[en] | $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)

At a town hall, Mayor Quimby fields suggestions on ways to improve Springfield’s faltering economy. Principal Skinner suggests the town legalize gambling to rejuvenate its economy. Everyone likes the idea, even Marge, who has become known for disapproving of the townspeople’s ideas. Mr. Burns and Quimby work together to build a casino, and Homer is hired as a blackjack dealer.

While waiting for Homer’s shift to end, Marge finds a quarter on the casino floor and uses it to play a slot machine. She wins and quickly develops a gambling addiction. Bart attempts to patronize the casino, but he is refused service because he is younger than the legal gambling age. This prompts Bart to transform his tree house into a casino for children. Burns grows even richer from his casino, but his appearance and mental state deteriorate. He develops a fear of germs and builds a handheld model plane called “The Spruce Moose”, which he believes is big enough to hold human passengers.

Marge’s gambling addiction causes her to neglect her family. She stays in the casino for multiple days in a row, forcing Homer, Bart, and Lisa to make their own meals and do their own laundry, which they do poorly. Marge forgets to help Lisa make a costume for Springfield Elementary School‘s geography pageant. Homer makes a costume of Florida for Lisa, but it is misshapen and shabby, displaying the state’s name as “Floreda”. Lisa begins crying, which motivates Homer to cure Marge of her gambling addiction.

Homer frantically runs throughout the casino, searching for Marge. Security cameras capture his rampage, causing Burns to demote him to his old job at the power plant. After realizing how much he misses the plant, Burns decides to return to it. When Homer confronts Marge for her behavior, she finally realizes she has a gambling problem and agrees to stop.

Lisa wins a prize in the geography pageant for children who “clearly had no help from their parents”. Ralph receives the same prize for his costume, a note taped to his shirt that reads “Idaho”.

The episode was written by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, and directed by Wes Archer.^[1] The story of the episode originated from a newspaper article that Oakley and Weinstein found about a town in Mississippi that was introducing riverboat gambling.^[2] Oakley said another inspiration for it was that there had not been many episodes about Springfield as a whole and how “crummy” the town was, so they filled the whole first act with scenes showing how “dismal” it was.^[3] Oakley particularly liked the animation of the lights on the slot machines and the lamps in the ceiling of the casino; the “way they radiate out” had always amazed him.^[3] Archer, who directed the animation of the episode, also thought they turned out well. The lights were especially hard for them to animate back then because the show was animated traditionally on cels.^[4] A deleted scene from the episode shows Homer dealing cards to James Bond. The staff liked the scene, so they decided to put it in the clip show episode “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular“.^[5]

There was a brief period when the episode had a different subplot that revolved around the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood. Groening had been told by a spokesperson that if he put Planet Hollywood in The Simpsons, the creators of the restaurant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, would agree to make guest appearances on the show. The writers of The Simpsons were excited about this so they wrote a new subplot for the episode that featured Planet Hollywood and the three actors. However, for unknown reasons, they were unable to appear in the episode.^[6] Instead, Gerry Cooney and Robert Goulet guest starred as themselves. Executive producer David Mirkin enjoyed directing Goulet because he was “such a good sport” and had “a great sense of humor”.^[5] Oakley thought it was nice that Goulet was willing to make fun of himself in the episode, which at the time was rare for guest stars on The Simpsons.^[3] This episode features the first appearances of Gunter and Ernst, the Siegfried and Roy-esque casino magicians who are attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia. Ten years after this episode first aired, on October 3, 2003, Roy Horn was attacked by one of the duo’s white tigers. The Simpsons production team dismissed the novelty of the prediction by saying that it was “bound to happen” sooner or later.^[5]

The title is a reference to the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the music of which was composed by Laurie Johnson. Two of his songs, “Happy-go-lively” and “Rue de la park” can be heard in the News on Parade segment at the beginning of the episode.^[7] Burns’ bed looks similar to the one occupied by Keir Dullea‘s character Dave Bowman in the end of the 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).^[8] Homer is impressed by the card-counting abilities of a man who resembles Raymond Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman‘s character in Rain Man (1988).^[1] Krusty‘s midnight show is similar to Bill Cosby‘s 1971 album For Adults Only, recorded at a casino at midnight.^[8] Marge reminds Homer that his lifelong dream was to be a contestant on The Gong Show.^[8]

Henry Kissinger visits the plant and drops his glasses in the toilet. He thinks that no one can know how he lost them, “Not I, the man who drafted the Paris Peace Accords!” Burns’s paranoid obsession with germs and cleanliness, and his refusal to leave his bedroom once the casino opens, parodies American magnate Howard Hughes, who had obsessive–compulsive disorder and was involved in the casino business in his later years. The “Spruce Moose”, an absurdly tiny wooden plane Burns makes, is a parody of Hughes’ impractically enormous wooden plane, derisively nicknamed the Spruce Goose.^[8] Homer parodies the scene in The Wizard of Oz (1939) when the Scarecrow demonstrates his newfound intelligence by (incorrectly) reciting the law that governs the lengths of the sides of an isosceles triangle. Unlike in the film, somebody correctly points out that the Pythagorean theorem recited applies only to right triangles, not isosceles triangles.^[6]

In its original American broadcast, “$pringfield” finished 35th in the ratings for the week of December 13 to December 19, 1993, with a Nielsen Rating of 11.7, translating to 11 million households. The episode was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week.^[9]

Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. DVD Movie Guide’s Colin Jacobson commented that “this excellent episode includes a surprising number of concurrent plots. Homer also works in the casino and tries to care for the family without Marge. It balances them deftly and provides great laughs along the way.”^[10] Adam Suraf of Dunkirkma.net named it the third best episode of the season. He also praised the episode’s cultural references.^[11] The authors of the book I Can’t Believe It’s a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote: “There’s a lovely nod to the earlier episodes in which Marge protests the citizenry’s hare-brained ideas at council meetings. A series of bizarre moments rather than a story—we’re especially fond of Homer’s photographic memory and Mr Burns’ descent into insanity—but great fun.”^[8] Patrick Bromley of DVD Verdict gave the episode a grade of A,^[12] and Bill Gibron of DVD Talk gave it a score of 4 out of 5.^[13] The episode is Sarah Culp of The Quindecim‘s eleventh-favorite episode of the show,^[14] and one of Les Winan of Box Office Prophets’s favorite episodes.^[15] A scene from the episode where former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets Burns was included in the 2002 documentary film The Trials of Henry Kissinger.^[16]

• “$pringfield episode capsule”. The Simpsons Archive.
• “$pringfield” at IMDb