Mr. Burns decides to build a basketball stadium over a bee sanctuary — one that Lisa wants to preserve now that honeybees are becoming extinct.
Tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Mr. Burns waged Smithers on the bet where he got the basketball team.
- Alliterative Name: Aaron Ableman, the first scientist on the phone-book. Frink loathes him.
- Artistic License – Sports: Burns relocates the Celtics to Springfield in the middle of the season so he doesn't have to constantly travel to Austin. In real life, Burns would have to move the team after the season ended, a team could only be moved to a different city during the season if it was an emergency.
- Attention Whore: Mark Cuban runs back onto the field when nobody's paid attention to him in a few minutes.
- Calling Me a Logarithm: Subverted. While Willie is exactly the kind of person you would expect to pull this, when Lisa calls him an apiarist, he can tell it means beekeeper from context.
- The Cameo: Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and sportscaster Marv Albert appear as themselves.
- Confirm Before Reveal: When Homer has to tell Marge that Lisa is carrying bees on her face:Homer: Marge, remember when we were talking about our worst fears?
Marge: Mmm-hmm.
Homer: Mine was snakes, and yours was...
Marge: Never being a grandmother.
Homer: Really? I thought it was Lisa with a beard of bees. Well, whatever. Brace yourself. - Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
- Homer wonders if animals get sick.
- Grampa thinks that Lisa with the "bee-ard" is Abraham Lincoln without the top hat.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: For entertainment at his stadium Mr Burns hires a group of women to show their ankles, this goes over as well as you'd expect.
- Disco Dan: Mr. Burns attempts to sing the national anthem at the Excitement's first home game in the new arena. According to him, the lyrics are, "My country, 'tis of thee/Austria-Hungary, obey your king". Smithers interrupts to tell Mr. Burns that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had died, and what happened afterward. Burns has lived nearly a full-century on the planet, and had no idea that either World War had taken place (despite being a veteran of the second).
- Fate Worse than Death: Burns would rather be killed than sent to Millionaire's camp.
- Food as Bribe: Homer only agrees to saving the bees when Lisa reminds him bees make honey.
- I Want Grandkids: Marge's worst fear is never being a grandmother.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After Burns takes away Lisa's bee sanctuary, his new stadium was overrun by the cross-bred bees Homer developed and the costs of the project without any profits means he's barely not a billionaire and gets kicked to the millionaire's camp.
- Noodle Incident: When readying himself to save Lisa from a bee, Homer says there won't be any mistakes this time.
- Series Continuity Error: In this episode, Mr. Burns doesn't know the World Wars took place, despite him previously fighting in WWII alongside Abraham Simpson and making (working) shells for the Nazis.
- Shooting the Swarm: When the new stadium is swarmed by bees Wiggum ineffectually tries shooting at them. They respond by snatching his gun and shooting him with it.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Godfather at the end, when Burns pleas with Mark Cuban to vouch for him after revealing he's a millionaire rather then a billionaire. Cuban tells him he can't do it.
- Also, to WALL•E when Homer imagines a world without honey.
- One of the games played at the billionaires' retreat is Quidditch.
- When the bees take over the stadium and Bumblebee Man claims to be one of them, one of the bees says they hate him the most and calls him "Uncle Tom".
- Simple, yet Opulent: The billionnaire camp doesn't seem that flashy at first glance (Burns do a typical food fight with ketchup and mustard) but a lot of the activities there are decadently expensive, such as roasting jewels, shooting valuable paintings or playing Quidditch.
- Special Edition Title: As they couldn't make a Christmas Episode this season, the staff made due by making the opening Christmas related.
- Special Guest: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
- Stock Beehive: Honeybees in the episode are portrayed making their hives this way, which is by no means accurate.
- Writing Around Trademarks: The professional basketball team that The Rich Texan loses to Mr. Burns in the poker game is conveniently called the Austin Celtics. The team's logo
◊ is slightly tweaked from that of its real-world counterpart. Of course, Burns subsequently relocates the team to Springfield, and renames them the Excitement.
