Colonel Homer
"Colonel Homer" is the twentieth episode of the third season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on March 26, 1992. In the episode, Homer and Marge quarrel after he embarrasses her at a movie theater. Later Homer visits a redneck bar, where he discovers Lurleen Lumpkin, a talented singer-songwriter, waiting tables. Homer becomes her manager, unaware she has fallen in love with him. When Marge grows upset because she suspects Homer is cheating on her, he must remain faithful to her after Lurleen makes romantic advances toward him.
The episode was written by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and directed by Mark Kirkland. It is the only episode of the series for which Groening received an individual writing credit. American singer and actress Beverly D'Angelo guest starred in the episode as Lurleen. Although the character makes several cameos after this episode, Lurleen makes her second full-time appearance sixteen years later in "Papa Don't Leech". The episode features cultural references to songs such as "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. and "There's a Kind of Hush " by Herman's Hermits, and the films Deliverance, Look Who's Talking and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Since airing, "Colonel Homer" has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It attained a Nielsen rating of 14.8, and was the highest-rated show on Fox the week it aired. The episode was selected for inclusion in a video collection of selected episodes, titled The Last Temptation of Homer, which was released on November 9, 1998. An action figure set based on "Colonel Homer" was released in March 2002, and two of Lurleen's songs from the episode appeared on the Simpsons compilation album Songs in the Key of Springfield.
Plot
visit the local multiplex. After Homer makes distracting sounds and loudly reveals the film's ending to the audience, Marge berates him and the other patrons heckle and pelt him with refreshments. Marge tries to apologize on the way home, but Homer, blaming her for robbing him of his dignity, drops her and the children at home and drives into the night.Homer stops at a redneck bar, where an attractive waitress and singer-songwriter named Lurleen performs country songs on stage. Her song "Your Wife Don't Understand You" resonates with Homer; he drives to her mobile home several days later to beg a copy. When Lurleen reveals she has not recorded the song, Homer persuades her to join him at a recording booth, after which they are approached by a representative for a local country station. Lurleen's songs are instant hits.
Marge disapproves of Homer seeing Lurleen because she fears they will form a romantic relationship. Her fears increase after Homer becomes Lurleen's manager, and she buys him an expensive white cowboy suit, which he wears at home. Homer denies having an affair with Lurleen, but insists he will manage her career, with or without Marge's approval. Marge becomes angry when Homer gambles his whole family's future by using the life savings to pay for a recording studio for Lurleen, and her new single, a suggestive love song called "Bagged Me a Homer", angers her further.
Homer gets Lurleen a gig on the country western television show Ya-Hoo! The night before the show in Lurleen's home, she sings a new song to Homer, "Bunk With Me Tonight", adding it has a "secret message"; he belatedly realizes that she is trying to seduce him. Rather than violate his marital vows, he leaves.
During Lurleen's performance, Homer is approached by a business agent who asks to buy Lurleen's contract, but he refuses. When Homer becomes locked in an embrace with Lurleen in her dressing room, his love life flashes before his eyes, and he remembers Marge saying she will always love him. Homer tells Lurleen that he only wanted to share her voice with the world, and leaves to avoid committing adultery. He sees the agent again outside the dressing room and sells him Lurleen's contract for $50.
Marge is watching Ya-Hoo! in bed when Homer returns. Lurleen's new song "Stand By Your Manager" reveals what Homer did – and did not – do with her; expressing her hopes that Marge knows how lucky she is to still have Homer as a loyal husband. Marge forgives Homer and they kiss passionately.
