Production
"Homer Loves Flanders" was the last episode to be pitched by Conan O'Brien before he left The Simpsons. David Richardson was assigned to write it, and Wesley Archer to direct it. Richardson wrote the episode at a Motel 6 in Hemet, California while he was dating an actress who was shooting a film there. In this season, the staff wanted to take a deeper look at the relationships of the characters. One of the things they wanted to explore in particular was what Homer and Flanders have in common and how they could turn into friends. Former show runner David Mirkin enjoyed making Homer and Flanders get along because they do not normally act that way.
The episode begins with the Simpson family watching a news broadcast in which the news anchor Kent Brockman calls the United States Army a "kill-bot factory". Mirkin said this was a joke the staff "particularly loved to do" because it pointed out how negative and mean-spirited news broadcasts can be, and how they are seemingly "always trying to scare everybody" by creating panic and depression. In one scene in the episode, Marge begins hallucinating after drinking from Springfield's water supply, which has been spiked with LSD by Springfield's rival town, Shelbyville. The Fox network's censors wanted the scene to be cut from the episode because they did not like the idea of Marge "getting high" on LSD. Mirkin, however, defended the scene and argued Marge was not "doing it on purpose", so the censors ultimately allowed the scene to remain in the episode. In another scene, Homer becomes frustrated at God for not getting the tickets to the game, so yells at a waffle stuck to the ceiling that he believes is God. Marge points out to him, however, that it is just a waffle that Bart threw up there. This scene, inspired by some melted caramel stuck to the ceiling of the Simpsons writers' room, is one of Mirkin's and Richardson's "all time favorite" jokes.
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