How real murder influenced this change on “Simpsons”

“Team Homer” of season 7 of Simpsons is one of the best episodes in the series, one of the few in which Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer) does something altruistic, before returning to Curmudgeon, selfish, we know. This is the first appearance of friends, Homer (And Castelaneta) Bowling team, one of the many references in the series that has reached the relevance of pop culture, and one that is revisited from time to time throughout the series, more recently in “The Man Who Who Who Who Who” of this season. It is a rather harmless episode, plus a comment on the repression of creativity through its secondary uniform intrigue, but nothing so devious than justifying the need for a change. But real murder caused a change in a small disposable gag, and it was the right thing to do.

Homer and the pine pals compete for the trophy of the Bowling Championship in “Team Homer”

It’s a slow night at Moe, so Homer and Moe (Hank Azaria) Go to the bowling alley, which gathered, on the other hand, of activity. It is the league evening, and each path is occupied (in a recurring character, the teenager of the creaky voice, working at Bowl-O-Rama, cannot even rent a path to his own mother, revealed to be Dunchlady Doris). Homer therefore offers the idea of ​​training his own bowlingal team, the friends, adding Moe, Apu (Azaria) and Otto (Shearer), who is chosen at random as the fourth member required. What he cannot find is the $ 500 request fees. Attempts to obtain money are below, including Homer’s attempt to invoice Marge (Julie Kavner) For sex, therefore Marge suggests that he approaches Mr. Burns to sponsor the team. Reluctant but out of options, Homer goes to the office of Burns, and for once, Fortune smiles on the often united Homer while Burns is on an ether and thinks that Homer is Fresh, aka the Pillsbury Doughboy, and gives him $ 500 freely, After a stomach or two.

Now, in the bowling league, the friends are in tears, crushing – or should I say “striking” – the competition, well on the way to the championship trophy. Bad news: Burns wakes up from his state induced by ether and realizes that he has given money. Good news: Burns does not reimburse him Homer and joins the team instead. Bad news, Part II: Otto’s Out, Burns is in it, but its fragility and its inability to launch the ball have a harmful effect on their championship activities. Moe and Apu insist that Homer tells Burns that he is out of the team, but change his mind after Burns reveals their bowling shirts of pen styles he had made for them.

Despite the handicap of having burns in the team, the friends reached the championship, where they faced five times champions Ned Flanders (Shearer) and his team, the Saintes Rollers. Everything comes down to a player, Burns, who miraculously wins the game for friends, Thanks to a chronic hubbub between Otto and an arcade label machine. But Burns takes the trophy for himself, because, as Homer says, “I suppose that some people never change. Or they change quickly and then change quickly.”

A cup gag refer to a winner of the Oscars in “Team Homer”

If you do not see anything that would have required a change for any reason, not to mention a murder, you are not mistaken. The scene in question is a quick cup that occurs shortly after Burns joins the friends, with Homer sitting on the edge of the bed, lamenting at the margin:

“Oh, margin, we were so close to winning the championship. Now, thanks to Burns, it will never happen. And I spent so much time building this trophy case.”

The camera cuts, as it makes dozens of times throughout the series for a gag, in the case of the Homer DIY trophy, built with the same fine crafts that he gave to his spice rack made by hand (of “Itchy and Scratchy and Marge” of season 2 of season 4 “Lisa’s First Word”. The zooming camera, we see that Homer’s name has been written on a best support actor, and the name of the original recipient is scratching. Dr. Haing S. Ngorwhich won the prize for 1984 The fields of killing.

Before his awarded role, Ngor, of Cambodian origin, was a surgeon and a gynecologist who was forced to a labor camp by the communist movement Khmer Rouge, where he had to hide his vocation to avoid being put to death. When the Vietnamese armies invaded the Red Khmers in 1979, Ngor and his niece fled to Thailand, where Ngor worked as a doctor in a refugee camp, and continued to work with refugees as an advisor after a move to Los Angeles the following year.

There he drew the attention of a casting director looking for actors to appear in The fields of killingA film on the Cambodian genocide directed by the Red Khmer, and specifically for the role of Dith Pran, a journalist who must escape from a prison camp. Although he never acts professionally, Ngor would win the Academy Prize for best actor in a support role, Only the second person to win an acting Oscar without previous experience (the first was Harold Russell For The best years of our lives). Ngor was also the first Asian person to be won in the category.

The murder of Haing S. Ngor causes a change for “Team Homer”

Ngor continued to appear in a handful of other projects after his Oscar victory, especially in Stone‘s Heaven and earth. But on February 25, 1996, Ngor was assassinated in front of his house in Los Angeles At the age of 55. Officially, death was considered the result of a flight that went wrong, with a trio of adolescents associated with the lazy oriental gang boyz found guilty of the crime. However, this decision has been examined over the years, especially since adolescents have not stolen its Mercedes or $ 3,700 on his person, despite the point reported to steal it. Many in the Cambodian American community believe that the dictator Pole can is the one behind the murder, Ngor’s recovery continuing to denounce the Khmer Rouge regime, a theory supported by the comments made by Kang Kek Leu (alias comrade duch) in a court not directed in 2009.

The tragedy of the death of Ngor, gracked with a flight has been in pain or by politically motivated assassination, put the producers of Simpsons in a strange situation. If the murder had had long after “Team Homer” was broadcast, it was perhaps not a problem, but there was a little more than a month between the antenna date and the murder, joking about bad taste. In addition, this short period led the producers to fear that this implies that Homer murdered Ngor to steal the statue. Seeking to avoid this connection, the name has been changed to Always drawwho won the best OSCAR support actor in 1985 for CocoonOne of the academies The most notorious of the estimated prize winners.

It may seem a lot of nothing, but it was the right thing to do. Keeping the Haing S. Ngor benchmark would have been a dark element to what is otherwise a light entry into the barrel. “Team Homer” include some very funny references to previous episodes (The Home Wreckers Bowling Team Had Jacques, Who Seduced Marge in “Life on the Fast Lane,” And Three Women Who Wooed Homer: Princess Kashmir, Lurleen Lumpkin, and Mindy Simmons) Stereotyped Characters through Bowling Team The Stereotypes (Cletus Spuckler, Captain McCallister, Groupskeeper Willie, and Luigi Risotto). Add another funny reference, this to Mad Magazine, and a poorly invented reference to an murdered actor exceeds like a sore thumb. Don Ameche’s reference is actually more funny, given the controversy around Ameche that won it, so it finally worked. In addition, the following year Homer would have a Grammy to make this trophy case, thanks to the Beaux-Sharpes of “Homer’s Barbershop” classic “. If he had not exchanged it for champagne from service to room, that is to say.

Simpsons

Release date

December 17, 1989

Network

FOX

Directors

David Silverman, Jim Reardon, Mark Kirkland

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