Tennis the Menace
The episode features guest appearances from tennis professionals Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and the Williams sisters as themselves.
Around eight million American homes tuned in to watch "Tennis the Menace" during its original airing, and in 2009 it was released on DVD along with the rest of the episodes of the twelfth season.
"Tennis the Menace" was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Jen Kamerman as part of the twelfth season of The Simpsons (2000–2001).
"[1] Maxtone-Graham did a lot a research for the scenes at the beginning of the episode where the Simpsons visit a funeral salesman at a cemetery.
The Simpsons show runner Mike Scully has said that he thought this was "probably too long to wait before getting the story started.
[1] However, Scully liked the fact that the staff included a comment in the episode on its "screw you" beginning by having Homer say "I'll bet you didn't see that coming!"
[1] For instance, at one point, the family was to return home to watch the match in which Serena and Sampras faced off against Venus and Agassi on television.
[1] "Tennis the Menace" features guest appearances from Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and sisters Venus and Serena Williams.
This kind of digital coloring would not be used permanently on the show until the season fourteen episodes "Treehouse of Horror XIII" and "The Great Louse Detective" (2002).
[8][9] The reason for the long gap between this episode and "The Great Louse Detective" was that the staff of The Simpsons wanted to refine the look some more before doing it full-time.
[12] On August 18, 2009, "Tennis the Menace" was released on DVD as part of the box set The Simpsons – The Complete Twelfth Season.
Staff members Mike Scully, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, John Frink, Don Payne, Matt Selman, Max Pross, as well as television writer and producer Philip Rosenthal, participated in the DVD audio commentary for the episode.
[14] Nancy Basile of About.com wrote in her 2003 review that the plot of the episode "allowed us to see more secondary characters than usual.
"[15] In July 2007, Simon Crerar of The Times listed Agassi's performance as one of the thirty-three funniest cameos in the history of the show.
[16] In his review of the twelfth season of The Simpsons, Jason Bailey of DVD Talk wrote that the staff members' "habit of using the first act as a red herring, only semi-connected to the rest of the show, is ingenious and hilarious [...] They'd been doing this kind of thing for years, but it still plays; what's more, they've begun to acknowledge it, and wink about it.
