(Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)

Original air date: 12/16/1993

Production code: 1F08

Legalized gambling comes to Springfield as a new revenue stream after news hits that the town's economy is on the down slope. When Mr. Burns constructs a casino, Homer gets a job as a blackjack dealer, Marge finds herself addicted to the slots, Bart opens his own treehouse casino to show up a teenaged worker who had him thrown out for being underaged, Mr. Burns' constant surveillance of the casino turns him into late-stage Howard Hughes, and poor Lisa can't find anyone to help her make her Florida costume for the school state pageant.

This episode contains examples of:

• Adam Westing: Gerry Cooney, who lost his last two fights via quick knockout (George Foreman, 1990) or TKO (Michael Spinks, 1987), gets floored by the skinny, perpetually spaced-out Otto with just one punch.
• Addiction Realization: Marge develops a gambling addiction and starts spending more time at Mr. Burns' casino than at home. It's only when Homer tells her that she broke her promise to help Lisa with her school project, after what seems to be days of pulling the slot lever nonstop, does she realize she's become a full-blown addict... something Homer spends the rest of the episode mocking her for.
• Angrish: Homer meant to say, and did say on the third try, "You broke a promise to your child," but he was too angry with Marge to talk coherently. She ended up having to remind him to think about what he was saying.
• Animals Hate Him: Milhouse's attempt to do "magic" with Snowball II and a stray cat results in both cats clawing up his face.
• As Himself: Gerry Cooney and Robert Goulet.
• As You Know: Parodied when Homer brings up his "lifelong dream" of working at a casino.
  Homer: I got a job at Burns' casino. As you know, it's been my lifelong dream to become a blackjack dealer.
  Marge: Your lifelong dream was to be a contestant on The Gong Show, and you did it in 1977, remember?
• Awesome, but Impractical: Back in the 1940s/1950s, Springfield's streets were literally paved with gold. After Jasper points this out, we see a man trying to drive down said streets with his car swerving out of control and crashing because the wheels kept slipping.
• Bait-and-Switch: Smithers, flanked by two security guards, approaches Marge who's still compulsively playing the slots.
  Smithers: Excuse me, ma'am, don't you think you've gambled enough?
  Marge: No.
  Smithers: Okay. We're required by law to ask every 75 hours. (the the guards) Get her another free drink.
• Big Damn Heroes: Barney rescues Maggie from being mauled by a tiger. He thinks that she's Bart, and that the tiger is a pony... but still saves her life nonetheless.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: Marge in Homer's "phonographic memory".
• Blind Without 'Em: Henry Kissinger drops his glasses in a toilet while visiting the nuclear power plant. (Smithers assures him as he leaves that they'll keep an eye out for them, but Kissinger knows what happened; he's just too embarrassed to tell him.) In the next scene, the news reports that he injured himself walking into a flagpole.
• Bowdlerise: On Channel 4, E4 and All 4 showings of this episode, the following scenes are removed.
  • Kent Brockman's report at the start of the episode loses the line where the closure of Fort Springfield was responsible for devastating the city's liquor and prostitution industries.
  • When Homer tries to stop Raymond (One of the protagonists of the film Rain Man) from leaving the table, the scene of Raymond having a meltdown (And Homer mimicking it in frustration) is removed.
  • Krusty's 'Herpes' joke is removed - the scene starts at Krusty calling the audience the worst he's ever seen.
• Call-Back: Barney has five years of training in modern dance and six years of tap, and when he was The Plow King, he donated fifty thousand dollars to the Shelbyville Dance Theatre.
• Calling Out for Not Calling: Marge develops a gambling addiction and Lisa is the first to be worried by her sudden lack of presence and dedication.
  Lisa: Do you get the feeling this family is disintegrating? I mean, we haven't had a meal with Mom all week. And she hasn't even started my costume for the geography pageant.
• Celebrity Impersonator: Bart tried to hire a Liza Minnelli impersonator for his casino. He found himself needing a replacement act because he found out the "impersonator" was the real Liza Minnelli.
