Where is airing: FOX
For what age: 9+
How many episodes in 16 season: 21 episodes
The Ned Zone Ned develops a sixth sense that allows him to see the passings of everyone he touches. When he sees himself cuddle Homer, he tries his best to keep his vision from coming true. Four Beheadings and a Funeral A take on the Jack the Ripper story that casts Lisa and Bart as Eliza Simpson and Dr. Bartley, who try to discover the identity of the "Mutton Chop cuddleer." In the Belly of the Boss A parody of Fantastic Voyage in which the Simpson family goes on a rescue mission after Maggie is accidentally shrunk and ingested by Mr. Burns.
The house next door is for sale and Marge and Homer go inside to check it out; Marge falls in love with the kitchen. Back at home Marge asks Homer for a new kitchen. Rather than hire someone, Homer decides to do the renovation himself. While demolishing the kitchen, Homer unleashes his old collection of Playdude magazines. He tells Marge he keeps them for the articles; she obliges him by cutting up the magazines, keeping only the articles. Now that they are useless, Homer throws them away, only to have them found by Bart and Milhouse. Using these 1970's era magazines as a model, Bart decides to renovate the Treehouse. After Homer has made a mess of the kitchen remodeling, Marge is finally able to hire a contractor, who completes the job "on-time" two years later for 0,000. Marge's first new dish out of her kitchen gets rave reviews and she decides to enter the Ovenfresh Bakeoff with her Dessert Dogs. At the bakeoff Marge encounters stiff and ruthless competition, so ruthless that Marge resorts to cheating to get even, much to Lisa's dismay. Chief Wiggum and other concerned parents talk with Homer about Bart's spreading the Playdude philosophy to the other children. Homer has a talk with Bart about the facts of life, which a horrified Bart quickly spreads to the other children. Meantime, in the finals for the bakeoff against Brandine, Marge admits to her foul play and Lisa's faith in her mother is restored.
Lisa has a big butt and her friends at school, Sherri, Terri and Janie let her know about it. Homer explains to her about the Simpson butt, it is something she'll have to learn to live with. Bart comes home with 100 on his test, and now he wants to collect on the party that was promised. Lisa is trying to deal with her weight issue, meanwhile Bart gets his party; with his relatives, Ralph, Martin and Milhouse via speakerphone. It's the worst party ever as far as Bart's concerned. It's made worse when Lisa returns home only to be confronted by her mother wanting her to eat a big slice piece of cake, she runs out of the room crying. Marge is bummed that the kids don't appreciate her anymore. She finds Nelson in the park and spends some quality time with him and when her kids continue to shun her, she adopts Nelson as a surrogate child. Lisa tries diet and exercise to reduce her big bottom. Marge brings Nelson home to do some chores around their home, but Nelson's real mother returns that money that Marge paid her son and then she leaves for Hollywood, leaving her son in Springfield and homeless. Nelson goes to the only place where he can find refuge, the Simpson home. Much to Bart's dismay Marge lets Nelson stay in his room. Late one night Bart finds Nelson singing for the return of his father and Lisa overindulging in a cake (she'd previously been starving herself). Lisa gets help from Nelson to get revenge on Sherri and Terri. When the pair returns to the Simpson home there is a surprise waiting for Nelson; Bart has found his father. Nelson is reunited with his father (and his mother who's returned from Hollywood with an acting job). Lisa still hasn't found a conclusive solution to her weight problem.
Famous journalist Chloe Talbot comes to Springfield to cover a scandal involving Mayor Quimby. Chloe Talbot comes from Springfield and she and Marge were journalism students together in high school; Chloe went on to fame and fortune and we all know what happened to Marge. Lisa becomes enamored with Chloe and Marge becomes jealous of loss of her daughter's attention. After a half a glass of wine, Marge goes cuckoo bananas and gets into a fight with Chloe. When Marge won't let her go with Chloe to news conference, Lisa sneaks out and into the trunk of Chloe's car. Everything might have gone according to plan if Chloe hadn't been diverted to cover the eruption of a volcano. Lisa and Chloe get into trouble and it takes a mother's love to affect Lisa's rescue, whereas Chloe's rescue comes from an old high school boyfriend, Barney Gumble.
Bart loses his last baby tooth in a spitball fight. Called the money tooth, Bart is suffering from what he calls a midlife crisis when the tooth fairy has given a gift in his name to the United Way, what his mother calls a "grown-up gift." Bart gives up on his childhood and Lisa suggests that he expresses his feelings in some way and Bart chooses to put them in the form of slogans on a T-shirt. When Goose Gladwell, a gag-gift entrepreneur, sees the slogans he forms a partnership with Bart that begins to make Bart a lot of money. Homer is suspended from work without pay and then decides to quit outright and live off of his son's earnings. Of course he loses his place in the family as breadwinner and starts to lose his self respect. A documentary by Declan Desmond on lions inspires Homer to start focusing on his relationship with Lisa. He decides to help her with her science project about nuclear power, which includes a scale model of the first nuclear power plant. Homer improves on her model by making it functional, something easily done after finding the instructions on the Internet. He sneaks into the power plant and get some plutonium. Meanwhile, Goose Gladwell has sold the rights to Bart's T-Shirts to Disney and Bart won't get a dime from it. To get back into his role as the alpha male of the family, Homer makes use of the working nuclear reactor to threaten Gladwell into giving his son what he deserves and few novelty items for himself. As to whether the reactor actually works or not, Homer decides to leave that up to the seagulls at the city dump to figure it out.
The power plant's office party is being held at the Springfield Air and Space museum, where amongst other things we learn that Agnes Skinner was a wing-walker back in the 1920s. Mr. Burns is acting unusually nice, and then he makes an announcement that the employee prescription drug program has been canceled. Other companies follow suit, the citizens of Springfield At Springfield Retirement Castle, due to the high cost of medication, they cut their residents off cold turkey. Grandpa goes to his son's home with a plan; he has a friend that will help them out. He and Homer go to Canada where they meet the friend that gives them cards that will let them get all the drugs they can carry. They return home and their drugs are in high demand. Ned and Apu accompany them on their next trip to Canada, but an unfortunate incident with Apu and a hot cup of coffee gets their cover blown as they try to cross the border. They are banished from ever returning to Canada. Because he can no longer afford the medication he requires Smithers' thyroid begins to swell causing a concern for Mr. Burns, he doesn't want to have to train anyone else on his filing system. He provides the means, his old wooden plane The Plywood Pelican, for Homer to invoke his plan to fly into Canada. They load up, but on the return flight the plane encounters trouble. Burns bails out, leaving Homer and Grandpa to crash land the plane in Springfield's town square, where their smuggled drugs are hit. Meanwhile, Mr. Burns has cured Smithers and decides to reinstitute the drug program for all his full time employees. Homer comes home from work to report that he is now a freelance consultant, complete with a lump on his throat.
The family is celebrating by having brunch at a fancy restaurant; Homer has finally paid off the mortgage. Lisa and Bart get into a food fight, embarrassing Homer. Homer goes to Moe's, where a visit from the health inspector, results in his passing from eating one of Moe's pickled eggs. The new health inspector comes down hard and Moe's is closed until the violations are cleared up. The regulars hold an Irish wake for the demise of Moe's. Homer decides to help Moe reopen his bar; and he gets a new mortgage for their home. When Marge finds out, as a new co-owner she goes with Homer to the bar and tells Moe that there are going to be changes until he pays them back. On Homer's next visit, he finds Marge behind the bar, protecting their investment. She sends him home to take care of the kids, while she sells Moe on the idea of remodeling the place into an English pub. The new place opens and is a success; the kids tell Homer that they've noticed that Marge is spending more time at Moe's than he ever did. Homer becomes worried; but Marge tells him there is nothing to worry about. They go to a movie together, but they are joined by Moe. Homer is more worried than ever; Lenny and Carl tell Homer that Marge and Moe are having an emotional affair. When Marge and Moe are leaving to go to a convention together in Aruba, Homer makes a mad dash to the airport and gets to the airplane as it is taxing down the runaway. He confronts Moe, but Moe makes him realize that he really doesn't know that much about his wife. Homer concedes defeat, but Marge tells Moe that she doesn't love him. She tells Homer that she is totally committed to him. In Aruba, Marge makes Moe realize that he might be able to make a woman happy some day with a few changes. Marge realizes that no one is home watching the kids, but the kids aren't at home as Bart has them entered in a European balloon race.
The family goes to run down Springfield Park, where a carnival is being held to save it. Homer performs a wild crowd-pleasing dance at a local carnival, after beating Bart's performance in a game. Ned Flanders has captured the performance on videotape and Comic Book Guy (Jeff Albertson) puts it up on the Internet. The video gets worldwide attention, much to Homer's embarrassment but his tune changes when a football player wants to buy the rights to use his dance as his own end zone celebration. Homer turns the opportunity into a new lucrative occupation, which prospers as other athletes come to learn from him. Meanwhile Ned looks to create his own wholesome entertainment by creating his own versions of bible stories, which get the backing of Mr. Burns. Marge doesn't like his approach, which eliminates the good aspects of the stories, and only concentrates on the violence. She threatens a boycott, which gets Burns to remove his financial backing, leaving Ned with no creative outlet. The commissioner of football (and all the owners) want to talk to Homer, his teaching of crazy antics to their players have increased their ratings. They want him to choreograph the Superbowl half-time show. Homer struggles for a show idea and on the night before the big show he still doesn't have one. Homer looks for inspiration at the church, but instead finds Flanders, who is looking for an outlet for his ideas. Together they bring the story of Noah to the half-time show, but everyone boos as no one wanted to see such a "blatant display of religion and decency."
Fearing punishment from Marge and Homer, Bart decides to fake his own kidnapping rather than admit that he went to the rap concert that he was told not to go to. Things get interesting when Chief Wiggum, seeking to improve his tarnished reputation, investigates the kidnapping and wrongly arrests Kirk Van Houten as Bart's kidnapper.
Bart and Milhouse look for someone new to play tricks on and they find their new victim in Howell Huser, a yokel who just fell of the turnip truck. Their pranks get Howell Huser to stop smiling and he leaves town, only to turn up on the Soft News Network reporting that Springfield is the only town he's been to that he doesn't like. The negative publicity affects tourism. Mayor Quimby calls for the town to give him ideas to promote tourism and Lisa suggests they start allowing same sex marriages. The idea is approved and Springfield becomes the place to be for same sex couples to get married. When Reverend Lovejoy won't perform the ceremonies, Homer can't pass up the opportunity to make money and he becomes a certified minister via the Internet. He marries all the gay couples in town and then starts to marry anything to anything else. Patty requires Homer's service; she wants to marry her partner, Veronica, who is a pro-golfer. Marge has trouble dealing with the fact that her sister is gay. Marge discovers Veronica's secret, that she is really a man. Marge stops the wedding and reveals the secret, and when Leslie Robin Swisher (Veronica's real name) proposes that they still get married, she sticks to her guns, she still likes only girls.
