Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious
"Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious" is the 13th episode of The Simpsons 8th season. It was first broadcast on the Fox network on February 7, 1997. The episode is about the Simpson family getting a nanny named Shary Bobbins (a parody of Mary Poppins).
The episode was written by Al Jean and Mike Reiss. Chuck Sheetz is the director of the episode. It got a Nielsen rating of 8.8. This means that about 8.5 million people saw the episode when it was first broadcast. In 2014, Jean put the episode in his list of the 5 most important episodes of The Simpsons.
Story
Marge Simpson starts to lose some of her hair very quickly. Dr. Hibbert says that she is losing hair because of her stress. The Simpson family wants to hire a nanny to care for their children and help with their house. They have trouble finding a good nanny. A woman with an umbrella comes from the sky on to the ground. The woman is Sharry Bobbins and makes herself known to the family. They think there are no problems with her and hire her.
Shary helps with work around the house. Marge's hair starts to come back. At dinner, Shary says that she does not need to help around with the family anymore. When she leaves the house, she sees Homer strangling Bart, Maggie stopping a fire, and Marge losing hair again. Shary must stay to help with the family again.
The family starts to act rude to Shary and does not care for her excitement. Shary starts to feel depressed and cries. Marge says that Shary can not be able to change how the family acts. The family says in a song that they are happy with how they act. Shary thinks that the family is okay and leaves with her umbrella. She is killed when she flies into a jet engine of an airplane.
Production
Al Jean and Mike Reiss made a deal with Disney to make four episodes of The Simpsons. Jean and Reiss thought of the episode's story years before it was made. They talked about the idea with other writers but no one wanted to make an episode with the story. When they were able to make episodes again, they wrote the dialogue of the episode. Reiss first did not like the episode. He thought that the story was foolish and had too much magic in it. He now thinks that it is one of the best episodes he wrote. When it was made, the episode had more music than any other episode. Jean thought that the songs would make the episode as long as it needed to be. However, it was still shorter than regular episodes. Many parts of the episode were added to make it longer. For example, an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon was put in the episode. There was going to be a song where Bart, Lisa and Shary go to Patty and Selma and sing about smoking. The song was not put in the episode because producers did not think it was funny. The song was put in the album Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons. Some animation of the song was shown in the 8th season's DVD as a deleted scene. Eric Stefani made the animation for some of the episode's songs.
Julie Andrews was first going to be the voice actor of Shary. Maggie Roswell was made the voice actor after producers heard her speak some of the episode's dialogue. Producers wanted Quentin Tarantino to be the voice actor for a character in the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. He did not want to because he thought the dialogue was rude. Dan Castellaneta was the voice actor for that character in the episode.
References
Other websites
The Simpsons episodes
1997 television episodes