Original air date: 1/4/2004 (produced in 2003)
Production code: FABF-03
When a group of singles, seniors, childless couples, teenagers, and homosexuals band together to protest having to accommodate families (including paying property taxes used to teach children they do not have) after a riot at a children's concert gone terribly wrong, Marge takes up the cause for the families, with some help from Bart and Lisa.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Medicine: In real life, the flu doesn't kick in as quickly as it did to SSCCATAG.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Marge's thoughts on the Teletubbies:Marge: They make the Blue Man Group look like Mummenschanz, which is still pretty good.
- Then later:
Lindsay Naegle: Ladies and gentlemen, let's kill every child...friendly thing in town! - Brick Joke: In Homer's commercial supporting the Families Come First initiative, one of the "regular" Springfieldians that he mentions supports it is the Jack Benny Expy who often shows up as a cashier at high-end stores like Costington's. At the end of the episode, he comes out to inform the sick members of SSCCATAG that the initiative passed using his Big "YES!" Character Catchphrase.
- Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': Of course, the one time Bart desperately wants to be given detention (to escape Maggie's Roofi CD), Mrs. Krabappel sends him home, even though he poured coffee in the class gerbil's water bottle and caused it to have a heart attack.
- Cheated Angle: A very odd case of it. Usually, the characters' mouths are drawn appropriately when a character is facing the camera, which is most noticeable during the first season. However, during the final scene, when Moe starts getting sick from contact with children, pausing the cartoon shows that whenever he faces the camera as he turns his head, his mouth is drawn as if he's still on a side view, and in both
◊ angles◊ at that. - Children Are a Waste: The SSCCATAG believes this to a pretty big extreme. The conflict of the episode after they are introduced is that, if their proposal passes, things will be a hell of a lot harder for children (and their parents) within Springfield.
- Child Hater: The SSCCATAG is a whole group of them. Their motto is "The children are our future; today belongs to me." The climax even exaggerates it — somehow the whole group is so anti-kid that they never got infected with the flu when they were kids, and when kids give it to them they instantly drop half-dead.
- Continuity Nod: Upon seeing Roofi's show, Maggie hugs the TV screen like she did in "Moaning Lisa."
- Credits Gag: Roofi's repetitive counting song plays over the ending credits.
- Deal with the Devil: Averted. One of the supporters for the pro-family initiative is a tobacco lobbyist, attempting to bribe Marge with a check. But before she can even sign it, he suddenly reveals himself as Satan, or at least a demon, shouting "Now we own you!", but she reminds him she hasn't signed it, so he goes back to normal, trying to play this off as football injury. For obvious reasons she turns him down, and he ends up being dragged back to hell.
- Death Glare: Maggie gives off quite a glare when Bart shuts Roofi off on her.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Mr. Burns supports the pro-family initiative because he loves children, particularly their supple young organs.
- Evil Old Folks: One of the notable "senior" members of SSCCATAG is Agnes Skinner.
- Expy Coexistence: Roofi is an obvious parody of children's entertainer Raffi. After Roofi's disastrous concert, a news ticker covering the concert reads "Raffi denounces Roofi".
- Fun with Acronyms: Discussed by Dr. Hibbert when Marge forms her own group PPASSCCATAG (Proud Parents Against SSCCATAG); he mentions that PPASSCCATAG shares its name with a disease of the brain stem.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: At the Roofi concert, the babies in the audience get rowdy and pelt Roofi with their bottles.
- Groin Attack: Happens to a Steve Irwin Expy on a show Bart was watching.Crocodile Hunter: That's a salt-water croc, the largest reptile in the world! [crocodile bites his crotch] Oh, crikey! She's got me by the dangle-down!
- Incessant Music Madness: Maggie's love of Roofi's song is demonstrated in a montage where Marge plays it constantly, at all hours, in a radio with multiple back-up power sources so it can only be smashed (which will upset Maggie), which drives the rest of the family crazy (at one point Bart even begs Krabappel to give him detention just so he won't have to listen to the song for a few more hours, but she refuses).
- Insane Troll Logic: The ad for Mothers Against "Families Come First" runs on this:TV Mom: As a mother, I love my family. That's why I'm against the "Families Come First" initiative. "Families Come First" will hurt families, and I love my family too much for that.
