The Ten-Per-Cent Solution

"The Ten-Per-Cent Solution" is the eighth episode of Season 23.
==Synopsis==
Krusty is down on his luck when his show gets cancelled and he also loses his talent agent. To help him out, the Simpsons find a veteran agent, who happened to be his first one, Annie Dubinsky. Despite their troubled past, Krusty gives Annie another chance. The move to bring the retro style helps revive his show. However, it has downside, Krusty must choose of getting help afterwards, from his agent or the network.
==Full Story==
Krusty becomes depressed after getting fired from his television show for being unpopular with children. The Simpson family encourages him to make a comeback, suggesting that he seek help from an agent they met earlier at a television museum. This agent turns out to be Annie Dubinsky, who was Krusty's first agent. Krusty left her when he became successful but now he begs her to take him as a client again. She accepts the offer and together they are able to get him back on television, hosting a show for adults that features his clown tricks. However, Annie soon begins to interfere too much, which frustrates the network executives.
==Production==
"The Ten-Per-Cent Solution" was written by Dan Castellaneta and his wife Deb Lacusta. Late actress Joan Rivers guest starred in the episode as Annie. In an interview with E! News at that time, Rivers noted that this was not her first animated voice-over role, although it was her biggest one yet. She further added that she is a fan of the show because it is "so clever and so funny on so many levels. So when they called and said, 'Do you want to do it?' without even reading a script I said, 'Absolutely.'" Adam Buckman, a former television columnist at the New York Post, noted on his blog that the story of the episode is similar to a period in Rivers' life in the late 1980s. At that time, she was hosting The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers on the Fox network. When Rivers challenged Fox executives who wanted to fire her husband Edgar Rosenberg as the show's executive producer, the network fired them. Rosenberg committed suicide just three months later. Buckman wrote that the story of "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution" was "no doubt devised with Rivers’ approval and possibly with her input", and that "only a comedian of her stature and experience" would attempt to spoof a personal tragedy such as this one. Other guest stars in the episode include actor Kevin Dillon and stand-up comedian Janeane Garofalo as themselves, and standup comedian Jackie Mason in a minor reprisal of his role as Krusty's father Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, speaking only one line.
== Citations ==
fr:La Solution à 10 %
pl:The Ten-Per-Cent Solution
pt:Uma Solução Dez Por Cento
Category:Incomplete
Category:Stubs
Category:Krusty the Clown Episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Featured Episodes
Category:Television-themed Episodes
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Episodes in which a Character Swears Censored or Uncensored
Category:Episodes with a alternative Gracie Films logo
Category:Episodes with alternate end credits
Category:Directed by Michael Polcino