Much Apu About Nothing
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"Much Apu About Nothing" is the 23rd episode of The Simpsons' seventh season. The title is a spoof on the William Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing.
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[edit] Synopsis
On an ordinary day, a bear strolls onto Evergreen Terrace. Ned Flanders, scared on seeing the grizzly visitor, slams his car into a tree, and runs home terrified. With Maude too panicky to open the door, Ned panics and jumps inside through the window, while the bear calmly watches, without having moved since it saw Ned first. Kent Brockman, in a helicopter reports about the huge bear-like animal ("most likely a bear"), coming down from the mountains in search of food or employment. While his family watches the bear playfully maul their mailbox, Homer prefers to watch it on TV, feeling sorry for the "Impson" family. He feels there's nothing to fear as long as they have beer, but, on opening the fridge, he finds there's no beer and freaks out. He sneaks out through a window and climbs onto the power line attached to the house. The power line snaps and he gets swung around. Bart grabs onto his pants, causing Homer to lose them and hit the ground near the bear.
The bear is subdued by the police, but not before they tranquilize and capture Barney Gumble (though he seems to enjoy it). Homer rants about these "constant bear attacks", even though this is the very first bear Ned has seen in his thirty odd years of living on that street. Homer then leads an angry mob and demands that Mayor Quimby do something about this. The mob make their way to the city hall chanting, "WE'RE HERE, WE'RE QUEER! WE DON'T WANT ANY MORE BEARS"! Soon, the Bear Patrol is created, a useless organization which makes use of helicopters, police cars, even a B-2 Spirit. Homer feels happy to know that the Bear Patrol is doing their job, as there are no bears around. Lisa calls it "specious reasoning" and tries to explain, with the help of a rock "that keeps tigers away", that since there are no tigers around, the rock must be working. Homer contemplates this and offers to buy Lisa's tiger-repellant rock, to which Lisa agrees knowing better than to try and explain further.
Homer then gets just as shocked when he saw the bear when he discovers that taxes have been raised five dollars to maintain the Bear Patrol. This warrants yet another visit by the angry mob to the Mayor's office. To calm down the ignorant citizens of Springfield, Mayor Quimby pins the blame for the high taxes on illegal immigrants. He then creates Proposition 24, which will deport all illegal immigrants from Springfield.
At Springfield Elementary, Nelson picks on Uter, the German exchange student, for being an illegal immigrant. Even Principal Skinner refuses to help out poor Uter, much to Lisa's dismay. At home, she tries to talk about the benefits of immigration, and how the Simpson family itself were immigrants, which prompts one of Grampa's stories of how they immigrated to America. But it has no effect on Homer, who still supports Proposition 24.
At the Kwik-E-Mart, Apu tells Homer that he is an illegal immigrant and if Proposition 24 passes, he will be deported, as his visa expired many years earlier. Homer feels sorry, but he tells Apu that we will miss him. The Kwik-E-Mart's business goes down due to the surge of protesters against illegal immigrants. Marge cannot believe that Apu is an illegal immigrant. He narrates of how he graduated from Caltech (Calcutta Technical Institute) and came to Springfield for higher studies, and learned Computer Science from Professor Frink. To pay off his student loans, he joined the Kwik-E-Mart and has stayed in Springfield ever since, despite having paid off his loans.
Marge tells Apu she will vote "no" on Proposition 24, although it clearly will not be enough to help Apu. After discovering Kearney's fake ID, he asks him where he got it. On finding out, Apu goes to Fat Tony to get a false United States citizenship. On Fat Tony's advice, he starts acting American, putting up American flags in the store, wearing a New York Mets jersey (which he subsequently pronounces as the "nie" Mets) and a ten-gallon hat, and speaking in an "American" accent. However, he realizes he disgraced his parents for turning his back on his Indian heritage.
