The Simpsons/Marge vs. the Monorail

Marge vs. the Monorail
Season 4, Episode 12
Airdate	January 14, 1993
Production Number	9F10
Written by	Conan O'Brien
Directed by	Rich Moore
← 4x11 Homer's Triple Bypass	4x13 → Selma's Choice
The Simpsons — Season Four

Marge vs. the Monorail is the twelfth episode of the fourth season of The Simpsons, and the seventy-first episode overall. When the city comes into a great deal of money, they're swindled out of it by a con man selling monorails to newly wealthy cities.

Special Guest Voices: Phil Hartman (Lyle Lanley), Leonard Nimoy (Himself)

Also Starring: Doris Grau (Lurleen Lumpkin), Maggie Roswell (Maude Flanders, Ms. Hoover, Café Owner, Voice of Monorail)

Plot Overview

Mr. Burns has been discovered dumping nuclear waste in a public Springfield park by the Environmental Protection Agency, an act which forces him to pay the city $3 million in fines. The mayor holds a town meeting that night to solicit suggestions on how to spend the money. Lisa already hopes that the money will be spent on virtual reality for the school, but Bart is looking for giant mechanical ants to destroy the school with. At the meeting, the entire town offers suggestions which range from Maude wanting to put out a wildfire in East Springfield to "Mr. Snrub" wanting it invested into the nuclear plant and Apu wanting more police officers in the city. Marge finally stands up to recommend repairing the potholes on Main Street, which is met with applause from the crowd (except for Abe Simpson) until Lyle Lanley appears with a song about monorails in his heart. He successfully sells the saps on buying a monorail to put them on the map next places like Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.

Plans for the monorail are quickly put in motion and Homer decides to attend a class on monorail conducting along with several other people from the city. Meanwhile, Barney is inexplicably is the foreman for monorail construction even though he's incredibly reckless. In the end of the class, Lanley tries to escape from town and quickly names Homer the conductor because he's closest to the door. Marge doesn't have a good feeling about Homer's new job and decides to investigate Lyle Lanley's office, in which she discovers a notebook with a crudely drawn monorail in flames in it.

Marge drives to North Haverbrook, where she meets Sebastian Cobb. Cobb was hired to build the Haverbrook monorail, which had so many corners cut that it was a disaster on its first day out. Cobb tells her that their only hope is if they have a "damn good conductor." At the monorail unveiling, Leonard Nimoy christens its first voyage, along with Krusty the Clown and other local celebrities. On the monorail's approach to the station, one of the hoses blows and it's sent into warp speed at 180MPH. The brakes don't work and the monorail is solar powered so it can't be stopped. There's a solar eclipse briefly, but it only stops things shortly.

Meanwhile, Lyle Lanley's flight to Tahiti has a holdover in North Haverbrook where he's beaten senseless by a mob of angry citizens. Marge finally gets through to Homer and Cobb suggests that he find an anchor of some sort to stop the monorail. He takes the "M" off the monorail logo and it eventually anchors itself to a giant donut sign. The monorail stops and its passengers are free to disembark from the emergency chutes.

Notes

Title Sequence

• Blackboard: "I will not eat things for money." The last line cuts off at "things."
• Couch Gag: The entire cast of the show joins the Simpson family around the couch, leaving the family stuck in the background.

Monorail Lyrics

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth

Like a genuine,

Bona fide,

Electrified,

Six-car

Monorail! ...

What'd I say?

(Ned Flanders): Monorail!

What's it called?

(Patty & Selma): Monorail!

That's right! Monorail!

(Miss Hoover): I hear those things are awfully loud...

It glides as softly as a cloud.

(Apu): Is there a chance the track could bend?

Not on your life, my Hindu friend.

(Barney): What about us brain-dead slobs?

You'll all be given cushy jobs.

(Abe): Were you sent here by the devil?

No, good sir, I'm on the level.

(Wiggum):The ring came off my pudding can.

Take my pen knife, my good man.

I swear it's Springfield's only choice...

Throw up your hands and raise your voice!

(All): Monorail!

What's it called?

(All): Monorail!

Once again...

(All): Monorail!

