Misplaced Pages

"Margical History Tour" is the eleventh episode of the fifteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 8, 2004. The episode was written by Brian Kelley and directed by Mike B. Anderson.

In this episode, Marge tells Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse three stories about historic figures. The episode received mixed reviews.

Plot

When Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse go to the library to study but see that most of the books have been removed due to their unpopularity, so Marge tells them stories about history.

Henry VIII

Henry VIII (Homer) desires a male heir. He has a dream of a conversation with a son (Bart), who taunts him about his failure. When Anne Boleyn (Lindsay Naegle) promises to produce a son were she his wife, Margerine of Aragon (Marge) takes Henry to a marriage counselor (Dr. Hibbert) who encourages him to remain faithful but changes his mind after Henry threatens him. Sir Thomas More (Ned Flanders) protests that divorce is not permitted in the Catholic Church. The King says he will start his own Church. More objects, prompting Henry to shoot him out of a cannon. Henry and Margarine explain their divorce to their daughter (Lisa), who says Henry's heir could be female but leaves when Henry threatens her.

Henry's new Church grants him his divorce. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Reverend Lovejoy), now head of the Church of England, officiates Henry's wedding to Anne. She bears Henry another daughter and is beheaded. Henry marries a total of six times but fails to produce a son.

Years later, Henry is old and lying in his bed with Margerine by his side. He apologizes for locking her up and asks her to become his Queen again. Margerine accepts then smothers Henry with a pillow.

Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea

Meriwether Lewis (Lenny) and William Clark (Carl) are assigned to explore the West by President Thomas Jefferson (Mayor Quimby). They meet a Shoshone tribe, whose chief (Homer) offers them the guidance of his daughter, Sacagawea (Lisa). They are accompanied by her husband (Milhouse) until he is slaughtered by Sacagawea's brother (Bart).

Sacagawea gives them tips on how to survive the land but quickly tires of Lewis and Clark's stupidity. She leaves them and sets off back home. She encounters a mountain lion, but Lewis and Clark save her using her advice. The party arrives at the Pacific Ocean and a downpour begins, prompting Lewis and Clark to name the place Eugene, Oregon. The two explorers promises Sacagawea national recognition, but it is not until the present that she was retrospectively honored with the creation of the Sacagawea dollar.

Mozart and Salieri

Popular Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Bart) plays sonatas on the piano in Vienna and is pushed along by his father (Homer). Antonio Salieri (Lisa) is resentful of her brother's talents, especially when Mozart wins the award for best composer. At Mozart's flatulence-themed opera, The Musical Fruit, Salieri serves the Emperor (Mr. Burns) drugged wine. The opera is a success until the audience sees the Emperor asleep and mimics him, leaving Mozart stunned.

His failure leads to Mozart's fall from popularity, causing him to become deathly ill. At her brother's deathbed, Salieri says she wanted to ruin his life, not kill him. Mozart says he thought highly of Salieri's work, believing that it would be remembered more than his, but his youthful death ensures he and his music will be immortalized forever. He then dies. Salieri visits the Emperor's court to submit Mozart's Requiem as her own. The Emperor, however, is already focused on Ludwig van Beethoven (Nelson Muntz), whose performance of "Ode to Joy" on the piano prompts him to declare all other music obsolete. Crushed, Salieri throws the Requiem away and boards a carriage filled with lunatics.

Epilogue

Lisa says Marge's story of Mozart and Salieri is based upon the movie Amadeus and calls it inaccurate. Homer notes that the actor starred both in Amadeus and in Animal House and begins singing its theme.

Cultural references

Some items seen in the library are 'Everybody Poops: The Video, Yu-Gi-Oh! Price Guides, and Itchy & Scratchy books on tape.

The title of the episode is a satire of The Beatles' movie, song, and album Magical Mystery Tour.

When King Henry first appears, he is gorging himself while singing the 1911 music hall song "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am". The lyrics, however, are altered to refer to the King's enormous appetite and reputation for gluttony. Henry also wipes his face with Magna Carta, a document which limits the power of the Monarchy and forms the basis of the Constitution of the United Kingdom. During King Henry's dream about his son, a brief snatch of the song, "Greensleeves" can be heard. While in the marriage counselor's office, Henry is reading a magazine called The Yorker, a send-up of The New Yorker, until Margerine reminds him that they've come to talk about their problems. The Sir Thomas More subplot is a satire of Fred Zinnemann's Academy Award-winning film, A Man for All Seasons, starring Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas and Robert Shaw as King Henry. Later, in a dig at Tudor anti-Catholicism, Henry watches a Punch and Judy-style show in which Itchy & Scratchy accuse each other of conducting an illegal Catholic Mass and for refusing to sign the Act of Supremacy.

As Lisa points out at the end of the episode, the Mozart segment is a satire of Peter Shaffer's stage play Amadeus and Miloš Forman's Academy Award-winning film of the same name. During Mozart's first concert, Otto Mann calls out a request for "Sonata in A, K.331". In reality, the K numbering system for Mozart's work was not introduced until 70 years after Mozart's death. Later, Salieri is compared to the three "untalented" Mozarts—Randy, Jermaine, and Tito from the Jackson Five. Mozart's opera "The Musical Fruit" is a satire of both The Magic Flute, and the children's song "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit," while the opera is sung to the tune of his composition Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which also plays over the closing credits. A fragment from the movement Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem can be heard while Mozart is dying. When Salieri arrives at the Imperial Palace, the Emperor is listening to Beethoven perform the Ode to Joy from his 9th Symphony on the piano. When the Emperor declares all other music obsolete, Beethoven points at Salieri and "Haw Haws" to the opening of his 5th Symphony.

The epilogue is similar to the one from Animal House.

Reception

Viewing figures

The episode was watched by 8.87 million viewers, which was the 48th most-watched show that week.

Critical response

Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide thought it was one of the better episodes of the season but thought the Amadeus segment was the worst of the episode.

On Four Finger Discount, Guy Davis and Brendan Dando thought it was a filler episode but liked the scene of Homer as Henry VIII’s dream of Bart as his son.

In 2021, Ben Sherlock of Screen Rant ranked this episode as one of the series' 10 best anthology episodes.

References

1. ^ Jacobson, Colin (December 13, 2012). "The Simpsons: The Complete Fifteenth Season (2003)". DVD Movie Guide. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2024.
2. "National Nielsen Viewership (Feb. 2-8)". The Los Angeles Times. February 11, 2004. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 10, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
3. Davis, Guy; Dando, Brendan (April 29, 2023). "Margical History Tour (S15E11)". Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) (Podcast). Event occurs at 4:50. Archived from the original on July 23, 2024. Retrieved October 26, 2024.
4. Sherlock, Ben (May 10, 2021). "The Simpsons: 10 Best Anthology Episodes, Ranked". Screen Rant. Archived from the original on April 12, 2023. Retrieved April 12, 2023.

External links

• "Margical History Tour" at IMDb
• Margical History Tour Script on Springfield! Springfield!

• The Simpsons season 15 episodes
• 2004 American television episodes
• Tudor England in popular culture
• Cultural depictions of Henry VIII
• Cultural depictions of Anne Boleyn
• Cultural depictions of Catherine of Aragon
• Cultural depictions of Thomas Jefferson
• Fiction about uxoricide
• Fiction about regicide
• Cultural depictions of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
• Cultural depictions of Ludwig van Beethoven
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in fiction
• Cultural depictions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Cultural depictions of Antonio Salieri
• Cultural depictions of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
• Fiction about fratricide
• Television episodes set in Oregon
• Television episodes set in Vienna
• Television episodes set in England
• Television episodes written by Brian Kelley (writer)