Homer vows that the Simpsons will help him, though three of them are below voting age and he is not a registered voter. Bart advises Apu to marry some American woman and dump her after getting the citizenship. Homer tries to get Apu married to Selma, but she refuses, citing an already long list of surnames she has acquired due to having already married too many men, only to divorce them later.
Lisa, having read the citizenship laws front to back, discovers that Apu will not get deported if he can pass a US citizenship test. Homer agrees to be his tutor to help prepare him before the vote on Proposition 24, much to Apu's delight, though his family is less optimistic. Apu demonstrates excellent knowledge of the United States, but Homer is a terrible tutor and replaces Apu's knowledge with false information and leaves Apu to look over his notes from ninth-grade history. However, he falls asleep. When he wakes he panics, declaring he has forgotten everything Homer had taught him, which Lisa says is excellent news and takes him to the exam. Apu then goes to take the written and oral test. He passes it and becomes an American citizen, i.e., an Indian-American. At a congratulatory party, Homer tells his guests how terrible it would be if immigrants were deported. He inspires them to vote "no" on Proposition 24, but it still passes...with 95%.
Apu is happy to get a letter to report for jury duty, as it affirms his citizenship, and he does what any typical American citizen would do - toss it into the trash can. The Simpsons are happy that everything worked out for the people they care about... However Groundskeeper Willie is deported.
[edit] Trivia
- The DVD commentary for this episode reveals that the original title was going to be "The Anti-Immigrant Song" in reference to the Led Zeppelin song, Immigrant Song.
- After graduating from "Caltech", Apu enrolls in the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology, which has a taboo acronym ("SHIT"). His Caltech graduating class consisted of seven million students, which is a stab at India's status as the second most-populous country in the world.
- At one point, as Homer and Apu are studying, Bart appears over the map of the USA and asks, "Watcha doing, studying?" They then proceed to tell Bart that they are looking for Springfield on the map. Barts goes, "Hey, we live right there!" and points to the map, but his head is blocking the map so we cannot see where he is pointing. This scene is sometimes cut from syndication.
- There is a scene where young Apu says goodbye to his family, including his future arranged marriage bride, Manjula. This is a foreshadowing, as Apu meets Manjula again for the marriage in "The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons" in Season 9. The only distinction is that in this episode, Apu is shown as being years older than Manjula, whereas in the marriage episode, a flashback shows them to be the same age. This scene is sometimes cut from syndication.
- In The Simpsons: Hit And Run mission, "This Little Piggy", Apu wears his American costume from this episode when Krusty wants him to become an American so he can track down a criminal.
- The Bear Patrol plane is a B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
- Homer's paycheck, where he complains about the $5 bear tax, also shows a gross pay of $479.60, net pay of $362.19 for 40 hours work, $56.25 for fed withholdings, $36.34 FICA, $10.45 state, and $9.37 municipal tax. [1]
- One of the protester's signs as Apu goes to take his citizenship test reads "Homer say 'Get Out' ". Oddly enough, it is held by Mrs. Glick. Moe is shown painting a sign that reads "Get Eurass Back to Eurasia."
- Frink's prediction that computers would become ever larger and costlier is a play on the old belief, often attributed to IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, that the world market for computers was limited to just a handful of people and companies.
- In the immigration service room, there is a calendar for the month of May, and the dates are correct for 1996, the month this episode first aired.
[edit] Cultural references
- The episode title is a play on William Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
- Moe says that the Bears are "smarter than the aver-age bear" and "they swiped my pic-a-nic basket" in an homage to the Yogi Bear cartoons.
- The "I Want You ... Out!" poster is similar to the famous Uncle Sam army recruitment poster.
- Apu's parents in the flashback scene resemble the parents of the character for which he was named, the eponymous protagonist of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy.
- In a cutaway depicting Chief Wiggum and his men preparing to deport the immigrants, he tells them to "first round up your tired, then your poor, then your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", a reference to the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.
[edit] External links
- "Much Apu About Nothing" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- From NoHomers.net -- a detailed analysis and discussion of this episode.
