The Man Who Came to Be Dinner

"The Man Who Came to Be Dinner" is the tenth episode of the twenty-sixth season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and the overall 562nd episode of the series. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 4, 2015.

Plot

The Simpsons go to Diz-Nee-Land. After a really long journey, they dislike all of the lame rides they visit, and decide to go to "Rocket to Your Doom", a just-opened queue-less ride which wasn't on the map. They get in and it immediately transforms into a space ship. At first, the family is skeptical, but a screen appears with Kang and Kodos on it telling them that they are being taken to their home planet Rigel 7. At the planet, Kang and Kodos show them around in a giant pet cage and the Simpsons are informed they are prisoners. Then they are taken as exhibitions to a zoo. After a while, they are informed they must choose one of them to be dined in a ritual. Everybody votes for Homer (even he changes his vote from Bart to himself after seeing the other votes).

Afterwards, we can see Homer walking in something that looks like bacon underwear, to be eaten, but he gets rescued by some hippie-looking Rigelians who believe that eating other sentient species is wrong. After an excessive party, he gets on another space ship only for one that also pleases all desires, but he realizes he won't enjoy it without his family and goes back to rescue them. The Rigelians have decided to eat the rest of the family and they are glazed over giant plates with some lettuce and tomato. When Homer offers to be eaten instead, he gets put on a similar plate and annoys the Rigelian chef by eating the glaze and claiming he didn't get any. The Rigelian Queen then eats Homer's previously off-camera severed buttock and gets poisoned because of the fast food life they all lead; even Lisa is the most polluted of them all and would be better chewing tobacco like Bart. The Rigelian Queen dies from the poison.

Following the Rigelian Queen's death, the Simpsons get sent home on a space ship that looks like the interior of the original starship USS Enterprise. They set course to Earth. But after a call from Grampa Simpson, the family decides to go anywhere else but home.

The credits happen over a montage of several images spoofing Star Trek TV and film franchise scenes.

Production

The episode was originally scheduled to air on May 19, 2013 as the finale of season 24, but was replaced by "Dangers on a Train";^[1] so as a result, the production code is dated compared to the rest of season 26.

Just prior to the broadcast of the episode, Al Jean and David Mirkin took to Twitter to reveal that the episode (which had been produced in 2012 and was originally set to air on May 19, 2013^[2]) had been held back^[3] because it was being "seriously considered" for adaptation into a sequel film^[4] of The Simpsons Movie, as the episode was "very cinematic"; they cited a similar sequence of events that occurred earlier in the show's run with the episode "Kamp Krusty".^[5] Jean also stated that he was sure reasons the episode both could and wouldn't work as a film would occur to those that viewed the episode^[6] and later expanded that there was the fear of the potential film being considered "not canonical" with the TV series^[7] and the potential backlash of overcoming it by using a "memory wipe".^[8]

Reception

The episode received an audience of 10.62 million, making it the most watched show on Fox that night, the episode received a 4.7/13 rating/share in the 18-49 demographic, the show's highest since the twenty-fifth season episode "Steal This Episode".^[9]

The episode received negative reviews from critics. Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club was highly critical of the episode, giving it a D+ and saying, "It would be a lot easier to make the case that The Simpsons still has value if the people behind the show seemed to give a damn. But an episode like "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner" is a product of such slapdash, breezy disregard for what makes The Simpsons The Simpsons that it functions as a dispiriting signpost to the show's hastening irrelevance." He criticized how the episode repeated the scene in which Homer eats chips in zero gravity from season 5's "Deep Space Homer". Perkins likened the episode's ending in which everything returns to normal to the controversial season 9 episode "The Principal and the Pauper", and said "The Simpsons have met The Great Gazoo".^[10]

References