Funeral for a Fiend

Funeral for a Fiend is the eighth episode of Season 19 (Originally supposed to be the season premiere).
==Synopsis==
Marge sees a commercial for a new barbecue rib restaurant that turns out to be a trap set by Sideshow Bob. Once again, the trap fails and Bob is arrested, but at his trial, Bart throws away a nitroglycerin vial that Bob needed for his heart condition, leaving him to supposedly die.
==Full Story==
Bart accompanies Homer to Circuit Circus to purchase a battery. The cashier who rings up Homer's purchase explains that if he signs up for a $200 TiVo and a two year subscription, he will receive his battery for free. Homer quickly complies and in almost a couple of hours, Lisa is busy installing the new TiVo system at home.
The family quickly realizes the capability of their new TiVo device as they skip through the commercials (mostly from former episodes) during Itchy & Scratchy (Entitled: "Spherical on 34th Street"). Marge especially takes a shine to their new TiVo, and becomes a pro at skipping all the commercials and recording all her favorite shows. Her TiVo watching passion quickly becomes an addiction and late one night after falling asleep on the couch watching TV, her guilty conscience gets the better of her in her dreams. Marge dreams of Keith Olbermann speaking to her through the TV and making her feel guilty for skipping all of the television commercials. She makes a vow to Keith that she will be sure to catch up and her advertisement watching.
During a commercial marathon-watching session, Marge catches an ad for a "Wes Doobner's World Famous Family Rib Huts" restaurant. With a menu that appeals to everyone in the family, they excitedly head out to visit the new restaurant that night.
The family begins to sense that something is amiss when they see an empty parking lot and a restaurant void of any tables or chairs, once inside. The doors and windows close and latch behind them and Wes Doobner himself steps in through another door and emits a maniacal laugh. Wes reveals himself to be Sideshow Bob and gloats about his ingenious plan to trap and then kill the Simpsons.
With the Simpsons tied up, Sideshow Bob provides a slide show to explain what he's been up to since the last time the Simpsons saw him in "The Italian Bob". Sideshow Bob then shows the family how he plans to kill them. He places a laptop computer with a defective battery on top of a pile of TNT so that when the battery overheats and explodes, it will ignite the TNT causing it to explode as well. Bob quotes some Shakespeare and then makes his exit, but Lisa calls out to Bob, teasing him for getting the Shakespeare quote wrong. Sideshow Bob, not wanting to be upstaged, quickly reenters and uses the laptop to check Wikipedia about the accuracy of his quote. But while waiting for the website to load, the defective battery explodes in his lap knocking him unconscious. Within minutes Kent Brockman is reporting on the scene and Sideshow Bob is taken down.
At his trial Sideshow Bob confesses that he did try to kill the Simpsons, but that his plot was a product of his insanity caused by Bart's constant persecution. He calls his father, Dr. Terwilliger, to the witness stand. Bob's father testifies that Bob was a peaceful, weak and sickly boy due to a congenital heart defect, until Bart began "tormenting" him, which led Bob to full-blown dementia. Sideshow Bob pleads with the jury and begins to successfully paint Bart in a bad light and win sympathy from the court.
An outraged Bart snaps and in an outburst tries to convince the court that Bob is lying. Sideshow Bob then reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small vial of nitroglycerin, but before he can make his use with it, Bart snatches the vial out of Bob's hand and flings it out the window. Bob screams, clutches his chest in horror and collapses. Dr. Terwilliger rushes from the witness stand to his son's side and Bob's mother emerges from the gallery to explain that the nitroglycerin was actually for Bob's heart defect. Dr. Hibbert rushes forward to check Bob's pulse and then confirms everyone's fears, telling them that Sideshow Bob is dead, blaming Bart in the process.
Nearly the entire town attends for Sideshow Bob's funeral (including Bob's parents, wife, son, and younger brother Cecil, who has been let out of prison to attend) and Kent Brockman covers the scene with live coverage. Krusty leads the funeral in song as well-wishers pay their last respects to a peaceful Sideshow Bob, who is lying in a tailor made coffin that accommodates his tremendous feet. The Simpson family enters the church to hostility and Bart storms off, refusing to pay his respects to Bob.