(Marge): But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...

(Bart): Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!

(All): Monorail!

(All): Monorail!

(All): Monorail!

(All): Monorail!

(Homer): Mono... D'oh!

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Lyle Landley: Landley is a con artist and shyster who sells faulty monorails to several towns, including Springfield. He scouts out towns whom he learns have large financial reserves but where he suspects its people aren't very smart. While it's not exactly known which towns he was unsuccessful in selling his product in (or was escorted out by the police), it is known that in each town he visited, he would make a sales pitch for the monorail to its residents and community leaders, using song and dance to play up the benefits of such a transportation device, even if one wasn't really needed (but he'd claiming it was, suggesting rival towns are considering it as a draw and convenience). If the townspeople approve of the monorail, he would quickly start construction by hiring random people – always those who were completely unqualified – as the contractor. At the same time, he'd also open a monorail conductor's training school, which provided nothing in the way of real training, and he'd pick somebody at random to be the lead conductor. After the monorail was built and a conductor selected, Lanley would set up a huge opening ceremony with a celebrity presiding, then sneak out of town (with the town's money, natch) while everyone's attention was focused on the opening ceremony and the celebrity, off to his next "mark" town, where he would repeat his sales process and defraud them of more money.

Lanley's undoing is Marge, who – when nobody will listen to her concerns – decides to investigate him herself. She realizes that Lanley is a sadistic psychopath who enjoys learning about people dying in the wreckage of his failed monorails ... and, truth be known, speculating what his victims were thinking in their final moments before the crash and in the instants they were suffering their injuries. Later, Marge meets with a former contractor who built one of Lanley's monorails in nearby North Haverbrook: Sebastian Cobb, who regrets ever associating with Lanley, especially after the monorail literally fell apart and crashed on its maiden voyage, implying the accident killed hundreds of people. Lanley also proves to be his own worst enemy; eager to leave town with the money, instead of detaining Marge upon realizing she can refer him to the authorities, he lets her go and resumes his focus only on a life of women, drinks and living it up on island resorts.

As Lanley is en route to where he thinks will be Tahiti, the plane makes an unscheduled landing in North Haverbrook. Unknown to him, the authorities have been tipped off and are waiting to arrest him for fraud and other charges ... but they decide to let the surviving residents of North Haverbrook have at him first. They attack Lanley so violently the plane shakes as he screams for mercy; this is the last viewers see of Lanley, and his exact fate is deliberately made unclear.

Referbacks

• 2x08 - Bart the Daredevil: The commercial for Truckasaurus: The Movie is actually just reused footage from when Homer accidentally drove the family car (with the family inside) into the arena with Truckasaurus in it.

Trivia

The Show

• Town Charter: There's a great deal of detail in the town charter, including the signature of Jebediah Springfield at the bottom.
• Director Cameos: Animation directors Rich Moore, Wes Archer and David Silverman make a brief cameo at the end of this episode as the three people riding the escalator to nowhere.

Behind the Scenes

• Korean Mistake: During the Monorail musical number, the salesman was actually meant to play the piano correctly along with a temp musical track they had in place. But, when the animation came back from Korea, the piano playing was completely wrong. Although director Rich Moore wanted to do a retake, they wound up matching the score to the movements, creating a weird plinking sound in the otherwise well written and choreographed song.
• Under Time: The show wound up coming in under the 22 minute mark, which is why they recycled a scene from an older episode as a commercial, added several jokes over the black screen and did a second rotation of the floating heads while Marge was driving.
• Star Trek Switchout: Originally, Leonard Nimoy's part in this episode was to be played by his fellow Star Trek castmate George Takei. However, even though Takei has been in a previous episode of the show, he was forced to decline a role in a show which makes fun of public transportation because he was on the San Francisco Board of Transportation. He would only do the voice if they made extensive changes to the script in which they made the monorail less dangerous or at least somewhat positive in the end, but even then he wound up declining.
• Cut Line: Homer's conductor's uniform was designed with a specific joke in mind, according to Bill Oakley. That joke was eventually cut from the script but involved this exchange:

Homer: Well, how do I look?

