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The Burns and the Bees |
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Premiere[]
- The premiere of this episode was watched by 6.19 million people in America.
Cultural References[]
- The title of this episode is a reference to the expression "The birds and the bees", used by parents when explaining a sexual relationship to a child. Futurama, a sister show of The Simpsons, also has an episode that references this.
- Music from the episode:
- "Deck the Halls" (Lisa plays this on her saxophone as she walks out of the class)
- "Amazing Grace" (Groundskeeper Willie plays it on his bagpipes while mourning for the deceased bees)
- "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty By Nature (played during the gorilla mascot scene)
- "Sea of Love" by The Honeydrippers (when the queen bee is being introduced to the Africanized bees)
- "Call to the Cows" by Rossini (when the bees are released in the old greenhouse)
- Since the intro is done in a Christmas theme, Mr. Burns appears as Ebenezer Scrooge and Smithers appears as Jacob Marley. However, the episode itself isn't Christmas-themed.
- The bee tombstone that set Jerry Seinfeld a reference to the 2007 DreamWorks film Bee Movie where Seinfeld played as the voice of Barry.
- In Homer's fantasy about a future without honey, the robot that offers him some artificial honey and then compresses him into a cube resembles WALL-E from the Disney/Pixar film of the same name.
- The original home of the Springfield Celtics/Excitement, the Springfield Sports Palace, is very similar in appearance to the former home of the Boston Celtics and Bruins, Boston Garden. That arena was demolished in 1998 after being replaced by TD Garden.
- In the poker game scene as the camera pans around the cabins, Mr. Burns net worth is seen to be 1,800,036,000; this lines up exactly with the end of the episode when Mr. Burns laments that he had to take a third-quarter write-down of $804,000,000; thereby leaving him exactly at $996,036,000.
Trivia[]
- For the first eight episodes of this season, the show won the 2009 People's Choice Award for Favorite Animated Comedy.
- This is the last episode where a Simpson wore a beard of bees was in "New Kid on the Block" and "Brawl in the Family".
- This is the last episode to air in 2008. This is also the penultimate episode to air in 4:3 resolution.
- Even though the Christmas opening sequence is heard in this episode, it's very misleading as the episode itself is not actually Christmas themed, unlike "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II".
- Therefore, it made more sense for the Christmas intro to play in the previous episode since the first scene after the intro and fade out features Christmas decorations at the mall.
Goofs[]
- Lisa's bees would not be able to reproduce with African bees as they are probably from a different species.
- Moe probably said it because he didn't know this fact. If the bees were able to reproduce then the bees most likely weren't African.