Original air date: 3/14/2004 (produced in 2003)
Production code: FABF-08
The Simpsons go on a late-night attic search after Bart and Lisa (who are traumatized by a horror flick Homer let them watch) begin hearing voices—and find Marge's ex-prom date Artie Ziff, who's on the run for cheating the shareholders of his company.
Tropes:
- Artistic Licence – Law: At the end, Homer is allowed to put the time he spent in prison towards a future offence, which he does by punching the prison guard in the stomach. This would not happen in real life. For one thing, the concept of "putting time you spent in prison towards a future offence because you were wrongly convicted for the crime you were imprisoned for" is untrue in real life (there are certain Wrongful Accusation Insurance laws, but they don't work like this). For another, assaulting a prison guard (or stealing a car, the other option Homer had) can get you imprisoned for years, and Homer was implied to only be in prison for a few days (or weeks at the absolute most).
- Bad "Bad Acting": Lenny in the horror movie combines this with a bit of Dull Surprise as he tries to remember his lines.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The final scene of the episode is Artie pissing off all of the inmates at the prison by squirting water in their faces and extinguishing their cigarettes. Marge makes it pretty clear that she doesn't expect Ziff to survive the beatdown to come.Marge: Kids, I think you better take your last look at "Uncle Artie".
- Averted, given Artie appears alive and well in Season 31's "Hail to the Teeth".
- Continuity Nod: Llewellyn Sinclair, Professor Lombardo, Aristotle Amadopolis and Jay Sherman, all characters previously voiced by Lovitz, appear at Moe's.All: Hello, handsome!
Artie: Hello... losers. - Comically Missing the Point: Marge asks Artie if he ever thinks of anyone but himself. Cue Imagine Spot of several can-can dancers with his face doing the dance in his honor as an audience of Arties applauds them.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Ziff. He runs his company into the ground (although in his defence it was mostly the dot-com bubble bursting) and then manages to swindle Homer into becoming CEO so the IRS will arrest him instead of Artie.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: While investigating the noise in the attic, Homer finds an issue of Newsweek from 1986, with the front page reading "Why America Loves Saddam Hussein," and shows Uncle Sam and Hussein lovingly looking at each other while sharing a milkshake.
- Doppelgänger Crossover: Homer introduces Ziff to other characters voiced by Jon Lovitz including Jay Sherman from The Critic. Ziff calls them all losers.
- Everyone Has Standards: Bart, the kid who would gladly sneak into horror movies, is terrified by The Re-Deadening.
- Everything Is Racist:Marge: My husband's going to jail and it's all your fault! Do you know why no one likes you?
Artie: Antisemitism? - Eye Scream: Continuing a Running Gag with Lenny, his movie character loses his eyes to an evil doll.Lenny: The buttons look like they're sewn to my eyes, but they're really held on with hot wax.
- Hated by All: Artie. Everyone in the courtroom galleries during the trial is glaring at him, well aware of what he did to Homer.
- Heel Realization: After Marge calls Artie out on his behavior, saying that he only ever thinks of himself.Artie: My God, she's right!
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: When in prison, Homer admits that he enjoys strangling Bart, and starts to cry from the fact that Bart will be an adult when his father is out, too old to be choked.
- House Squatting: After hearing weird sounds on the attic, the Simpsons go check and find out that Artie has been living inside of the house without their knowledge for months, surviving by feeding off the attic's mold.
- Informed Judaism: The only time throughout all of his appearances in which we obtain information that Artie Ziff is Jewish is his blunt Comically Missing the Point question of "anti-Semitism" when Marge asks him if he knows why everybody hates him as a preface to a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- It's All About Me: Artie Ziff before Marge calls him out on it. His Imagine Spot just before his Heel Realization is a chorus of Artie's singing "Artie, Artie, Artie, Artie, Artie" as an audience consisting of more Arties applauds them.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Back in The '70s, Artie was a slim young man with a very nice "Jew-fro". In his middle age, he's gotten pudgier and his hairline is receding.
- Jerkass:
- Artie Ziff. He breaks into Homer and Marge's house, squats in their attic and tricks Homer into becoming majority shareholder of ZiffCorp so he'll be arrested for Artie's crimes. And once in prison, he sprays water into the faces of fellow inmates to put out their cigarettes (because of all the hazards of smoking, you see).... that is something that would be enraging even if not done to a convicted felon (and it's made pretty clear that he is about to be pummeled before the credits start running).
- Also, back in 1974, he had tried to force himself on Marge after the prom.
