Plot
Homer takes his family to a company picnic given by his boss, Mr. Burns, and hopes they will not embarrass him. After Bart, Lisa and Marge all misbehave, Homer sees that Burns is drawn to a "normal" family that treats one another with respect, and he wonders why he is cursed with his troubled family.
Determined to improve his family's behavior, Homer takes them on a tour of the neighbourhood, peeking through living room windows to observe how happy families spend time together. Depressed by the outing, Homer stops by Moe's Tavern, where he sees a commercial for Dr. Marvin Monroe's Family Therapy Center. Dr. Monroe guarantees "family bliss or double your money back."
Homer makes an appointment at the clinic and pays for it by pawning their television. Dr. Monroe encourages the family to express their unhappiness and release their hostility toward one another through several exercises. When these methods prove ineffective the doctor takes them all to a generator, allowing them to deliver electric shocks to each other. The family shocks one another to the point of causing a power drain on the city and driving the doctor's other patients away. Unable to help them, Dr. Monroe gives the Simpsons double their money back. With a fresh sense of family unity, they use the money to buy a new television set.
Read more about this topic: There's No Disgrace Like Home
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)