Due to personal circumstances, Kirkland assigned his assistant director, Matthew Nastuk, to take over the directing duties for a couple of scenes in the episode.
After starring in a low-quality worker recruitment commercial directed by Mr. Burns for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Homer decides he wants to be an actor.
They point out a mural that she painted based on an incident at Woodstock, which is dedicated to Homer and reveals his middle name as "Jay".
He dons a dirty old poncho left behind by Mona and begins to carry a frisbee, but is dismayed to learn that Seth and Munchie are using the farm as headquarters for an organic juice company, the largest in Springfield.
To set things right, Homer sneaks back to the farm at night, picks and processes all the vegetables he can find, and delivers the juice shipment to Springfield.
The juice causes intense psychedelic hallucinations in those who drink it, and the police quickly trace it to the farm and move in to arrest Homer, Seth, and Munchie.
Despite the circumstances, Kirkland stated that he "loved" working on the episode, and could relate to the story since he had grown up in a "sort of hippie commune school" in the late '60s and early '70s.
[1] The psychedelic version of The Simpsons' main theme that plays during the end credits was performed by Yo La Tengo, an American alternative rock band who are friends of Cary's.
[2] The episode features the theme from the musical Hair, "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock (1967), "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane (1967) and "Time of the Season" by The Zombies (1968).
[6] After drinking the tainted juice, Grampa and Jasper sit on a bench, laughing like the title characters from the series Beavis and Butt-Head,[7] while Flanders hallucinates skeletons and dancing bears (images associated with the Grateful Dead), marching hammers (from Pink Floyd's 1982 film Pink Floyd—The Wall) and The Rolling Stones' lips and tongue logo.
In its original American broadcast on November 15, 1998, "D'oh-in' in the Wind" received an 8.5 rating, according to Nielsen Media Research, translating to approximately 8.3 million viewers.
Matt Groening, Mike Scully, George Meyer, Donick Cary, Ron Hauge and Mark Kirkland participated in the DVD's audio commentary of the episode.
[12] Writing for DVD Movie Guide, Colin Jacobson stated that, even though he feels the sixties have been lampooned "many, many times over the years", he considered "D'oh-in' in the Wind" to be a successful spoof of the era.
[14] Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood of I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide were negative as well, calling the episode "dreadful".
They wrote that, aside from a couple of references to sixties psychedelia and the hippie movement, the only significant part of the episode is the revelation of Homer's middle name.