Fear of Flying

"Fear of Flying" is the eleventh episode of Season 6.
== Synopsis ==
Homer gets banned from Moe's Tavern after playing a lame prank, and uses an airport bar as his new watering hole, but when Homer is mistaken for a pilot and causes an accident, the head of the airline pays him off with a vacation to anywhere in the United States (except for the freak states, Alaska and Hawaii). However, the trip is short-lived, when Marge has a mental breakdown before the flight. Marge assures the family that she's fine, but when her erratic behavior begins unnerving the family, Marge goes into therapy to find out why she's afraid of flying.
==Full Story ==
At Moe's Tavern, the patrons pull a series of hazardous pranks on Moe (planting a venomous snake in the cash register and setting his alcohol-soaked clothes on fire), which he laughs off. Homer, however, pulls a harmless prank (unscrewing the sugar shaker top and causing it to spill on the bar) and gets banned. Rather than stay home and reconnect with his family, Homer decides to find a new bar at which to drink. The first one (a refined cocktail bar) politely asks him to leave. The next one, the bar from the long-running NBC sitcom, Cheers (complete with most of the actors voicing their characters from that show), seems like a good fit, until Homer sees Norm Peterson (George Wendt's character) break a bottle and threaten to kill Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson's character) for cutting him off for being drunk (which bartenders are legally required to do), with Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger's character) and Dr. Fraiser Crane (normally played by Kelsey Grammer on the actual show, but Grammer didn't voice his character in this scene) holding Norm back and telling him to save his strength for karaoke (Norm then cries on Cliff's and Dr. Crane's shoulders, saying that he loves them while the Cheers theme plays). The third bar, The She-She Lounge, is a lesbian bar, but, Homer rejects it after noticing that it doesn't have a fire exit (and one of the patrons mistakes Homer for a lesbian).
Homer eventually settles for an airline pilots' bar, where he is mistaken for a pilot and despite his vehement protests is put in the cockpit of an airplane, which he promptly wrecks. In exchange for his silence about their mistake, the airline gives the Simpson family free tickets to anywhere in the United States of America, except for the "freak states", Alaska and Hawaii.
The idea of plane travel fills Marge with anxiety because she has a fear of flying. After several failed attempts to avoid the trip, she has a panic attack on the plane and the trip is postponed, whilst Grampa is left behind on the plane. To conquer Marge's phobia, Homer rents fiction films with airplane themes. This backfires when one film shows the survivors of a plane crash surviving by eating the dead crew and passengers.
When Marge shows signs of lingering flight-related trauma, manifesting as compulsions to perform household chores either at night or to an excessive degree, Lisa convinces her to undergo psychotherapy with Dr. Zweig. Homer is highly paranoid of this, believing that Dr. Zweig will identify him as a problem and convince Marge to leave him. She uncovers the roots of Marge's fear: the moment she discovered her father was not a pilot, but a flight attendant. Her shame is eased when Zweig assures her that male flight attendants are now very common, and that her father could be considered a pioneer. Marge also remembers other flying-related accidents that caused her fear, which include getting accidentally hit in the eye with an "airplane" spoon by her grandmother as an infant, riding an airplane scooter that caught fire, and being taken to a cornfield where she and her mother were attacked by a plane.
Thinking she has finally conquered her fear of flying, Marge boards a plane with Homer. The plane skids off the runway and lands in a body of water.
==Behind the Laughter==
===Reception===
In its original American broadcast, "Fear of Flying" finished 48th (tied with Dateline NBC) in the ratings for the week of December 12 to December 18, 1994, with a Nielsen rating of 9.6. The episode was the third highest rated show on the Fox network that week, beaten only by Beverly Hills, 90210, and Married... With Children.
Since airing, the episode has received many positive reviews from fans and television critics. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, said it was "a good Marge-centric episode with plenty of clever set pieces - the tributes to Cheers and Lost in Space are fantastic", and noted that "Marge's father looks suspiciously like Moe".
==Videos==
Marge Simpson -- "Let Me Off"
C L A N C Y.PNG|Clancy boarding the plane as a "pilot".
== Citations ==
fr:La Peur de l'avion
pl:Fear of Flying
pt:Medo de voar
Category:Marge episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Lisa episodes
Category:Homer episodes
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Episodes on DVD
Category:'Of' Episodes
Category:Flashback episodes
Category:Insanity-themed Episodes
Category:Directed by Mark Kirkland
Category:Written by one-time writers
Category:Episodes Set in The Past
Category:Episodes where Maggie cries
Category:Summer episodes
Category:Episodes Where Marge cries
Category:Highly Rated Episodes