S05E09 | THE LAST TEMPTATION OF HOMER

A handy reminder

"The Last Temptation of Homer", ep. 9(90) of S5 (December 9, 1993).

“The Last Temptation” is a curious and weird one, even by season 5 standards, by which relatively plausible scenarios with grain of suspension of disbelief, that can be attributed to exaggeration or artistic rendition, did made way for the scenarios ranging from surrealism to outright fantasy, but not ones taking place in full-on cartoon universe yet.

It puts, once again, one side of Simpsons couple into situation, in which he/she has to fight, well, temptation of extramarital affair, keeping in mind it was already established that neither one can consider brief fling without seeing it as immediate threat to integrity of their union. It seems to be the case this time too – will Homer succumb to forbidden fruit of “office romance” or not is one obvious issue, but what raises the stake is a notion that maybe, it’s something much more – genuine soulmate met by chance, and in this case, one may think, whether Homer stays away from cheating or not, he’s going to suffer loss. Will he face his fate or reject it in the name of status quo? Anyway, the story is busy with bizarre gags and situations (and Bart’s subplot that asks for its own episode), just to end in sorta anticlimactic, and confusing for many, manner, brushed off all gloomy implications of tragedy our star-crossed lovers are going through.

Doesn’t help that while Homer’s mindset on extramarital affairs (or simply on notion of any other women by his side) is already explained in “Colonel Homer”, Mindy’s side is left cryptic, except overall impression that she enjoyed Homer’s company a lot and was at least at one point attracted to him, but since then either gave up on prospects with him (getting informed of his family status, probably?), or decided she and Homer are better off as friends, possibly not even being aware of mutual interest. Or maybe she is as much in pain as himself, up to very end, in which she vanishes without trace, visibly heartbroken. Isn’t it weird Mindy, out of all one-time mysterious figures who did enter Simpsons’ lives to show them new perspective or teach something about themselves (Jacques, Karl, Mr. Bergstrom, Lurleen…), doesn’t have on-screen departure or explanation of why she can’t stick around even as background figure? She does show up couple of times (once in meta gag acknowledging all “homewreckers”), but it’s nothing compared to, say, continued sights of Jacques as stable part of Springfield. Likely non-canonic nod in clip show, disclosing her as another victim of Homer’s propensity of ruining lives, doesn’t help either… I only may assume, creative team had unspoken agreement it’s better not to bring up sore subject given how sympathetic both sides remain through all their inner turmoil, and that there wasn’t way around to have Mindy as recurrent background member without her serving as reminder of that bittersweet in its core storyline. (There is the fact, also, that writer of TLTOH, Frank Mula, is responsible for another saddest love story in Simpsons catalogue – “I Love Lisa”, and even that one ended on uplifting note.) Rather than thinking she did hit rock bottom over heartbreak, I’m going to assume she had to take responsibility for that room service at the SNPP’s expense, and that did cost her workplace (temporarily or permanently).

Two (tangential, maybe) outtakes from it:

-           We were robbed of interesting workspace dynamics, if only Mindy could stay as recurring character and join Homer, Carl, and Lenny’s antics on occasion, also serving as both voice of reason (woman as agent of order) and catalyzer of risky adventures, depending on situation;

-           Storyline would’ve been used as exploration of concept of friendship between opposite sexes, which, surprisingly, wasn’t a subject in The Simpsons during whole its run (granted, there was once episode in similar vein between Homer and his female neighbor, but seemingly too late in game and it didn’t have any impact as far as I concerned…).

Lastly, in regard of that ambiguous ending that makes people believe Homer has had one night stand with Mindy, while imagining Marge in her place (assumption which makes everything ever gloomier). My take on it: what if it is true… but in opposite way. Whole episode is chock-full, more than usual, with Homer’s fantasies, and in general depicts him in constant state of delirium to the point imagination blends into “reality” (already too fluid in this era of the series). What if Mindy, herself, was just a product of Homer’s wandering mind, his boredom and dissatisfaction, all that time?

Homer must withstand Mindy's greatest temptation: Bortposting!

Bruno Madrigal being aroace:

Bruno: All I'm gonna use this bed for is sleeping, eating and maybe building a little fort.

"write 3 lines" turned into "finish the weird thing you started at midnight"

Frey looked different in the dim light, her face lax and babyish in sleep, her loose hair scattered over her pillow. He didn't move from his place leaning against the doorframe.

