The Food Wife

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"The Food Wife"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.Season 23
Episode 5
Directed byTimothy Bailey
Written byMatt Selman
Production codeNABF20
Original air dateNovember 13, 2011 (2011-11-13)
Guest appearances
Episode chronology
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"The Food Wife" is the fifth episode of the

meth lab
, where a gunfight starts as the police burst in.

The episode was written by Matt Selman. It contains several references to different foods and famous chefs, and is largely devoted to the foodie culture, which Selman has said that he "always thought was funny and fascinating. The idea of food as not only something you enjoy eating, but as something that you are so passionate about that you're kind of bragging about it."[1] Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the stars and creators of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, guest starred in the episode as two foodies and performed a hip hop song that makes fun of foodies. Chefs and media personalities Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, and Mario Batali also guest starred in the episode, but as themselves in a dream sequence. Although "The Food Wife" has received generally positive reviews from television critics, particularly for the hip hop song, it has also attracted criticism from certain food critics.

Plot

Ethiopian food. Although initially averse to the exotic food, Marge is reminded that she wants to be a fun mom and therefore asks for the most authentic dish on the menu for her and her children. All three of them enjoy the food and are joined by a group of foodies, who share anecdotes on their food adventures. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade a resistant and gluttony Homer to try their Ethiopian takeout, Marge, Bart and Lisa start their own food blog
, "The Three Mouthketeers". The blog quickly becomes popular and the three spend much time together trying out new foods and writing about them.

When the trio gets an invitation to an exclusive molecular gastronomy restaurant called El Chemistri, Homer is angry over being left out. Marge invites him out of pity and he plans to reclaim his "fun dad" title, leaving Marge worried about losing her new bond with the children. In one of her dreams that night, she and the children are trying out new food together with chef Anthony Bourdain when Homer jumps in on a hop ball and eats up everything, taking away the children's attention from Marge. Homer, Bart, Lisa, Bourdain, and other famous chefs that have shown up, such as Mario Batali, then jump away from Marge on hop balls, leaving her by herself. Afterwards, Gordon Ramsay appears next to her, telling her that she should not have invited Homer. The next day, she deliberately gives Homer the wrong address to the restaurant.

When Marge and the children arrive at El Chemistri, Homer unknowingly arrives at an illegal

doggie bags
from the chef. After arriving, Marge throws apple pie from her doggie bag into the mouth of the meth dealer, causing a flashback to his childhood when his mother used to make apple pie (a reference to the flashback experienced by the infamous “Anton Ego” in the Disney movie “Ratatouille”). With the help of this distraction, the police subdue him. After Marge apologizes to Homer, they and their children decide to have fun together as a whole family from now on. At Krustyland, Homer gives the kids $50 to enjoy themselves and he decides to spend quality time with Marge.

Production

Staff member Matt Selman wrote the episode.

"The Food Wife" was written by executive producer of The Simpsons Matt Selman. The writing process began around September 2010.[1] According to Selman, the episode mainly revolves around Homer and Marge competing about who is perceived as the most fun by Bart and Lisa, a situation that he thinks parents can identify with in real-life.[2] The episode also focuses heavily on foodies and food blogs.[1] Selman said in an interview with New York magazine's Grub Street publication that the foodie culture is "just a world that I always thought was funny and fascinating. The idea of food as not only something you enjoy eating, but as something that you are so passionate about that you're kind of bragging about it. 'I'm the one who discovered this particular Korean pork-neck soup restaurant,' and you can kind of claim that as yours. The blogging just feeds into that kind of territorial element that I always thought was inherently funny. And when I write Simpsons episodes, I try to start with a world I think is funny, and think, 'What's a good story we can tell in that world, using the characters that we have?'"[1]

Describing himself as "sort of a foodie", Selman has said that food is constantly on his mind and that he particularly likes reading food critic Jonathan Gold's reviews in LA Weekly.[1][3] He told LA Weekly's Squid Ink food blog that he likes foodies, despite making fun of them in "The Food Wife". He commented that on the show, he has often "taken something that I love, found the one little weird, bad thing about it and harped on that", giving foodies as an example and writing: "You can make fun of them for being pretentious or snobby or taking the fun out of eating. That you'd rather photograph something than taste it is a funny nuance of the phenomenon. That it's more about sticking your flag in something than actually enjoying it. We kind of make fun of foodies, but in real life we actually love them."[4]