Selma: Like Darth Vader without the helmet.

Allusions and References

• Andy Capp: Andy Capp is the main character from the comic strip bearing his name, he's an Englishman who enjoys sports, womanizing and getting drunk. Many of the strips revolve around Capp drinking at a bar and getting home late at night, much to his wife's disappointment. Up through the 1980s, Capp frequently got into fistfights with his wife, but this was discontinued when complaints of lightly depicting domestic violence surfaced.

Homer: Oh, Andy Capp. You wife-beating drunk.

• Batman: When "Mr. Snrub" and Smithers escape from the town meeting, Smithers using a grappling gun that is similar to one used in Tim Burton's 1988 comic adaptation, Batman. In the movie, Batman and Vickie Vale escape from The Joker when Batman uses the physics defying gun to shoot a grappling hook to safety.
• Beverly Hills Cop: Smithers removes a barrel of toxic waste to a song resembling Harold Faltemeyer's "Axel F," from the 1985 movie.
• "Carrie": North Haverbrook became much like Chamberlain, Maine (from the original 1974 Stephen King novel) – a desolate, dying town with its remaining residents still in catatonic grief – after a massive disaster killed hundreds, possibly thousands of people. (Although the main protagonist in "Carrie" created the disaster through telekinetic revenge targeted at just a couple of bullies, unlike Lanley who did so through (in the very least) negligent homicide (selling an unneeded monorail that malfunctions on its first day of operation).
• The Flash: The Flash is a comic book alias used by a variety of characters owned by DC Comics over the years, including Jay Garrick (Golden Age), Barry Allen (Silver Age), Wally West and Bart Allen. At the time this episode was broadcast, Wally West was the most prominent Flash published by the company. Another kid asks if Superman can outrun the Flash, this is a reference to an occasional contest held in the early days of the character where they would face off in a race around the world. Usually, Flash would win but only by a very short margin.

Ralph: Can it outrun the Flash?

• The Flintstones: The opening segment is a parody of the long-running ABC cartoon series, starting with Homer waiting for the 5 o'clock whistle and sliding down a pipe to get into his car; he then sings, to the theme music of the show: "Simpson ... Homer Simpson ... He's the greatest man in history! From the, town of Springfield ... he's about to hit a chestnut tree!" (Which Homer promptly does ... "AAAAAHHHHH!")
• Gallagher: Sebastian Cobb remarks that the prop comedian, known for his inane comedy and signature act of destroying watermelons with a device called the "Sledge-O-Matic," and whose peak was in the 1980s through early 1990s, was the keynote celebrity on the ill-fated maiden voyage of North Haverbrook's monorail.
• The Little Rascals: In addition to misidentifying him as having starred in Star Wars, Mayor Quimby confuses Leonard Nimoy for a former child actor who appeared decades earlier in the comedy shorts of the late 1920s through early 1940s (originally titled Our Gang, before being renamed to The Little Rascals for television reruns), about a group of children and their misadventures. Specifically, Quimby asks, "Weren't you one of the Little Rascals?"
• The Music Man: The overall story structure – a con artist who tries to defraud the naive residents of a Midwestern town – is taken from the stage musical. (Although Harold Hill's scheme is far more innocent by comparison: Hill merely was selling musical instruments without plans to give them musical lessons to train the hopeful musicians, compared to Lanley's deadly con game purely for his sadistic amusement and profit.) Lanley is based on the musical's main character, Harold Hill. The episode's signature song, "The Monorail Song," is inspired heavily by "Ya Got Trouble."
• Silence of the Lambs: When wheeled into the court hearing, Mr. Burns is restrained in a similar way to how Hannibal Lecter was restrained in the movie Silence of the Lambs, although his face mask isn't as elaborate as the one put on the notorious serial killer and cannibal.
• Star Trek: Leonard Nimoy's starring role in the legendary NBC sci-fi series is played up during the opening ceremonies. Also, Homer wears a uniform similar to the one worn by Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock.
• Star Wars: Mayor Quimby confuses Nimoy's work on Star Trek with the 1977 sci-fi blockbuster when he greets him with the line, "May the force be with you."