This was a rarity, for him, for her. She was a miserably light sleeper so watching her like this would never be possible without a lapse in judgment... or permission. She hadn't granted permission for this, not in so many words, but she hadn't closed the door after reminding him that "didn't sleep" was not synonymous with "can't sleep." It was an invitation for intimacy, one they had not yet shared, one that he could not even fathom indulging in.

Too much. He had already given her more than he ever intended. She was starting to truly see him now and that was craved, terrifying, a vicious temptation unacceptable.

Her brow furrowed for a moment, face twitching and eyes fluttering, as if something in him had called to her loudly enough that she could hear it in her sleep. But Frey did not wake. Instead, Homer wriggled her way free on Frey's arms and dropped to the floor with a nearly inaudible thud. On silent padded feet, Homer approached. The two stared at each other for long moments, appraising, before Homer wound her way between his feet in a furry figure-8.

Letting himself be herded from the room, knowing he shouldn't have been there in the first place, he headed to the kitchen where his phone rested, ignored, on the counter. There was a text waiting on it, impatient and demanding. He couldn't ignore it for much longer.

Homer leaped up next to his phone and sat, staring him down. "Do you have something to say, creature?" he asked. "You have been fed. You have all the places you could wish to sleep. Why are you following me?" Homer meowed softly, as if aware of the late hour. "You know you are not supposed to be up here. Frey would tell you to get down. But it hardly matters to me. The kitchen is her domain. It was never used before her."

Eating was not a necessity any more than sleep was. He would live indefinitely without it and felt no hunger. Well, he thought as he glanced towards the bedroom, hunger could mean so many things and he couldn't deny he had felt its pull. But he had eaten more in the last weeks than in years of his existence because she had insisted and he no longer felt the need to deny her. It was getting harder to deny her anything, in fact.

"I don’t know what to do," he admitted to the cat. "I should get her out of the city. She would be safer as far away from him as possible. But without the anonymity that she has here... if he found her and I wasn't there..." Even the thought ached. Living with that (because he would have no choice but to live on and on and on, a chained mad dog who could never quite manage to destroy itself) would be unimaginable. "But she's not safe with me either. Or from me."

He put his face in his hands, elbows braced on the counter, and tried to think. He was startled from his catastrophizing when Homer gently headbutted him. "You are an exceptional creature, aren't you?" he asked her. "I suppose I understand why she's so attached." She headbutted him again in reply and he reached to pet her on instinct. "What have the two of you done to me?"

Homer accepted his touch easily. Most animals shied from him, feeling what he was where their humans could not, but Homer never had. Neither had Frey, not once she understood. He shuddered at the memory of her placing his hands on her bare waist, soft vulnerable skin under his fingers. Without consciously choosing to do so, he drifted back to her open door. Knowing it was foolish but pulled by something as monumental, as inescapable, as gravity, he stepped inside. Her eyes opened immediately and he froze. Instead of anger, she looked up at him solemnly. Silently, she held out her hand to him. When he hesitantly took it, she told him, "I'm not going anywhere."

When she pulled, he followed.

SURPISE GUEST STAR POLL TO DECIDE THE FINAL SLOTS!!!!

Can you talk about Janeway for the reverse opinion meme?

I've been trying to better understand Janeway for years—she's always been rather difficult character for me to crack. But last week I came across a completely deranged insight that I'm going to share again here in more detail: Janeway is Ulysses, but not exactly the Ulysses from the Odyssey, more like the Ulysses that Dante Alighieri puts in his Inferno.

From this analysis (it's long but worth it I promise):

[16] Ulysses is an embodiment of Dante’s fundamental trope of voyage. He is the dramatic expression of the Commedia’s metaphorization of desire as flight.

[...]

Dante’s Ulysses is a complex creation that goes far beyond Vergil’s negative portrayal. Dante borrowed also from the positive rendering of Ulysses that was preserved mainly among the Stoics, for whom the Greek hero exemplified heroic fortitude in the face of adversity. Horace praises Ulysses in the Epistle to Lollius for his discernment and endurance and especially for his ability to withstand the temptations that proved the undoing of his companions: “Sirenum voces et Circae pocula” (Sirens’ songs and Circe’s cups [Epistles 1.2.23]). From the Ars Poetica, where Horace cites the opening verses of the Odyssey, Dante learned that Ulysses “saw the wide world, its ways and cities all”: “mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes” (Ars Poetica, 142).

