Simpson and Delilah

"Simpson and Delilah" is the second episode of Season 2. It aired on October 18, 1990. The episode was written by Jon Vitti and directed by Rich Moore. Harvey Fierstein guest stars as Karl.

When Homer gets an experimental hair treatment, he grows a shaggy new mane. Marge finds the new Homer sexy and Mr. Burns mistakes his most incompetent employee for a hungry up-and-comer and promotes him.

Plot
While watching TV with the family, Homer Simpson sees a commercial for a hair restorer called Dimoxinil, considered a "miracle breakthrough" by the announcer on TV. He visits a doctor who sells Dimoxinil, but it costs $1,000, and Homer cannot afford that. At work, Lenny suggests Homer pay for Dimoxinil through the company's medical insurance plan. Homer arranges to get the Dimoxinil through a shady deal in an alley with the doctor he visited previously. He applies the drug, and the next day, Homer wakes up with hair. At work, Mr. Burns surveys the security monitors to find a new person to promote to an executive promotion. He sees Homer with hair and chooses him for the job.

Now that he's an executive, Homer tries to look for a good secretary, but all the applicants fail until a man named Karl applies. Homer eventually picks Karl, and finds in him a man who sees that Homer is not executive material, but is willing to help him. The two improve Homer's workplace wardrobe, and Karl even arranges for roses and a singing telegram when Homer forgets his and Marge's wedding anniversary. At the power plant's board meeting, Homer finds a good suggestion to improve the low productivity and decrease the record high worker accident rate: Give people more tartar sauce when they have fishsticks every Tuesday. Mr. Burns approves Homer's proposal, and accidents have, according to Smithers, decreased by the number of accidents that Homer himself is known to have caused last month. With Burns impressed with Homer's efforts, he gives him the key to the executive washroom. Smithers has slowly grown jealous over Mr. Burn's joy regarding Homer's work at the plant, and when Mr. Burns asks Homer to towel off his hands and follow him down the hall, Smithers takes matters into his own hands. Checking through the plant's files, Smithers finds Homer's phony medical insurance form, and sees Homer's reason he got Dimoxinil was to keep his brain from freezing.

Shortly afterwards, Burns asks Homer to give a speech to the executives. As Homer goes off to discuss the speech with Karl, Smithers meets up with them, willing to fire Homer for insurance fraud. However, Karl convinces Homer that the entire scheme was his idea, and he is fired instead of Homer. Karl politely says his goodbyes to Homer, who now has to worry about the big speech without his secretary's help. When he gets home, he finds Bart using the Dimoxinil bottle, splashing the formula on his face in order to have a beard. Homer's exclamation at seeing Bart handling the formula causes Bart to spill the hair restorer. The next day, without it, Homer loses all his hair before the big meeting. At work, he's surprised to find Karl, who has written a series of notecards for Homer. However, Homer tells Karl that without his hair, he won't be taken seriously. Karl energizes Homer with a pep-talk, explaining that all the things he did (the tartar sauce, drying Mr Burn's hands) were the result of him, not the hair.

Homer presents his speech, about economizing the power plant, but by the end of it, the entire audience has walked out. He is asked to come to Mr. Burns' office. Burns voices his displeasure, but rather than fire Homer, he tells him of the time when he too had hair, before turning 'bald as a plucked chicken.' Knowing what Homer has gone through, Burns is willing to give Homer his old job back. Even so, Homer is still distraught that Marge won't love him now that he has no hair. But Marge being Marge, she lets him know that the hair doesn't matter.