The Springfield Connection

From Simpsons Wiki

Plot

Homer and Marge, on the way back from an orchestra performance, pass through a seedy part of town. Homer cautions Marge, but gets enticed by Snake's Three-card Monte game. Snake cheats Homer out of $20, which makes Marge mad. When she exposes the con, Snake takes off. Marge, not wanting to let a crook run away and not getting any help, chases after him, with Homer following laboriously. Marge runs faster than Snake who becomes trapped in a dead end. He tries to attack Marge, but a panicked Marge manages to knock him out. She begins to feel that the whole (mis)adventure has given her a sense of exhilaration.

Soon, she begins to find that her everyday routine is dull and boring. In the grocery store, she starts rolling around on her shopping cart until it crashes, exciting her more. Instead of regular ham, she buys deviled ham. She begins to lose interest in her previous magazines (Sponge and Vacuum), and checks out the Death Sports section. She decides to spice up her life by joining the Springfield Police Force, much to the amusement of Chief Wiggum, although he agrees after a while.

Homer, however, is less than enthused about his wife being a cop, but she assures him that he will remain "man of the house". Marge reports for police recruit training. She does well in the obstacle course, pretty well in the shooting range, and nails the high-speed driving test -- although Wiggum asks her to redo it, as he wasn't watching. Finally she goes home to her family, and announces herself to be a cop.

The next day, after a breakfast of donuts and coffee, a cop's necessary sustenance, Marge reports to the station for work. Wiggum, after assigning some cops to stake out a donut place and some cops to sleep in, sends inexperienced and vulnerable Marge to Junkyville and Bumtown for her beat.

On her beat, after encountering Lionel Hutz rummaging in a dumpster, she goes to the Kwik-E-Mart, where Apu, who knows the drill, tries to bribe her. They both turn their backs as Marge won't take the money, and Apu leaves it on the table; they are both satisfied when the money is gone, as Mr. Burns took it. She then settles a domestic disturbance in the Skinner residence.

On her day off, she orders Bart to wear safety gear when skateboarding, which gets him beaten up by the bullies. She goes to the beauty salon, where the people there are a little skittish around her. Lisa tries to encourage her mom to "attack the roots of social problems" but fails when Marge doesn't understand what she means and changes the subject with a McGriff the Crime Dog hand puppet.

That night, Homer and his friends (Lenny, Carl, Moe, Barney, and Herman) are playing cards. Herman excuses himself to get some fresh air. Homer fires up a Cuban cigar. Marge comes in and finds them gambling, which is illegal. Homer's friends beat a hasty retreat while Homer himself is a little mad at her for not being home more often.

The next day, she seems rather unenthusiastic, as everyone seems to be breaking the law -- especially Homer, who has parked illegally and is buying liquor for the underage bullies. She tells him to move his car, which he refuses to do, leading her to write him a ticket. He gets even more obnoxious, teasing Marge and stealing her hat, which prompts her to arrest him. Later, he is released (after eating Hans Moleman's last meal) but he is pretty mad at Marge.

When he gets home, he finds a jean-counterfeiting operation going on in his own garage (or "Car-hole," according to Moe) and his friend, Herman, is involved. As Herman and his cronies are about to tune him up, Marge busts in to save the day. As she is cuffing the rest of the crooks, Herman takes Homer as a hostage and runs to Bart's tree house, with Marge in hot pursuit. She manages to evade getting shot, by coming in through the secret entrance. Herman tries to escape using a pair of knock-off jeans to slide down a rope, but the stitching on the jeans is shoddy and they tear, causing Herman to fall to the ground.

Later, Wiggum informs Marge that they can't hold him due to lack of evidence. Homer retorts saying that there is a garage full of counterfeit jeans. However, Wiggum says that they have "mysteriously disappeared" -- true, considering all the cops are wearing them now. Marge gets mad and says that there is too much corruption on the force and she quits. After a hearty laugh, Wiggum accepts her resignation.

Trivia

• When Homer uses the police tape on Ned's home, there was a hedge that was never seen before.
• Some of the 'extreme' magazines Marge browses include mosh pitting, bear-baiting, and glass eating.
• Because of Moe's ridicule of Homer for using the word "garage", fans jokingly refer to a garage or garage-like structure as a "car hole", as Moe does.Template:Fact
• About 50 seconds of the episode feature an excessive amount of laughing: when Marge joins the force, when she quits the force, and when Homer pranks Flanders.
• In the two scenes where the cops are laughing at Marge (for joining the force and later for quitting) all the policemen are in identical positions.
• The show often implies that Wiggum, Lou, and Eddie are the only cops in Springfield, which is specifically stated in the Season 14 episode 'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky. However, in many other episodes (Marge on the Lam, for example), a much larger police force is seen such as in this episode. The nature of this conflicting canon is most likely attributed to the series' very loose continuity.
• Upon Marge's first day on the job, she passes the "Junkytown Legal Clinic". This could mean that Junkyville and Bumtown, the two areas of town Marge is policing, are adjacent, and that the legal clinic services both areas.
• When this episode first premiered on Sky One in the United Kingdom, the trailer was a parody of the TV show COPS. Here, Marge was shown walking down the street while a parody song of "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle played, but the song was called "Bad Marge". This was the TV station where COPS was shown in the United Kingdom at the time. Inner Circle provide the theme song of the series itself.
• Homer is given a ticket by Marge for parking his car across three handicap spaces in front of the Kwik-E-Mart and he refuses to move his car. Yet, when Marge arrests Homer in front of the store, the car is nowhere to be found.
• Homer learns by conducting a background check on Moe that Moe's real name, or at least Moe's name as he is known by unsavory types, is Momar.[1] Moe desperately wants to keep that name a secret.

• Much of this episode shows Marge with white pearls, and in a few scenes shows her without them.
• Chief Wiggums' hair switches from black to blue in different scenes.
• Dr. Marvin Monroe is implied to have died in this episode.
• The Kwik-E-Mart is in Junkyville or Bumtown.

Cultural references

• Title is a reference to The French Connection.
• The couch gag is a parody of James Bond.
• The background music in the scenes of Marge walking her beat is an homage to the theme of the 1980s police drama Hill Street Blues. In fact, the ending credits sequence's music pays homage to the series.
• Homer refers to two 1980s films when he says he thought Marge's calling to the police force would be fun and exciting like Spaceballs, and not painful and disturbing like Police Academy.
• At one point Marge appears on a COPS like show.
• While giving Lisa a tour of the station, Marge attempts to distract her with a McGriff puppet, asking her to "Help me bite crime"; a reference to McGruff the Crime Dog and his "Help take a bite out of crime" slogan.

Censorship

• Australian TV has sometimes edited out the part where the crazy police recruit yells, "Forget about the badge! When do we get the freakin' guns?!"