Upon his release from jail, Homer hosts an illegal poker game and stumbles across Herman running a jean-counterfeiting operation in the Simpsons' garage.
After Wiggum and the other officers confiscate the counterfeit jeans for their personal use, the chief informs Marge that they cannot detain Herman because the evidence has mysteriously disappeared.
[4] The joke where the police officers laugh at Marge for a long time was pitched by David Mirkin and features a "crazy twist" at the end where Wiggum says "welcome aboard".
Director Mark Kirkland found that it made it awkward for staging in scenes, so they altered the design to have her hair pulled down.
[2] Marge's difficulties in scaling the wall in the police academy's obstacle course references An Officer and a Gentleman, where the lone female cadet had similar issues.
Homer said to Herman that Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt and Antoine Bugle Boy are victims of the counterfeit jeans ring.
[9] Robin Oliver rates the episode "thumbs up" in a review in The Sydney Morning Herald, where she says of The Simpsons as a series: "this encouragingly funny show knows how to tug at the heartstrings".
I can't quite figure out how Marge stays in such good shape, but her escapades as a cop are funny, and the episode works best when she arrests Homer.
'[11] Kurt M. Koenigsberger analyzes Homer's comments about the Springfield Pops rendition of the Star Wars theme in Koenigsberger's piece "Commodity Culture and Its Discontents: Mr. Bennett, Bart Simpson, and the Rhetoric of Modernism" published in the compilation work Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture edited by John Alberti.
[8] Koenigsberger comments: "The joke in this opening scene involves a confusion of high and popular artistic production: Marge treats the Springfield Pops as 'culture' and expects that the usually boorish Homer will need to be drawn into the spectacle.
of Homer edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, contributors Gerald J. Erion and Joseph A. Zeccardi cite the episode as an example in their piece titled, "Marge's Moral Motivation".
[13] Erion and Zeccardi assert that Marge has "virtuous personality traits" which they compare to Aristotle, commenting: "Whether breaking up a counterfeit jeans ring run out of her garage in "The Springfield Connection", escaping a cult commune in "The Joy of Sect", or standing up to a Poe-ssessed "Treehouse of Horror".
"[13] They also note that "Marge's crime-stopping vigilantism in "The Springfield Connection" and her dangerous escape from the Movementarian commune in "The Joy of Sect" demonstrate that she is genuinely brave, but not foolhardy.