• Churchgoing Villain: Burns is seen laughing hysterically in church (among other places) over a fond boyhood memory of deliberately maiming a boardwalk employee with a bumper car.
• Comically Missing the Point: Even after seeing Marge at the slot machines and being told by her he brought her bad luck, Homer still believed she was against legalized gambling.
• Consolation Prize: Despite Marge failing to help her to make her a Florida costume for the school pageant, Skinner chooses to give those students "that obviously had no help from their parents" a consolation award for effort - the only other winner is Ralph, whose costume is a paper sheet with the word "Idaho" written on it tapped to his shirt.
• Couch Gag: The family runs into each other and shatter like glass, with Santa's Little Helper walking in to look at the mess on the floor.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: When Lisa points out Marge's absence leaves nothing for Homer to eat for breakfast, Homer tries to improvise by making a meal out of cloves, Tom Collins Mix, and a frozen pie crust. One bite and Homer's convinced they need to get Marge.
• Creator Cameo: The hobo who asks Abe and Jasper for change is modelled after James L. Brooks.
• Damned by Faint Praise: The episode opens with a newsreel from The '50s talking about how Springfield is blossoming into a major power. Its positive traits include: being in the top 400 fastest-growing cities, being the home of celebrity "Professor Rubbermouth" (a man who can fit several billiard balls in his mouth), and making half of America's galoshes. It concludes by issuing a warning to a competitor... Utica.
• A Degree in Useless: Kent Brockman starts his report on mass unemployment by mentioning that joblessness is no longer just for philosophy majors.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The intro to News on Parade Corporation News features deeply unsafe atom bomb tests, families irrationally afraid of their new televisions, and the Amos n' Andy radio show (complete with a caricature of Freeman Gosden doing the voice) as glamorous and exciting.
• Dude, Not Funny!: The audience's reaction to Krusty's Herpes "comedy routine", which is sometimes cut for syndication.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Rich Texan makes his debut in this episode, and Homer calls him "Senator". This is the only time he is ever addressed as such. Could be Hand Waved by the fact that it's Homer saying it.
• Either/Or Title: The actual title to this episode is: "$pringfield: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling."
• Ensemble Cast: This is the first of two episodes to have several different stories focused on various characters, with a Homer–Marge–Lisa story, a Bart story, and a Burns–Smithers story. The second one would be the more well-known "22 Short Films About Springfield".
• Epic Fail:
  • Milhouse's magic act goes horribly, with one of the cats refusing to go in the box and the other escaping from his hat. Both cats claw him.
  • The Florida costume Homer makes for Lisa is so bad that Principal Skinner says it was obviously made without any help from parents. The only other costume to be declared as such is Ralph's Idaho, which consists of a piece of paper with "Idaho" written on it and taped on his shirt.
  • Homer's appearance on The Gong Show ended with him and Barney getting more gongs than a breakdancing robot that caught on fire.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Homer at this point in the series has eaten things like waffle batter mixed with liquid smoke wrapped around a stick of butter and a rotten 10 foot sub sandwich. A single bite of his "cooking" while Marge is away (cloves, Tom Collins mix, and frozen pie crust mashed up together) leaves him with a Thousand-Yard Stare as he quietly says they need to get Marge back home.
  • Barney scolds Marge for leaving Maggie (who he incorrectly believes is Bart) unattended. He then recognizes Marge's gambling as compulsive behavior, before wolfing down two cups of beer and a cup of someone's quarters by accident.
• Evil Laugh: Burns lets out one that goes on for days over a memory of deliberately crippling a boardwalk employee as a kid.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The judges' panel for Homer and Barney's Gong Show appearance comprises Paul Williams, Jamie Farr, and show regular Jaye P. Morgan, a very appropriate and typical line-up for any 1977 variety show.
• Fright-Induced Bunkmate: Played with through Disproportionate Retribution. Look down on Things That Go "Bump" in the Night.
