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"There's No Disgrace Like Home" was the fourth non short Simpsons episode released on television. The episode deals with Simpsons family relations, anger, and comparisons to other families.

Synopsis

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Homer takes his family to the company picnic given by his boss Mr. Burns A cruel and tyrannical employer, Burns fires any employee whose family members are not enjoying themselves. Homer sees that Burns is drawn towards a family that treats one another with love and respect and he wonders why he is cursed with his unloving and disrespectful family.

The Simpsons observe other families on their street. Peeking through living room windows, they see happy families sharing quality time together. Convinced that both he and his family are losers, Homer stops by Moe's Tavern, where he sees a TV commercial for Dr. Marvin Monroe's Family Therapy Center. When he hears that Dr. Monroe quarantees family bliss or "double your money back," Homer pawns the TV set and enrolls the family in the clinic.

When standard methods prove useless in civilizing the family, Dr. Monroe resorts to shock therapy and wires the Simpsons to electrodes. Soom the whole family is sending shocks to one another. Resigned to the fact that the Simpsons are incurable, the doctor gives them double their money back. With $500 in his pocket, Homer takes his blissful family to buy a new television.

This episode marks the introduction of Dr. Marvin Monroe, Itchy and Scratchy, and Eddie and Lou (two of Springfield's policemen). But Lou is not African-American in this episode, though he is later, and Smithers, who was drawn as an African-American in the previous episode, is drawn a yellow lighter than Burns in this one. This episode also marks the first use of Burns' "release the hounds" comment.

Trivia

• This episode was the first to be broadcast by the BBC, on BBC One on 23 November 1996, making it the first episode to be seen by UK terrestrial viewers (the satellite channel Sky One had shown the programme since 1990). Moving to BBC Two from 10 March 1997, it continued on the BBC until terrestrial rights moved to Channel 4 in 2004.
• Red, purple, green, blue: The colors of Jell-o molds Marge makes for the picnic.
• A sign outside Burns manor reads, "Poachers will be shot."
• Smithers wears his plant I.D. even at the picnic.
• Dr. Monroe keeps his aggression therapy mallets in a gun cabinet.

Parodies

• Freaks, the Tod Browning cult horror film about sideshow "freaks," in its repetition of the line "one of us"
• Citizen Kane in its low angle hillside shot of Burns' mansion
• Batman in its reference to the "stately Burns Manor"
• The episode title is a play on the saying "There's no place like home".
• In a scene reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange (1971), the Simpson family members are seated in a stark white laboratory, wired with electrodes, fronted by a bank of buttons. Each has the ability to shock everyone else.

Memorable Quotes

• Homer: "I'm sorry, Marge, but sometimes I think we're the worst family in town."
  Marge: "Well maybe we should move to a larger community."

• Homer: "When will I learn? The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're on TV!"

External links

• Episode capsule on "Simpsons Archive"

• Simpsons episodes