Rosebud

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Rosebud
Season 5 Episode 4
Production Code	1F01
Original Airdate	October 21, 1993
Written By	John Swartzwelder
Directed By	Wesley Archer
Show Runners	David Mirkin
Special Guests	The Ramones as themselves
Blackboard Text

"Rosebud" is the fourth episode of the |fifth season.

Plot

Smithers finds Mr. Burns having a nightmare in which he constantly murmurs the name "Bobo". Although Burns initially brushes him off, he later begins to tell a story concerning his beloved, lost teddy bear.

As a child, Burns lived with his family and cherished his teddy bear Bobo. But he drops Bobo in the snow when he leaves to live with a "twisted, loveless billionaire". His father shouts after him "Wait, you've forgot your bear! A symbol of your lost youth and innocence!" but he goes unnoticed and all his parents had left after that was his little brother George. Bobo lies in the snow until the spring, when a thaw washes him downriver to New York. There, he is picked up by Charles Lindbergh and flown across the Atlantic Ocean.

Upon arrival in Paris, Lindbergh tosses the bear out the window, where it is caught by a young Adolf Hitler. In 1945, in his Führerbunker in Berlin, Germany, Hitler blames Bobo for losing (and possibly causing) World War II and tosses him away. In the next scene, Bobo lies onboard the submarine Nautilus headed for the North Pole. He becomes encased in a block of ice until picked up by an ice-gathering expedition. The bag of ice with him in it is sent to Apu's Kwik-E-Mart in Springfield. Bart Simpson buys the bag of ice, finds Bobo and, after remarking "It's a teddy bear! Ugh gross, its probably diseased or something!" gives it to Maggie to play with.

Burns discovers that Maggie has the bear and goes to incredible lengths to get it back, including interrupting all TV shows and cutting off the beer supply to Springfield, in order to get Homer to give it back. However, Maggie loves the bear and Homer's conscience prevents him from taking Bobo away from her. Burns becomes deeply depressed and asks Maggie to look after his bear. Maggie, in an act of pity, lets the desperate Burns have the bear. Burns is overjoyed, but his loving mood does not last.

The episode ends with a Planet of the Apes scenario in one million AD, where a robotic Burns and robotic dog Smithers once again discover Bobo.

Deleted Scenes

On the season set DVD, there is a scene where Burns shows Smithers two switches labeled Beer and TV. He turns them off, but Smithers tells him that those levers are not connected. Burns does a double take and claims he knew that.

Also, according to a DVD commentary, there was a scene where Bobo was in the car during the JFK assassination. This was left out because the writers felt it was in bad taste.

Cultural references

• The episode title is a reference to Charles Foster Kane's dying word in the 1941 Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. Rosebud itself is a sled that Kane had as a child; the teddy bear Bobo ("the symbol of your lost youth and innocence!") is a substitute for Rosebud in this episode, even down to the fact that Burns discards it in the snow when offered a new life of riches and power. The scene where he drops a snow globe, while whispering the name of his lost toy, also parodies Kane's death scene at the start of the film. This is one of several Simpsons episodes which portray Burns as a cartoon version of Kane, others including "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish". Unlike Kane, however, Burns immediately preferred his rich adoptive stepfather over his poor family.
• At the start of the episode, the guards outside Mr. Burns's house parody the Wicked Witch of the West's guards from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The guards also give the same chant the Wicked Witch's guards gave ("O-E-O, E-O!") as well.
• In Burns's dream, his younger brother is apparently future comedian George Burns, already trying out his comic material ("Trust me, it'll be funny when I'm an old man!").
• The caricature of Burns on the theater curtain is drawn in the style of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, including the name Nina (the name of Hirschfeld's daughter) being hidden in the drawing.
• Mr. Burns and Homer make references to The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo.
• While Homer is practicing part of his comedy routine at home, he is holding a golf club in the style of Bob Hope.
• The Ramones are featured in a rendition of "Happy Birthday To You". After their performance, delivered in their typical raucous punk rock style, a trembling, irate, and confused Burns commands Smithers to "have The Rolling Stones killed."
• Photos at Burns's party include him riding a penny-farthing bicycle, a photo of his face poorly taped onto that of boxer Muhammad Ali after he famously floored Sonny Liston in their second fight, and a parody of Marilyn Monroe's skirt being blown up during the movie The Seven Year Itch. The photos are set to the instrumental of the Diana Ross song "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)."
• The jackboots that break up Burns's birthday bash are similar to Nazi Sturmabteilung who busted up groups who were antagonistic to the Party's political platform.
• The last scene where Mr. Burns's robotic body runs off with Bobo is a spoof of Planet of the Apes in which herds of humans are enslaved by humanoid apes.
• The scene with Bobo and the fishtank is a reference to The Graduate.
• When Homer imagines himself singing at the recording studio he sings the Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, which was McDonalds's slogan in 1975.

Reception

The episode was placed second on Entertainment Weekly's top 25 The Simpsons episode. Vanity Fair named it the best episode of the show in 2007, calling it, "A perfect episode. Mr. Burns's lamentations for his childhood bear, Bobo, lead to a show-long parody of Citizen Kane. At once a satire and a tribute, the episode manages to both humanize Mr. Burns and delve deep into Homer's love for his oft-forgotten second daughter, Maggie."

External links

• "Rosebud" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive