Marge Gamer

"Marge Gamer"
The Simpsons episode
Homer showing Ronaldo a red card (in some promotional images, Ronaldo appears with a Real Madrid uniform, rather than the Brazil National Football Team one).
Episode no.	395
Prod. code	JABF10
Orig. airdate	April 22, 2007
Show runner(s)	Al Jean
Written by	J. Stewart Burns
Directed by	Bob Anderson
Couch gag	A copy of The Springfield Shopper spins into frame. The headline reads, “COUCH GAG THRILLS NATION” with a photo of the Simpsons on the couch
Guest star(s)	Ronaldo as himself
Season 18 September 10, 2006 – May 20, 2007 "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer" "Jazzy and the Pussycats" "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em" "Treehouse of Horror XVII" "G.I. (Annoyed Grunt)" "Moe'N'a Lisa" "Ice Cream of Margie (with the Light Blue Hair)" "The Haw-Hawed Couple" "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II" "The Wife Aquatic" "Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Three Times" "Little Big Girl" "Springfield Up" "Yokel Chords" "Rome-old and Juli-eh" "Homerazzi" "Marge Gamer" "The Boys of Bummer" "Crook and Ladder" "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot" "24 Minutes" "You Kent Always Say What You Want" List of all The Simpsons episodes
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"Marge Gamer" is the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' eighteenth season, which was originally broadcast on April 22, 2007. It was written by J. Stewart Burns and featured a guest appearance from Brazilian football star Ronaldo. This episode was first broadcast three days after the twenty-year anniversary of the first ever appearance of The Simpsons on television, in The Tracey Ullman Show' short "Good Night".

Plot

Marge is embarrassed at a Parent-Teacher Association meeting because she does not have an e-mail address, and she decides to buy her own computer. She is quite taken by the Internet, and starts playing a Fantasy MMORPG called Earthland Realms after refreshing her e-mail and finding an ad for it. The game has her interacting with practically the whole town of Springfield, including Apu the gem trader, Seymour Skinner the turkey, Moe who looks like a troll but is not, Mrs. Krabappel the enchantress, Snake the Cobra King, Chief Wiggum the pig man, Smithers the Barbarian, Comic Book Guy the fully armored crusader-like warrior, and Sideshow Mel as a creature who looks surprisingly like a Tauren. Suddenly everyone hides and closes the windows of their shops and houses as a knight atop a black horse named "The Shadow Knight" appears. Apu grabs Marge and Skinner is flamed by the knight's flame sword. It turns out the Shadow Knight is the most powerful and deadly character in the game (as Moe remarks "He once beat me to death with my life bar!") . While off the game, Marge does the laundry and unintentionally hears Bart say "Another senseless killing by the Shadowknight", learning that he is the Shadowknight. After this, she states "My son is an evil knight! The most successful evil knight in the whole of Earthland Realms. Not bad!"

Meanwhile, Homer referees Lisa's soccer game and his subpar skills frustrate Lisa. Stung by her criticism, he learns the rules of soccer and becomes a better referee, briefly impressing Lisa. Lisa twice pretends to be fouled hoping that Homer would admit it. At first he does but when Ronaldo points out that Lisa is a "flopper", Homer gives Lisa a yellow card. When she rips up the yellow card, he gives her a red card for bad sportsmanship and throws her out of the game. As a result, Lisa gets mad at him.

Marge goes to the Shadowknight's castle and meets Milhouse, cursed to look like a female servant as a result of an evil spell. In the online game Marge constantly frets about Bart, who goes around causing carnage, and redecorates his "trophy room" with the Hello Kitty expansion pack. Bart smashes all of these decorations with his weapon and accidentally kills Marge's character in his fit of rage, severely disappointing Marge.

Homer and Bart go to Moe's Tavern to escape their troubles. Moe gives quality advice to Homer and Bart (though it appears to be an imposter, as the real Moe is shown tied up and gagged in the basement). Acting on Moe's advice, Bart makes up for killing his mother's character by reviving her with two thirds of his life force. While "Elf Marge" tends to the Shadowknight, the other characters raid the castle to take advantage of his weakness and graphically kill him. Homer gives Lisa a BBC documentary produced in cooperation with Canal+ about "floppers", hoping that she will forgive him, but she realizes that she was at fault. So, instead of forgiving Homer, Lisa apologizes for her injustice against him. Marge refuses to come outside as the rest of the family plays soccer outside with Ronaldo. Feeling sorry for Bart, she becomes the new Shadowknight and avenges Bart by eliminating everyone who participated in killing him, first starting with Moe's character, while juggling his head like a soccer ball, making Moe wonder why he pays $14.95 a month to play the game.

Reception

Adam Finley of TV Squad felt "the Homer/Lisa story might have worked better as the main plot, but even that segment of the episode was hindered by a terrible guest voice in soccer player Ronaldo". He went on to say: "I hate it when non-actors do guest voices on The Simpsons" and that "bad voice acting becomes much more of a distraction".^[1] In 2007, Simon Crerar of The Times listed Ronaldo's performance as one of the thirty-three funniest cameos in the history of the show.^[2]

Cultural references

• Marge plays a game called "Earthland Realms" which is a parody of MMORPGs particularly World of Warcraft due to the almost identical interface and HUD, and Moe's comment about paying a monthly fee.
• The music playing as the statue of the Virgin Mary beats the "living snot" out of the Brazilian football team is Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.
• Marge makes a reference to the search engine Google when she searches for her own name online, and says, "and all this time, I thought 'googling yourself' meant that other thing."
• Marge says that she has the same birthday as Randy Quaid. She was only referring to the actual date, this means Marge was born on October 1; if they are exactly the same age then Marge was also born in 1950, which seems out of continuity for the series, also in the earlier episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore" Marge says her birthday is in May and in Homer's Paternity Coot, Marge says her birthstone would be emerald if she were born three months later.
• When the Shadow Knight is getting killed by the mob, the killing sequence was a parody of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when King Arthur is cutting all the Black Knight's limbs off.
• Marge is using a MacBook, and Bart is using a computer looking like a Macintosh IIfx.
• In the Brazilian dub, Homer shouts "Zidane!" when headbutting the linesman. This is a reference to Zinedine Zidane's infamous headbutt on Marco Materazzi at the 2006 FIFA World Cup final match.
• Lisa's reason for taking up soccer is inspiration from seeing Bend It Like Beckham.
• When Homer rips his shirt off after scoring a goal, it is a reference to when Brandi Chastain scored the winning penalty kick in the 1999 World Cup final against China.^[3]
• Helen Lovejoy telling her daughter Jessica to "save their troubled marriage" may be a foreshadowing to the next episode, The Boys of Bummer, in which the Lovejoys' marital problems were a major part of the episode.
• Lisa rips up the yellow card she is given in a reference to one of Peter Buck's alleged transgressions on a British Airways flight in 2001.

References

1. ^ "Marge Gamer". TVSquad. April 24, 2007. http://www.tvsquad.com/2007/04/24/the-simpsons-marge-gamer/. Retrieved March 10, 2008. 
2. ^ Crerar, Simon (2007-07-05). "The 33 funniest Simpsons cameos ever". The Times. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2021776.ece. Retrieved 2010-08-09. 
3. ^ 1999 World Cup champion Brandi Chastain gets things off her chest

External links

The Simpsons portal

• "Marge Gamer" at TV.com
• "Marge Gamer" at the Internet Movie Database