• The Gambling Addict: Marge becomes addicted to slot machines at the casino, and shows this trait occasionally in subsequent episodes.
• Gambling Ruins Lives: Marge's gambling addiction causes a rift in her family. Unlike most examples of this trope (in which the gambler's addiction ends up forcing themselves and their family into poverty and often causes them to lose everything), Marge wins more money than she loses; the problem comes from her spending days at a time at the casino and not being there for her family, with Homer ill-equipped to look after the family alone.
• Game Show Appearance: Homer claims that being a blackjack dealer is his lifelong dream, and Marge points out he previously claimed his lifelong dream was to appear on The Gong Show, which he did in 1977. His act involved him and Barney playing a giant harmonica while wearing one leg each of an oversized pair of pants.
  Homer: (waxing nostalgic) We got more gongs than the break-dancing robot that caught on fire.
• Get Out!: Mr. Burns rejecting propositions for his casino's theme. The first one, the British man, at least got to give his presentation before Mr. Burns sends him off. The second one, the hippie proposing a Woodstock-like event didn't even get to start his presentation before Burns tells him off.
• Giftedly Bad: Homer is praised by the players at his blackjack table, though only because he's so bad at it that he causes them all to win every time. The second his shift is over and he is replaced by someone else, they all vamoose.
• Gilligan Cut: After gambling is approved by unanimous vote, Homer says that this is something that will bring better things for the children. Cut to a panning shot of the park with the Jebediah Springfield statue, which has become a full-blown Sodom and Gomorrah-style Wretched Hive in mere seconds, complete with sleazy sax.
• Glasses Curiosity: Homer finds a pair of glasses in the toilet and decides to keep them (unknowingly swiping Henry Kissinger's) after he likes how intelligent he looks with them. Even if, from his new perspective, wearing them makes Bart and Lisa look like something from a Salvador Dalí painting.
• Hidden Depths: Barney has five years of training in modern dance, six years of tap. He also instantly recognizes Marge's neglect of Maggie in favor of the slot machines as "classic compulsive behavior."
• Hilarious in Flashback: When Abe was a young man, Springfield was named one of America's 400 fastest-growing towns and had such a booming economy that the streets were paved with gold—a far cry from the town on life support from the power plant it's become by the show's present.
• Hope Spot: For Smithers. It looks like the resolve to get back to the power plant has snapped Burns out of his Howard Hughes-esque funk.
  Burns: Now, to the plant! [picking up his model] We'll take the Spruce Moose! Hop in!
  Smithers: But, sir—
  Burns: [pulling out a gun] I said hop in.
• Howard Hughes Homage: Mr. Burns temporarily turns into a germophobic recluse with many of the traits of Hughes in his later years. He also becomes obsessed with a model airplane which he names "The Spruce Moose", a clear reference to Hughes' "The Spruce Goose" plane.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The Squeaky-Voiced Teen throwing Bart out of the casino for being underage. Bart calls him out on this, prompting the Teen to respond, "I'm not authorized to answer that."
  • Barney feels that Marge's gambling is a sign of very addictive behavior. Immediately afterwards, he mistakes cups with quarters in them for booze and guzzles them down, then belches them up as people gather to collect.
  • At the beginning of the episode, Grampa and Jasper walk past a beggar:
    Beggar: Got any spare change, man?
    Grampa: Yes! And you ain't gettin' it! Everybody wants somethin' for nothin'.
    (the two walk into a Social Security office)
    Grampa: I'm old! Gimme gimme gimme!
• Irony:
  • Mr. Burns is a proud member of the Simpsons universe's counterpart of the Freemasons, but he's evidently scared of the real thing (when he imagines the microbes on Smithers' face announcing "Freemasons run the country!").
  • Mr. Burns was about to fire a crap ton of employees, but since Homer was wearing Nerd Glasses, Burns decides to keep him on, mistaking him for an egghead.
  • Marge—in stark contrast to her usual attitude regarding moral gray areas—is in favor of the town legalizing gambling. She in turn develops a gambling addiction.
