Secrets of A Successful Marriage - Analysis

Analysis

It was revealed in a flashback in the episode that Smithers was briefly married to a woman, but the two split up when he devoted too much time to his boss Mr. Burns. Smithers's relationship with Mr. Burns has long been a running joke on The Simpsons. His sexual orientation has often come into question, with some fans claiming he is a "Burns-sexual" and only attracted to his boss, while others maintain that he is, without a doubt, gay. Matthew Henry wrote in the book Leaving Springfield that this episode is "perhaps the best" example of an attempt to portray an actual gay lifestyle on the show. Henry added that the flashback is a "wonderfully rendered parody of scenes from two of Tennessee Williams's most famous plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. To fully appreciate it, one must know something of not only the two plays cited but also of Williams himself, of his own struggles with both heterosexual and homosexual desires and the way in which these struggles were incorporated into his art. The creators of The Simpsons offer what I think is a perfect parallel for the relationship between Smithers and Mr. Burns by combining Williams's two most notable male characters and their defining characteristics: the suppressed homosexual desire of Brick and desperate dependence of Stanley."

In their book Education in Popular Culture, Alma Harris, Roy Fisher, Ann Harris, and Christine Jarvis analyzes the adult education aspects of this episode that portrays adult learners as "stupid and lazy". After Homer is appointed as a teacher, he feels immensely proud and boasts to all his acquaintances about it, initially making it seem like if the show is indicating that adult education tutors have a relatively high status in society. "However," the authors added, "Homer's pride is undercut for the audience by the awareness of how he came to be appointed and by the subsequent representation of the adult education center. It seems that anyone can become a tutor. Homer's fellow tutors are drunks, incompetents and down-and-outs, adult education is therefore presented as an amateur business staffed by the dregs of society." The writers of the book thought the whole idea of storytelling and building on experience that Homer uses, and that many adult education tutors uses in real life, is represented in the episode "simply as an excuse for gossip and prurient curiosity". They also thought that statements like "I can't believe I paid ten thousand dollars for this course. What the heck was the lab fee for?" imply that adult education is "exploitative and poor value for money, and that the students themselves contribute to this by demanding an essentially recreational service." The authors concluded that the episode "certainly sustains a popular view of adult education as pointless and recreational. Similarly, no value whatsoever is attributed to the extensively researched, proven through practice and well-argued perspective that adult learners do best when the curriculum builds on and values their experience."