YMMV / The Simpsons S 10 E 10 Viva Ned Flanders

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The joke about the church auditing its members to make sure they were tithing 10% of their gross income. The Mormon Church actually requires members in good standing to review their tax returns with their church leaders for this exact reason.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Ned's previously established background as the son of beatniks was maintained in future episodes despite not quite meshing with his age of 60 as established in this episode. Thanks to the show's sliding timeline, Ned being a child of beatniks in his 60s ended up making sense in the 2010s, though it will eventually fall prey to the same logical problem as Abraham Simpson being a still-alive World War II veteran.
• Genius Bonus: Reverend Lovejoy tells the congregation, "And once again, tithing is ten percent off the top. That's gross income, not net. Please, people, don't force us to audit." This is both a religion and accountancy joke. In Christianity, it is customary to give ten percent of your weekly pay to the church (see Genesis 14:20, among other verses). The congregation was presumably giving 10 percent of their regular paycheck which would already have taxes deducted (the aforementioned net income) along with whatever other deductions they could claim, hence the auditing remark.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ned makes a joke about preferring the humor of Bob Saget, the intent of which was to show how much of a lame, stick in the mud he was. This was before it became wildly known that Saget's standup routine was vastly different than the public image of him that was cultivated on Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos, where his material was very raunchy and adult.
  • This episode seems like a Whole-Plot Reference to The Hangover (the first one), except it was made 10 years earlier. Some movie critics even made a connection between the two and it was pointed out in the live tweets during the "Every Simpsons Ever" marathon.
  • One item in Homer and Ned's hotel room◊ the night after their hangover is a trophy similar to The Stanley Cup. In 2017, Las Vegas got their own National Hockey League team, the Vegas Golden Knights. They even came close to winning it all in their first season, and then would actually win the Stanley Cup in 2023.
  • When the congregation are quizzing Ned about all the vices he doesn't practice, Edna Krabappel asks him a pretty brazen question about his sex life. She could have just waited until Season 23 to find out firsthand.

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