History Recap / TheSimpsonsS8E18HomerVsTheEighteenthAmendment

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Duff Zero goes over like a concrete zeppelin because the drinkers of Springfield ''do'' like its alcohol content.
** Prohibiting alcohol didn't make people stop wanting to drink it. Homer himself scoffs at the proposal ("They tried that in the movies, and it didn't work"), so he's also RightForTheWrongReasons about it.
** Chief Wiggum getting fired from his job is more than earned given his actions in this and previous episodes. But as the episode reminds us he does still have a family to support and is struggling to do so without a job.

* IntoxicationEnsues: Bart getting drunk at the St. Patrick's Day parade after beer being sprayed by the Duff float winds up in the plastic horn he's blowing is the inciting incident that leads to alcohol getting banned in Springfield through the invocation of an unenforced prohibition law.

* AssholeVictim: Rex Banner gets launched by the catapult after testing it by launching a cat and saying that the only thing stopping him from becoming a spree killer is the fact that the law forbids him. The only reaction everybody has to him being flung by the catapult (under Wiggum's orders) is Quimby saying a puzzled "Well, ''that'' was unexpected."

* ThinkOfTheChildren: Since Helen Lovejoy is part of the anti-alcohol ladies' group, it's only natural that she say her CatchPhrase at one point. It's slightly more understandable than usual in this episode, since the IncitingIncident was a child getting drunk.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: The Duff Brewery Head honestly believed that people would like beer for a reason besides its alcohol content, and invested time and money in a non-alcoholic beer based on this idea alone. How wrong he was...

** Obnoxious as they were, the anti-alcohol ladies’ group were right that the St. Patrick's Day parade was celebrating grotesque levels of alcoholism, which got a 10-year-old boy drunk when someone fired alcohol into the crowd. They're also right that Wiggum was brazenly not enforcing the prohibition law (a law everyone thought at the time was in effect) by getting drunk at a speakeasy.

* RabidCop: Banner. The man makes it pretty clear on his big rant at the end that he would go on a killing spree if the law allowed him to do so (and the closest we see to him being ''actually'' happy is when he causes a multiple-car pile-up for the sake of maintaining prohibition). Even then, he goes around kicking people off chairs, slapping them, shaking them hard, grabbing them by the shirt (hell, he gets the knowledge that a booze baron exists by noticing that Barney is drunk and ''punching right through a window'' to get a hold on him to interrogate him) and generally acting as violently as a cop could get away with in a movie made during UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode era.

* WholePlotReference: The Prohibition Era of TheRoaringTwenties and ''Film/TheUntouchables''.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Already a RabidCop who casually admits he'd kill anyone who looked at him funny, Rex Banner has no qualms about testing the catapult with an actual cat. The poor creature ends up launched into the horizon.

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: Moe fronts his speakeasy as Moe's Pet Shop. However, the fact that it plays jazz music at 1:00AM and attracts a certain partygoing clientele make its true purpose blatantly obvious. Even more stupid of Banner, he had already raided the same place earlier in the episode when he took over Wiggum and he should have at least harbored a stronger suspicion than he showed.
-->'''Banner:''' What kind of pet shop is filled with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1:00AM?
-->'''Moe:''' Um, the best damn pet shop in town.
-->[''Crowd cheers'']

* DumbassHasAPoint: When Lisa objects to Homer making alcohol after running out of it from Duff's dumped barrels, Homer makes the point that the law he's fighting against is unjust. Considering the only citizens who called for it were Helen Lovejoy, Maude Flanders, and their {{Moral Guardian|s}} posse, the law just happened to be written on the town charter but never enforced, and those opposed to the idea never got a chance to have their say or vote on it, he's not wrong.

* KarmaHoudini: The police are able to catapult a cat and Rex Banner in front of a large group of people and nothing happens except the mayor saying that was unexpected.

** The clerk who unveiled the old Prohibition law doesn't noticed that there's a note on the manuscript that explicitly says it had been repealed one year after it was passed, because the paper was rolled up.

* ThinkOfTheChildren: Since Helen Lovejoy is part of the anti-alcohol ladies’ group, it's only natural that she say her CatchPhrase at one point.

** Homer's bathtub distillery.

** Later, Banner has a kick the dog moment of sorts; he decides that before using a catapult to fire Homer out of town for breaking the law, he's going to test it on a harmless cat. This is probably to set it up so that you don't feel very sorry for him when he gets launched from the catapult a minute later.

* PlotHole: The Duff Beer corporation goes out of business in less than a day after Springfield goes dry, despite the fact that previous episodes have established Duff being based in Capitol City and has a nationwide presence. So even if it had a large customer base in Springfield, the town banning alcohol should not have been that big of an impact on their sales.

* DeusExMachina: At the exact moment before Homer is to be exiled (or probably executed) by catapult, the clerk that discovered the ancient prohibition law finally notices it was repealed one year later, meaning Homer never broke any law.

** Kent Brockman, who is not adverse at [[ImmoralJournalist exposing sleaze on his newscasts]] and [[KentBrockmanNews being non-chalant (when he is not absurdly alarmist) about it]], is outright disgusted at how all of the drunks of Springfield are acting.

* FelonyMisdemeanor: Springfield's dry law says that people caught smuggling booze are to be exiled from town ... by being tossed with a catapult and having nothing to catch them.