- It Won't Turn Off: The radio Marge placed in Maggie's room and plays Roofi's song incessantly happens to have battery and solar backup power, which she reveals after Lisa unplugs it and rips out the batteries, respectively.
- Jerkass Has a Point: SSCCATAG (Particularly Lindsay Naegle) has a point that kids caused a ton of damage at the Roofi concert and all of the problems and additional expenses they cause for childfree people. Then they waste little time in Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: Roofi acts like a perky kid-friendly musician, but is actually a greedy manipulative con man.
- Not Helping Your Case: Prop 242 is using the same website as Al-Jazeera.
- Only One Finds It Fun: Only Maggie enjoys Roofi's song being played continuously (and possibly Marge, who likes it because it makes Maggie happy.)
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Roofi drops his fake Middle Eastern accent when he leaves the stage saying, "Five, six, so long, hicks."
- Opening Shout-Out:Bart: Please, make me write something on the chalkboard a thousand times!Mrs. Krabappel: We all got tired of that chalkboard years ago. Now go home!
- Out of the Frying Pan: Sick of Maggie hogging the TV to watch Roofi, Bart mentions that Roofi has CDs, so he and Lisa can have the TV back. Marge buys the CD, and the Incessant Music Madness gets so bad that Bart begs Krabappel to give him detention just so he can avoid listening to it for a while.
- Overly Long Name: The true title of the episode is "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors Citizens, Childless Couples, and Teens and Gays", but it is often shortened to simply "Marge vs. Everyone".
- Parental Favouritism: Marge towards Maggie. It doesn't matter how much the rest of her family clearly hates the song, as long as Maggie likes it she refuses to ever let it stop playing.
- Pig Latin: When Marge tells Bart and Lisa to buy a Roofi CD for Maggie, the following exchange takes place:Lisa: On't-day ell-tay om-may oofi-ray as-hay e-say e-days! (Don't tell Mom Roofi has CDs!)
Bart: Y-whay ot-nay? Ut-whay ould-cay o-gay ong-wray? (Why not? What could go wrong?)
Lisa: E'll-shay uy-bay em-thay, upid-stay. (She'll buy them, stupid.)
Marge: Ou-yay ow-knay, I-ay as-way oung-yay unce-way oo-tay. (You know, I was young once too.)
Bart and Lisa: Ap-cray. (Crap.) - Police Brutality: Eddie, Lou and Chief Wiggum's intervention at Roofi's concert. The little kids and their moms get beaten off with batons.Lou: I don't feel right clubbing women and children, chief.
Wiggum: I hear ya. Some days are tougher than others. Just close your eyes and club. - Remote Control Ruckus: This episode begins with Bart and Lisa fighting over what to watch on television. Bart wants to watch a Crocodile Hunter Expy, while Lisa wants to watch Dollhouse Do-Overs. As the two fight over the remote, they accidentally change the channel to a TV show hosted by the Raffi expy, Roofi, starting Maggie's Roofi addiction.
- Ripped from the Headlines: SSCCATAG destroying every child-friendly thing in Springfield includes toppling over a statue of Itchy and Scratchy which resembled the famous Saddam Hussein statue destruction that happened in Baghdad, Iraq a few months prior to the episode's airing.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: Homer's support ad for Families Come First ends with the message "Yes on 232" instead of "Yes on 242". In addition, the bumper stickers that are supposed to support Marge's cause were misspelled to say "Yes no 242". It's impossible to fix all these mistakes because it's the night before the election. Though since Homer never gave them out and their side won the vote anyway, it didn’t have that much of a detrimental effect.
- Sexophone: Plays in one scene where, thanks to the SSCCATAG's Proposal 242 being functional in a preliminary manner, Springfield Public Library's "Young Adult" section is changed to a fully "Adult" section.
- Share the Sickness: the end of the episode, the children of Springfield hug all the adults before they vote to block funding for children's services. It doesn't change their minds... but the adults begin suffering flu symptoms, revealing the kids' actual plan was to exploit the adults' lack of immunity to children's germs to incapacitate all the voters, forcing the polls to close.
