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"'Simpsons Tall Tales'" is the season finale and twenty-first episode of the twelfth season of ''The Simpsons''. It aired on May 20, 2001.

Contents

Plot

Paul Bunyan

Connie Appleseed

Tom and Huck

Trivia

External links

Plot

After the Simpsons win a trip to Delaware, Homer refuses to pay a $5 airport tax for his flight. The family jumps onto a freight train and meets a singing, although clearly weird, hobo who tells them three tall tales. They are as follows:

Paul Bunyan

Homer plays Paul Bunyan, a great burden on local townspeople, as he crushes their houses and consumes all their food. Eventually, the townspeople drug him and drag him out of their town. Out of loneliness, he carves a block of stone from the mountains into a blue ox that he calls Babe, who is rendered alive by an electric shock, similar to lightning, which apparently originated from the northern lights. However when a meteor is soon to hit the town, the townspeople call Paul back to help them. Paul obliges and throws the meteor towards Chicago, starting the Great Fire there. Paul meets Marge and they fall in love.
After the hobo has told this story, he asks them for a sponge bath as compensation. Disgusted, Homer is forced to oblige, as nobody else will do so, but the hobo does not mind anyone seeing his nakedness.

Connie Appleseed

The hobo's second tall tale is loosely based on the legend of Johnny Appleseed, except Lisa portrays him, and her name is adapted to "Connie Appleseed." Connie is part of a wagon train, and all of the travelers shoot and eat buffalo. Connie is against the practice because "If you aren't careful, you'll wipe the species off the face of the earth." She is worried that no one is eating a renewable source of food and finds some apples for the pioneers to eat, but they reject them. Eventually, she changes her last name to "Appleseed", and leaves her family to journey across America and plant apple seeds wherever she goes. Meanwhile, the Simpsons change their surname to "Bufflekill" and they succeed in killing all the buffalo. Just as they are about to cannibalize Homer, Connie returns and offers them apples. They like them, and Homer is spared.

Tom and Huck

Though it is not actually a tall tale (Lisa points this out before the story begins), the hobo tells this tale based on Mark Twain's story about Tom Sawyer, whom Bart portrays, and Huckleberry Finn, which Nelson has the role of. Huck is caught holding hands with Becky (Lisa) and is forced to marry her. He dodges this marriage and goes on the run with Tom, leaving Missouri for Missoura. However, there are chased by townspeople (led by Becky's father (Homer)) and their families. Tom and Huck are later caught and unceremoniously hung.
The family arrives in Delaware and disembarks the train, but the hobo reminds them that they owe him two more sponge baths as compensation. Homer promises to catch up with them in an hour and volunteers to stay behind to do the dirty work.

Trivia

★ The chalkboard gag (I should not be 21 by now) is a reference to how the characters never age. Bart started the show as 10, had one birthday, and 11 seasons/years later, Bart is still ten. A sign seen in the rail yard at the end of the episode reads "20 IF", likely a reference to both this and the Beatles' album ''Abbey Road'', on the cover of which is a Volkswagen Beetle with the license plate "28IF". Supposedly this meant that if Paul McCartney had not "died", he would have been 28 when the album was released.

★ The premise of the episode, and the verbatim line, "I can't believe it, we won another contest!" said by Marge, refers to the season eleven episode Behind the Laughter. At the finale of that episode, Homer (on the TV show-within-the-show) enters announcing, "The Simpsons are going to Delaware!" ... and Homer the producer of the show comments "This'll be the last season."

★ Paul Bunyan and Babe fought Rodan, according to the hobo. Oddly enough, Rodan roars like Godzilla in the episode.

★ In the tale "Connie Appleseed", when Connie/Lisa finds the group, Moe is seen taking an apple from Lisa, but in the end Moe is under Homer's clothes, eating him.

★ Gracie films tagline: Homer: "Oh boy! Buffalo testicles!"

★ In the original story of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Tom (here played by Bart) had a crush on Becky (here played by Lisa). In the Simpsons spoof on that story, Huck (here played by Nelson) is shown getting married to Becky, which is another throwback to Lisa's Date with Density. The change made from the original—Huck with feelings for Becky instead of Tom—might be because if it remained true to the source material, we would see Bart marrying his sister.

★ In the tale "Tom and Huck", Tom Sawyer (played by Bart) and Huckleberry Finn (played by Nelson) buy products from a store called "Pelts, Pones, & Beyond", a parody of the store Bed, Bath & Beyond. The store was run by Apu.

★ This was the last episode to air before the introduction of computer-influenced animation began.

External links

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