The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson

Plot

At Moe's Tavern, Moe informs Homer and his friends that one of them must be a designated driver, and Barney loses the choosing draw. After Barney drives the drunken men home in Homer's car, Homer allows him to use it to drive himself home, expecting Barney to return it the following morning. In his distressed state, Barney disappears with the car. Two months later, Barney returns to Moe's Tavern, unable to recall where he left the car. Homer later receives a letter from the New York City government, which informs him that his car has been found parked in the World Trade Center plaza. Homer reveals to the family that he had once been to New York before when he was 17 years old and had a horrible experience. Marge and the children persuade Homer to go retrieve the car and he reluctantly agrees.

When the family arrives in Manhattan, they decide to split up. Upon arrival at his car, Homer discovers it has been issued many parking tickets and has been wheel clamped. While waiting for a parking officer to come remove the clamp, Homer drinks an excessive amount of crab juice from a food vendor and needs to urinate, but is afraid to leave his car behind. After several hours of holding it in, he finally goes to the restroom at the South Tower's indoor observation deck, but discovers that it is out of order and must use the one at the top of the North Tower. While he is doing that, the officer arrives at the car and, finding no one present, issues another ticket and leaves; Homer's subsequent "D'oh!" echoes across the city. Meanwhile, the rest of the family tours the Statue of Liberty, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Empire State Building. Bart leaves the group to visit the offices of Mad magazine, and is in awe when he sees Alfred E. Neuman. The family attends a Broadway musical about the Betty Ford Clinic, and then takes a carriage through Central Park to where they are planning to meet Homer.

Upon returning to the car, Homer realizes he must make it to Central Park to find his family and leave before it gets dark. Ignoring the wheel clamp, he tries to accelerate and in the process destroys the car's fender. Homer stops by a road construction crew and steals a jackhammer so he can use it to remove the clamp. The car is freed from the clamp, but further damaged as a result. Homer races to Central Park and reunites with his family. While driving back to Springfield, the family reflects on their wonderful time, while Homer's hatred for New York remains.

Production

Writer Ian Maxtone-Graham, a former resident of New York, had conceived the idea of having the family travel to the city to locate their missing car and believed it to be "a classic Manhattan problem". Bill Oakley, who had visited the World Trade Center when the construction of the towers was completed in 1973, suggested parking the car in the plaza of the buildings. Josh Weinstein observed that, "When we realized that there was a plaza between the two towers, we knew it was a perfect spot to have Homer's car."

The animators were told to make a detailed replica of the city. David Silverman was sent to Manhattan to take hundreds of pictures of the city and areas around the World Trade Center. When he returned, Lance Wilder and his team spent time creating new scenes and backgrounds, incorporating small details such as signs and hundreds of extras that would correctly illustrate the city. Oakley and Weinstein were pleased with the final results, and both noted that the buildings, streets, and even elevator cabins were detailed closely to their real life counterparts. In the final scene, as the family is seen driving away from New York on the George Washington Bridge, the credits roll with the "camera" gradually pulling back from a view of the car, to a view of the side, and then on to a panorama view of the city; as if the whole sequence was being shot from a helicopter. To achieve this effect, a computer model of the bridge pulling out was made and then printed out. With the print outs, photocopies were made traced onto the animation cels. The process took a long time and was expensive, as the use of computer animation was not widespread when the episode was produced. Director Jim Reardon wanted to replicate films that ended in a similar way, and commented, "I remembered that every movie located in New York would pull back if you were leaving town on a bridge." Shortly before the episode aired, the production staff contacted Fox to make sure they would not run commercials during the credits.

Ken Keeler, who wrote the lyrics for the "You're Checkin' In" musical number, spent two hours in a room alone to write the song. Upon sharing the lyrics with the rest of the production staff, some revisions were made, although little was changed. Bill Oakley was unsatisfied with the part of the musical where the actor sings, "Hey, that's just my Aspirin!", claiming that a better line could have been written.

Reception

In its original broadcast, "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" finished 18th in ratings for the week of September 15–21, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 10.7, equivalent to approximately 10.5 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, beating King of the Hill's season two opener "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying".

The episode was mostly well received. The song "You're Checkin' In" won a 1998 Primetime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music and Lyrics", and an Annie Award for "Outstanding Music in an Animated Television Production" in the same year. In honor of The Simpsons' 300th episode milestone in 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked the episode at number 13 on the list of their 25 favorite episodes, and AskMen.com ranked the episode at number seven on their top ten; in both cases it was the second-most-recent installment chosen to co-inhabit the lists. IGN named the episode the best of the ninth season, claiming "this is a very funny episode that started season nine off on a strong note". Since the release of the season nine DVD box set, the episode has been highlighted by newspaper reviewers to show excellence of the season.

Ian Jones and Steve Williams, writers for British review website Off the Telly, claimed that the episode "ditched all pretence of a plot and went flat out for individual, unconnected sight gags and vignettes". The two noted that it was their least favorite debut episode for a season of The Simpsons. In a separate article in Off the Telly, Jones and Williams write that the episode "... wasn't shown for reasons of taste and has never appeared on terrestrial television in Britain", referring to a BBC Two schedule of the ninth season, which began in October 2001.

Due to the prominence of the World Trade Center in the plot, the episode was removed from syndication after the September 11 attacks. By 2006, the episode had come back into syndication in some areas; however, parts of the episode were often edited out. One previously such edited item is a scene of two men arguing across Tower 1 and Tower 2, where a man from Tower 2 claims, "They stick all the jerks in Tower One". Co-executive producer Bill Oakley commented in retrospect that the line was "regrettable".