- Patty and Selma, but what else is new? When they find out that Artie got Homer thrown in jail, Selma has sex with Artie to celebrate.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Artie loses his big-time, after three episodes in which he doesn't get what he wants (Marge) but he doesn't get anything truly bad coming at him. By the time the episode ends, he's lost all of his money and his freedom.
- Majority-Share Dictator: Played with. Ziff, having absolutely nothing else to his name, bets the company stock he owns in a poker game, which Homer wins. Then at that moment the IRS barge into the Simpson house looking for the CEO of Ziff Co... which at the time technically is Homer. He ends up being taken away with Artie (the man who actually founded, ran, and then destroyed the company) remaining untouched. Needless to say, Moe and the others aren't happy about this when they find out, and Marge even less so when she finds out.
- Missing Steps Plan: The moment Artie Ziff told the Simpsons he was a dot-com billionaire, they already understood how he went broke.
- Nostril Shot: Lisa parodies The Blair Witch Project.Lisa: If I don't make it out alive, I love you, Mom and Dad. Maggie, you can have my books. And Bart, I'll See You in Hell, you booger-eating wuss! Yeah, that's right, we all know!
- Put on a Prison Bus: Artie Ziff gets arrested for all his schemes at the end, and this episode was his last major appearance outside of cameos and non-canon episodes until "Hail to the Teeth".
- Rage Breaking Point: When the Simpsons suddenly hear theremin music coming from the attic:Homer: That's it. It's one thing for a ghost to terrorize my children, but quite another for him to play my theremin.
- Recognition Failure: Homer, believing that he's been in jail for years instead of a few weeks at most, thinks Lisa is a preteen Maggie, and Artie is a grown-up Bart.
- Riches to Rags: Artie after the bubble burst.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Bart abandons Lisa in the attic when they film themselves investigating the noises.Lisa: (nervous laugh) Must be the pipes. What do you think, Bart?
Bart: I think you're on your own, toots! - Secret Squatter: Bart and Lisa are traumatized after seeing a scary movie, and they think there's a killer in the house after hearing bumps in the night. It turns out to be Artie Ziff, who had been squatting in the attic after going broke.
- See You in Hell: Lisa says this to Bart during her Blair Witch Project influenced breakdown.Lisa: Bart, I'll see you in hell, you booger eating wuss! That's right, we all know!
- Short Film: An in-universe example happens with The Wild Dingleberries Movie, where the runtime is shown as 47 minutes.
- Shout-Out:
- The moment Lisa breaks down while she and Bart are investigating the odd noises in the attic and tells how she's sorry about things she's done to the camera she's brought along is clearly based on a similar moment in The Blair Witch Project.
- The title is one to The Man Who Came to Dinner.
- Skewed Priorities: Lisa drops her camera and runs away from the odd noises in the attic, which for all she knows is something very, very dangerous, and takes a moment to go back to where the camera is lying down and rattle off her home film's copyright legalese before continuing to run away (without the camera).
- Social Media Before Reason: Lisa brings a camcorder with her when Bart and her go see what's in the attic. She spends quite a lot of time recording what she thinks may be her last words and her video's legalese than she does running the hell away from the thing that scared her half to death.
- Stalker with a Crush: Artie's this to Marge. After the family finds out that he's been living in their attic since he went broke, he explains that he did it because Marge is the closest thing he's ever had to true love—but Marge is quick to point out that she and Artie only had one date together and that he almost raped her on the night of their high school prom.
- Take That!:
- The episode begins with the Homer attempting to take his kids, Rod and Todd to see The Wild Dingleberries Movie, with the descriptions of the film given by Bart and Lisa clearly being unflattering regardless of how enthusiastic they sound.
Lisa: It's a movie version of a cartoon family you can see for free on TV.
Bart: But they stretched out the plot and added a wildebeest...from the hood!- One of the movie titles on the placard is The Unwatchable Hulk.
- Technology Marches On: Acknowledged In-Universe. Ziff only gets as far in the story of how he became poor as to mention his business was a dot-com company before everybody interrupts him by saying "we get it".
- Too Dumb to Live: Artie didn't realize how his fellow inmates thought about his plan to save them from smoking.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We never see Rod or Todd after they see The Re-Deadening, or if Ned even found out about Homer taking them to the movie in the first place.
- Wrongful Accusation Insurance: After Homer is released, the guard says to make it up to him, he's allowed to either steal a car or punch him in the stomach. Homer chooses the latter, which the guard moans every wrongfully arrested prisoner chooses.