Selman was pleased with the finished result of the episode.

blue-collar kind of guy who doesn't like foreign food, weird food, savoring food, intellectualizing food, blogging about it, photographing it – he just wants to be stuffed all the time."[1]

Cultural references

Selman wanted to include things in the episode that "only really hard-core foodies would have any idea what we were talking about. This was like a love letter to foodie culture."

phở from Vietnam and how to pronounce it correctly, and the inclusion of the El Chemistri owner who is based on the Spanish chef José Andrés (known for using molecular gastronomy).[3] Selman has commented that food produced with the help of molecular gastronomy "lends itself to comedy quite nicely. There’s a dish [at El Chemistri], for instance, called Regret. The waiter cries into one's soup when he serves it. The human tear is the final ingredient."[3] The fictional character Swedish Chef is also seen in the episode,[4] and the scene where the meth dealer is reminded of his childhood after eating the apple pie is a reference to the Pixar film Ratatouille, which was written and directed by former Simpsons consultant Brad Bird.[6]

In addition to the foodie culture, "The Food Wife" parodies the video game industry and references games such as

Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that is presented annually in the United States by the Entertainment Software Association.[2] This marked the first time that the family visited a video game convention in The Simpsons.[2] Selman and other staff members on the show had previously visited E3 during the release of The Simpsons video games such as The Simpsons Game.[2] While appearing on GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley on November 11, 2011, Selman commented that "We've been to so many [E3s] and we've been pushed around, and knocked around, and seen so many PR guys [talk] about how hard it was working on their game. We've seen how expensive the food is, and how nuts it is, and the bloggers, and the photos, and just the noises [...] We had to do it on the show."[2]

In the episode, Homer and his children want to see the unveiling of a new Funtendo console called Zii Zu, which is a parody of Nintendo's Wii U console. As he and the children make their way through the crowded convention to get to the unveiling, the screen turns into a first-person shooter game through the eyes of Homer. He uses Frisbees and a fire extinguisher as weapons to get forward.[2] According to Selman, the inspiration for this came from the fact that "if you've been to E3, you know it's insane, it's super-crowded, it's super-loud, and walking through it feels like a video game, like a nightmarish first-person video game of bloggers and nerds. You just want to get the thing that you want to get to."[2]

Guest appearances

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the stars and creators of the American sketch comedy television series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, guest starred in the episode as foodies Amus Bruse and Fois Garth, respectively.[1] These two characters are among the foodies that Marge, Bart, and Lisa meet at the Ethiopian restaurant. In the episode, they rhyme a hip hop song that according to Selman is "all bragging about how awesome and cool you are as a foodie."[1] It was co-written by the duo,[8] and was inspired by the song "Empire State of Mind".[1] Selman has commented that "In animated TV shows, whenever you're trying to show people having fun doing their new thing [in this case, Marge and the children creating content for their blog], it just kind of becomes a boring montage. And we've done so many montages on The Simpsons over 25 years, it's like, oh, God, no more montages. [...] So we were like, 'Why not do a silly rap song?' Rapping is sort of inherently boastful, and there's something about being a foodie that's inherently boastful. It's like the boastfulness links those things. So Tim and Eric perform a food rap song in the show—an extremely silly rap song, and the name is intentionally silly: 'Blogging a Food Blog.'"[1]

Chefs and media personalities (from left to right) Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, and Mario Batali guest starred in the episode as themselves.

American chef Anthony Bourdain guest starred in the episode as himself. Selman wanted him on the show because he is a big fan and he thinks Marge would have a liking for him.[1] Bourdain's appearance was cut short because the episode ended up being too long, and as a result, his "bad boy persona is not fully explored," Selman told Squid Ink.[4] In addition to Bourdain, guest stars in the episode include chefs and media personalities Gordon Ramsay and Mario Batali as themselves. These three all appear in Marge's dream.[9][10][11] When asked by Digital Spy about his appearance, Ramsay said that "I grew up watching The Simpsons and love that they're foodies," and joked that "For God's sake, I had to promise Marge a spot on MasterChef to get on the bloody show!"[12] Selman wishes that he could have given Batali more than one line, but has admitted that "You just can't fit everything into a 21-minute show."[4]

