Season 30, Episode 11
Original Airdate: 01/06/2019
When Homer and Marge go out on a date, they fail to find a babysitter for the kids. They turn to Grampa as their last resort, and he accepts. Desperate to find some activity to do, they scrounge around the basement for old toys and games. When Bart opens up a box of green plastic army men, Grampa starts to have old war flashbacks. A little prodding of his memory reveals that Abe was the model who posed for those army men toys, and but he was driven away from the job after learning that the cameraman taking his pictures was gay. After asking the toy company whatever came of him, they reveal he was fired for being gay — It was an acceptable practice in the The '40s. The Simpsons set off to Marfa, Texas, to let Abe make reparations for what he had done.
Tropes:
- Anachronism Stew: Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk" plays during the 1947-set photoshoot. The song would not be recorded until 1959.
- Blood Knight: Abe during his time in the army.Abe: What secretly helped me was I enjoyed killing strangers!
- Brain Bleach: Bart remarks that the Alamo isn't the only thing he's going to remember on this trip after he sees Grampa giving a kiss to the cameraman in his studio in Texas.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Parodied with the bourbon vending machine seen in the 1947 flashback, as well as the toy company's casual Mad Men-esque sexual harassment of his secretary—which Lisa is surprised to find is still going on in the present. Philip is also mentioned to have been fired not for unwanted advances as Marge had initially assumed, but for being gay.
- Abe's belief that, if a man is gay, he's automatically feminine, is consistent with society's views during the time period he grew up in. He also believes that sexual fluidity is a sign of being gay and insists that he's completely straight to sidestep this, even when the cameraman who kissed him tries to prove otherwise.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Homer and Marge's struggle with the former's clothes includes cries of "Harder!" and "Almost there..." Anyone who wasn't watching the footage could easily mistake them for getting it on.
- Flirtatious Smack on the Ass: The president of the toy company slaps his secretary on the butt in a flashback, and she giggles approvingly. He still does it in the present; when Lisa questions the secretary about it, she reveals that she's slowly poisoning him.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: An overarching issue of the episode is the gay cameraman trying to persuade Abe that it's okay to be even a little bit sexually fluid, even citing a Cornell research paper that states that there is no such thing as being "100%" straight for anyone. Still, Abe doubles down on his insistence that he's straight, even after giving a thank you kiss to the cameraman for finishing up the photoshoot.
- Logic Bomb: Homer is using a smart home device as a babysitter. Lisa tries to short it out with a Liar's Paradox, but the device is programmed to avoid this.
- One-Track-Minded Artist: After being fired from his photography job and striking out on his own, Philip based an entire artistic career on his incompleted photo shoot of Abe.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: The family believes Abe, a war veteran, to be this when he panics at the sight of Bart's toy army men, but when they take him to therapy he's totally unbothered by graphic war imagery shown to him by the therapist, even confessing that he enjoyed killing total strangers and therefore experienced no side effects. The toy soldiers actually triggered the memory of a moment in his youth—unrelated to his time in the army—when he was kissed by another man.
- Shout-Out:
- The title is a play on the 1932 song "Mad About The Boy", written by playwright Noel Coward, who was a (semi-)closeted homosexual.
- The episode starts with the Married... with Children theme song being played and the Simpsons' front yard's irrigation system starting to work like the water fountain from the series' opening. Homer changes a line to "the show with Al Bundy, who's now on Modern Family" and later sings the fact Bundy's neighbor was played by Ted McGinley.
- Straight Gay: Abe took a shine to Philip, the cameraman, regarding him as a masculine person similar to himself, only to have his sexuality threatened when the man revealed he was gay. Abe's belief that a gay man must be feminine caused him to repress any questions he had about his own inclinations.
- Swallow the Key: To stop watching The Geezer Network with Grandpa, Bart takes the batteries out of the remote and swallows them.
- Take That!:
- A sign at the veterans hospital reads "Our Draft-Dodging President Salutes You."
- The Simpsons pass a billboard calling Texas "The Reluctant Home State of Ted Cruz".
- "...and don't get me started on Young Sheldon."
- Sipper McTea and Milly is a parody of Fibber McGee and Molly and "old-time radio" in general.
- If you think the traditional correlation of masculinity and heterosexuality is not given enough blows, Abe decides to watch the movie Rio Macho to remind himself what manliness is after being kissed by the photographer. The movie in question stars Rock Hudson (of course, no one knew the truth about him at the time).
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The toy company president's secretary is gradually poisoning her boss by putting mercury in his coffee, pouring it straight out of a thermometer.
- The V-J Day Kiss: Spoofed with Abe in place of the sailor. The woman punches him out, saying that the war was over two years before.
- Zip Me Up: Marge alluringly asks Homer to zip up her dress. Homer then asks the same of her - closing the tear on the back of his coat with a safety pin.
