The Way We Weren't/References

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The Way We Weren't

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Trivia

• The three girls Bart has kissed are Laura Powers ("New Kid on the Block"), Jessica Lovejoy ("Bart's Girlfriend"), and Gina Vendetti ("The Wandering Juvie"). He would later kiss Darcy in "Little Big Girl", as well as an unnamed girl in "The Monkey Suit", Jenny in "The Good, the Sad and the Drugly", Nikki McKenna in "Stealing First Base" and "Moonshine River". Becky also kissed him ("Flaming Moe's") and Sherri and Terri kissed him in "Homer's Odyssey", but they were non-consensual, so it doesn't count.
• The scene where Young Homer tumbles down the cliff and into the lake is strikingly similar to the grown-up Homer's legendary fall down Springfield Gorge in "Bart the Daredevil".
• Homer recalls bad actions of his including hiding a gun from Marge ("The Cartridge Family"), suing the Church ("Pray Anything"), and ruining Lisa's wedding in the future ("Lisa's Wedding").
• When Marge calls Moe and asks for Homer's false name, Moe backfires and thus sets up the origin of Bart's prank calls.
• Moe breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera, saying "And that's the origin of that!" before
• Homer says he has only kissed one girl, but he has actually kissed at least two others in addition to Marge: Patty, (later in this episode, and Mindy Simmons in "The Last Temptation of Homer" (which Homer already admitted to his family in "Another Simpsons Clip Show"). He has also been kissed by at least three men: Karl ("Simpson and Delilah"), Grady ("Three Gays of the Condo"), and Milhouse (also this episode).
• This episode was nominated for an Emmy.
• The song played in the background of Homer and Marge's daydreams is the most popular love song ever, called Happy Together.
• Ms. Killebrew, the instructor at Camp Land-A-Man, is identical in appearance and voice to Millicent, the horse stable owner from Lisa's Pony. However it's never made clear if they're meant to be the same character.

Cultural References

• Marge claims she enjoys Parliament but not Funkadelic in reference to the funk collective popular during the 70's. Both individual bands were led by George Clinton. Funkadelic was the heavier among the two individual bands, mixing heavy rock into the funk influence.
• Marge's other favorite acts as a young girl are mostly considered "middle of the road" performers - Bobby Goldsboro, Gilbert O'Sullivan and Terry Jacks.
• The episode title echoes that of the episode The Way We Was, which itself gets its name from the 1973 film The Way We Were.
• Homer's imagined perfect world includes Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Quisp flying by in his spaceship, and the Kool-Aid Man—whom Homer kills by drinking him.
• Before meeting the Sea Captain by the docks, Homer says, "I guess it's Roe v. Wade, and it's my right to choose." This namechecks the landmark American supreme court decision on abortion.
• When the Captain rows Homer across the lake to meet Marge, he sings: "I met her on the mountain, there I took her life. I met her on the mountain, Stabbed her with my knife." These are lyrics from the folk song Tom Dooley, as made famous by The Kingston Trio.
• This episode shares the same major storyline as "It Happened One Summer (Parts 1 and 2)" from Who's the Boss, where Tony and Angela realize that they had already met as children and had even shared a kiss while attending summer camp.
• Homer hints that his pen pal may have been Osama Bin Laden.
• In the Season 19 episode "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind", while traveling through his memories, Homer (literally) destroys the memory of his first kiss in this episode. Bart then makes him believe that Homer's first kiss was with Apu.

Goofs

• In this episode, Milhouse states that his kiss with Homer in the treehouse was his first kiss. However, in the season 3 episode, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" Milhouse shared his first kiss with Samantha Stankey. It's possible he'd forgotten about that kiss.
• When Homer notices the beer bottle in Bart's treehouse, he cradles it and laments that it "never had a chance be become [his] urine", essentially regretting that he never got to drink it. Seconds earlier, however, Homer had in fact drank the beer when Milhouse poured it out of the treehouse (although he was asleep and was unaware of where the beer came from).

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