Marge, Bart and Lisa visit various Irish landmarks while Homer and Grampa buy O'Flanagan's during a night of binge drinking and soon discover that pubs are no longer popular in Ireland.

Marshall pitched the idea in 2007 and the script was ready for a table read later that year, but the Writers Guild of America strike delayed work on the episode.

Guest stars for the episode include Colm Meaney as Tom O'Flanagan, Glen Hansard as a street musician and Markéta Irglová as an Eastern European woman.

The episode contains numerous jokes about Ireland and references to Irish culture including the Giant's Causeway, Blarney Castle, James Joyce, leprechauns, Guinness, Riverdance, U2 and the film Once.

To promote the broadcast, Jean, Brooks and voice actor Nancy Cartwright visited Ireland and participated in the Saint Patrick's Day parade in Dublin.

Homer and Grampa sit down at the pub and start drinking while Marge takes Bart and Lisa to visit various Irish landmarks, such as the Giant's Causeway, Blarney Castle, the Guinness brewery and the city of Dublin.

[5] Executive producer Al Jean said the episode is intended to be "an affectionate love letter to Ireland" because many of the writers have Irish roots.

[6] He added, "The episode is based on the experiences of myself and a lot of the writers on The Simpsons who have Irish ancestry and come back to visit to find it very different, much more hi-tech.

[8] In the latter case, Rio de Janeiro's tourist board—who claimed that the city was portrayed as having rampant street crime, kidnappings, slums, and monkey and rat infestations—went so far as to threaten Fox with legal action.

[12] For the episode, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová reprised their roles as a street musician and Eastern European woman, respectively, from the film Once.

[19] Homer says that he wants to take Ireland back to the "good old days of Angela's Ashes", referencing Irish author Frank McCourt's memoir.

[21] Musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová reprise their roles as buskers from the 2007 Irish film Once - much of which was originally shot in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, coincidentally a location that is also featured in Ulysses.

Global simulcasts shows from several American networks and the occasional special forces them to push episodes of The Simpsons to an earlier timeslot.

[28] To promote the broadcast, executive producers Al Jean and James L. Brooks, as well as Nancy Cartwright visited Ireland and participated in the Saint Patrick's Day parade in Dublin.

[11] To promote the episode in the United States, several people dressed as Marge visited pubs in various major cities on March 17 and gave away codes for free cell phone ringtones and wallpaper.

[28] Before "In the Name of the Grandfather" aired, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power started taking bets on what would happen in the episode.

[31] The original airing of the episode on Fox in the United States finished with a 3.6 Nielsen rating and was viewed in 6.15 million homes.

He added that "even as it reveled in stereotypes, it used them to continue the running joke about how Ireland doesn't conform to American's [sic] views of it.

He wrote that he enjoyed the jokes about the Irish landmarks but called it "a fairly slapdash, ramshackle half-hour" and mentioned that Colm Meaney deserved a better role.

[20] Evan Fanning of the Sunday Independent wrote "Yes, The Simpsons came to Ireland and all we got was some lousy rehashed jokes and a feeling that the whole thing was a bit of a waste of time.