The Springfield Connection

"The Springfield Connection" is the 23rd episode of the sixth season of The Simpsons, and original aired May 7, 1995.^[1] It was written by Jonathan Collier and directed by Mark Kirkland.^[1] The title is a satirical reference to the 1971 movie The French Connection.

1 Plot
2 Trivia
3 Cultural references
4 References
5 External links

[edit] 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 (according to Chief Wiggum, Marge forgot to shoot cardboard cutouts depicting a mother and her baby and a blind man with a seeing-eye dog, both of which weren't armed or posing a threat to Marge), and nails the high-speed driving test -- although Wiggum asks her to redo it, as he was distracted by a Magic Eye picture in a book. 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 will not take the money, and Apu leaves it on the table; they are both satisfied when the money is gone, as Mr. Burns takes 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 does not 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 not 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.

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

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.^{[citation needed]}
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.^{[citation needed]}
When Bart asks if he can go to work with Marge (as a cop), she says "You got it, lil' buddy", a reference to the underground comic series Sam and Max: Freelance Police. This is Sam, one of the main character's, catch phrase (and pet name) often directed towards his friend and cohort Max.

[edit] Cultural references

The title, as well as Herman's illegal activities, are references to the 1971 film The French Connection, and the couch gag is a parody of the James Bond series.^[2] Several references are made to the 1980s police drama Hill Street Blues: the briefing scene at the police station is similar and the background and end credits music, are parodies of the show's theme.^[2] Marge appears on an episode of COPS, and McGriff the dog is a reference to McGruff the Crime Dog, the US police public relations figure.^[2] Additionally, Marge's training sequences features homages to Police Academy and Speed.^[2] The Springfield Pops played the theme to the Star Wars films, and Homer mistakenly believes that its composer John Williams is dead.^[3]