- Shout-Out:
- The title characters of Teletubbies open the Roofi concert.
Announcer: And now, our opening act, in their first live show since Tinky Winky was acquitted of manslaughter...
Tinky Winky: Not guilty!- Milhouse's teary face when Toys'R'Us is rebranded is a direct reference to the 1943 World War II propaganda film, "Divide and Conquer". In it, a French man makes a similar mournful expression◊ when the country is successfully invaded by the Nazis. Even the children in the background are dressed in similar fashion.
- The concert scenes spoof footage from Woodstock and Gimme Shelter (1970).
- The shot of the babies clinging to Roofi's chopper is a parody of the Playboy chopper from Apocalypse Now.
- The SSCCATAG is defeated when the children hug them and they succumb to the ordinary germs they carry in a spoof of The War of the Worlds. Lisa even quotes a line from the 1953 movie version.
- The riot is referred to as The Tot Offensive.
- When Roofi talks about the upcoming concert, he says that if the kids don't buy tickets, one of the shows' mascots will die (even showing the mascot with multiple bandages and in crutches). This is similar to televangelist Oral Roberts' saying that "God will call him home" unless his viewers gave money to help fund his hospital.
- While Bart and Lisa are fighting over the TV remote, the (offscreen) TV says in a Texan accent: "Bobby, I got propane in my urethra."
- Status Quo Is God: Lampshaded:Marge: Looks like everything's back the way it was, which is the only way it should ever be.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: The families when Marge reveals her proposition, Marge when she’s left to pay, and Luigi when the man from the US immigration department shows up.
- Sting: Played three times in one scene — when Marge reveals she had drawn up a petition for her Families Come First initiative, when she claims it's getting on the ballot in the March primary election, and this bit at the end:Bart: Mom, can we get a pretzel?
Marge: We've got pretzels at home.
Bart: Not cinnamon.
(Marge rolls her eyes while the third Dramatic Sting plays.) - Subliminal Seduction: Attempted by Homer when he moves a picture of Rudy Guiliani around while telling the viewers "I am Rudy Guiliani, do as I command you!" and "YES ON 232" flashes in a fairly obvious way. Homer being Homer, he screwed up — 232 is what the ad's supposed to be against (the one they support is 242).
- Three Stooges Shout-Out: Homer imitates two of the Three Stooges as he tries (and fails) to get Maggie to give him the remote.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Almost everybody who is a member of SSCCATAG other than Lindsay Naegle. Moe and Smithers had been showcased on various prior episodes that they have no problem being around children (and in one Moe becomes fully stalker-levels of obsessed with being nice to Maggie). On this episode, they are every bit as militantly hateful of them as the rest.
- Versus Title: One of many for The Simpsons. Others include, but are not limited to, "Marge vs. the Monorail", "Homer vs. Patty and Selma", and "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", just to name a few.
- Vocal Evolution: Invoked with the Squeaky-Voiced Teen."It's time to put away my childish thing..." [in a deep voice] "...and become a man!"
- Wave of Babies: There is a riot in the form of a wave of angry babies at Roofi's concert, who converge on police officers and are beaten off with batons.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The SSCCATAG is prevented from voting in favor of their Proposition by means of having a bunch of kids infecting them with the flu, that they all seem to have never contracted in their entire life because of being anti-kid.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Bart asks this when Lisa chides him for telling Marge that Roofi has CDs. Of course, life answers that question for him.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Springfield Police's attempt to pacify the riot at the Roofi concert has them beating up babies with their batons (just barely off-screen).
- After the riot, Mayor Quimby passes a law allowing children acting up in public to be lightly tased.
- Mr. Burns implies he's abducted more than a few children to harvest their organs.
Monty Burns: Unguarded backyard pools, where would I be without you? - Writing Lines: At one point, Bart begs for Mrs. Krabappel to make him stay after school and write something on the chalkboard 1000 times so he doesn't have to go home and listen to the Roofi song that Maggie is addicted to. He even tells her that he should be punished for giving the gerbil coffee. Mrs. Krabappel tells him, "We all got tired of that chalkboard years ago. Now go home!" Around this time, the amount of chalkboard gags was reduced.
