All's Fair in Oven War

"All's Fair in Oven War"
The Simpsons episode
File:Alls Fair in Oven War.jpg
Episode no.	Season 16
Directed by	Mark Kirkland
Written by	Matt Selman
Original air dates	November 14, 2004
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	None
Couch gag	The family along with the couch are launched by a catapult

All's Fair in Oven War is the second episode of The Simpsons' sixteenth season. It aired on November 14, 2004.

Plot

Marge and Homer attend an open house when the house next door is put up for sale. Marge is seduced by the large extensive kitchen. She realises her own kitchen is very damaged and wishes she has a better kitchen. So she asks Homer to hire a contractor to rebuild the kitchen. Homer decides to renovate the kitchen himself instead, insisting that contractors are the biggest crooks around ("They charge for materials AND labour. Pick one jerks!").

While demolishing the kitchen, Homer unearths his old collection of Playdude magazines. He innocently tells Marge he kept them only for the articles, and she responds by cutting out all the nudes from the magazines. Now that they are useless, Homer throws them away; but they are discovered by Bart and Milhouse. They read the articles and are greatly inspired. Using these 70s-era magazines as a model, Bart decides to renovate the Treehouse.

After Homer's remodeling makes the kitchen useless, Marge hires a contractor to complete the job. Homer is angry with this and throws paint cans at him. The contractor is not surprised ("Many husbands feel emasculated when their wife must turn to a professional to satisfy her remodeling needs"). Despite the contractor's insistence it will take 3 months, it actually takes two years (and $100,000, as Homer moans) to finish the kitchen (although obviously, no one ages between that time). The dishes that come out of Marge's new kitchen get rave reviews and, on Ned's suggestion and Apu's encouragement to follow her dream (like he followed his dream of coming to America and starting a family and the new dream he is pursuing, of ditching his family and sneaking back to India in disguise), she decides to enter the Auntie Ovenfresh Bakeoff with her Dessert Dogs. She is successful and goes through to the second round. In the Wiggum house, Ralph Wiggum is upset because his "Grilled crayon sandwich" did not get through. Chief Wiggum insists it is delicious, even though Ralph clearly knows he only pretended to eat it. When he does eat it, he starts to look sick, and Ralph asks if he can taste the thumbtacks, to which his father responds with an, "Ah, crap."

At the bakeoff, Marge encounters ruthless competition, as the chefs mock her and attempt to sabotage her cooking (Luigi Risotto, who is next to her spreads fish scales on it to make it taste awful, a man named Stuart deliberately spills burning bananas on it, blackening it and Agnes Skinner dunks her wig into Marge's mixing bowl). Her Dessert Dogs almost ruined by the end of the time limit, she barely manages to make them presentable and get them to the room where the entries have to be stored. Still fuming about the behavior of the other chefs, she resorts to cheating, by spiking the other entries with Maggie's ear medicine, much to Lisa's dismay. Homer is glad he might meet all the food personalities and has a daydream in which he accidentally kills Twinkie the Kid and gets chased by a number of other food personalities.

Meanwhile, Chief Wiggum and other concerned parents talk with Homer about Bart's spreading the Playdude philosophy to the other children. Homer has a talk with Bart about the true facts of life, which a horrified Bart quickly shares with the other children, who are just as horrified.

Marge's cheating gets her to the finals, and Lisa confronts her. Marge retorts saying that the other chefs deserved it for the way they treated her; Lisa urges her to do the right thing. In the bakeoff finals, Marge admits to her foul play and Lisa's faith in her mother is restored. Brandine's "Alco-Hog" dish wins by default.

When they are shopping at the Kwik E mart a few months later, they discover the new flour cover with Brandine Spuckler on it. When Marge expresses disappointment because it was almost her, they run into Cletus Spuckler, who is upset that Brandine has left him for James Caan; but he swears he's "gonna fix his wagon.". As James and Brandine drive towards a tollbooth, Cletus' hillbilly friends ambush Caan's Ford Mustang and gun him down in a scene reminiscent of Sonny Corleone's death in The Godfather.

Cultural references

• The title is a play on the saying "All's fair in love and war", a proverb found in John Lyly's 16th century book Euphues that is commonly used to justify cheating.
• Playdude is a parody of Playboy magazine.
• The Simpsons watch the movie "Blacula Meets Black Dracula", a reference to 1970's Blaxploitation Films.
• The music Bart's friends play in his treehouse is "Take Five" by Paul Desmond.
• The music Homer asks himself to turn down is the classic 80's power ballad "Separate Ways" by Journey.
• The song Bart and Milhouse listen to on the record player is Boplicity by Miles Davis.
• Among the food-related characters Homer imagines are Pringles and Snap, Crackle and Pop mascots. The one he kills is named "Twinkie the Kid"