The students of Springfield Elementary are on a field trip to Springfield's Glacier, but when they get there, the glacier is a shadow of its former self, a huge pond with a hardly noticeable block of ice. Lisa (of course) blames global warming. While Lisa is calling for action to save the glacier, her brother is taking every opportunity to torment her. Meanwhile, back in town Homer and Marge have gone to Sprawl Mart to do some shopping. When Grampa (Sprawl Mart's greeter) isn't capable of doing his job, Homer takes over and does such a great job it gets him a full time position with no chance for advancement. Lisa has vengeance on Bart by getting a restraining order against him, he must stay at least 20 feet away from her at all times, or go to jail. Chief Wiggum shows the family a videotape hosted by Gary Busey on how to live with a restraining order. For his part Homer constructs a 20 foot pole that Lisa can use to help keep them apart. It impacts Bart's life at home and school. At family court, after Bart points out some obvious flaws in her character, Judge Harm increases the distance to 200 feet. Having to live at the edge of their property, Bart decides to embrace living the natural way. Homer finds out from his fellow employees how to survive working at Sprawl Mart. And mistakenly feeling that Bart might have changed, Lisa decides to forgive him and burn up the restraining order.
Mr. Burns is taking his driving test and Selma is having hot flashes. Dr. Hibbert diagnoses that she is going through menopause. After seeing a video on the topic hosted by Robert Wagner, Selma is disappointed to learn that she'll never be able to have children. Patty suggests that she try adoption and Lisa suggests China. Only to qualify, Selma needs a husband who must go with her to China to collect their child. She fills out the form with the name: Homer Simpson. Selma flies the Simpson family to China. At Marge's request, Homer goes along with the charade. Under the supervision of Madam Wu, a Chinese functionary, the family, with Marge as the children's nanny takes a tour of the sites. For his occupation, Homer tells Madam Wu that he is a Chinese acrobat, and of course later his services in that capacity are called into action. Selma gets her child, a daughter named Ling Bouvier, only to have her taken away after Madam Wu sees Marge snuggling with Homer. At the airport, Lisa comes up with a plan to get Ling back. Homer poses as a Buddha statue to get inside the orphanage. Only Madam Wu stops them with a tank in Tien An Men Square. Selma appeals to Madam Wu, bureaucrat to bureaucrat and it works. Selma, her new daughter and the family are allowed to leave China via a junk.
Marge takes the kids on a Sunday drive while Homer is at home attempting to clean out the garage. After Homer suffers a garage-door-to-the-throat incident, Marge wants them to buy life insurance. Homer however is deemed uninsurable. Fearing that with no insurance for Homer they will go broke, Marge starts cost-cutting measures. Homer is against these new measures and takes the nest egg that Marge has made and spends it on the down payment for a new motor home. Marge tells him to enjoy being the king of his new castle, because she is no longer speaking to him. Homer is now living in the RV in the backyard and he and Marge try to entice Bart and Lisa to come and stay with them. Homer then opens up the backyard as a RV park, until Marge puts an end to it and they get into a big fight, which makes Bart and Lisa take action. Bart decides they need to take the RV back to the dealer. Homer and Marge try to stop the pair who has managed to get the RV onto the freeway. The RV crashes onto a Turkish container ship, which is leaving port. With the right enticement, mushroom soup, Marge gets the ship to turn around, saving the children and what is left of the RV. The RVs fate is determined when Homer try to put it on the dock.
The family visits Shelbyville and are appalled at the perception those citizens have of the inhabitants of Springfield. Back in town, Marge brings it to the attention of the Springfield Cultural Advisory Board and then asks architect Frank Gehry to design and build a new Springfield cultural center. He sees inspiration in her request and submits a design that is approved by the town. million dollars later, the project is built and it opens and closes quickly as nobody in town really cares for classical music. Mr. Burns agree to take over the space, with his plan to turn it into a state prison. Homer applies for a job as a guard, but fails the drug test after Otto switches their samples. Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa follow Snowball II, when they believe the reason she is so fat is that she is getting food from elsewhere; after following her they discover she has another family. Burns needs convicts for his prison and Chief Wiggum blows the dust of some old forgotten laws. Homer is arrested for illegally transporting litter (kicking a can 5 times in a row). In prison Homer inadvertently squeals on Snake's escape attempt and is drafted to becoming a snitch and he begins enjoy the perks that go along with it. Snowball II ("Smoky") enjoys life with her new family and Bart gets into the home to find out; there is plenty of good eating to be found there. Fat Tony and his boys try to find out who the snitch is. They feed Homer information regarding a breakout. While all the guards are outside waiting for the breakout, the prisoners are taking care of their snitch and a riot ensues. The riot is stopped and Homer snitches on the conditions of the prison.
