The Strong Arms of the Ma

"The Strong Arms of the Ma"
The Simpsons episode
File:Strong Arms of the Ma.gif
Episode no.	Season 14
Directed by	Pete Michels
Written by	Carolyn Omine
Original air dates	February 2, 2003
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	"The school does not need a 'regime change' "
Couch gag	The family stands behind a cardboard cutout of the room with holes, sticking their heads through

Strong Arms of The Ma (or Me, Myself and Steroides) is the true 300th episode of The Simpsons. "Barting Over" is advertised as the 300th episode, but in the episode they make a reference to it being the 302nd.

Plot

Kent Brockman interviews Rainier Wolfcastle on his show, and informs us that Rainier has filed for bankruptcy. However, instead of just moping about it, he is having a "Bankruptcy Garage Sale", where everything that he owns is up for sale at throwaway prices. Homer is duly impressed by this sale and decides to go there, until Lisa informs him that they are already at the sale.

The sale is going well, with Lenny and Carl checking out a lot of Rainier's memorabilia and Moe buying his Playdude centerfolds (the live ones). Bart gets impressed by a hidden sword, and Rainier shows him different other items with swords hidden in them, one of which is a pie (which has been eaten by Homer, hidden sword and all). Homer asks Rainier if he has anything that will go up in value when he dies and is shown his old weight-lifting set, complete with dumbbells and bench press. Homer takes it. Finally, it's time to go home, but the Simpsons have gone overboard with their purchases. In Tetris-style, Homer starts to arrange the items in the car. He even bends and twists his family into manageable shapes so that they too can fit in the car. At the end of it, he realises that there is no more room for him. So Marge drives the car home, while Rainier carries Homer in an oversized Snugli (which he used to carry Rob Schneider in one of his cheesy action-comedy movies "My Baby is an Ugly Man").

On the way home, Marge and the kids smell something awful. They pinpoint the source to Maggie. Marge quickly pulls into the Kwik-E-Mart, and Apu is reluctant about letting Marge use the restroom, but when he smells Maggie, he allows it. Later, as Marge comes out with a much sweeter-smelling Maggie, a shady character accosts her and threatens her with a gun. Finding only diapers in Marge's purse, he grabs her pearl necklace and takes off. Marge, stunned, walks to her car in a daze and breaks down at the wheel, in front of her kids.

The next day, they inform the cops and Chief Wiggum declares he will get on it right away. Later, as Marge is about to leave the house, Homer gives her some pepper spray and some tips on how to handle an attacker. She pulls up to the Kwik-E-Mart, but she is scared when Ralph greets her. She pepper-sprays him, causing Ralph to run away, crying and yelling, "Even my boogers taste spicy." Feeling guilty, she drives back home "where it's safe". When she reaches home, Bart tells her she's parked over the mailman. As she goes outside to help him, she is badly surprised again and runs inside. In a parody of the Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough At Last", the mailman, deciding to read while stuck under the car, breaks his glasses accidentally.

Marge is a nervous wreck and cannot bring herself to cross the threshold of her house. Homer and the kids try their level best to encourage her to go outside, but to no avail. Finally, she moves into the basement. There, feeling a bit safer, she prepares breakfast for the family and sets up a bed for herself. One day, when she is alone at home, feeling bored but still afraid to venture outside, she eyes Rainier Wolfcastle's weight-lifting set and decides to use it to pass the time.

In two weeks, she builds herself up and even gets a well-defined washboard stomach (much to Homer's delight). Suddenly, she dashes out to the garden to get some lemons. Realising that she is not afraid anymore, she starts running around town in happiness. Suddenly, she runs into her mugger, who tries to get tough with her again. But this time, she takes him to the cleaners, beating him up in a way similar to Sonny Corleone beating up Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather. However, she hit him so intensely he was a bloody mess by the time she was finished. The cops arrive and arrest the crook. Wiggum chastises the onlookers for not catching their own criminals: "You're not going to find those criminals by looking at your feet, people." Saddened, the crowd disperses and leaves.