Later Bart sits alone out on the sidewalk grumbling about how everyone hates him for "killing" Sideshow Bob, when Cecil, accompanied by two police officers, approaches. Cecil tells Bart that he once shared the same disdain for Bob, but tells Bart of feeling better if he makes his peace with Bob. Bart reluctantly agrees and heads off to the funeral home to say goodbye before Bob is cremated.
Milhouse makes his rounds delivering newspapers and at the Simpson home Marge asks if he has seen Bart. Milhouse tells her of noticing Bart a few minutes earlier and that he was going for the funeral home to see Sideshow Bob one last time. When Milhouse asks to sit down because his feet are killing him, Lisa suddenly realizes that Bart is in danger and convinces everyone to rush to the funeral home before it is too late.
At the funeral home, Bart approaches as Sideshow Bob's coffin, which awaits the furnace, and confesses that he didn't mean for Bob to die. Just then, to Bart's surprise, Bob jumps out of the coffin, alive and well, and quickly throws Bart in. He laughs maniacally as he throws a switch that starts the coffin on its slow journey down the conveyor belt to the furnace.
As the family rushes to the funeral home Lisa explains how she figured out Bob's plan:
* With his mom being a Shakespearean actress, Bob would have known Shakespeare far too well to have "accidentally" misquoted him and deduces that Bob's plan was to do so intentionally so he could go to court and be put on trial.
* When he collapsed during the trial and his dad rushed to his side, he must have injected Bob with a special drug to make him appear in a death-like state, to make it seem like that Bart had killed him.
Back at the funeral home Bob gathers with his entire family, including Cecil and his police escorts, who peel off their latex masks and turn out to be their parents. Bob then plans for Bart's ashes to be mistaken for his, and by the time police figure it out, Bob and his family will be away scot-free. As they watch Bart slowly head to the furnace, Lisa and her parents suddenly burst in to rescue Bart in the nick of time. Homer throws some hobo ashes into Bob's eyes, distracting him, and Marge reverses the switch and stops the conveyor belt.
Once Bart is safe, Chief Wiggum and the real officers arrive on the scene to arrest Sideshow Bob and his family. Defeated but curious, Bob questions Lisa on how she was able to figure out the scheme that he and his family had come up with. Lisa admits to Bob and his family that she actually started getting suspicious at Bob's fake funeral after noticing how Bob's coffin had been accommodated to fit his larger-than-average feet -- Lisa argues that if Bob really had been dead, his family probably wouldn't have bothered to pay for something like that.
Realizing that they were ultimately undone by a seemingly minor detail, this makes Cecil irritated at Bob for having that done despite the fact that he (presumably) advised against it.
In a prison cell with the rest of his family, Sideshow Bob sits in a corner, restrained by a straitjacket, and laughs maniacally as he is having thoughts about sneaking into the Simpsons' house for his revenge and kills them, while his father, son, and brother play cards.
==Behind the Laughter==
===Reception===
Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode a 6.2/10, saying "there were some enjoyable scenes, but the half hour lacked in the number of laugh-out-loud moments, and Bob's ultimate scheme wasn't very surprising."
==Citations==
fr:Funérailles pour un félon
pl:Funeral for a Fiend
pt:Funeral a um Amigo
ru:Похороны злодея
Category:Sideshow Bob episodes
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Crime-themed Episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Chief Wiggum episodes
Category:Written by Michael Price
Category:Directed by Rob Oliver
Category:Death Episodes
Category:Poorly-received episodes
Category:Dramatic episodes
Category:Simpson Family Are Pariahs episodes
Category:Episodes on DVD
Category:Episodes focusing on Sideshow Bob
Category:Mystery-themed episodes
Category:Krusty the Clown Episodes
Category:Marge episodes
Category:Episodes Where Krusty cries