Bart and Lisa find themselves in Prof. Frink's basement and he uses the science of astrology on his new computer to show them their future, eight years from next Tuesday. In this future, Maggie is away on a trip to Alaska; Homer and Marge have separated and Bart and Lisa are getting ready for prom. Lisa's date is Milhouse, who and Bart is dating a skateboard chick named Jenda. Lisa is graduating 2 years early and is going to Yale (now owned by McDonalds) on a scholarship funded by Mr. Burns as punishment for stealing Christmas. Bart is also graduating and is ready to move to the next level of his relationship with Jenda, he wants to marry her but his vision of their future together makes her break it off. Working his part-time job at the Kwik-E-Mart, Bart winds up saving Mr. Burns life while delivering groceries. As a reward Mr. Burns gives him the scholarship that Lisa was to receive. Bart is back with Jenda, now that he has a future, but Bart finds his way back in Prof. Frink's old basement and sees Lisa's bleak future with Milhouse. He does the right thing and keeps her from destroying her life.
Springfield is experiencing an unusually strong thunderstorm, and the rain is causing roofs to leak all over town. Homer devises a unique solution for getting the rain water out of their house that ultimately fails and sends him dejected off to Moe's, where he ruins Lenny's surprise party. Homer goes off wandering and finds himself at a bar called Knockers, where he makes a new friend named Ray, who is a licensed and bonded roofer. Marge takes the kids on some errands while Homer and Ray almost begin the roof repairs; they screw around and never get around to doing any work until he gets called away. Marge wants Homer to fix the roof by himself. Homer runs into Ray at the Builder's Barn and Ray promises to stop by later and help him with the roof. Homer waits for him, but Marge is skeptical that Ray even exists when Ray never shows up. Marge has Homer placed in the mental ward of the hospital and she and no one else can confirm that Ray really exists. Dr. Hibbert recommends and gives Homer electro-shock therapy. Six weeks later Homer's treatments are over and to everyone's surprise Ray turns up at the hospital to celebrate Homer's release. Plausible explanations, even one by Stephen Hawking, are given to explain why no one had ever seen Ray before.
At Springfield Elementary the new vending machine contract is awarded to a company that promises to give half the profits to the school and it is of little consequence whether the snacks are healthy for the children or not. Bart begins taking all of his meals from the vending machine and three weeks later has gained a lot of weight, so much so that he has heart attack symptoms as a result. The X-Ray shows that malted milk balls have blocked his arteries. Despite it all Bart continues to eat junk food. Marge has no choice and holds an intervention, which Bart escapes from, right into the hands of representatives of a maximum security fat camp who take him away. Bart finds himself Serenity Ranch with Kent Brockman, Apu and Rainer Wolfcastle. The first bill from the ranch arrives and Marge decides they need to find a way to pay for it. They open their house up as youth hostel to German tourists. Having a hard time getting through to Bart, Tab Spangler takes him home and shows the horrors his family is enduring on his behalf. Bart finally gets the message and rages against the vending machines and is cured of his junk food addiction, there are three non-refundable weeks of fat camp available for a family member to use. Homer, the obvious choice, is elected to go.
The family tries to eat a total vegetarian meal and everyone except Lisa gets sick from eating the healthy meal. As they moan from the sickness Lisa sings them to sleep. The next morning they've recovered enough to go back to their old dietary habits. On television a commercial airs for a Krusty-sponsored "Li'l Starmaker" competition and Lisa's singing voice seems a natural for the competition. Of course, Lisa and every other child in Springfield signs up. When Clarissa, one of the competitors sings the same song that Lisa was going to sing, and does it much better than Lisa believes she will be able to, Homer reassures her that he will write her a can't lose song. Lisa sings the song and makes it into the final competition. Homer takes charge of her career and writes her more songs that take her into the finals of the competition; it's Lisa versus Cameron, a boy all the girls go crazy over. When Homer oversteps his bounds with his obnoxiousness, Lisa fires him. Homer retaliates by getting himself a new client, Cameron. The final competition begins and Lisa's sings a song she wrote on her own, a song about her relationship with her father. Homer tells her that he was always in her corner and that Cameron is learning the greatest lesson he can ever learn in the music business, don't trust people in the music business.
