Milhouse of Sand and Fog

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3rd episode of the 17th season of The Simpsons

"Milhouse of Sand and Fog"

The Simpsons episode

Episode no.

Season 17
Episode 3

Directed by

Steven Dean Moore

Written by

Patric M. Verrone

Production code

GABF19

Original air date

September 25, 2005 (2005-09-25)

Episode features

Couch gag

The Simpsons sit down on the couch as normal. A TiVo menu pops up, asking the viewer if they would like to save the recording or delete it. “Delete This Recording” is chosen and the screen goes black.

Commentary

Al Jean
Patric M. Verrone
Matt Selman
Tim Long
Kevin Curran
J. Stewart Burns
Michael Price
Steve Dean Moore

Episode chronology

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"The Girl Who Slept Too Little"

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"Treehouse of Horror XVI"

The Simpsons (season 17)

List of episodes

"Milhouse of Sand and Fog" is the third episode of the seventeenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox network in the United States on September 25, 2005.

Plot

During Reverend Lovejoy's sermon, Maggie is scratching. The family takes Maggie to see Dr. Hibbert, who diagnoses Maggie with chicken pox. Inspired by Ned Flanders' suggestion of purposely exposing his sons to chicken pox, Homer invites all the neighborhood kids over to the Simpson house for a "pox party". He ends up catching it himself, by drinking from Maggie's milk bottle, having no childhood immunity. Milhouse's parents Luann and Kirk attend the party, and after getting drunk on Marge's custom Margaritas, they resume their relationship.

Milhouse feels neglected because his parents are not fawning over him as they did while they were separated. He schemes to break them up again, and Bart helps him with a plot borrowed from The O.C.. The boys place a bra, belonging to Marge, on Kirk's bed. Luann finds the bra, assumes Marge is having an affair with Kirk, and informs Homer. When Homer confronts Marge, she angrily denies the allegation and kicks him out of the house.

Prodded by Lisa, Bart confesses to Marge that he left the bra in Kirk's bed, but Marge refuses to reconcile with Homer as he still does not trust her. In order to bring Homer and Marge back together, Lisa inadvertently influences Bart and Milhouse to plan to throw a dummy that looks like Bart off a cliff into the river below, while Homer and Marge, after receiving false messages from each other to meet, watch. However, after breaking his glasses, Milhouse accidentally pushes the real Bart off the cliff. Homer leaps into the rapids to rescue him, but they end up clinging on to a rock near a waterfall. There Bart confesses to Homer what he did, causing Homer to strangle him. Marge tells them to trust her, and let go of the rock. They let go and she catches them, swinging from a rope attached to a tree. Once safely on the river bank, Marge and Homer reconcile. They see Milhouse, thinking Bart died, jump off the cliff, leaving his fate unresolved. Marge wonders if Milhouse can swim, to which Bart asks "What do you think?"^[1]

Production

Writer Patric M. Verrone based the episode on his own experiences at the time since he was raising three children and dealing with chickenpox.^[2]

Cultural references

In August 2022, screenshots from this episode were used in social media to erroneously show that the series had predicted the 2022–2023 mpox outbreak.^[3] Instead, the screenshots from this episode showing Homer with rashes were combined with an image of Homer with a monkey from the ninth season episode "Girly Edition."^[4]

Wikiquote has quotations related to "Milhouse of Sand and Fog".

References

^ "17x03 - Milhouse of Sand and Fog - The Simpsons Transcripts - Forever Dreaming". Retrieved November 9, 2016.
^ Shields, Rachel (December 13, 2009). "20 Years Of The Simpsons". The Independent. Retrieved September 3, 2023.
^ "Fact Check-"The Simpsons" did not predict monkeypox outbreak". Reuters. August 9, 2022. Retrieved September 3, 2023.
^ Kum, Dezimey (August 15, 2022). "Fact check: Viral images of 'The Simpsons' unrelated to 2022 monkeypox outbreak". USA Today. Retrieved September 3, 2023.