Release

The episode originally aired on the

share.[13][14] The Simpsons became the highest-rated program in Fox's Animation Domination lineup that night in terms of both total viewers and in the 18–49 demographic, finishing before new episodes of Family Guy, American Dad!, and Allen Gregory.[13][14][15] For the week of November 7–13, "The Food Wife" finished seventeenth in the ratings among all prime-time broadcasts in the 18–49 demographic.[16]

Reception

Critical reviews

Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Ology (website)'s Josh Harrison gave it an eight out of ten rating, writing that "You gotta love these Simpsons episodes that really get into the heart of a subculture. Diving head-first into the world of foodies and food blogging (after a hilarious geeky pit-stop at a video game expo), 'The Food Wife' shish-kabobs gourmet diehards while highlighting a very real problem between Homer and Marge."

Game Revolution as well. He commented that the writers "nailed it. Everything from the massive displays, long lines, and even the look of the Los Angeles Convention Center was spot on. The best was how they portrayed people with 'VIP passes', you know those things that we journalists get, as douches who think they're better than the regulars."[17]

In his review of "The Food Wife", HitFix's Alan Sepinwall commended it for "stay[ing] true to the characters. Of course the kids would consider Homer to be the fun dad on those occasions when he's actually making an effort, and of course Marge would feel jealous of this. And if she goes too far in trying to keep this as her special thing, she also recognizes it immediately, feels guilty throughout the meal and then heads off to save the day, complete with a great homage to the climax of Ratatouille."[8] Sepinwall also praised the episode for being "packed with great jokes", such as Heidecker and Wareheim's hip hop song and the scenes at the video game convention where the screen turns into a first-person shooter game.[8] Similarly, Haydens Childs of The A.V. Club praised the episode as "funny and well-observed", giving it a B+ grade, and cited the hip hop song as the highlight of the episode.[18] He also praised Bourdain, Batali, and Ramsay, and stated that he wished Bourdain would have gotten a bigger part in the episode. Childs further wrote that "The best thing about this episode is that it doesn’t try to stuff any outlandish plot mechanics or out-of-character character moments down the viewers’ throats. It sticks to the basics: the family dynamic combined with gentle mocking of a still-current fad. I say 'still-current' because although it is probably true that food blogging is a bit past its expiration date in some cities, I don’t think that it has been overdone everywhere."[18]

Response from food critics

Reception of "The Food Wife" from food critics has been mixed to positive. Before the episode aired, Robert Sietsema of The Village Voice disapproved of it for being outdated. He commented that "this show should have been done, say, two or three years ago, when food blogging was hot. By now, many food bloggers of our acquaintance have out-migrated to paying gigs, and the concept of the food blog has been co-opted by every major media outlet, rendering real food blogs – the old-fashioned kind, where someone stood alone in their kitchen cooking things, or wandered the hinterlands seeking out unique deliciousness – nearly obsolete."[19] Sietsema also criticized the scenes showcasing molecular gastronomy because he thought they were out of date, since molecular gastronomy is, "by now, long past its prime".[19] Chris Shott, a food critic for Washington City Paper's Young & Hungry column and blog, wrote negatively about the character that owns El Chemistri and is a parody of José Andrés. He commented that "For one thing, the character seems far more subdued than the kooky, wild-eyed power drill-wielding cook we saw on Conan recently. The satire here, involving a deconstructed Caesar salad of foams, gels and airs, is more a riff on molecular gastronomy in general than a send-up of Andrés' over-the-top personality."[20]

Food critic Katharine Shilcutt of the Houston Press' criticized the episode for giving what she thought was an inaccurate depiction of foodies, as people that are "tacky, snotty, slightly racist, hoarders of food experiences that you gather like rare gems and patronizingly hold over other people's heads."[21] Shilcutt added that she found it upsetting that what she believes to be the moral of the episode is that "Educated, passionate people are elitists. It reduces all the hard work that people put into creating good, honest food into a joke, and not a terribly funny one. There was no balance in the episode between smug, arrogant, obnoxious foodies and those who have a genuine, guileless interest in food and all its important permutations in our lives."[21]

