The Seven-Beer Snitch

"The Seven-Beer Snitch" is the fourteenth episode of the sixteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 3, 2005.

Plot
The Simpsons go to Shelbyville to see a musical, which paints Springfielders as hicks and morons. An angry Marge goes to Springfield's Cultural Advisory Board to brainstorm a plan to make Springfield more sophisticated and gets the idea to hire architect Frank Gehry to build a concert hall. Opening night proves to be a bust, and the concert hall falls into shambles from disuse.

Mr. Burns buys the hall and turns it into a state prison. Homer applies for a job as a guard, but is rejected after Otto switches his drug-laded urine sample with Homer's. Mr. Burns forces Chief Wiggum to reinstate old and forgotten laws to fill his prison with convicts and make more money. Homer is convicted after getting caught kicking a can five times down the street (which constitutes "illegally transporting litter").

Bart and Lisa notice that Snowball II has been gaining weight. Lisa follows her and discovers she has been visiting and eating food from another family, who believe she is theirs and named her "Smokey". Snowball prefers her second family to the Simpsons, to Lisa's dismay. Bart goes in to set the record straight, but instead the family fills him up with food and teaches him the same trick they taught Snowball.

Homer is sent to work in the prison kitchen and becomes a prison snitch after unwittingly alerting the guards of Snake's escape attempt. Homer is rewarded with food, special treatment, and a new plasma TV. The other prisoners learn he is a snitch after Marge shouts it out in the visitation room. After using a fake claim of a prison break to lure out all the guards, the prisoners attack Homer. Using the key to the concert hall given to her as head of the Springfield Cultural Activities Board, Marge finds Homer in the kitchen with the other prisoners on his tail. They take refuge in the gas chamber, where Marge scolds Homer about being an informant. The guards come in with tear gas and riot gear. As they are released, Homer tells Governor Mary Bailey about the prison's deplorable conditions and food. Bailey tells the prisoners that since there is no room left in the prisons they were transferred from, they will be put on a garbage barge and bare-knuckle box until someone emerges as their king, a plan the convicts applaud.

Homer is released, which pleases Marge, and heads out to Moe's after she falls asleep. He bumps into Snowball, who is overweight and also approaching the bar. He promises not to tell on her if she does not tell on him.

Homer runs into the concert hall, claiming the building is a death trap, in response to a dream he had after watching The Towering Inferno.

Production

Frank Gehry guest starred in the episode of himself, becoming the first architect to appear on The Simpsons. According to Matt Chaban of  The New York Observer, "Because of his successful style, Frank Gehry sometimes comes under criticism for being a hack whose buildings all look the same—even if in their 50th iteration, those waving bands of metal still look amazing, fresh and different. This sensibility was, like so many other things, immortalized on The Simpsons." The episode makes fun of Gehry's architectural style in a throwaway gag, which sees Gehry becoming inspired for the design of the concert hall after crumpling up Marge's letter and hurling it to the ground. The crumpled letter becomes the model for the building. As a result of the scene, according to Gehry, many people believe this is how he actually received the inspiration for his real-life buildings, particularly the Walt Disney Concert Hall, though this is not the case. He told the public affairs show Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN in September 2011 the gag was just "a fun – fun thing. But it has – it has haunted me. People do – who've seen The Simpsons believe it." He also commented that "Clients come to me and say crumple a piece of paper, we'll give you $100 and then we'll build it."

Reception
In 2007, Simon Crerar of The Times listed Gehry's performance as one of the thirty-three funniest cameos in the history of the show.

Cultural references

Homer's tiny hat is a reference to the character Simon Adebisi from HBO's prison drama Oz.

References

External links

The Simpsons (season 16) episodes
2005 American television episodes
Television episodes set in prisons