the simpsons s16 e10 'there's something about marrying'

Recently I sort of accidentally started watching old episodes of The Simpsons, a show I stopped keeping up with solidly about twenty years ago. Maybe more. The season I randomly landed on was (I now appreciate) season 16, which was screened in I think 2005. I could tell it wasn't super-recent because the style of animation was, while not as primitive as the first episodes obviously, still not as pristine as it appears today, but tbh I could not otherwise really figure out what the year was. I was figuring 21st century. 

Anyway, this episode intrigued me and I had to check it out more because it really, really shows how much times have changed in, well, 18 years, which I have to admit is quite a long time and imagine if times hadn't changed? I'm going to spoil it, by the way. 

Essentially the plot is that gay marriage is legalised in Springfield to assist in tourism (I suppose it's 'tourism', though really the gay people who are coming to Springfield are simply getting married, they're not exactly having any other kind of touristic experience that we see). Reverend Lovejoy refuses to marry gay people (apparently no-one sorted this out with him before the law came in and apparently there is only one church in Springfield) so Homer gets a priest's license off the internet and marries gay people for $200 a pop. Marge's sister Patty asks Homer to marry her to her fiancee, a pro golfer called Veronica. Marge is challenged by the news that one of her sisters is a lesbian and then discovers that Veronica is, actually, a man who (it is revealed) pretended to be a woman to get into some golfing league which we are supposed to understand through its acronym so I don't know whether it's just women's golf or gay women's golf.* Not important. The point is he is not a woman but also only pretended to be a woman to get some privileges or something? 

It's amazing to imagine that this episode was groundbreaking and controversial in its day, but wikipedia assures me it was. I wonder if I would have thought so at the time. The jokes about anyone marrying anything (Homer marries Reverend Lovejoy to the bible without his consent, for instance, but at the very end we see a line of people going into Homer's chapel to marry inanimate objects eg the Sea Captain is going to marry the figurehead off a ship, etc) are extremely Cory Bernardi as far as I'm concerned. There is also a lot of stereotypical male gay shizzle that feels like a real throwback, far older than 2005, but what do I know, I'm not a gay man or woman and I am probably - like so many things in this world - not really qualified to have an opinion except broadly as a consumer of culture, and I guess as an ally. 

Of course I watch The Simpsons with the Finnish subtitles turned on as though I'm ever going to learn anything from this, other than that languages have words for everything and you have to learn them all and it's probably impossible.  

'Could we hurry up?'

'Veronica is a man!' (Finnish has no definite or indefinite articles which makes it somewhat easier at the same time as it makes it harder, lol). 

'Patty, I love you but I pretended to be a woman long before we met.' 

I guess there is a joke in here somewhere that 'Leslie' is a man's name that sounds like the woman's name 'Lesley', and 'Robin' can be a man's or a woman's name, I don't get the last name, 'Swisher', though (yes I know the caption says 'Swisherinä' and names are often presented in this kind of way in Finnish and I don't know why, but the character's real name is actually 'Swisher'. 

'Even if you are a lesbian you are the same'. (Who'd have thought the Finnish word for 'lesbian' would be 'lesbo'?! 

*I looked it up. Ladies' Professional Golf Association or something like that. I assume there's a belief at the heart of this that men are intrinsically better at sport than women? Not sure. 

homicide, 'my brother must rest'

Just when I was thinking I was getting less interested in Homicide, this fabulous episode from October 1966 comes along and I get the bug again. This one has a lot of great guests, a lot of weird twists and quirks, and good locations too. Love it. Colin is trying to get sweet with his secretary (? office manager?) Leslie, to the degree that he goes to her house to listen to her records (when he compliments her on her taste in classical music, she doesn't straight up say well you don't have to pay copyright on those kinds of records, although let's be fair that's what everyone's thinking). (He doesn't compliment on her taste in art). Anyway, this is a fun / creepy element of the whole. Yes, Leslie is played by Elizabeth Harris. 

Helmi was freaked out by Colin's behaviour and I told her as far as I was concerned there was a lot more to this than meets the eye. In fact, the show kicks off with Colin's stepson Timothy being reckless on the balcony of their high-ish apartment building, and Colin apparently kind of hoping that if he did nothing Timothy would fall to his death. Colin!!!

I said to Helmi really I think Homicide is really hitting its stride here, it was already a massive TV hit. We went and looked at what it was up against when it first screened, I mean looking at this stuff I think the other stations are really getting out of its way. There was nothing like it. You can almost imagine IMT not wanting to go up against it on a Thursday night but just hoping that people will be glued enough to their TVs they'll switch over to another golden local program. And 7 and 2 both have cop shows after it, as well. This is the schedule for 11 October 1966, by the way, from the Age TV and Radio Guide for 6 October 1966, p. 10.

Leonard Teale is really getting on top of his role in the show too, making a lot of fun in ways that look improvised, a little geeky/awkward but I bet would have a lot of value to viewers in 1966. Not that either of these pictures really convey the fun of it. 

Elizabeth Harris doesn't get enough screen time. But there are a number of secret magic ingredients in this ep. One is the marvellous Patsy King as Joan Preston, suspected of killing her husband ten years previously in the UK. Timothy is her first husband's son, not hers (biologically) , and Colin is her second husband. I am pretty sure Timothy says nothing at all during his time on screen. 

Here are the police going to visit Joan to tell her that her first husband's body has been found. By the way - spoiler - I am not going to tell you the story in full, you should check it out, it's cool. 

The flats where Joan, Colin and Timothy live. 

So the other magic element of this is... yes... Hilda Scurr! Hilda is Sarah, Joan's first husband's sister, who has come from the UK to see justice done now his body has been found. 

I didn't want to have to tell you this but Timothy fell off the roof. This is one of the weirdest bits, where Colin - who's already informed the police that he's put grease on the ledge after Timothy fell from it, to make Joan feel better about his death (yeah, I know) - now tries ardently to get her to go up on the roof and look at the grease. She really doesn't want to go. 

The police have found out that Colin is actually someone else, I won't bore or excite you with the details. Colin is played by Rhoderick Walker, and he (Colin) is quite the bounder, a really great nasty piece of work. Here are the police driving in St Kilda, and coming to the block of flats again. 

So um Colin tries to push Joan off the roof and instead he gets kind of thrown off himself somehow, and he is not in great shape...

But he's not quite unalived enough that he can't be taken to hospital where the detectives can visit him and clear up all the details of what he did, killed Joan's first husband, then came to Australia and married her, etc. He also tried to get Leslie to love him but that clearly wasn't going to pan out.  

Looks like despite the near-death he still had time to eat some hospital jam but life (his) was too short to wipe his face afterwards. Anyway, presumably he dies. 

Joan is visited by Sarah who says she is sorry for everything. 

I don't want to detract from Patsy King, Hilda Scurr and Elizabeth Harris but Rhoderick Walker deserves a special mention for having such an extraordinary life someone should write a book about him. Or two books?! He was a British actor (1920-2010) who was a Broadway star in the 1940s, then drove - drove - across Eurasia 'to' Australia (I'm not sure how he did the Indian Ocean bit) in the late 1950s to visit his mother and sister in Perth (!!!) then ended up staying in Australia the rest of his life (till 2010) because he fell in love with Max Meldrum the actor. I mean, they were a couple. Although I'm fairly willing to bet that they were not, as IMDB would have it, married. Talk about rewriting history, ffs.