Production code: FABF-20
Marge enters a baking contest, where she cheats after other contestants ruin her entry. Meanwhile, Bart uses Homer's old Playdude magazines to live life as a swinging bachelor.
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: Homer calls Milhouse "Milton" as he comes up into the treehouse to give Bart The Talk.
- Actor Allusion: James Caan pulls up to a toll booth and is shot by dozens of gunmen.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Homer thinks the joke about an octopus having sex with bagpipes is hilarious.
- Adolf Hitlarious: Marge ends up visualizing a shot of the man himself as the face of Auntie Ovenfresh before deciding to take part in the bake-off.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- When Marge is going through the rundown kitchen, first a cupboard door breaks off, then the bottom of a drawer caves in, then when Marge opens the refrigerator... the back of her dress rips.
- When Marge receives a letter from the bake-off, it at first sounds like a rejection letter... but then it's revealed that Marge was accepted.
- Then again as Homer is giving Bart The Talk.Homer: Do you know why your mother and I sleep in the same bed?
Bart: Because we're poor?
Homer: Exactly! And the reason we're poor is because we have three children.
- Big "NEVER!": After her buffalo wings are a hit, Sideshow Mel leads the crowd in giving a "huzzah!" for Marge. Marge then asks them to give credit to Homer for paying for the new kitchen. Mel responds with this.
- Blatant Lies:
- Homer tells Marge that he only keeps his Playdude magazines for the stories. Marge cuts out all the pictures of naked women and Homer throws away what's left of the magazines, leading Bart and Milhouse to find them and use them for ideas on how to spruce up Bart's treehouse.
- There's also the contractor who promised Marge the new kitchen would be ready in three weeks when it takes two years.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:Moe: Same old stuff—meatloaf, casserole, tuna loaf, loaferole, casseloaf...
- Bread Milk Eggs Squick: Among the Ovenfresh Flour family of products that Kent Brockman mentions are Li'l Fatso Cupcakes, Drizzlers Gravies, American Pride Radar-Guided Missile Systems, and Quetzalcoatl's Choice Mexican Food.
- Break the Haughty: This happens to Bart when Homer explains the true life of a bachelor.
- Brick Joke: Apu mentions he intends to abandon his family and sneak back to India disguised as Steve Barnes. Later, newspaper articles talk about Apu disappearing and 'Steve Barnes' opening up a convenience store in New Delhi.
- Broken Pedestal: Marge disappoints Lisa by cheating. Lisa feels better after Marge publicly confesses.
- Children Are Innocent: Bart and the other kids are completely unaware of the Double Entendre used in Playdude. Unfortunately, this upsets their parents who are more sexually aware than them.Homer: Bart, I know a father has no right to pry into the life of his ten-year-old son, but what's going on up here?
Bart: I'm just spreadin' the Playdude philosophy: hi-fis, Norman Mailer, gettin' some...
Homer: Uh, um... what do you think "some" is?
Bart: Uh... toys? - Comic-Book Time: The kids are still the same age when the kitchen is finished as they were when work started, two years prior. This means it also took two years for Bart and Milhouse to start acting like the guys in Playdude, or already have for two years and never got sick of it.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Ralph was rejected from the bake-off because his sandwich consisted of grilled crayons and thumbtacks.
- The Dog Bites Back: After being bullied by the other contestants throught the bake-off, Marge gets back at them by giving them a taste of their own medicine by sabotaging their entries, just like how they tried to do with hers.
- Entendre Failure: Bart and Milhouse repeat lines they read in Playdude despite having no idea what they mean. ("Bachelors are always squeezin' stuff!")James Caan: Hey, Bart. Me and Mrs. Krabappel, we're gonna go play some backgammon, if you know what I mean.Bart: I don't, but I hope you win!
- Epic Fail: While trying to build the new kitchen, Homer ends up using too much plaster on the ceiling, leaving him and Marge to need to stand on their knees.
- Everyone Has Standards: While Marge is sabotaging the other entries, she comments that even the Pope wouldn't forgive the Sea Captain's pizza (covered with seafood toppings), and he's let a lot of things slide.
- Expy: The food personalities in Homer's Imagine Spot are parodies of mascots of popular snack foods.
- Gilligan Cut: The contractor assures Marge that the new kitchen will be finished in three weeks. It takes two years.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Two wrongs don’t make a right. Even if someone wrongs you for no reason, retaliating against them makes you no better than that person.
