Simpson Tide

Plot

While lying on the couch at home, Homer sees a recruitment advertisement on television for the Naval Reserve and decides to enlist. Moe, Barney, and Apu decide to join him. Meanwhile, Bart purchases an earring, which an outraged Homer confiscates.

Homer and the others are placed on a nuclear submarine. When the captain goes to check on a problem in the torpedo hatch, Homer is left in charge. An enemy submarine approaches, and Homer gives the order to fire a torpedo. However, the captain is in the torpedo tube and is fired at the other submarine. The other sub fires back at them and Homer gives the order to retreat. The submarine ends up in Russian waters and is seen by the United States government as an attempt to defect. This event creates a political schism between the USA and Russia, leading to the revelation that the Soviet Union in fact never truly dissolved. Out of nowhere the Berlin Wall rises from the ground, Soviet troops and tanks take their positions and Vladimir Lenin rises from Lenin's tomb in Moscow à la Frankenstein's Monster "to crush capitalism", all set to Alexander Borodin's 'Boyar chorus' from Prince Igor. Nuclear war is anticipated until the US Navy drops depth charges on Homer's sub, aiming either to destroy it or force it to surface. The consequent explosion causes a pinhole leak in the submarine's wall. Homer uses Bart's earring to plug the leak and saves the submarine.

The vessel surfaces and Homer is taken to be court-martialed. Homer's punishment ends up being a mild dishonorable discharge.

Production

"Simpson Tide" was one of two season nine episodes that was executive produced by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who together were the showrunners for the third and fourth seasons. Although Jean would later return to run the show the following season, it was the last episode that Reiss received an executive producer credit for. Joshua Sternin and Jeffrey Ventimilia, the episode writers, were working on Jean and Reiss's show The Critic at the time, and pitched an episode where Homer joins the Naval Reserve. Although the episode is partly based on the film Crimson Tide, the original episode pitch was made before the film was released. After the release of the film, the writers decided to start incorporating things from the movie in the script. In the original draft, Bart sneaked on board the submarine with Homer. They were trying to do it "for the comedy of it", but could not get the draft to work, so it was cut. It was difficult for them to figure out how to get the captain off of the sub and they eventually decided to have him shot out of the torpedo tube, which in the DVD commentary, Al Jean says that Steiger claimed that he really did get stuck in a torpedo tube once.

The Navy drill instructor, along with the announcer to "Exploitation Theater", was voiced by Michael Carrington, who had written the season four episode "Homer's Triple Bypass" and previously voiced Sideshow Raheem. Bob Denver voices himself in the episode and was directed by Mike Reiss. Rod Steiger guest stars as the captain and was directed by Al Jean.

Reception

In its original broadcast, "Simpson Tide" finished 29th in ratings for the week of March 23–29, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 9.2, equivalent to approximately 9.0 million viewing households. It was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files.

Michael Schiffer, one of the writers of the film Crimson Tide, is said to have enjoyed this episode. Mike Reiss considers the sequence where Russia returns to being the Soviet Union to be "the nuttiest the show has ever been". The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a fairly straightforward episode where the biggest laugh comes from Homer being able to talk to penguins and Bart trying to impress his classmates by doing The Bartman."