• Kids Are Cruel:
  • Burns has a flashback of him ramming a poor worker repeatedly with a bumper car when he was a child, breaking the man's legs and only stopping long enough to hear the man's pleas for him to stop before continuing.
  • The kids in Bart's casino clap while Milhouse gets clawed at by the cats from his magic act.
• Laugh Track: After Homer comments that a heartwarming moment between Marge and Lisa is "just like on TV", he trips over an Ottoman à la the opening to The Dick Van Dyke Show, followed by the sound of studio audience laughter.
• Lethal Chef: Homer's attempt at cooking while Marge is gambling consists of mashed up cloves, pie crust, and a bottle of Tom Collins mix. After one bite, Homer eerily states they should go get Marge.
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: When Bart is kicked out of Mr. Burns' casino and notes the martinis suck, the Squeaky-Voiced Teen challenges him to have his own casino in his treehouse. Bart does just that, leading the teen to note how he was shown up.
• Living Out a Childhood Dream: Homer announces it's always been his lifelong dream to be a blackjack dealer. Marge reminds him that his real lifelong dream was to be a contestant on The Gong Show, which he did in 1977. In previous episodes, Homer's purported/real "lifelong dream" was:
  • "Colonel Homer": Managing a beautiful country singer/eating the world's biggest hoagie;
  • "Marge vs. the Monorail": Being a monorail conductor/running out on the field during a baseball game.
• Logo Joke: The Gracie Films jingle is redone in a big band style for the first half, and we hear slot machines replicating the second half.
• Malaproper: Homer tries claiming he has a photographic memory. He can't even pronounce the word properly, calling it "phonographic."
• Manly Tears: Homer sheds them when Lisa is crying over her costume, and decides to get Marge to come home.
• Men Can't Keep House: With Marge out of the house, Homer's attempts to keep the family afloat by himself are fruitless at best.
• Moral Guardians: Averted. The decision to legalize gambling in Springfield is unanimous, with even Reverend Lovejoy approving of it on the basis that "once something has been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral." Everyone expects Marge to stand against the proposal, but she agrees it could help improve Springfield's economy.
• Never My Fault: Homer makes a big mess trying to protect the house from the boogeyman. When Marge returns home, Homer blames her for not being there and keep him from acting stupid.
• Noodle Incident: Homer's past goof-ups include getting caught stealing watches from Sears and letting an escaped lunatic in the house for being dressed as Santa Claus, which apparently aren't as bad as Marge's gambling problem.
• Not Hyperbole: Back in the late 1940s, Springfield's streets were literally made of gold. Jasper points this out to Abe Simpson when he says it sarcastically.
• One-Hit KO: Otto manages to floor Gerry Cooney with a single punch.
• Only a Model:
  • When Mr. Burns is planning the layout and theme of his casino, a few men visit his office with models of their proposed designs. A British man proposes a British-themed casino with a building that resembles the Palace of Westminster. A hippie then arrives with a model of what looks like the Woodstock concert venue. Mr. Burns rejects both ideas.
  • Played with when Mr. Burns designs an airplane. It's clearly a scale model but Mr. Burns actually thinks it's real.
• Overly Long Gag: Mr. Burns laughing at the memory of injuring an Irish bumper car worker as a child.
• Papa Wolf: Not a standard example, but Lisa crying because her costume isn't very good causes Homer to get pissed and give Marge a What the Hell, Hero? speech about letting down Lisa because she was too busy gambling.
• Parallel Porn Titles: Grampa and Jasper walk by a porn theater showing Sperms of Endearment and I'll Do Anyone.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The episode title substitutes a $ for the S in "Springfield".
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title above references Dr. Strangelove.
• Production Throwback: The porn theater is showing takeoffs of I'll Do Anything and Terms of Endearment, both directed by executive producer James L. Brooks.
• Reckless Gun Usage: After hearing Lisa's nightmare about the Boogeyman, Homer arms himself with a shotgun. When Marge comes home, we see that he has already fired a shot through the door; when she enters the house, he points the gun right at her face, and upon being relieved to see her, he casually tosses the gun on the floor, causing it to discharge as he runs over to embrace her.