Marge, pumped after catching the crook, starts exercising even more (to the theme from Rocky). One day, as she jogs by an open-air gym at the beach, she runs into Ruth Powers, her old neighbor (with whom she went on a high-speed escapade from the cops in "Marge on the Lam"). Ruth, pretty much buffed herself, tells Marge that she owes it all to steroids. She talks Marge into using them, attacking her inability to stop trying to be stronger, and also attacking her wish not to be weak and helpless, she also advises Marge to enter a women's bodybuilding contest. Marge, using the steroids, exercises harder than ever. At the contest, despite her massive training, she wins second prize. This puts Marge in a bad mood.

Later that night, at Moe's, Homer and a whole lot of other male Springfieldians are celebrating, Homer tries to calm the angry Marge down. The only problem is, due to the steroids, she has become extremely short-tempered and powerful (indeed, shortly before the contest, she more or less rapes Homer), a recipe for disaster. After Homer goes to the bathroom, she gets mad at what Moe says (about her coming second) and proceeds to beat up everyone at the bar as well as turn the bar into a wreck, in the path of her rampage are Springfieldians like Disco Stu, the Barfly and other Springfieldians who are beaten with a Jukebox, Lenny urges the others to stick up to the "Muscle Marge" by saying, "Pile up on her!" The remaining men pile up and hold her down but her rage is so great that she forcefully rises up, flinging the others, Homer goes back to the toilet as Marge throws men around in her fury, Marines come to stop the fight but are beaten up by the enraged Marge, Marge continues beating up men and destroying the tavern in her fit of rage. Finally, when Homer comes out and sees the "Muscle Marge", he pleads with her to look inside her and find the sweet, loving Marge and to lay off the steroids. Marge, horrified with what she's done, apologizes and leaves with Homer. Moe, in order to cover the costs of repairing his bar, sets fire to it; however, Carl points out that he has not insured the place yet. Later, at the Simpson house, Marge burns the weight set in the furnace as the show ends. Homer asks if Marge is ready for a "real workout."

Trivia

• The graffiti tag "El Barto" can be seen on a dumpster close to where Marge was held up - likely being made by Bart Simpson.
• In episode 1F09 "Homer the Vigilante" Marge seems to have a ball of replacement necklaces which is never mentioned in this episode (making Marge's freak-out over having her pearls stolen out of character for her).
• This is the 300th broadcast episode of The Simpsons.
• When in church, Reverend Lovejoy's hair is brown, as opposed to black.
• Ruth Powers makes a surprise returning appearance.
• Ruth mentions that she was in jail yet, in "Marge on the Lam" the epilogue says she got off because Lionel Hutz was her husband's lawyer.

Cultural references

• The way the "slightly-buffed-up" Marge confronts her mugger, is exactly the way James Caan's character (Sonny Corleone) beats up his sister's husband, Carlo Rizzi, in The Godfather.
• The scene with the mailman is a spoof of the classic The Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last". An earlier spoof of that episode also appears in Groening's other series, Futurama. (A Head in the Polls)
• When Homer tries to fit all the things he bought from Rainier Wolfcastle in the car, the theme of the famous game Tetris plays. When Homer realises there isn't room for him in the car, the final seven notes of Music A on the NES version plays as a Game Over tune.
• When Homer speaks to Marge after she destroyed Moe's, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings plays.
• The name of the female strong person contest is the "Iron Maidens", a possible reference to the mediaeval torture device of the same name.
• One of the female bodybuilders in the talent contest is seen and heard singing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the intended (but not used) theme song to the renowned Western of the same title.
• The song that plays on the jukebox when Marge hits Disco Stu is Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax. The Simpsons choose it because it's an old dance/disco song from the 80's.
• Some of the songs that play when Marge rips the jukebox out of the wall at Moe's Tavern are "At Last" by Etta James and "Love Is A Battlefield" by Pat Benatar.
• The fact that Marge, the housewife, gets strong and takes advantage of it is a possible spoof of the Family Guy episode, Lethal Weapons .