- Margical History Tour
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"Margical History Tour" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons' fifteenth season. The episode was first broadcast on February 8, 2004. This is one of several Simpsons episodes that features mini-stories.
Contents
Plot
Marge takes Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse to the library to study. When they go inside, they realize that the library has removed all the books except for the popular ones. Marge makes the best of this situation by telling stories about history.
Henry VIII
King Henry VIII (Homer) is unhappy that his wife, Margerine of Aragon (Marge) has borne him a daughter, Mary I (Lisa). Unable to execute Margerine because her father is the king of Spain, Henry attempts marriage counseling. Henry then files for a divorce, which forces him to split his kingdom.
Wanting a son to inherit the throne, Henry marries Anne Boleyn (Lindsey Naegle); nine months later, Anne tearfully apologizes to Henry for having borne him another daughter, Elizabeth I, and is executed. Henry marries a total of six times, each time failing to produce a male heir, and executing all his wives except Margerine. Finally, after many years and executions, Henry is old and sick, lying on his bed, with Margerine by his side. He asks for her forgiveness for having locked her up in a dungeon and asks her to be his queen again. She accepts tenderly, but then violently smothers him to death with his pillow. Elizabeth then becomes queen of England. In reality Henry only had two of his wives executed, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and he actually did have a male heir, with his first wife dying even before Anne Boleyn.
After the story, Milhouse leaves eagerly to start his report on Henry VIII, only to be tripped by Nelson, who steals Milhouse's notes from Marge's story to use for his own report.
Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea
Meriwether Lewis (Lenny) and William Clark (Carl) are assigned to explore the West by President Thomas Jefferson (Mayor Quimby). They meet a tribe of Native Americans led by Homer as the tribal chief, who offers them the guidance of his daughter, Sacagawea (Lisa). Sacagawea gives them many tips on how to survive the land, including how to scare a cougar, but quickly becomes fed up with Lewis and Clark's antics and stupidity. Finally, she leaves them and sets off back home. She encounters a cougar, but before it can attack, Lewis and Clark save her using the advice she gave them. The party arrives at the Pacific Ocean and a heavy downpour begins, prompting Lewis and Clark to name the rain-soaked place Eugene, Oregon. The two explorers reward Sacagawea by creating the Sacagawea dollar which —Marge explains— can be exchanged at the bank for a real dollar.
Mozart and Salieri
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Bart) is a big hit in Vienna, playing sonatas on the grand piano. Antonio Salieri (Lisa) is resentful of Mozart's good fortune, especially when Mozart wins the award for best composer. At Mozart's next opera, Salieri serves the Emperor (Montgomery Burns) wine spiked with a sleeping potion. The opera (a humorous rendition of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik), is a success until the crowd hears the Emperor snoring in the balcony. The failure of his opera leads to Mozart's fall from popularity, after which he develops a high fever and becomes deathly ill. Dr. Nick attempts to cure Mozart with leeches.
At Mozart's deathbed, Salieri tells him she wanted to ruin his life, not kill him. Mozart confesses that he thought highly of Salieri's work, believing that it would be remembered more than his — but his youthful death ensures he and his music will be immortalized forever. He then dies, but not before saying "Eat my pantaloons." The next day, Salieri visits the Emperor's court to submit Mozart's Requiem as her own, but the court is already focused on Ludwig van Beethoven (Nelson). Befuddled, Salieri throws the Requiem away. Then she hails a carriage to the mental asylum in which she gets in and laughs hysterically as the carriage draws away.
Lisa realizes that Marge's telling of the lives of Mozart and Salieri is not the real version, noting that Mozart and Salieri had better relations in their time, and says that the story is based on the movie Amadeus. Homer says that Tom Hulce starred both in Amadeus and in Animal House, and he sings an inaccurate rendition of the Animal House theme from that film over the credits.
Epilogue
The episode ends with a facetious epilogue that reads:
Henry VIII still holds the world turkey-leg-eating record.
Sacagawea went on to great riches posing for butter boxes.
Mozart's burial site is now the most popular gas station in Vienna.
That night, Homer watched Animal House again. He went to work the next day in a toga.Cultural references
Some items seen in the library are Everyone Poops: The Movie, Yu-Gi-Oh! Price Guides, and Itchy & Scratchy books on tape.
Many of the episode's puns derive from popular music. The episode's title is a take off of the song and film "Magical Mystery Tour" by The Beatles. When Homer tells Bart to "get out of my dreams and into my wife", it is a reference to the song "Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car" (which in turn had been inspired by a line in the song "You're Sixteen"). In direct reference to the theme of the mini-story, Homer also sings a variation of "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am". During this mini-story, a brief snatch of the English folk-tune "Greensleeves" (which is popularly supposed to have been written by Henry VIII) can be heard.
The mini-story also makes self-reference to the series. Henry wipes his mouth with the Magna Carta, an important 13th century document. In Make Room for Lisa, he licks the Eighth Amendment off the Bill of Rights. Later, Reverend Lovejoy says "In the name Henry, the Hank and the holy Harry". The latter two are nicknames for men named Henry, and the first names of Simpsons cast members Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer. Otto makes a cameo as Anne of Cleves, one of the men in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and of the audience in Mozart's concerts.
In the Mozart mini-story, the opera Bart writes has the line "The Musical Fruit", which is a reference to both The Magic Flute, a Mozart piece, and "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit", a children's song. The music in Bart's opera is in fact Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with lyrics referring to flatulence. However, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is not an opera. Later in the story, Nelson's laugh imitates the opening bars from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. In a more modern reference, the three "untalented" other brothers of Lisa are Randy, Jermaine, and Tito Jackson from the Jackson Five. A fragment from the movement Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem can be heard while Bart is dying in his bed.
Categories:- The Simpsons (season 15) episodes
- 2004 television episodes
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in popular culture
- Tudor England in popular culture
- Cultural depictions of Henry VIII of England
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