$pringfield
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"$pringfield" (full title: "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)") is the tenth episode of the fifth season of The Simpsons. The episode first aired on December 16, 1993.
Episode details
Production Number: 1F08
Original Air Date: December 16, 1993
Writers: Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein
Director: Wes Archer
Blackboard: "I will not say 'Springfield' just to get applause."
Couch Gag: The family runs to the couch, but when they get there, they break and shatter like glass.
Guest Voices: Gerry Cooney and Robert Goulet
Synopsis
The economy in Springfield is in decline, and Mayor Quimby tries to listen to the citizens' ways to improve the economy. They suggest that legalized gambling has helped rejuvinate run-down economies, and it can work for Springfield as well. Even Marge agrees to the idea. Later, Mr. Burns and Mayor Quimby work together to build a casino, and Burns looks at several prototypes he disagrees with until he develops his own casino design for "Mr. Burns' Casino", with "sex appeal and a catchy name".
The casino opens, and Homer gets a job as a blackjack dealer at the casino, and loses, because the numbers of the cards he dealt himself were 18, 27, and 35. Also visiting the casino are Marge and Bart. Bart visits to gamble and wins a jackpot, but is kicked out and starts his own casino for his friends to play in his treehouse, featuring Milhouse and Jimbo as entertainers. When Marge is there, she finds a quarter on the floor and uses it to play a slot machine, but with playing the slot machine comes a gambling addiction for Marge. Meanwhile, while Burns' casino is a success, he develops a fear of microscopic germs.
Still at the casino, Marge becomes extremely addicted to the slot machines, and she neglects the family, as Homer leaves for home. At home, Lisa thinks there's a boogeyman in her dream, and a gun-toting Homer and the kids hide behind a mattress, as Bart gets Robert Goulet to perform at his casino. Lisa is worried that Marge did not help her make a costume for a geography pageant at school, so Homer makes a primitive costume of Florida for her, but she wins the contest tied with Ralph Wiggum, who dressed up as Idaho. Mr. Burns, at his casino, goes crazy a la the later life of Howard Hughes, wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet and designing a plane he thinks is real called the "Spruce Moose", but then Burns admits he is crazy and he returns to his normal job, while Marge overcomes her gambling addiction.
Quotes
- Newsreel Announcer: So watch out, Utica—Springfield is a city on the... grow!
- Homer: (finding a pair of glasses in a toilet, which appear to be Henry Kissinger's) Anyone lose their glasses? (no response) Last chance! (no response) Woo hoo! (Homer puts the glasses on) The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.
Man in bathroom: That's a right triangle, you idiot!
Homer: D'oh! - Smithers: Sir, bad news from accounting: the economy's hit us pretty hard.
Mr. Burns: Heh, tough times, huh? I've lived through twelve recessions, eight panics, and five years of McKinleynomics. I'll survive this.
Smithers: Even so, sir, we could stand to lay off a few employees.
Mr. Burns: Oh, very well... (pointing at people on monitors) Lay off him, him, him, him... (he points at Homer, who is wearing glasses) Hmmm, better keep the egghead. He just might come in handy. - Lisa: Marge, we're having a geography pageant at school, and I don't know which state to go as.
Marge: In honor of legalized gambling, why not go as the state of Nevada?
Lisa: No, Nevada makes my butt look big. - Mr. Burns: (holding a model-sized plane) Smithers, I've designed a new plane. I call it the Spruce Moose, and it will carry 200 passengers from New York's Idlewild Airport to the Belgian Congo in seventeen minutes.
Smithers: That's a nice model sir.
Mr. Burns: Model?
