Pokey Mom

"Pokey Mom" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons' twelfth season, aired on January 14, 2001.

Plot

When the family attends a prison rodeo, Marge meets Jack Crowley, a convict whom she believes to have great artistic potential after becoming impressed with his work. Marge later teaches a class on being an artist to the prisoners. Jack is up for parole and, with Marge's help, is granted parole under her custody. When Jack is looking for a job, Marge finds a mural-painting job at Springfield Elementary School. Jack paints a powerful, epic mural symbolizing school spirit with a tiger, which the whole school likes (including the teachers), but Principal Skinner (who hates it) demands that he tone it down using his childish idea of bunnies in a fantasy land. After reluctantly giving into Skinner's wishes, Jack is criticized for doing a terrible job. He goes crazy and commits arson on the mural and later Skinner's car. Inevitably, Marge resents Jack for lying to her that he did not set the mural on fire, and he returns to jail.

Meanwhile, Homer suffers from a back injury at the rodeo, and he sees a chiropractor. He reveals that he can solve his back problems with the garbage can; therefore, he names it "Dr. Homer's Miracle Spine-o-Cylinder", and makes a business out of it. It turns out be successful until the other chiropractors denounce it for taking away their business and destroy it.

Cultural references

• The name "Pokey Mom" is a double play on words. Firstly a tribute to the popular franchise Pokémon, which is occasionally (intentionally or unintentionally) pronounced "Pokeymon" and sometimes misspelled as Pokémom, it also references the colloquialism "pokey" used to refer to prisons.
• Bob Dylan's song "Hurricane", about boxer and convict Rubin Carter, is obliquely referenced when the announcer at a prison rodeo says of Crowley that he is so vile "Bob Dylan wrote a song to keep him in prison!". Ironically, this statement also recalls Dylan's take on William Zantzinger, as musically chronicled in "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" back in 1964's The Times They Are a-Changin'.
• The crazy prisoner painting the picture of a judge being murdered was named Sardonicus. This could be a reference to the film Mr. Sardonicus, where the title character's face was frozen in a ghastly smile, much like the one the prisoner had on his face throughout his entire scene.
• Jack's painting of a man with wings flying away, which he names "A Time to Kill," is likely a reference to the Greek Mythology character Icarus, whose father, Daedalus, fashioned him a pair of wax and feather wings to aid his escape of King Minos' prison. Marge comments on the painting, stating that she sees a man yearning for freedom.
• Michael Keaton's vocal performance as Jack Crowley is similar to his portrayal of sociopathic convict Peter McCabe in the 1998 film Desperate Measures.
• Moe echoes the famous line from Chinatown as "Forget it Homer, it's Chirotown".
• The prison rodeo at the beginning of the episode is a parody of the Huntsville Prison Rodeo, that took place in Huntsville, Texas from the years of 1931-1986. Inmates would participate in typical rodeo fare such as bareback and saddle bronco riding and bull riding. The rodeo drew huge crowds and was a boost to the local business economy. It was finally shut due to lack of funds for repairs.
• The cell block Marge enters resembles the cell block in Australian cult soap opera Prisoner
• The original "Puma Pride" mural looks simlar to the poster of the 1982 Ralph Bakshi animated film Heavy Metal (film).

Self-references

• When Homer is dangling Lisa in front of the bull, he looks for a blue object to calm it down. Looking to Bart he asks, "Hey, where's your blue shirt?". This is a reference to the official Simpsons line of action figures and other Simpsons merchandise from the early 1990s, where Bart often sports a blue shirt instead of an orange one.
• Marge looks out of the kitchen window to view a building twice in the episode; once for the prison and once for Springfield Elementary, both in the same place. This is a joke on the fact that in cartoons, several places, buildings and such move around to a different place frequently, and in the show, the features do move around from episode to episode. An example is Moe's Tavern being down the road from the Simpson's home in "Brake My Wife, Please", while in some episodes it is is several streets away.
• Sideshow Bob is shown in the prison infirmary wearing a headcast from the neck up. Later on in the episode Marge tells Bart that Sideshow Bob said he would be seeing him very soon and Bart just laughs it off and says "Oh, that Bob." He would in fact encounter him again three episodes later in Day of The Jackanapes

References

External links