[20] And, most suggestively, in De Finibus, Cicero celebrates the mind’s innate craving of learning and of knowledge, what he calls the “lust for learning”: “discendi cupiditas” (De Finibus 5.18.49). As his exemplary lover of wisdom, Cicero presents none other than Ulysses. Cicero interprets Homer’s Sirens as givers of knowledge and Ulysses’ response to their invitation as praiseworthy. He endorses Ulysses’ quest, writing: “It is knowledge that the Sirens offer, and it was no marvel if a lover of wisdom held this dearer than his home” (De Finibus 5.18).

[21] Dante’s reconfiguring of Ulysses is a remarkable blend of the two traditional characterizations that also succeeds in charting an entirely new and extremely influential direction for this most versatile of mythic heroes. For Dante invents a new story, never told before. His Ulysses departs from Circe directly for his new quest, pulled not by the desire for home and family, but by the lure of adventure, by “the longing / I had to gain experience of the world / and of the vices and the worth of men”: “l’ardore / ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto / e de li vizi umani e del valore” (Inf. 26.97-99). As the classicist W. B. Stanford points out in The Ulysses Theme: “In place of [Homer’s] centripetal, homeward-bound figure Dante substituted a personification of centrifugal force” (p. 181).

[22] Stanford offers a remarkable tribute to the importance of Dante’s contribution to the Ulysses myth: “Next to Homer’s conception of Ulysses, Dante’s, despite its brevity, is the most influential in the whole evolution of the wandering hero” (The Ulysses Theme, p. 178). The wings of Dante’s alta fantasia may fail him at the end of the journey but they vouchsafe him remarkable insights along the way. It is indeed a testament to that fantasia that Dante was able to summon the authentic Ulyssean spirit in his brief episode, and to impress his version of that spirit upon our collective imagination.

[...]

In order to persuade his old and tired companions to undertake such a “folle volo” (mad flight [Inf. 26.125]), Ulysses deploys his forceful eloquence in an “orazion picciola” (little oration [Inf. 26.122]). Rightly or wrongly, his oration has moved generations of readers and (quite divorced of its infernal context) has achieved proverbial status in Italy. Ulysses exhorts his companions to follow him to the unknown, framing such a voyage as a pursuit of knowledge:

Considerate la vostra semenza:/fatti non foste a viver come bruti,/ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza. (Inf. 26.118-20)

(Consider well the seed that gave you birth: you were not made to live your lives as brutes, but to be followers of worth and knowledge.)  

[... ]

[40] In its infernal context, this oration exemplifies fraudulent counsel, since through it Ulysses leads his companions to their destruction. But the oration also powerfully evokes the authentic spirit of the Ciceronian discendi cupiditas: the lust for knowledge.

To me it fits so well that it's kind of funny. Janeway is so much larger than life that the only thing that makes sense to me is comparing her to well, the epitome of the epic hero that will pursue knowledge even to the cost of damning her companions to never going home.

(The difference is that Janeway WILL make a deal with the devil to get the cake and eat it too, eventually.)

Mini-comic inspired by The Simpsons episode "Last temptation of Homer"

Original and Spanish (Latin America dub)

“The Last Temptation of Homer” (season 5), aired December 9, 1993.

I have no idea how to draw motorcycle.

Mindy Simmons, Homer’s workplace schoolboy crush.

Clean version under 'read more':

ALIAS / NAME: Captain! I used to be called Honey, Lovely, and Nyx in the past, though that was LONG before Tumblr. Twas my amino days, baby. ( I also semi-recently tried out 'King' but the vibes don't quite fit yknow! prefer the vibe of that as a term of referral - ex: my liege - rather than a name weirdly enough BHGKTRB )

BIRTHDAY: july 7th!

ZODIAC: cancer! i forgot my exact stuff, like rising sign or the like, but i do know that! i got into zodiacs when i was like 13 i think so I know at least MY sign by heart lol

HEIGHT: 5'6! something like that, I think :] which is also 167 centimeters

HOBBIES: drawing, writing ( I have an ao3 I've been neglecting for so long ), dungeons & dragons / general ttrpgs which take up SO much of my week <3, video games, content analysis ( kinda? ), baking, penpal, learning ukulele, learning to sew, learning crochet!