• Role Swap Plot: Subverting the more familiar formula, Marge is the one with a Compressed Vice and it's Homer who has to go Wet Blanket Wife when the kids suffer for it. When he manages to talk Marge down, he's pretty thrilled to have been the one in the right for once in his life.
• Sanity Slippage: Burns' sanity gradually erodes à la Howard Hughes the more he works in the casino. He grows a long shaggy beard and ridiculously long fingernails, becomes obsessed with germs, starts wearing tissue boxes on his feet, preserves his own urine in jars, and insists that a model of an airplane he built is a real, functioning airplane, to where he tries to get Smithers to board at gunpoint.
• Self-Serving Memory: Homer claims to have a photographic memory regarding the town meeting about whether they should legalize gambling when Marge argues that she never said that she was against it, which she wasn't. His actual memory is, in a word, warped, and has to be seen to be believed◊.
• Shaped Like Itself: "The News on Parade Corporation presents News on Parade! ...Corporation... News."
• Shout-Out:
  • Burns' bedroom in the hotel is modeled after that of the astronaut during the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • The protagonists of Rain Man visit the casino.
  • Homer recites Scarecrow's "brainy" quote from The Wizard of Oz, which someone else irritably corrects.^note The quote was "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side." By "isosceles triangle" it should be "right triangle", as was pointed out in this episode; however, a right triangle can be either isosceles or scalene.
  • Just after pointing out that Marge's promise to stop gambling and help Lisa with her costume is "just like on TV", Homer trips over an Ottoman à la Dick Van Dyke in the opening titles of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Burns doesn't fire Homer (wearing Henry Kissinger's glasses) for this reason.
  Burns: Hmm...better keep the egghead. He just might come in handy.
• Soapbox Sadie: Marge is such a well-known Moral Guardian example of this by now In-Universe that after the proposal to make gambling legal is near-unanimously voted "yes", everybody in Town Hall turns towards Marge, expecting her to have something against it. This even extends to Homer's otherwise Crazy Memory, where he falsely recalls an entire rant from Marge against legalized gambling and tries to mock her for it later.
• Springtime for Hitler: During Homer's rampage through the casino at the end, he angrily spins a giant wheel... only for it to land on double stars, causing everyone playing that game to win.
• Start My Own: When Bart gets thrown out of the casino for being underage, he creates his own casino in his treehouse.
• Sure, Let's Go with That:
  Mr. Burns: Nothing can stop me! (beat) Except microscopic germs. But we won't let that happen, won't we Smithers?
  Smithers: Um... no sir.
• Take That!:
  • The start of Springfield's decline is attributed to the army base closing, destroying the local liquor and sex work industries.
  • On Kent Brockman's report on Springfield's unemployment crisis, he remarks "Joblessness isn't just for philosophy majors; useful people are starting to feel the pinch."
  • The waitress for the proposed "Britannia" casino are straight from England, and are total slags.
• Tempting Fate:
  • The Squeaky-Voiced Teen gives Bart the idea of starting his own casino when asking what Bart would do about being expelled from Mr. Burns' casino.
  • Gunter and Ernst (an Expy of Seigfried and Roy) claim their white tiger Anastasia enjoys show business far more than life in the wild... whereupon the tiger remembers her capture from the wild and promptly and angrily mauls her handlers.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Mr. Burns is less than thrilled over the idea pitches for the casino. The first, Britannia, was supposed to be English-themed, with genuine Cockney waitresses (actually prostitutes fresh from the streets of Sussex). The second was a hippie who thought he was being brought in to pitch Woodstock. The third interview, the Sea Captain, tried to talk Burns into financing a spice expedition to the East Indies.
  Mr. Burns: We're building a casino!
  Sea Captain: Arr... can you give me five minutes?
