The Blunder Years

"Wait a minute! I remember falling in the mud, but I don't think that's why I've been screaming."

- Homer Simpson

"The Blunder Years" is the fifth episode of Season 13. It originally aired on December 9, 2001. The episode was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Steven Dean Moore. Paul Newman, Joe Mantegna and Judith Owen guest starred. The episode title is a play on the television show, The Wonder Years, while Homer's flashbacks are parodies of the movie, Stand By Me.

Synopsis
A restaurant hypnotist causes Homer to relive a traumatic childhood experience where, upon swimming in a quarry, he found a dead body. That dead body turned out to be Waylon Smithers' father, Waylon Smithers, Sr., who had disappeared twenty-five years earlier under suspicious circumstances. Meanwhile, Marge fancies Chad Sexington, the man who appears on the packaging of Burly paper towels.

Full Story
Marge accidentally buys Burly paper towels and goes to return them when she "falls in love" with the lumberjack on them and finds that they're super absorbent. Homer becomes jealous and tricks Marge, making her believe that "Chad" is going to come for dinner. Marge prepares the house for his arrival, only to find out that "Chad" is actually Barney in disguise. Marge is humiliated once she realizes it is just a prank, which make Homer and Bart feeling guilty. Lisa encourages Homer and Bart to make it up to her with Homer taking them all to a posh restaurant.

At the restaurant, Marge admits that the prank was actually funny and it was the first prank that didn't go on fire. Soon a famous Indian hypnotist performs various acts of hypnosis, including making Professor Frink a makeout master, and when the hypnotist approaches Waylon Smithers and tells him that he'll do something about his father, Smithers mysteriously replies he has no father; he died years ago. Dauntless, the hypnotist approaches Homer, and hypnotises Homer into "turning into" various people. However, when the hypnotist turns Homer into his twelve-year-old self on summer vacation, he begins screaming hysterically, and still is screaming all the way home and even screams when he is asleep. The next day Lenny and Carl bring him home from work because his screaming continued. Lisa says he is screaming because of a repressed memory. Marge makes Homer some Yaqui tea to unlock his suppressed memory.

After he drinks it, in a flashback to when he was twelve, he remembers going hiking with Lenny and Carl. They ran into a young Fat Tony, Louie, and another boy. They've blundered into their secret "wacky tobacky" patch. The bullies are about to punch and kick the hikers when a young Moe, shoots right in front of the toughs with a Daisy air rifle. The bullies run away. After the flashback ends, Moe reveals himself to be in the living room with Carl, Lenny, and the Simpsons.

They serve Moe Yaqui tea, and the Flashback continues. Moe, Homer, Carl and Lenny go to an old quarry to have a swim. Homer was the only one dumb enough to jump in and found it was now a mud puddle. At this point, in the present. Homer begins to remember what it was that caused him to start screaming. Wondering why the water was not coming out he loosened the blockage and the water came out along with a decaying corpse that ended up in his lap. Homer started screaming endlessly (and hit puberty as a result).

In the present, the Simpsons visit the quarry, leaving the others behind. They find Chief Wiggum there and when Marge throws the Burley paper towels in, it absorbs the water where they find the corpse is now a skeleton. They go into the drainpipe and discover a hatch to Mr. Burns' office. Chief Wiggum accuses him of murder, but then Mr. Burns shows a movie proving his innocence. It shows that the body was Waylon Smithers, Sr., who died in a nuclear accident to save the town and his son. When Waylon Smithers Jr. sees the movie, he finds out the truth of how his father died, a hero and not by a tribe of savage women from Amazon that Mr. Burns told to him when he was young. When the Simpsons get back to their house, the next day Moe Szyslak comes over with clues, and relates them to Homer and Marge all the way through the end credits, which end with Homer screaming over the Fox logo.