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"Homer Defined"
The Simpsons episode
	Springfield's fate lies with Homer
Episode no.	40
Prod. code	8F04
Orig. airdate	October 17, 1991
Show runner(s)	Al Jean & Mike Reiss
Written by	Howard Gewirtz
Directed by	Mark Kirkland
Chalkboard	"I will not squeak chalk" (While Bart writes this, he makes a horrible squeaking noise)
Couch gag	An alien drinks beer on the couch and escapes through a trap door.
Guest star(s)	Jon Lovitz as Aristotle Amadopoulos; Magic Johnson as himself; Chick Hearn as himself
DVD; commentary	Matt Groening; Al Jean; Mike Reiss; Dan Castellaneta; Howard Gewirtz; Mark Kirkland
Season 3
	September 19, 1991 – August 27, 1992
	"Stark Raving Dad"; "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington"; "When Flanders Failed"; "Bart the Murderer"; "Homer Defined"; "Like Father, Like Clown"; "Treehouse of Horror II"; "Lisa's Pony"; "Saturdays of Thunder"; "Flaming Moe's"; "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk"; "I Married Marge"; "Radio Bart"; "Lisa the Greek"; "Homer Alone"; "Bart the Lover"; "Homer at the Bat"; "Separate Vocations"; "Dog of Death"; "Colonel Homer"; "Black Widower"; "The Otto Show"; "Bart's Friend Falls in Love"; "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?";
	List of all The Simpsons episodes
Seasons
	1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12; 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21

"Homer Defined" is the fifth episode of The Simpsons' third season, airing on October 17, 1991. The episode marks the first appearance of Milhouse's mother and the first time his surname, Van Houten, is used.

The episode featured the first appearance of a professional athlete in the series, Magic Johnson. At the end of the episode, he slips and lands by the feet of several beautiful women who admire him. Shortly after this episode aired, Johnson went public with the fact he has HIV as the result of having had extramarital relationships with over 200 women.

[edit] Plot

At the power plant, as Homer eats jelly donuts, one of them splatters onto a dial nearing the red zone. The plant is on the verge of a nuclear meltdown, and Homer seems to be the only person who can stop it. He has no skills and cannot remember any training, however, and in desperation chooses a button via eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Miraculously, Homer presses the button that averts the meltdown; Springfield is saved, and Homer is honored as a hero.

Mr. Burns rewards Homer for saving the plant with an "Employee of the Month" award (displacing longtime holder Smithers), a ham, a plaque, a discount coupon book, Burns's personal "thumbs-up", and a congratulatory call from Magic Johnson. Even Lisa begins to admire Homer as a role model, but Homer's conscience haunts him. He knows (and fears that everyone else will realize) that his "heroism" was nothing but luck. Burns introduces Homer to Aristotle "Ari" Amadopoulos, the owner of the Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant. Ari wants Homer the hero to give a pep talk to his plant's lackluster workers. Homer is hesitant to accept, but Burns forces him into it.

As Homer gives his fumbling "motivational" speech, an impending meltdown threatens the Shelbyville plant. The crowd marches Homer to the control room, asking him to perform his heroic deeds once again. In front of everyone, Homer repeats his juvenile rhyme and presses a button blindly. By sheer dumb luck, he manages to avert this meltdown as well. Ari thanks Homer for saving the plant but is angered to find out that it was done with just dumb luck rather than heroic intelligence. He is even more widely derided as a lucky imbecile than he was hailed as a hero, and "to pull a Homer" becomes a widely-used phrase meaning "to succeed despite idiocy" (even entering the dictionary illustrated with a small portrait of Homer). However, Lisa does give Homer a tad of encouragment by saying that "Our dad, now he belongs to the ages".

[edit] Subplot

On the bus ride to school, Bart gives Milhouse one of a pair of Krusty walkie-talkies as a birthday present. Bart is upset to discover that Milhouse had held a birthday party the previous Saturday, but he had not been invited. Milhouse seems unwilling to talk to Bart and avoids him for the rest of the day.

Milhouse finally tells Bart why he was not invited to the party: Mrs. Van Houten thinks Bart is a bad influence on her son. She has ordered Milhouse to stay away from Bart, which he has reluctantly done, as he has been threatened with a reduction of his allowance. Suddenly deprived of his best friend, a sad Bart goes upstairs into his room and opens his memo book of fun things that he did with Milhouse, and throws away the Krusty walkie-talkie. Bart resorts to playing with Maggie.

Marge eventually asks Bart why he no longer plays with Milhouse and, upon discovering what has happened, she is furious with Mrs. Van Houten's over-protectiveness. She visits Milhouse's mother and, although she admits that Bart is a "bit of a handful," she explains that the two are best friends and have only each other, because "they're too young for girls." Mrs. Van Houten, upon realising that her decision causes grief to both her son and Bart, relents. Afterward, Milhouse invites Bart over to his house, and Bart thanks Marge for standing up for him. After she leaves his room, Bart then happily pulls out a BB gun for him and Milhouse to "play" with.

[edit] Debut appearances

Characters making a first appearance in this episode are:

Luann Van Houten

[edit] Censorship

In the original airing of the episode, Bart's retort to Milhouse after Milhouse tells Bart that his mom thinks he's a bad influence was "Bad influence, my ass!" Meanwhile, Mr. Burns says (while preparing for the nuclear meltdown), "I guess there's nothing left but to kiss my sorry butt goodbye." After receiving complaints about Bart cursing, Fox ordered the producers to alter his dialogue, which in turn led to a compromise. Some Fox repeats featured Bart's line as, "Bad influence, my butt!" and Mr. Burns' line as "I guess there's nothing left but to kiss my sorry ass goodbye." The original dialogue appears in syndicated versions; the changed version appears on the season three Simpsons DVD set.

[edit] Cultural references

"Homer Defined" features many references to nuclear incidents. The news coverage of the crisis at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant parodies the coverage of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
The children duck under their desks in a fashion taught to U.S. elementary school students during the early years of the Cold War.
While desperate, Homer looks back to his nuclear plant training and sees himself attempting to solve the Rubik's Cube (a common cultural icon of the 1980s, when this scene was set). He then blames the (still incomplete) puzzle for distracting him.
Otto hums "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group while driving the bus to the Kwik-E-Mart.
The Itchy and Scratchy episode that Bart and Lisa watch is titled "My Dinner With Itchy", a parody of the movie My Dinner with Andre.
Homer stops the meltdown and then silently looks at the monitor to see that seven seconds remained until certain death, à la Sean Connery in Goldfinger when he stops the nuclear bomb at the timer reading "007".