Production
As the title suggests, "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" is the 138th episode of The Simpsons, although it is the 155th episode when placed in production order. It is the third Simpsons clip show, after "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show" and "Another Simpsons Clip Show". It was written by Jon Vitti, who used the pseudonym "Penny Wise" in the closing credits because he did not want to be credited for writing a clip show. The episode was directed by David Silverman, who also did not want to be credited, and used the pseudonym "Pound Foolish" in the closing credits.
During the early years of the show, Fox network officials forced the Simpsons staff to produce clip shows in order to save money. Originally, the producers were ordered to produce one clip show per season in order to meet episode limits imposed by the network. Fox network officials reasoned that clip shows could be produced at half the cost of a normal episode, but syndication rights could be sold at full price. The staff, however, felt such a large number of clip shows would alienate fans of the series.
Former show runner Bill Oakley thought the episode was one of the better clip shows of The Simpsons, because it had more original and interesting material than the others. Oakley enjoyed showing deleted scenes from previous episodes and the Simpsons shorts, and particularly enjoyed the montage of couch gags at the beginning of the episode. The staff tried to entertain themselves while producing the clip show, and Oakley said by having the only actor be Phil Hartman as Troy McClure, it was "guaranteed to be fun".
One of the clips shown in the episode comes from the season four episode "Marge Gets a Job", in which Smithers has a dream that he is sleeping and Mr. Burns flies through a window into his room. The sequence shows Burns flying towards a happy-looking Smithers. The original clip went on for a few seconds longer, but had to be trimmed down in order to remove portions that showed "Mr. Burns land in a particular position on Smithers anatomy". There were also issues with "the lump in his bed", which the animators said they had drawn as his knee, but the censors had mistakenly believed was an erection.
A deleted scene from the season five episode "Burns' Heir" is also shown, in which a robotic Richard Simmons dances outside Burns's mansion to the 1976 song "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty". It was cut from "Burns' Heir" because the writers did not think it was funny, nor did it do well with a test audience, although Oakley thought the animation was terrific. To the production staff's surprise, the scene would make the audience "erupt with laughter" when screened at animation conventions and college presentations, so they decided to insert it in this episode.
Due to the amount of interest in the ending of the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episode, David Mirkin wrote several "terrible endings" and recorded several alternate endings with Harry Shearer serving as the only voice actor. Mirkin's original intention was to fool the production staff and also leak the endings to various media outlets; much to his surprise, Mirkin failed to successfully fool the staff. Several endings were animated that showed various characters, such as Barney, Moe, and Apu, shooting Mr. Burns, and were presented as part of this episode.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
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