• The Theme Park Version: One of the proposed themes for Mr. Burns' casino was a theme park version of Britain. The building resembled the Palace of Westminster with a Big Ben clock tower and the waitresses were planned to be real Brits who wore dresses with a large Union Jack graphic on them. Truth in Television as there are several real life casino resorts in Las Vegas that are themed after theme park versions of various places like New York City, Paris, Egypt, Venice, etc.
  British man: Gentlemen, I give you Britannia! Gambling with all the glitz and glamor of the British Isles! And best of all, the waitresses and showgirls are all real Brits, fresh from the streets of Sussex they are!
  Waitress: Freshen your drink, gov'nor?
  Mr. Burns: Get Out!
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Invoked. Lisa's mention of the boogeyman in her nightmare causes Homer to freak out and lock the rest of the family in his and Marge's bedroom along with a shotgun, thinking there might be a boogeyman or boogymen in the house. When Marge finally comes home, the bedroom door's got a few gunshot holes in it. Homer says it's Marge's fault for not being here to stop him.
• Touché: The Squeaky-Voiced Teen is forced to admit Bart stepped up when he said he'd open his own casino.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In a Deleted Scene,^note Can be seen in some overseas versions of the episode, as well as the series' "138th Episode Spectacular." Homer is dealing cards to James Bont, who is playing poker with a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Blofeld. Being who he is, he not only deals him the Joker card but also the rules for draw and stud poker, which leads to Bont losing and being dragged off by the Blofeld expy's henchmen.^note Even better, his henchmen are based on Oddjob and Jaws, who as iconic as they both are, never worked for him personally, though this could have been done for Rule of Funny.
  Bont: Well, at least tell me the details of your plot for world domination.
  Unidentified Blofeld Expy: Ho ho ho, I'm not going to fall for that one again.
• Tranquilization Taunt: Anastasia has a Flashback to when she was captured by Gunter and Ernst. She is sleeping in the jungle when Gunter yells from his safari truck, "Hey, tiger, wake up!" She wakes up and looks at him, only to be put back to sleep with a Tranquillizer Dart.
• Wet Blanket Wife: Marge's typical role is sent up and Subverted throughout the episode. Everyone expects her to be the lone dissenter when the suggestion of building a casino comes up, but she actually thinks it'd be great for the economy, which doesn't stop Homer from remembering it differently and repeatedly getting on her case about her supposed resistance. When she later develops a gambling addiction, it's up to Homer to be the Wet Blanket. Once he successfully convinces her that she has a problem, he's more happy than not to get to be Rightly Self-Righteous at last.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After Homer's disastrous attempt at making Lisa's Florida costume causes her to break down in tears, Homer rushes over to the casino to call Marge out... although it takes him a few tries:
  Homer: (flails arms) Yer gotta redda kid forrad yarrar!
  Marge: Homer, what is it? Slow down!
  Homer: (slowly; while also slowly flailing arms) J'yer gedda ferda redderarrar.
  Marge: Think before you say each word.
  Homer: (points in Marge's face) You broke a promise to your child.
  Marge: What?!
  Homer: (upset) You promised Lisa to help her with her costume. You made her cry. Then I cried. (begins tearing up) Then Maggie laughed. She's such a little trooper.
• Women Are Wiser: One of the show's earliest subversions after season one. Homer, if somewhat haphazardly, manages to bring Marge out of her gambling addiction after telling her about missing out on Lisa's pageant costume. He then revels in finally having one over her. However, in most other aspects this trope is played straight, as the biggest problem caused by Marge's gambling addiction is shown to be Homer's being too stupid to look after the family by himself, rather than the drain you'd think it'd place on their finances. Then again, Marge is shown to be winning, so her gambling hasn't yet caused the family any financial issues.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: After Homer quotes the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz's attempt to recite Pythagorean theory, a man in a stall "corrects" him by saying that it's for "right triangles, you idiot!" Not only is that incorrect—it states the sum of the squares (not square roots) of the two sides of the triangle that form the right angle is equal to the square of the remaining side—it doesn't apply to any triangle at all.