Monday in Springfield

At least one critic has turned to Season Eight for "the best" episode of "The Simpsons": The contender is "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer."

In this one, Marge tries to fill the house with cigar smoke, so Homer doesn't realize the annual chili festival is happening. Homer tends to get drunk on beer, and he then embarrasses himself in front of the community.

After a fight, Homer promises he will *not* drink at the new chili festival. But certain peppers are so hot, they call out for an alcoholic chaser. Marge sees Homer with a beer and storms off. Homer, now upset and unhinged, channels his anger into a hot-chili contest. He coats the inside of his own throat with liquid candle wax so he can ingest certain extra-hot peppers. And the peppers send him on a hallucinatory journey.

It's during this journey that Johnny Cash--in the form of a talking coyote--really questions Homer's life choices. Can Marge be an adequate soulmate? A person who doubts the utility of an occasional mug of beer?

Having awakened from his dream, Homer continues to entertain concerns about Marge. She doesn't have an awesome record collection! Glen Campbell, The Doodletown Pipers--These great artists all speak to Homer, and not to Marge.

Homer wanders off to a deserted island, determined to blacken the curtains of the local lighthouse, so that a ship will run aground--and the shipmates can become Homer's new buddies. Marge intuits that this is what Homer will do, and she finds him on the island--and the connection these two share does prove to be "enough." They head home together.

(The nearby ship does indeed crash, in total darkness, and the people of Springfield loot the boxes from the ship. Each box has a bushel of "hotpants.")

I'm obsessed with this script--how can it be otherwise?--and I especially like Act One. The fight about the chili festival is something that could happen within any couple. To go from there to the coyote, and to the lighthouse--This is a work of art.

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