Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore
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“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore” is the seventeenth episode of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons, it originally aired on April 9, 2006. Richard Dean Anderson was the guest star. It is written by Dan Castellaneta and Deb Lacusta and is the fourth episode written by the duo.
[edit] Plot
On movie night at the nuclear plant, Homer learns that the nuclear power plant is being shut down and outsourced to India. After Homer is sent to train the new employees, he becomes power-hungry. Meanwhile, Selma and Patty meet their Hollywood heartthrob, Richard Dean Anderson, who plays MacGyver, only to find that he is totally uninterested in MacGyver and only did it for the pay.
Meanwhile, Homer realizes to his horror that he has come to India (which he has mistaken for Indiana, among other misconceptions). After a brief standoff with a sacred cow, Homer looks for a relative of Apu named Kavi, who should be around somewhere. After randomly asking people, he (“Finally!”) gets the right man on the second try.
Back in Springfield, Patty and Selma kidnap Richard Dean Anderson from his Stargate SG-1 convention and tie him to a chair. From there, he manages to escape...only to discover that he loves escaping, and starts having Patty and Selma put him through increasingly complex MacGyver-esque kidnapping trials.
In India, Homer is coming to love the concept of outsourcing. With “help” from a book Marge gave him to read on the plane trip, The Cereal Is the Prize, Homer is able to spur the "natives" into a working frenzy. Or so it appears; actually they assume that if they cheer, they will be allowed to go back to work. Homer, Smithers, and Mr. Burns get a positive (if inaccurate) impression from this, and Homer is put in total charge of the power plant while Mr. Burns takes time off to have fun floating down the Ganges with corpses he has befriended. Homer, left in charge of a slightly-overgrown nuclear power plant on a river in the middle of nowhere, appraises the Hindu deities and decides he might be a god himself.
About a week later, Lenny and Carl come to the India plant, invited by a card claiming that Homer is to become a god. (His cell phone number will, however, stay the same.)
Soon,the rest of the Simpson family, worried about Homer, travel to India and, with Mr. Burns, journey upriver on a PBR boat in an Apocalypse Now manner, and find that Homer is ruling the plant like a god. Horrified, Marge and the kids tell the plant workers that Homer is not a god. They cheerfully explain that they know, and are worshiping him instead for the American workplace routines he has instituted, like coffee breaks. It is revealed that Homer is treating the workers as good human beings, much to Marge’s relief. Mr. Burns calls this “madness” and decides to close down the plant and move it to an area 'where the people are more stupid and desperate for work...Springfield'. Burns then fires all the workers: however, this makes the workers delighted due to the various firing clauses Homer has written into their contracts ("Golden parachutes for all!"). The episode ends with the Simpsons, Lenny, Carl, Patty, Selma, Richard Dean Anderson, and Mr. Smithers joining in a Bollywood style dance at the plant, for which the audio continues into the credits.
[edit] Cultural references
- The title is a spoof of the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
- When the video zooms out, the airport Homer flies into is in roughly the same location as Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh which does have an international airport.
- The Taj Mahal as shown in the background is misleading. As Bangalore is in the South and the Taj Mahal is in Agra, Uttar Pradesh which is in northern India.
- Homer pretends a cardboard cutout of Mac Tonight is a thermostat repairman and also leaves it to look after the kids.
- Homer is dressed like the character Mola Ram from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (played by the late Amrish Puri) when the Simpsons and Mr. Burns find him in India.[1] Homer dressed as Mola Ram would later appear in the YouTube video view of Homer's life as he plunges off the bridge in the season 19 episode "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind".
- Apu's cousin in India, Kavi, is shown using multiple accents while working as a telephone operator. It is a fact that call center executives in India are trained on several accents, such as the American, the American Southern, the British and so on.
- The boat ride at this episode’s climax parodies Apocalypse Now, itself based on Heart of Darkness.
- The song that plays as the Simpsons sail through India is "The End" by The Doors, which was also used in the film Apocalypse Now. It was previously used in "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", when Homer contemplates suicide after everyone becomes sick of him being famous for bowling a 300 game.
- The song that plays at the end of the episode is "Pal Bhar Ke Liye" composed by Kalyanji-Anandji, and performed by Kishore Kumar, a famous Indian playback singer. The track is from the 1970 Hindi movie Johny Mera Naam starring Dev Anand and Hema Malini.
- The conversation about choosing a door which may contain a tiger references the short story "The Lady or the Tiger", in which a young man must choose a door, knowing it will either house a beautiful lady who is not the woman he fell in love with, or a man-eating tiger.
- When Homer is looking for Apu's relative named Kavi, Kavi is found standing in front of a shop on Bangalore's busy street. The board on the shop reads as "ಷೂಮೇಕರ್" ("Shoemaker"), written in the local language Kannada.
- Patty and Selma eventually drive away Richard Dean Anderson by showing him slides of their trip to the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston, Alberta. The museum was actually quite honored by the reference, even though it was in the context of "boring summer vacations". In an interview, The Simpsons producer Al Jean said the idea to use the museum came from writer Matt Selman, who is, according to Jean, "a big fan of carriage museums".[2]
- The five carriages Patty mentions are the Phaeton, Landau, Buckboard, Post-chaise, and Surrey (the latter, more than once).
- Several of the nerds at the Stargate SG-1 scifi convention are sporting Jaffa-style tattoos on their foreheads. Temporary tattoos of the Jaffa emblem are actually easily available at many scifi conventions.
- Homer says that God has a white beard and invented The Da Vinci Code
[edit] References
- ^ The Simpsons. TheRaider.net. Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
- ^ "Alberta Museum Immortalized by The Simpsons", CTV, April 11, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-10-26.