- Impact Silhouette: Agnes crashes into a metal garage door, leaving her impression on it.
- Indy Hat Roll: After the baking time ends, the judges activate a metal garage door to the room of the entries, stating that any entries not inside before it shuts will not before officialnote . Marge ends up having to race against it and slide under the door before it shuts.Marge: Hmm, I guess I was the last one.
(There is a bang as Mrs. Skinner's impression with a bowl is pressed into the door)
Agnes: Dammit! - Inner Thoughts, Outsider Puzzlement: Homer has an imagine spot where he meets a bunch of fast food mascots. He enthusiastically hugs Twinkie the Kid, squeezing all the creme out of his body, killing him. The mascots advance on him chanting, "Blood for creme!", which Homer still chants once the fantasy ends, to Lisa's bafflement.
- Insane Troll Logic: Bart's thoughts after trying Marge's Dessert Dog.Bart: It's dessert, but it's hot dog so it's good for you!
- I Read It for the Articles: Marge tries to make Homer back this up by cutting the naked women out of his Playdude collection, leading him to toss the magazines away. And then Bart gets them, and actually likes the articles enough to rework his treehouse.
- Jerkass: All the contestants (except one) towards Marge. They all act rude and try to ruin her entry because they all see her as a legitimate threat to their own chances of winning the competition. One of them even burns her entry to a crisp and then mocks her when she cries over it.
- Kick the Dog: The contestants' treatment of Marge is this. One of them even destroys her entry, making her cry and forcing her to start all over again.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Marge felt that she was doing this when she sabotaged the other entries. She even said Who's Laughing Now? while doing so.
- While Agnes' entry wasn't sabotaged by Marge, she still receives it by being disqualified for not leaving her entry in time by mere seconds after Marge entered the room.
- Lonely at the Top: Played for Laughs. The original Auntie Ovenfresh tries to advise the contestants that "ribbons and trophies are no comfort on your deathbed", only for her to be cut off by the head judge.
- Madness Mantra: "Blood for cream", especially at the end of the Imagine Spot where Homer seems too into it despite it being his blood being targeted.
- Multiple Gunshot Death: In the parody of the tollbooth scene from The Godfather, James Caan gets it again, this time by Cletus and Cletus variants (who are upset that Bradine has caught Caan's eye). In fact, Caan has a "where have I been involved with this before" look in his eye as he is dropping his change in the toll bin. "That's it! Next time, I fly," he moans after being shot 60-plus times. (At least this time, he suffered far fewer wounds than in the movie; he was shot at least seven times more in 1972.)
- Now You Tell Me: Homer says this when Marge tells him that he used too much plaster on the kitchen ceiling (ie. enough to bring the ceiling so low that they're forced to kneel down on the kitchen floor and Marge has to punch a hole into the ceiling just to reach the phone), Marge counters that she never stopped telling him.
- Oh, Crap!: Chief Wiggum, when Ralph mentions that his grilled crayon sandwich that he bit into has thumbtacks.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Apu's disguise as Steve Barnes consists of sunglasses and a blond wig.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Marge sabotaging the entries of the other contestants. It's hard to have any sympathy for them given that they were trying to sabotage Marge because they saw her entry as a threat.
- Porn Stash: Homer had been keeping a bunch of Playdude magazines in the kitchen's light fixture.
- Screaming at Squick: Bart's reaction when Homer gives him The Talk. Then Bart tells all the other kids, and they all have the same reaction.
- So Last Season: The contestants considered Marge's dessert dogs 'So 90's'.
- Spit Take: Superintendent Chalmers when Marge forfeits the Ovenfresh Challenge.
- The Talk: Homer gives this to Bart about how reproduction works, which ends up scarring Bart and all the kids in town.Homer: (as the children are all running around the neighborhood in fright) Well, it's better they hear it from me now, than from their parents when they're old enough.
- Together in Death: Upon learning that Marge cheated in the contest, Moe's pleased that they're both going to Hell, planning to make his move then.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Bart is seen in one after Homer tells him about 'the birds and the bees'.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Brandine's holiday "Alco-Hog" suddenly comes to life and pukes up the beer and candy canes it was stuffed with.Brandine: Huh, I thought it was dead.
