Two Dozen and One Greyhounds

"Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" is the 20th episode of The Simpsons 6th season. It was first broadcast on the Fox network on April 9, 1995. The episode was written by Mike Scully and Bob Anderson is the director. In the episode, Santa's Little Helper mates with another greyhound at a race track. Mr. Burns wants to take their puppies to make a tuxedo out of them.
Story
Santa's Little Helper, the Simpson family's dog, runs to a race track and mates with a greyhound there. The owner of the racing greyhound lets the Simpson family keep her. She gives birth to 25 puppies. Homer and Marge are not able to take care of the puppies and tries giving them away. Mr. Burns asks them for all of the puppies. Lisa does not want Burns to have them, but he takes the puppies when the family does not see them.
Bart and Lisa later learn that Burns has taken the puppies. They go to his mansion and see him cleaning the puppies in a bath. Burns sees one of the puppies standing up and calls the puppy "Little Monty". He then sings a song on how he will kill the other 24 puppies and make a tuxedo out of them. Bart and Lisa go in the mansion to try to get the puppies back. They put the puppies in the basement and find Burns there. Bart tries to make it so that Burns does not know which puppy is Little Monty. When Burns makes Little Monty stand, Bart uses a clothes line to make all of the puppies stand. Burns wants to kill all of the puppies and Bart and Lisa, but then thinks he should not kill them all. He instead puts all of the puppies in greyhound racing and gets millions of dollars from it.
Production
"Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" was written by Mike Scully. Bob Anderson is the director of the episode. Al Jean and Mike Reiss came up with the story of the episode. They got the idea after seeing the movie One Hundred and One Dalmatians. David Mirkin said as a joke that they like to take ideas from Disney. For example, another episode called "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious" is a parody of the movie Mary Poppins. Mirkin thought it was great that they could use ideas from Disney in a "completely legal way".
Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) was happy with the episode because it reminded him of the very first episode ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"). He also liked the references to One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He liked the movie when he was a child and said it made him want to learn about animation and cartoons. In one part of the movie, the puppies can be seen watching cartoons on a television screen. Groening said that made him love how cartoons work and made him create a fictional television show in The Simpsons called The Itchy & Scratchy Show.
In the episode, Mr. Burns says Little Monty reminds him of the actor Rory Calhoun. George Meyer got the idea for Mr. Burns to say that. Matt Groening did not want this in the episode because he thought people watching it would not know who Calhoun was. This was kept in because Calhoun would be talked about again during the end of the episode. After the episode was broadcast, Groening went on the Internet and saw discussions from people who did not know who Calhoun was.
When Bart and Lisa first go near Mr. Burns' mansion, they see him singing a song called "See My Vest". It is about how he will kill the puppies and make a tuxedo out of them. One writer came up with the idea that Mr. Burns will show the bad things he will do to the puppies with a "fun and light" song. Scully made the lyrics to the song on the next day. The lyrics are a parody of the song "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast. Mirkin liked the song and said "The rhymes are really clever. It's one of our very best songs". He also liked that one song can be put in the episode without the episode becoming a musical. He said "We'll just do one song and that's plenty. We have fun with that and then we're out."
Animals in many cartoons may act like humans. Groening does not want this happening in The Simpsons and makes animals in the show act like real animals. This is how the animals in the episode act. Mirkin said they might not do this only for visual gags. Everything else has animals acting how they would in real life. Frank Welker made the animal sounds in the episode. Mirkin was happy with Welker's work and said "He can do anything, and it fits perfectly. You forget you're listening to a guy". Groening also thought he was very good at making animal sounds.
Producers and the people with Fox network's censors got into an argument if they should show Santa's Little Helper mating with the racing greyhound. Writers first thought it would not be a good idea, but Mirkin knew it could be shown without it being very sexual. In the episode, only the dogs' heads can be seen while they are mating. Storyboards of this part of the episode was later put on DVD. Anderson said that many people were laughing while the censors were looking at this part of the episode.
Reception
The song "See My Vest" was put in the album Songs in the Key of Springfield. The Daily Bruin thought the song's lyrics were humorous and said that listening to it would give memories of the episode. They thought the song really showed Mr. Burns as a character and said it shows the "disturbing elements" of how humans act. MSNBC made a list of "TV's top 10 scariest characters" and put Mr. Burns on the top of the list. They talked about "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" where Burns makes a plan on killing the puppies to make a tuxedo.
Ben Rayner from the Toronto Star thought that "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" was one episode of The Simpsons he liked the most. He thought Mr. Burns in the "See My Vest" song was the most interesting part. The Toronto Star later made a list of the best and worst episodes of The Simpsons. They put this episode as one of the best and said "See My Vest" was the best part of the episode. Todd Glichrist from IGN called the episode "memorable" and talked about "See My Vest" by saying Mr. Burns "flirts with copyright infringement". Michael Price from IGN thought the song was just a great as "The Monorail Song" from the episode "Marge vs. the Monorail". Colin Jacobson from DVD Movie Guide liked the references to many Disney movies and to Roy Calhoun. Jacobson said this made it a "fine show".
References
Other websites
The Simpsons (season 6) episodes
1995 television episodes