Helter Shelter

"Helter Shelter" is the fifth episode from Season 14 of The Simpsons that aired December 1, 2002.

Plot
After Homer suffers a brain injury at work, Mr. Burns offers his family tickets in a luxury sky box at a hockey game as compensation. Lisa receives a player's hockey stick for shouting advice to him during the game. However, termites, which were living in the stick, end up eating away at the entire Simpson house. An exterminator says their house should be tented and fumigated, and they cannot return for six months. However, the family has no place to go. They tried to stay with Lenny and then Comic Book Guy but their apartments were too weird. At Moe's, their last resort, Barney and Carl inform the Simpsons about a reality show, where a family is put in a Victorian house, where they must live like it was the year 1895. Homer is reluctant at first, but then they go to the reality show.

At the studio, the executives screen many families and finally they settle on the Simpsons, after viewing Homer's overreactions over nothing. They are taken to the Victorian house and shown around by the Network Executive, who says that they will be filmed round the clock. The only thing of the 20th century there is a "Confessional Room", which is a small room with a video camera where they say what they feel about the lifestyle. The family struggles with all of the drastic changes in their daily life and are pretty miserable, much to the delight of the show's audience. Homer tries to lighten up the family, saying they should be glad on TV, and begin to conform to their new lives cheerily. This is not deemed as entertaining, however, and viewership begins to drop. In attempts to save the show, the executives decide to introduce Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley into the household. But even his presence (and that of a taser which he uses on Homer) does not boost the ratings. Finally, one of the executives comes up with an idea. The house is airlifted at night and put into a river.

The Simpsons are shocked to find what had happened the next morning, and the house finally washes up on shore and falls apart, with Squiggy in it. The network crew is filming it and loving the drama that unfolds. They then break for lunch, but deny the Simpsons any of it. Later on, the family is confronted by a bunch of savage-looking people, who turn out to be contestants in other reality shows, whom the network ditched after they failed in their tasks. They decide to overpower the crew and return to civilization. Together with the Simpsons, they attack the crew, overpowering them. Homer then tried to crush the helicopter with a giant boulder but he was pushed into the ground. Finally at home, Homer decides to watch scripted TV shows, as he has had it with reality shows, but the family finds more pleasure in watching him continually spraying himself in the eye with the hose.

Trivia

 * This is the last time to date that Bart has prank called Moe, this time via Morse code.
 * This is the last episode to be traditionally inked and painted; for the episodes after it would be animated via digital ink and paint.
 * Homer's line "Where's that kid with my latte?" was used earlier in "Beyond Blunderdome".
 * This is the third time Bill Cosby has been parodied on The Simpsons. There is an extra gag in that the Cosby family are losing ratings on their reality show, so the producers decide on the Simpsons; in the early years, The Cosby Show was a ratings rival with The Simpsons.
 * When the family realizes that they are seeing a hockey game, the are discouraged and disappointed, yet in "Lisa on Ice", the family seems to have an interest in the game.
 * When Kozlov hands Lisa his hockey stick, it says "КОЗЛОВ" - the real Russian spelling of Kozlov.
 * The Russian hockey player seems to be Atlanta Thrashers' Vyacheslav Kozlov.
 * If you look closely, you can see a crossed hammer and a hockey stick on Kozlov's hockey stick, an obvious reference to the Soviet symbol of the hammer and sickle.

Episode Goofs

 * At one point when Bart is in the video confessional booth, he complains of boredom and says "Mutt & Jeff Comics are not funny! They're gay, I get it!". However Mutt & Jeff was first published in 1907, 12 years after the shows 1895 setting.

Cultural references

 * The title is a play on the Beatles song "Helter Skelter," a famous song which, it was claimed by prosecutors, was indirectly connected to the murders carried out by Charles Manson and his "family". "Helter Shelter" had earlier been the name of the shelter in the episode "Homer Loves Flanders".
 * The scene where the Simpsons are waiting for time to fly by mirrors the opening sequence of King of the Hill.
 * "Squiggy" being sent to boost their ratings is a reference to a lot of television shows sending in newer characters to save the show from being cancelled (often with disastrous results), such as Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch, Seven on Married...With Children, and Smitty (Adam Sandler's character) on The Cosby Show
 * A member of the crew says 'I can't eat any more kangaroo testicles'. This is a reference to I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!
 * Not for the first time, this episode of The Simpsons contains a reference to the 1990s TV character Steve Urkel from the show Family Matters. When Marge attempts to buy groceries from the Kwik-E-Mart, Apu informs her that he is under instructions from the producers of the reality show to vett her purchases for items that were not available in 1895. As such, he deems the breakfast cereal Urkel-O's "delicious, but forbidden."
 * "Law & Order: Elevator Inspectors Unit" is a reference to the TV show Law & Order and its various spin-offs.