Question: I, like Marge, don't know much about football. Why is Homer disappointed to own the Denver Broncos team? I know his first choice was owning the Dallas Cowboys, but he seems to especially dislike the Broncos.
Phaneron
25th Feb 2022
The Simpsons (1989)
3rd Nov 2003
The Simpsons (1989)
Corrected entry: When Lisa mocks Bart in French, she sings, "Vous ĂȘtes Baby Stinkbreath." However, "Vous ĂȘtes" is the formal construction. A person would not use this when speaking to his or her brother, especially when deliberately being disrespectful towards him. "Tu es," the informal form, would be more appropriate.
Correction: Lisa may still be learning, and it's an easy mistake to make.
26th Apr 2020
The Simpsons (1989)
Oh, Brother, Where Are Thou? - S2-E15
Question: How exactly did the production of Homer's car bankrupt Herb? If Herb, as a highly successful car manufacturer, was spending so much money spoiling Marge and the kids that an $82,000 price tag for making a car was enough of a straw to break the camel's back, wouldn't he have gone bankrupt sooner than later anyway?
Answer: It wasn't the cost of one car, but that they'd produced thousands of Homer's ridiculous vehicles, which they'd marketed as a family car, but cost five times as much as a new car at the time. No one would buy them and the company went under.
Wasn't the car just a demo though? How would they have been able to produce thousands of cars in such a short amount of time?
Big difference between a "demo" or prototype car compared to a launch car. The dealers must have stock available of the launch car so people can actually buy them straight away.
23rd Feb 2016
The Simpsons (1989)
Other mistake: When The Town is singing the Christmas carol you can see Sideshow Bob, who was arrested and jailed in series 1. We know he hasn't been released, as that's a plot point over the show. (00:18:10)
Suggested correction: Maybe he was allowed to participate due to good behavior. That's a possibility.
Good behavior or not, a prison wouldn't furlough an inmate just so they could participate in a snow day.
I'm not sure if it's been discussed here or listed as a mistake. Part of the problem with "The Simpsons" and the Sideshow Bob character is that time both moves forward and doesn't move. In "A Brother From Another Series," Krusty visits the prison and tells Bob he hasn't seen him in years because Bob had been in prison all those years for his crimes. Yet Bart and Lisa are still the same age and in the same grade. Bob is also let out of prison on a work-release program in the episode.
19th Jul 2019
The Simpsons (1989)
Character mistake: Burkina Faso is listed as being among the Southern Hemisphere locations Bart called when Homer is looking over the phone bill; since Burkina Faso is completely within the Northern Hemisphere, it would have made no sense for Bart to call there.
Suggested correction: It may not make sense, but Bart isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. In this same episode, he looked at his globe and thought Rand McNally was a country and was convinced by Lisa that the citizens there wear hats on their feet and that hamburgers eat people. Additionally, he could have just decided to prank call someone there if for no other reason than he thought the name of the country was funny.
Entirely possible, but since Bart had a globe right there to refer to, even someone with his limited geographical knowledge would have been able to tell that Burkina Faso is in the Northern hemisphere, unlike the other locations he did call as depicted in the montage (Antarctica, Argentina, unspecified South American nation, etc).
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Answer: I don't think the writers had anything particular in mind when choosing the Denver Broncos to be the butt of the joke. But I wonder if it's meant to be a clue where Springfield is. But, while this episode did air late 1996 when the Broncos had a winning season, given the amount of time needed to produce the episode, it was written when the Broncos were a mediocre team at best. From '92-'95 they had a 32-32 record and never finished higher than 3rd in their division. And the Cowboys and Broncos are in separate conferences, so they're not particularly rivals. But as Phaneron points out, the Broncos ended up winning back-to-back Super Bowls in the following 2 season after this episode aired, so Homer is a very lucky guy.
Bishop73
Probably also worth mentioning that by the time this episode had aired, the Broncos had an 0-4 record in the Super Bowl, and to this day I believe they hold the record for most Super Bowl losses.
Phaneron ★
The Buffalo Bills also had an 0-4 record at the time of airing having lost 4 straight years.
ctown28 ★
The Vikings are also 0-4 in the Super Bowl. The Patriots have 5 losses (although only had 1 at the time this episode aired).
Bishop73
True, and they would have been a funnier pick for Homer to end up owning, given that two consecutive of those four Super Bowl losses were to the Cowboys. Although Homer fantasizing about being John Elway in the episode Cape Feare makes his disdain for the Broncos rather funny.
Phaneron ★