New Episode: 01/16/05 Midnight Rx

Simpsons News — Posted 16 Jan, 2005 by MrBurns

Hey fans, new episode tonight of the Simpsons. The power plant's office party is being held at the Springfield Air and Space museum, where amongst other things we learn that Agnes Skinner was a wing-walker back in the 1920s. Mr. Burns is acting unusually nice, and then he makes an announcement that the employee prescription drug program has been canceled. Other companies follow suit, the citizens of Springfield at Springfield Retirement Castle, due to the high cost of medication, they cut their residents off cold turkey.Continue...

Grandpa goes to his son's home with a plan; he has a friend that will help them out. He and Homer go to Canada where they meet the friend that gives them cards that will let them get all the drugs they can carry. They return home and their drugs are in high demand. Ned and Apu accompany them on their next trip to Canada, but an unfortunate incident with Apu and a hot cup of coffee gets their cover blown as they try to cross the border. They are banished from ever returning to Canada. Because he can no longer afford the medication he requires Smithers' thyroid begins to swell causing a concern for Mr. Burns, he doesn't want to have to train anyone else on his filing system. He provides the means, his old wooden plane The Plywood Pelican, for Homer to invoke his plan to fly into Canada. They load up, but on the return flight the plane encounters trouble. Burns bails out, leaving Homer and Grandpa to crash land the plane in Springfield's town square, where their smuggled drugs are hit. Meanwhile, Mr. Burns has cured Smithers and decides to reinstitute the drug program for all his full time employees. Homer comes home from work to report that he is now a freelance consultant, complete with a lump on his throat.

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Couch: The family enters the living room and they take their usual places on the couch. Nothing happens, causing Lisa to quip "What can't we sit on the couch without something happening?" Just then Homer gets stabbed by a large spear.

Goof: Once again the writers have gotten their musical time periods mixed up. Skinner's mom is shown wing walking in what is a 1920's film. but the music in the back round is clearly from the rag time era which was about 15 years earlier.

The title is a take on the book/movie "Midnight Express."

When Burns returns to save Smithers, Smithers is laying in a glass coffin in a stone-walled castle. Burns then gives mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive him. This is a reference to Cinderella.

"The Plywood Pelican" is a reference to the gigantic plane nicknamed "The Spruce Goose" that eccentric aviator Howard Hughes built containing an inordinate amount of wood. Burns says he managed to fly it at six feet for four feet; Hughes flew the Spruce Goose at 70 feet for almost a mile, not a great achievement for a normal airplane but a wonder for this monstrosity. This is the second big comparison of Mr. Burns and Howard Hughes, the first being in the season 5 episode "$pringfield (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)."

In Canada, Homer & Grampa buy drugs at a place called "Dudley Do-Drugs", an obvious parody on the old cartoon show "Dudley Do-Right", which featured a Canadian mountie as the main character (the store also has a mascot that's a caricature of Dudley).

Ralph: "I'm cuckoo for contraband!"
An obvious parody of the phrase "I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!", which was the catch phrase for Sonny, Cocoa Puffs' mascot.