[2][3] After attending the annual Harvard–Yale football game, Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers take a train back to Springfield.

After Homer convinces Larry to fake a kidnapping so that Burns will admit that he loves his son, he moves into the Simpsons' basement.

Marge discovers the plan and convinces Homer and Larry to abandon it, but they are spotted by Kent Brockman's news helicopter as they leave the house.

Ian Maxtone-Graham wrote the episode, and it was his first writing credit for The Simpsons, although he had served as a consultant on the show for several months.

[4] Maxtone-Graham had previously worked with showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein on a game show and the two had wanted to hire him as a writer on The Simpsons.

The other episode idea became "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish'", which aired in the previous season.

After discovering that Larry Burns is also working in Sector 7G, Homer frantically cleans up and puts away an almost entirely assembled jigsaw puzzle which has an image of Snoopy the dog lying on his doghouse.

The puzzle is missing several pieces over where Snoopy's nose should be, which was intentionally drawn that way to avoid infringing copyright laws.

[8] The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "[a] fun episode, with Rodney Dangerfield putting a lot of pathos into Larry – and Homer's impassioned speech atop the cinema at the climax is one of his funniest moments.