FAV. COLOR: im terrible when it comes to this question because i love a lot of very specific colors because artist brain BUT... If I had to pick one. Probably a red-y brown-y color. I REALLY like warm and neutral colors ( though Quillheel's pallet probably wouldn't invoke that thought ) though i also like a lot of neutral and cooler colors. you can basically reference a rainbow for my preferred colors but even with blue at the bottom ( I'm a big purple-enjoyer ) i still enjoy what good usage of it can do <3

FAV. BOOK: the long walk by stephen king, inkheart by cornelia funke, or frankenstein by mary shelley <3 love different aspects of all of them, though inkheart was a big part of my childhood so i'm biased BHHGTR

LAST SONG: be nice to me by the front bottoms :] i've been listening to a lot of Hozier lately though

LAST MOVIE / SHOW: UHHH wolfwalkers! VERY good i really liked it <3 i wanna rewatch song of the sea eventually, too! that ones also a favorite. the last show would probably be season 3 of infinity train ( I still resist the temptation to add Simon sometimes. he is such a terrible yet interesting little man ) or finally finishing watching hisuian snow :]

RECENT READ: if fanfiction doesnt count ( if it Does then wander boy by poptod, which is surprising its not one of the HUGE amounts of disco elysium fanfiction i've been chewing on lately ) then probably i think frankenstein by mary shelley, which i picked up and began reading but didn't finish :( still the most recent though! I wanna actually finish that + reread the long walk + read a bunch of other books, like the song of achilles by madeline miller, circe by madeline miller, orange world and other stories by karen russle, memorial: a version of homers illiad by alice oswald, the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson, good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett, the city & the city by china mieville, etc etc etc! ( if you guys have any suggestions actually, feel free to send em my way! )

INSPIRATION: horror! especially slashers, psychological horror, and 'bloodbath' horror ( selectively! carrie's got the vibes, saw does NOT ), psychological writing in general, a bunch of the books i have or plan on reading, mythology & legends, fanfiction and composition, music ( especially the weakerthans, the narcissist cookbook, hozier, etc ), poetry, and just!! learning methods of how things Generally are made, ig! how people paint, how people make clothes and make fabric, how people grow plants. i take a lot of inspiration from unexpected places, but a lot of those places are the act of creation in of itself. my writing might only be writing, but i try to embody a sense of color to it, of an artstyle you can almost taste, yknow? the composition in shows where blues look almost green and its like the world is basked in paint and there's just a feeling, indescribable, contextual but potent in of itself, the feeling of small moments everywhere, all at once, all the time. THAT SOUNDS REALLY PRETENTIOUS BUT LIKE... its true, yknow!! i like to embody a feeling in my writing, and i go to a lot of places to find it.

STORY BEHIND URL: once, a long time ago, my oc multimuse @cassiopiia was named orphic-ruin, and quillheel came second in my blogs list. i wanted them to match! so i thought of storytelling, which went to writing, then to pens, then to quills! and the 'heel' part comes from achilles heel, or the achilles tendon! as well as having ties to hermes' winged feet. in a way, its kinda saying 'vulnerable storyteller' or 'half-divine legend' or even kinda like a title or epithet vibe wise like you might find on a mythological figure ( ex: quill-heeled ) or something like that, which i think still fits the vibe p well to this day! if i did change the URL, idk what I'd make it now! i might eventually, but yeah!

tagged: @disassnbler ty ender!!!! <333

tagging: uhhhhhhhhhhhhh @littlelonesomestars @slaughterlocked @underworldslibrary @rebellionhearted aaaand anyone wearing blue, green or red <3

The Simpsons Season 5 Episode 9: The Last Temptation of Homer

Written by Frank Mula

Storyboard by Martin Archer, Carlos Baeza & Steven Markowski

Directed by Carlos Baeza

Directing assistance by Swinton O. Scott III

I'm watching The Simpsons 5x09 "The Last Temptation of Homer"

Homer breaking out of the elevator before reaching a floor to avoid having ‘sexy thoughts’ about Mindy gives ‘pluck out your eyes if you can’t hold yourselves back’ Jesus energy

(The Last Temptation of Homer, s5e9)