Other food critics have written positively about "The Food Wife". Lesley Balla of LA Weekly's Squid Ink blog listed her ten favorite quotes from the episode, placing the entire hip hop song about foodies and food blogging at the top. She commented that "Plenty of insider jokes at foodies' expense season the episode. So was it as funny to a non-food-world person as it was to someone who could identify each culinary personality in Marge's dream [...]? Safe to say, yes; it is still The Simpsons, after all. For foodists, the whole episode is entirely quotable — we're sure it will be in the food blogosphere for years to come."[22] Laine Doss, a food blogger for the Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach, commented that she "loved Lisa Simpson's list of cutest vegetarians [that appears on the blog], which included Paul McCartney, Russell Brand, and Edward Cullen."[23] Doss, as well as Elizabeth Gunnison of Esquire's Eat Like a Man blog, also commended the hip hop song.[24][25]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Sytsma, Alan (November 7, 2011). "Simpsons Executive Producer Matt Selman on the Show's Upcoming Foodie Episode". Grub Street. New York. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  2. ^
    Spike
    .
  3. ^ a b c Baum, Gary (November 10, 2011). "The Eat Sheet: Where 'The Simpsons' Dine in L.A." The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d Rochlin, Margy (November 9, 2011). "Q & A With Simpsons Exec Producer Matt Selman: The Food Wife, Food Blogging + Dining at Jitlada With Matt Groening". Squid Ink. LA Weekly. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  5. ^ Brion, Raphael (November 14, 2011). "Here's a Thoroughly Annotated Slideshow of The Simpsons Food Episode". Eater National. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  6. ^ a b c Harrison, Josh (November 13, 2011). "'The Simpsons' Recap: 'The Food Wife". Ology. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  7. 1UP.com
    . Retrieved November 18, 2011.
  8. ^ a b c Sepinwall, Alan (November 14, 2011). "Review: 'The Simpsons' - 'The Food Wife': Don't meth with Marge". HitFix. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  9. ^ West, Kelly (November 10, 2011). "The Simpsons Preview: The Food Wife, Featuring Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Bourdain And Mario Batali". Cinema Blend. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  10. ^ Roush, Matt (November 11, 2011). "Critic's Guide to Weekend TV: Fringe, Primeval, A British Lunch and More!". TV Guide. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  11. The Huffington Post
    . Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  12. ^ a b Fletcher, Alex (November 11, 2011). "Gordon Ramsay visits 'The Simpsons". Digital Spy. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  13. ^ a b Gorman, Bill (November 15, 2011). "Sunday Final Ratings: 'The Simpsons,' '60 Minutes' Adjusted Down + Final CBS & 'Sunday Night Football' Ratings". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on November 17, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  14. ^ a b Gorman, Bill (November 14, 2011). "TV Ratings Sunday: Of Course Football Wins As 'Simpsons,' 'Allen Gregory, 'American Dad' Fall; 'Desperate Housewives,' 'Pan Am' Rise". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on November 17, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  15. ^ Rice, Lynette (November 14, 2011). "'Pan Am' picks up viewers on big football night". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  16. ^ Gorman, Bill (November 15, 2011). "TV Ratings Broadcast Top 25: 'Sunday Night Football,' 'Big Bang Theory' Top Week #8 Among Adults 18-49". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on November 18, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  17. Game Revolution
    . Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  18. ^ a b Childs, Hayden (November 13, 2011). "The Food Wife". The A.V. Club. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
  19. ^ a b Sietsema, Robert (November 10, 2011). "Marge Becomes a Food Blogger on this Sunday's Simpsons (Yawn)". Fork in the Road. The Village Voice. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  20. ^ Shott, Chris (November 14, 2011). "Real José Andrés More Animated Than Simpsons Parody". Young & Hungry. Washington City Paper. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  21. ^ a b Shilcutt, Katharine (November 15, 2011). "How The Simpsons Makes Foodies Look Like Smug, Elitist Schmucks". Eating Our Words. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  22. ^ Balla, Lesley (November 14, 2011). "10 Favorite Food Quotes in Simpsons' 'The Food Wife'". Squid Ink. LA Weekly. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  23. ^ Doss, Laine (November 14, 2011). "Simpsons Top Secret Food Blog Photo Leaked". Short Order. Miami New Times. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  24. ^ Doss, Laine (November 14, 2011). "The Simpsons' Food Blog Rap: Blogging a Food Blog". Clean Plate Charlie. New Times Broward-Palm Beach. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  25. ^ Gunnison, Elizabeth (November 14, 2011). "In Which Marge Simpson Becomes a Food Blogger". Eat Like a Man. Esquire. Retrieved November 16, 2011.

External links

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