Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?

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The Simpsons episode
"Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?"

Episode no.	229
Prod. code	AABF21
Orig. Airdate	October 24, 1999
Writer(s)	Al Jean
Director(s)	Nancy Kruse
Chalkboard	"I am not the Last Don"
Couch gag	The family, running into the living room, is surprised to see that Matt Groening has written his name on the carpet. Marge washes the name off, but Groening comes in again to write it down.
Guest star(s)	Ed Asner as the Newspaper Editor
SNPP capsule
Season 11 September 26, 1999 – May 21, 2000
Beyond Blunderdome Brother's Little Helper Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner? Treehouse of Horror X E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder Eight Misbehavin' Take My Wife, Sleaze Grift of the Magi Little Big Mom Faith Off The Mansion Family Saddlesore Galactica Alone Again, Natura-Diddily Missionary: Impossible Pygmoelian Bart to the Future Days of Wine and D'oh'ses Kill the Alligator and Run Last Tap Dance in Springfield It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge Behind the Laughter
List of all Simpsons episodes...

"Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" is the third episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons. It aired on October 24, 1999.

1 Synopsis
2 Trivia
3 Cultural references
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The students of Springfield Elementary go on a field trip to the Springfield Shopper newspaper facility for a tour, and they are joined by parents of students, including Homer. When he's there, he smells cake from a room, which is designed to celebrate the retirement of the paper's food critic. Homer eats some of the food and sings a song about how much he likes it. The newspaper's editor says that they are looking for a new food critic, and asks Homer to write a 500-word sample review. If the review is good, Homer will become the new food critic. He makes a first attempt that does not succeed, but his second attempt is more successful with aid from Lisa. The paper makes Homer its new food critic.

Inevitably, Homer turns in positive reviews of restaurants across Springfield, but when the positive reviews keep coming in, all of Springfield (except the Simpson family) is overweight. Homer continues writing nothing but positive reviews, until the other critics at the paper chastise Homer for liking everything. The critics convince Homer that a real critic looks down upon everything. Now that he's sure his job is to hate everything, Homer gives a negative review of a performance of King Lear at a local dinner theater, featuring Krusty as King Lear. Eventually, Homer gives negative reviews of other Springfield restaurants, and no one in Springfield likes him anymore. As the Taste of Springfield Festival is coming up, the owners of many Springfield restaurants Homer has critiqued hatch an evil plot to have him killed. The chef of a pastry restaurant (The French Confection) makes a very high-calorie éclair loaded with lots of butter, chocolate, and poison. Bart heard about this, and tells the rest of the family to warn Homer. Homer shows up at the festival and almost eats the éclair, but is stopped when Lisa tells him it's low-fat. He throws the éclair into the air and it lands in a pot of gruel and explodes. The restaurant's evil chef is arrested but escaped when the cops weren't looking. At the end, Homer and Lisa are chased by an angry mob, and Homer gets beaten up.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

People seen at Planet Springfield: Reverend Lovejoy, Julius and Bernice Hibbert, Principal Skinner, Edna Krabappel, Kirk Van Houten, Scott Christian, and Martin Prince's parents.
Booths at the food festival: Ugli, The Gilded Truffle, Ah, Fudge!, Much Ado About Muffins!, The French Confection, The Texas Cheesecake Depository, Phineas Q. Butterfats 5600 Flavors Ice Cream Parlor, The Pimento Grove, The Happy Sumo, The Frying Dutchman, The Hungry Hun, and Moleman's Gruel.
Lisa says that they recently visited a restaurant called the Pate Le-Belle, a reference to Patti LaBelle.
At the Sea Captain's Restaurant there is a picture on the wall of a sail boat being eaten by a whale.
The headline of Homer's first review is "Cod is Great / Scrod Is Good."
There are references to Üter's disappearance from the episode, The PTA Disbands! in which he was left behind at a Civil War field trip.
It is revealed that Homer hates low-fat food.
When Homer is looking his his birthday headline a new born homer is on the front page and his penis is visible.

[edit] Cultural references

The title references the 1967 film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
Homer's song about food resembles, in part, the tune "I Feel Pretty", from West Side Story.
Props seen at Planet Springfield: Herbie from The Love Bug, the coffee mug from Heartbeeps, the cane from Citizen Kane, a script from The Cable Guy, an alien resembling one from Mars Attacks! (but pink), a model of the Titanic, models of an X-Wing and TIE fighters, and a statue of C-3PO.
When Lisa and Homer discuss the language to use in his first review Homer attempts to augment nouns with "groin-grabbingly". Lisa offers the word "transcendent" to which Homer replies "What about groin-grabbingly transcendent?". Groin Grabbingly Transcendent is the name of a song by Jason Becker on his album The Blackberry Jams.
The episode was also the second episode of The Simpsons to feature a reference to the movie The French Connection (The first was "The Springfield Connection").
Luigi references the "horse head" scene from The Godfather.
Homer typing the same thing over and over spoofs the 1980 film The Shining.