Production
Writing and directing
The episode was written by series creator Matt Groening, the only episode for which he received an individual writing credit, though he has co-written for the episodes "Some Enchanted Evening", "The Telltale Head", and "22 Short Films About Springfield". "Colonel Homer" was partly based on Coal Miner's Daughter, which tells the story of country singer Loretta Lynn. Groening said he had always wanted to write an episode in which Homer is offered a chance between being rich and famous and being with his family, and chooses his family in the end. He pitched the idea to the writers of the show, who suggested the parody of Coal Miner's Daughter and that Homer should become a manager of a country singer.Showrunner Mike Reiss was originally skeptical about the episode, as he did not think Homer could get a new job when he already had a full-time job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Reiss eventually gave in, but in future episodes the writers tried to develop the explanation that he got fired from the plant and then rehired at the end. Groening said that during the episode production, he received comments from the production team that Homer was acting like a "jerk" in it, but his explanation was that Homer's behavior was due to his desire to make Lurleen a star and he was oblivious to her attempts to seduce him until the end. Mike Reiss stated that "Whenever we want to write stories about characters getting divorced or actually having an affair, rather than with Homer and Marge, which we could never do, we use secondary characters for that."
Mark Kirkland, said he enjoyed directing the episode because the characters' emotions throughout it are "very human and real". He believed many viewers watching the episode would recognize the emotions from experiences in their own lives, and would feel sympathy for the characters. The idea of Homer annoying the people at the movie theater was based on an experience Groening had with a friend of his when he was younger. They were sitting by themselves in a movie theater and two "annoying" women sat down right in front of them. Groening's friend told the women to move and they did. One of the women then turned to Groening and his friend and said, "Now are you satisfied?", to which Groening's friend replied: "I won't be satisfied until I see you burn in hell."
Voice acting and music
American singer and actress Beverly D'Angelo guest starred in the episode as Lurleen Lumpkin. The actress first met Groening at a party at Frank Zappa's house, and was called in to audition for Lurleen based on her performance as Patsy Cline in Coal Miner's Daughter. She got the role after completing a singing test. D'Angelo wrote two songs for the episode: "Your Wife Don't Understand You" and "Bagged Me a Homer". D'Angelo wrote both songs in an hour and presented them to Groening at the episode's table read. Unlike most other guest stars on The Simpsons who record their lines and then leave to accommodate their schedule, D'Angelo stayed with the production team all day and pitched several jokes for the episode. Entertainment Weekly named D'Angelo's performance as Lurleen one of the sixteen best guest appearances on The Simpsons. Tom Nawrocki of Rolling Stone rated the songs D'Angelo wrote as two of the best songs in the history of the show.Animation
The episode marks the debut appearance of Lurleen on The Simpsons. She was created by one of the show's character designers, John Rice. Kirkland thought the first design Rice drew of Lurleen was too "bland" and "plain", so they decided to model her after D'Angelo and add "every kind of pretty girl cliché" into the design. Rice and Kirkland then sent the character to Groening, who sent back a note saying "wow". Reiss's showrunner partner Al Jean said that "one of the most difficult things when translating real people to a Simpsons look is for women to look beautiful", as the Simpson overbite and facial construction make it particularly difficult to design women's looks. Lurleen's last name, Lumpkin, came from the country bumpkin character Tony Lumpkin in the 1773 comedy play She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.Bart's voice actor, Nancy Cartwright, wrote in her autobiography My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy that the episode's script gives the audience a "visual and aural feast". She said the background designers "must have gone on another field trip for this one" because they captured the look of a typical musical recording studio. The recording studio in the episode, where Lurleen records her new songs with the Simpson family, features two rooms, one for the artist and one for the engineer, with a pane of glass between them. Cartwright said the designers added their own "special touch" by putting a few cracks on the walls, designing a slightly dilapidated ceiling, and by making it look as if the soundproofing on the walls are falling off. The property designers went on a field trip to Sun Studio to receive inspiration for the props in the recording studio, such as the "in session" red light, the mixing board, the musical instruments, and the volume-unit meters which indicate how loud the artist is singing. For the interior design of the recording studio, the color designers mixed colors such as orange, mauve, gray, and brown to make them complement each other. The colors in the engineer's booth were darker to make Homer's white suit stand out from the background. The appearance of the engineer at the recording studio was based on John Boylan, an American music producer who produced the highly successful album The Simpsons Sing the Blues. Lurleen's mobile home was designed to be "very confined" and "tiny" so that the compositions of Homer and Lurleen would be tighter, thus giving the scene an intimate, romantic feeling.