Kill the Alligator and Run

Infobox Simpsons episode
episode_name = Kill the Alligator and Run


image_caption= Promotional artwork featuring Homer with Kid Rock.
episode_no = 245
prod_code = BABF16
airdate = April 30, 2000
show runner = Mike Scully
writer = John Swartzwelder
director = Jen Kamerman
blackboard = "I am not here on a fartball scholarship."
couch_gag = The Simpsons (save Maggie) are barefoot and briskly walking across a bed of hot coals in order to reach the couch. When they sit down, the soles of their feet are black and smoldering.
guest_star = Diedrich Bader as the sheriff
Robert Evans
Charlie Rose
Joe C. and Kid Rock as themselves
season = 11"Kill The Alligator and Run" is the nineteenth episode of the eleventh season of "The Simpsons". It aired on April 30, 2000.

Plot

Homer gets a magazine loaded with personality tests and quizzes his friends and family with them. Later on, he takes his own test and reveals that he will have only three years left to live, which proves that Homer is 39 years old. He develops insomnia and goes insane. Homer visits the power plant's psychiatrist, who suggests that he goes on a long vacation. The Simpsons go on a trip to a town in Florida, which Homer calls 'Americas Wang'. When the family arrives in Florida, they find it is Spring Break. Marge wants Homer to stay in his hotel room, but he escapes to party and attend a Kid Rock concert to brighten the last three years of his life. Homer becomes the life of the Spring Break party.

The party is not over after the Spring Break crowd leaves: Homer rents an airboat and races through the swamp, killing the town's most famous resident and reptile, an alligator named Captain Jack. Despite the fact that Homer is the sole guilty culprit, the family is charged for killing the alligator, but they flee from the sheriff and are hit by an Amtrak train They escape to a restaurant and nearby trailer, where they work until the sheriff finds them. For what they have done, the family is put into forced labor. One night when they are working, the family encounters the alligator, who is not dead but was rather knocked out. The family is acquitted, but they are not allowed to return to Florida again. For their next trip, the family plans to go to North Dakota, the only state other than Arizona (which Homer complains "smells funny") in which they are allowed to vacation.

Production

*The VJs are named Sepulveda and Cienega, presumably for the Los Angeles streets, Sepulveda Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard.
*Even though the Simpsons were supposedly banned from Florida for the events of this episode, they later came back to attend the 'Teacher of the Year' award show in EPCOT in Florida in Special Edna.
*When Homer's questioning Ned Flanders from the magazine, he takes marks off Ned for crying. Ned says this is due to his wife recently dying, a reference to the episode Alone Again, Natura-Diddily in which Maude died, which aired shortly before this episode.
*According to the website nohomers.net, this episode ranks number one on their list of the worst "Simpsons" episodes ever made.

Cultural references

*The alligator's name, Captain Jack, is a reference to the song by Billy Joel
*Homer's line of "Bring on the Rappin' Granny!" is reference to a member of The Howard Stern Show's Wack Pack known as the Rappin' Granny.
*The VJ's blinking crystal embedded in her hand (and her getting carted off by security and replaced with a younger, hipper VJ after revealing that she's turning 25) is a reference to the 1976 film "Logan's Run" where citizens in a biodome city have age jewels on their hands that beep when someone turns 30 years old (and are euthanized in order to keep the population young and low).
*Multiple times in the episode, Homer sings "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship (which appropriately was played on the first broadcast of MTV's Spring Break).
*The scene where the family works on a chain gang is a reference to the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke".
*Marge yells at a college co-ed who has her breasts pressed up against the car window to "...take 'em off the glass," which is a reference to the song "Put 'Em on the Glass" by Sir Mix-A-Lot.
*Homer watches an episode of Charlie Rose with Robert Evans. Evans' voice and vocabulary quirks have been mocked by many comedians, including impressions done by Patton Oswalt and Bob Odenkirk (though in this episode, Robert Evans voices himself).

External links

*snpp capsule|BABF16
*imdb episode|id=0701143|episode=Kill the Alligator and Run