fat Tony.^[1] In the episode, Marge starts her own business, selling pretzels.

Plot

At a meeting of the Springfield Investorettes, Marge admits that she is reluctant to invest money in high-risk ventures and is ejected from the group while receiving her refund deposit of $500.00. After some consideration, Lisa convinces Marge to buy her own franchise. During a Franchise Expo, the Investorettes become members of the glamorous, but containing suspicious ingredients, "Fleet-A-Pita" franchise, prompting Marge to join a much smaller one called "Pretzel Wagon" as a response, owned by a man named Frank Ormand. After watching a promotional video, Marge sets up a makeshift office in her garage, distributes flyers, and with Homer, Bart, and Lisa's help, proceeds to make pretzels.

To begin with, Marge sets up shop outside the Springfield Power Plant, with Homer convincing his colleagues to each try the new snack. The business gets customers initially however, the Investorettes' Fleet-A-Pita van rolls up, and within a few seconds, converts Marge's customers. Lisa suggests that Marge "think big", and so the family offer "Free Pretzel Day" at the Springfield Isotopes baseball stadium. Before the crowd has a chance to consume their pretzels, it is announced that Mr. Burns has won a 1997 Pontiac Astrowagon in the day's give-away competition. The supporters react angrily to the news and bombard the field with the pretzels, knocking out Whitey Ford in the process. No one tries the food, and Marge's efforts end in vain once again. Homer, seeing Marge depressed, decides to search for someone who can help Marge.

After discovering that Frank Ormand has died in a car accident, Homer establishes a secret business agreement with Fat Tony. The following day, Marge surprisingly receives a large order for pretzels and the business is reinvigorated. Many snack-food vendors are intimidated by the mob, culminating with the Investorettes' Fleet-A-Pita van being detonated. Fat Tony greets Homer and demands payment, but he instead inflicts self-guilt on Fat Tony by telling Fat Tony that he only helped Homer so that he could get something back. Fat Tony leaves hanging his head in shame but immediately realizes that Homer has just tricked him. As a result, on early morning Marge is given an order to be delivered to a remote location on the outskirts of the town, where she is approached by Fat Tony and his gang. He informs her of the deal he made with Homer and claims that he is entitled to a 100 percent stake of Marge's profits. Marge confronts Homer and he comes clean, explaining that he was only trying to help her. Marge decides to refuse to pay any money to the mafia and to go on making pretzels. The following morning the mob arrives and Marge makes her decision clear to them. As the mob advances on her, the Investorettes, after having their ship confiscated due to the ingredients being illegal, have decided to help Marge bringing with the Japanese Yakuza to try to kill Fat Tony's mob. The rival gangs begin to fight and the Simpsons retreat to the house. Inside the house Marge tells the kids to go back to bed and forgives Homer for trying to help her, even though he made the situation worse.

Production

The main plot of the episode concerning the two rival snack food franchises was selected because at the time of production, pita bread and pretzels were "becoming popular".^[3] Josh Weinstein expressed his wish that the ideas had been changed to something more "fun", as both snacks have since "gone out of fashion".^[3] The Fleet-A-Pita chef was an early version of the "Khlav-Kalash" man from "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson".^[3] At the Expo, many of the franchises were based on real franchises and get-rich-quick schemes.^[3] In the scene where Homer is inspecting pretzels, there was originally a shot where he gave a thumbs down to Maggie's pretzel.^[4]

The episode was written by Jennifer Crittenden who wrote four other episodes. Homer's line "Yeah, Homer's right" during the scene where the pretzel wagon arrives was ad-libbed by Dan Castellaneta.^[3] In another scene, Cletus calls for his many children to come out of the house; the names of which were all "trendy names from the nineties".^[3] The 1997 Pontiac Astrowagon that Mr. Burns wins was designed to accurately resemble one.^[3] The episode's final scene, the mob war, was conceived by Matt Groening as no one else could come up with an ending.^[5]

Cultural references

The scene in which the Springfield Mafia destroy all of the competition to "Pretzel Wagon" is based on a scene from Goodfellas.^[3] Frank Ormand's "You'll be there" speech mirrors that of Tom Joad from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.^[1] Lemmon's portrayal of Frank Ormand is based on the character Shelley Levene from the film Glengarry Glen Ross, also played by Lemmon.^[3] The character Gil Gunderson, who would not be introduced until the ninth season episode "Realty Bites", was also based on Levene.^[5] Rumer and Scout, two of Cletus's children, are named after Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's children.^[3] The scene where baseball fans cause a riot by throwing pretzels after Mr. Burns wins a new car, is based on an incident where the Los Angeles Dodgers were forced to forfeit. It happened on August 10, 1995, when the fans threw promotional baseballs onto the field to protest a bad call during the 9th inning.^[6]

Reception

In its original broadcast, "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" finished 55th in ratings for the week of January 13–19, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 8.2, equivalent to approximately 8.0 million viewing households. It was the fifth-highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, King of the Hill, Melrose Place, and Beverly Hills, 90210.^[7]

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "A clever, and rather unusual, idea for an episode that shows a frightening bitchiness beneath the middle-class veneer of smalltown businesswomen."^[2] The scene with Cletus's children is one of two scenes from this episode that Josh Weinstein considers to be "classic", with the second being the sequence when the crowd throw their free pretzels onto the baseball field, knocking Whitey Ford unconscious.^[3] The Ford scene was placed 24th on ESPN.com's list of the "Top 100 Simpsons sport moments", released in 2004. Greg Collins, the author of the list, added that "Every time it looks like a fight is about to start at a baseball game, I start quoting this scene."^[8] The A.V. Club named the baseball commentator's line "Aaaannnd heeerrre come the pretzels" one of the quotes from The Simpsons that can be used in everyday situations.^[9]

References

External links

• "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" at The Simpsons.com
• {{snpp capsule|4F08}}
• {{tv.com episode|the-simpsons/the-twisted-world-of-marge-simpson-1449}}
• {{imdb episode|0701266}}

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