"Duffless" is the sixteenth episode of the fourth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 18, 1993. After getting arrested for drunk driving, Homer tries to remain sober, at Marge's request. Meanwhile, Lisa attempts to prove that Bart is less intelligent than a hamster after he ruins her first science fair project.

The episode was written by David M. Stern, and directed by Jim Reardon.^[2] It had a positive reception.

Plot

While having breakfast with her family, Lisa shows them her project for Springfield Elementary School's upcoming science fair, a steroid-enhanced tomato she hopes will solve world hunger. At school, three days before the fair, Lisa leaves her tomato in Bart's care for a moment and he hurls it at Principal Skinner's butt. When Lisa returns, she is furious that Bart destroyed her project. She asks Marge for help, who suggests she run a hamster through a maze. Inspired, Lisa decides to run a series of tests on a hamster and Bart to determine who is smarter. After two easy tests, the hamster leads two to zero.

Homer sneaks out early at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and accompanies Barney on a tour of the Duff brewery. Afterward, Homer refuses to let a drunk Barney drive home and forces him to hand over his keys. On their way out of the parking lot, their car is pulled over by police Chief Wiggum, along with Eddie and Lou. After administering a field sobriety test on Homer, which he passes, the policemen tell Homer he is free to go. However, as revenge for not being allowed to drive, Barney tells the policemen to give Homer a breathalyzer, which detects that Homer has recently had alcohol. Homer is arrested, loses his license, and is ordered by a judge to attend traffic school and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In bed, Marge gives Homer a magazine quiz about his drinking. Hearing Homer's answers, Marge asks him to give up beer for a month, and he reluctantly agrees.

Bart discovers Lisa's plans to humiliate him at the science fair and pre-empts her project with a project of his own, "Can hamsters fly planes?", showing her hamster in the cockpit of a miniature plane. Despite Lisa's objection concerning the lack of scientific merit, everyone is distracted by how cute the hamster is, and a proud Skinner hands Bart the winning ribbon.

During the month that Homer spends without beer, he loses weight and saves over $100. After being sober for a month (despite many temptations), Homer goes back to Moe's, despite Marge's declaration that she would like to spend time with him in that moment. Homer orders a beer at Moe's, but thinks about what Marge said to him and leaves after a steady, appraising look at Barney and the other barflies. Homer and Marge ride a bike into the sunset, singing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head".

Production

Bart's go-go ray idea was "stolen" from the opening credits of Jonny Quest.^[3] Mike Reiss said they did not want to show the hamster getting shocked but had to for plot purposes.^[4] The first line Richard Nixon says, during the Duff commercial, was taken verbatim from the Kennedy-Nixon Debate during the 1960 Presidential Campaign.^[5] Adolf Hitler's head, among other things, can be seen going by in bottles of Duff when the quality control man is not paying attention.^[5] The Troy McClure driver's education film title Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass was pitched by Frank Mula.^[6]

The episode contains the first appearance of Sarah Wiggum.^[7] The episode also contains a two-second snippet of footage from "Bart the Daredevil": a close-up of Homer making a disappointed face and saying "D'oh!" when he gets arrested.^[8]

Cultural references

When Bart reaches for the cupcakes and collapses, it is a parody of a scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex, a predator who has been conditioned to hate sex, reaches for a woman's breasts.^[4] Duff is shown to be a sponsor of the 1960 United States presidential debates. The Duff clock is a parody of the "It's a Small World" clock.^[9] Troy McClure mentions having been in the driver's ed film Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass, a play on Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. In the Duff TV ad, a group of women are leading an anti-sexism protest in front of the McMahon and Tate building, a reference to the advertising agency from Bewitched.^[4] Homer's song "It was a Very Good Beer" is to the tune of "It Was a Very Good Year" (1961);^[10] one of its lyrics is "I stayed up listening to Queen."^[2] Bart sitting in the chair stroking the hamster is a reference to James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who sits in a chair and strokes a cat.^[4] Lisa imagines Bart as a hamster trapped in a maze saying "Help me! Help me!", a reference to The Fly (1958). Lisa claims she was laughing at a joke from Herman's Head, which featured Lisa's voice actor Yeardley Smith and fellow cast member Hank Azaria. Bart makes several actions reminiscent of The Three Stooges throughout the episode, saying "Certainly" à la Curly. The penultimate scene, where Moe points to customers declaring they will "be back" before pointing toward and addressing the viewer (revealed via cutaway to be Barney) is a parody of the end of Reefer Madness.^[4] The final scene, of Homer and Marge cycling off into the sunset to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", is a reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).^[1]

Reception

"Duffless" aired during February sweeps and finished 19th in the weekly ratings for the week of February 15–21, 1993 with a Nielsen rating of 15.2 and was viewed in 14.2 million homes.^[11] It was the highest rated show from the Fox Network that week.^[12]

Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood called it "A superb episode with a sincere message. Homer is excellent throughout, but it is the cameos by Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel that steal the show, especially the latter's reaction to Milhouse's Slinky."^[2]

Nathan Rabin writes: “'Duffless' flirts with a truly downbeat ending when Homer returns to an even-more-depressing-than-usual Moe’s (no mean feat considering that even at its liveliest and most upbeat, the bar is a pit of bottomless sorrow) to the bitterness and resentment of Moe and the sour apathy of the barflies Homer deludes himself into thinking are his friends, even if they can’t be bothered to remember his name.

The episode pulls back from that bleak void, however, by having a humbled and at least slightly wiser Homer turn down the beer he’s been lusting for, temporarily of course, so that he can go bike riding with Marge to the gentle strains of 'Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.' It’s a bit of a cheat, since we know that Homer’s sobriety is only temporary. Then again, it was awfully ballsy for an animated family sitcom in 1993 to make an entire episode around a lead character’s alcoholism and drunk-driving conviction so the show can be forgiven for not being quite as uncompromising in its depiction of Homer’s alcoholism as it could be."^[13]

Entertainment Weekly ranked the episode eleventh on their list of the top twenty-five The Simpsons episodes: "Not only does 'Duffles' tweak an unrelenting alcohol culture (a billboard flips between 'Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk' and 'It’s Always Time for Duff'), it deftly depicts poignant, if grudging, emotional growth for Homer: After bemoaning his newfound sobriety at a baseball stadium ('I never realized how boring this game is'), he forgoes a reward beer to bike into the sunset with Marge."^[14] Reviewing the season in 1993, Ken Tucker wrote that "the Simpsons aren’t winking, rib-cage-nudging rebels; if anything, they’re touchingly sincere. Groening and company want to suggest that family life is so complicated, so full of inarticulated desires and fears, that it can never be reduced to a mere collection of wisecracks." Referring to "Duffless" and "Selma's Choice", he writes "The closest the series has ever come to offering a 'message' has been in a few episodes this season that mercilessly satirize the alcohol industry in the form of the profoundly cynical 'Duff' beer company...the show has Homer trying to give up Duff for a month, with great difficulty. The episode is hilarious, in part because it makes alcoholism seem like such an absurd horror, you have to laugh."^[15]