Homer Goes to College
It acquired a Nielsen rating of 11.3, and it was tied with Beverly Hills, 90210 as the highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired.
After Homer is rejected by every school he applies to, Mr. Burns helps him enroll at Springfield University, since he is a member of the admissions board there.
Homer continues to hold these beliefs even after meeting the university's Dean Peterson, a friendly, laid-back young man who at one time played bass for The Pretenders.
When the pig falls ill after Homer feeds him malt liquor, the nerds are blamed for the incident and expelled.
When Marge orders Homer to evict them, he tries to get them re-admitted to college with an elaborate hoax: he will nearly run down Peterson with his car, but the nerds will push him from harm's way at the last moment, hopefully reinstating them.
Homer fails his final exam, so the nerds hack into the school's student records and change his grade to an A+.
O'Brien was informed that he had been hired by NBC not long before the recording session for this episode began, and he was forced to walk out on his contract.
[3] The Fox Network executives had wanted the season premiere to be "Homer Goes to College" because it was an Animal House parody.
[6] The animators were short on time, so for the design of Gary they took an earlier drawing of director Rich Moore and made him African-American.
[1] The film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is also referenced when Benjamin, Doug, and Gary imitate the Knights who say Ni.
[8] A picture in the dorm showing four men wearing silver dome hats resembles the '80s new wave band Devo.
[1] He also offers the nuclear inspectors a washer and dryer or the contents of a mysterious box, which parodies the gameshow Let's Make a Deal.
[9] Mr. Burns tries to get Homer into college by using violence and hitting one of the members of the admissions committee with a baseball bat, a reference to the film The Untouchables.
The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote: "Homer at his most excruciatingly stupid in another superb episode—his attitude to the college's 'stuffy old dean' (who was, in fact, bassist for The Pretenders) is a joy.
[13] DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson commented that it did not "quite live up to its two predecessors "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" and "Cape Feare" this year, but it remains a strong show nonetheless.
[15] Nathan Rabin writes of how the episode toys with expectations: "When it comes out that Homer still needs to pass the big test (he had conveniently forgotten that detail amidst all the pranks and stunts) he cycles his way through the kind of cramming montage that invariably ends with a proud graduate clutching an 'A' paper.
