“homer’s enemy” is such a fascinating simpsons episode because although it was largely panned by viewers for being too dark (even by the show’s standards), it’s gone on to become the number 1-rated simpsons episode of all time [according to IMDB] and most people who were young kids at the time the episode first aired (myself included) consider it one of the most iconic and classic episodes of the series
like damn, it was always a running joke that homer is much too incompetent and lazy for his line of work and yet somehow still manages to live in a decent 2-story home in a nice neighborhood but this episode hit it on the fucking nose with how unfair and ludicrous it all is
The show creators wanted to make this episode unsettling. They wanted to show what would happen if a real person ended up in Springfield.
The message of “Homer’s Enemy” is far more Chesterton’s Fence than Peter Principle, and I think a lot of people miss that.
Everything Frank Grimes says is both obvious and true to the viewer.
The twist is that Frank Grimes is from our world, but Springfield isn’t. Where he ended up, nuclear power plants ooze glowing green goop and undereducated drunks pour sodas on control panels to short them out rather than investigate error messages. In our world, Springfield would be a slightly more colorful Pripiyat, the town evacuated in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. But that keeps not happening!
The fundamental logic of Springfield is that of TV: big stuff happens, but it all has a way of returning to the status quo after 22 minutes. The Simpsons constantly makes reference to all the outlandish things Homer did, as if this mid-30s man actually did all the things he supposedly did over the last three decades of TV. They still callback Poochie, for chrissakes! It’s TV given self-awareness and this license to acknowledge its built-in logic.
For all his supposed knowledge and competence, Grimes’ skills of observation failed him miserably. He was driven to madness by a world that didn’t play by his rules. The lesson of “Homer’s Enemy” is that you can’t demand that a world you barely understand follow a set of rules that you do.
goddamn every time i go thru the notes of this post i find more and more in-depth analyses and interpretations of it, i’m impressed
I saw a recent interview with Bill Oakley (one of the writers during the time) where he compared Frank Grimes to Superintendent Chalmers - one of my favorite Simpsons characters because of how he plays a similar “only sane man” sort of role, but only ever asks a few questions before dropping it and taking everything at face value. He’s learned just not to care, because he knows it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Oakley sums it up really well:
“Chalmers is able to live in Springfield and succeed, because he knows not to ask too many questions. Whereas Frank just wouldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t let it go, and he died.”