Bart and Lisa want to start getting their hair cut at the mall. They go to the mall with Homer and while getting their haircut they get into a fight, which results in them each getting really bad haircuts. Out in the mall they are spotted by fellow school students who have cameras in hand. They find Homer and go on the run; they sneak into the back entrance of a movie theater and see the film "Left Below," which is a movie about the apocalypse. The images in the movie are disturbing to Homer, who fears the worst. Marge assures him that there needs to be some ominous signs before the rapture will come. When Homer is out driving, he sees what he believes to be the signs. Homer gathers some books on the subject and he calculates that the "rapture is nigh" at 3:15 PM on May 18th, seven days from now. He starts to spread the word and tells everyone on television a passage from Revelations 6:13 that says before the rapture "the stars will fall to Earth." At the Springfield Stadium, there is a celebrity filled blimp accident that causes the stars on board to fall to the Earth and Homer gains instant credibility. He gets a bus full of people to join him at Springfield Mesa. When the appointed time comes and goes, Homer loses credibility and everyone return back to their normal lives. Homer later realizes that he made a mistake in his calculation and the new time is only 30 minutes away. When no one in his family will join him Homer goes to the Mesa on his own. The rapture comes and Homer goes to heaven, but despite all that heaven has to offer, Homer needs his family. He gets an audience with God, but when God won't grant his request to have his family join him; Homer begins raising hell in heaven. To put a stop to it, God agrees to turn back time and put off the rapture.
Lisa wins 4 tickets to see a foreign film and Homer gets Flanders to baby-sit Maggie. Flanders doesn't take any money for his effort, but he does need to earn some extra money; Marge suggests that he rent out his spare room. Flanders rents the room to two college age women, who turn the room into the set for their live webcam at www.SexySlumberParty.com. Flanders is unaware of what is going on in is his home, and when Homer finds out he makes sure that every man in Springfield knows about it. When Marge finds out she makes Homer tell Ned and then he finds out that Homer has made him the laughingstock of Springfield. Flanders decides to move to Humbleton, PA., where his favorite figurines are made. Homer mourns the loss of his favorite neighbor and tries to make friends with the new neighbor that has moved in, Clay Roberts, but this new neighbor is obnoxious. Meanwhile in Humbleton, Ned seems in heaven, only for him to live and work there, he must remove his mustache. Ned refuses and is making waves in his new community. When Homer arrives on his doorstep, pleading for him to come back to Springfield, Flanders decides to return.
Bart is given the role of a cooper in the school's medieval festival, while Lisa is the queen. Bart is blamed and expelled when rats come out of large pie that is presented to the queen. Marge looks for a new school for Bart and decides to try out a Catholic school. In his first day at school Bart encounters a tough nun and Father Sean. Bart takes a liking to Father Sean and begins to embrace the Catholic faith, which concerns Homer and Marge. Homer goes to the school with the purpose of taking Bart out of school, only to himself being converted before the night is through. With her husband and son gone Marge finds herself alone at church. Reverend Lovejoy tells her that when they die she and Homer will be going to different heavens. Marge, Ned and Reverend Lovejoy go to Homer and Bart's first communion class to at the very least liberate Bart from becoming Catholic. To bring Bart back to his old religion they take him to a religious festival. Father Sean and Homer arrive hoping to take Bart back, but Bart in one his rare moments of insight brings both sides together, that is until 1,000 years later.
