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"Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons' fifteenth season, first aired on January 25, 2004. The title word plays off of the book and film "Diary of a Mad Housewife."

Synopsis

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Homer is at the local Krusty Burger drive-in window, ordering nearly everything on the menu and even asks for the paper bag to be deep-fried and finally a Diet Coke... deep-fried. As he drives to work, he eats the food, placing them all over his body for easy access. Suddenly, as he bites into a burrito, the filling flies out and splatters all over the windshield. Unable to see the road (and trying to see it using the glass on his wristwatch), he swerves towards the power plant. Meanwhile, at the plant, Mr. Burns seems to have finally impressed a security inspector with his security arrangements. But Homer crashes through the wall and hits the inspector. Homer is fired immediately and thrown out unceremoniously, along with his car.

Meanwhile, Marge, Bart and Lisa go to a book store (with contains a lot of advertising on DVDs, software, etc, but little on books). While Lisa runs off to see the books (which reside at the second level of the book store) and Bart tease the Ph.D.s by fooling them that there's a headhunter looking for a person with Ph.D., Marge sees one of her favourite bestselling authors giving a book reading of her latest love stories. After the reading, she asks her if she can also be a writer. The author encourages her to try and Marge decides to give it a shot.

Meanwhile, Homer walks around dejectedly. He comes upon a "Help Wanted" sign at a Used Car Lot. He takes a job there. The owner tells him that after they give all the details to the customers, they go in the next room and watch them through a One-way mirror. Homer tries this with two customers, and laughs a little bit too diabolically and leaves. The customers are spooked - they discuss Homer's flatulence (and his peculiar habit of turning up the radio to hide the smell) and then they leave the office. Later, as he tours the used car lot, Homer sees an ambulance from the 1960s. The owner tells him that nobody wants it and that nothing works correctly except the siren. Homer gets tempted and takes the ambulance after hearing the siren (which he hears saying "Buy Me! Buy Me Buy Me!").

He drives home, blaring the siren, and tells his family that he has left his job as a used-car salesman and has become an ambulance driver. Marge is none too pleased to hear that he has lost two jobs and bought an ambulance, without consulting with her. She asks him to take care of the kids while she writes her novel. He agrees to take them along in the ambulance. Bart teases Lisa with a defibrillator, while Lisa retaliates with a morphine-filled syringe. Homer takes them away from the kids and uses them on himself, demonstratively.

When Homer and the kids are gone, Marge starts work on her novel. She takes inspiration from a painting of a yacht and decides to write a story about whaling times (which she feels has never been done before) and thanks the painting, which is, and is titled, a "Scene from Moby Dick". She starts and finishes her first few sentences and runs off for a brownie break.

Meanwhile, Homer runs his ambulance service. Unfortunately for his customers (patients), he loses his way and refuses to accept that he is lost and goes in circles.

Marge, at home, writes about a dutiful lady (Temperance, inspired by herself) providing for her family, when her loving whaler husband (inspired by Homer) returns with a great catch. At that moment, in real life, Homer and the kids return and Homer starts demanding his dinner. Marge gets annoyed and changes the husband in the story to be a great brute, who returns with a seagull, that died of natural consequences. She now needs a desirable stranger and after seeing Ned Flanders, she bases the character, Sirius, on him. She completes the book, titled The Harpooned Heart. She gets rave reviews for her pre-published material and decides to get it published. But before she does that, based on Lisa's advice, she wants Homer to read it and approve it. Homer tries to do so, but falls asleep. He later tells her he loves it, despite not having read it. She gets it published.

The novel is an unexpected success, with acclaim from Tom Clancy and Thomas Pynchon (with a paper bag on his head, ready to have his pictures taken). Springfieldians, who read the book, begin to gossip around, saying that it is a reflection of Marge's life. Rumours spread fast and wild.

One day, when Homer visits the Kwik-E-Mart, Apu teases Homer about being the cuckolded husband and Ned being Marge's actual love. Homer gets mad and decides to read the book. He buys an audiotape version read by the Olsen twins. When he hears the full story, he explodes at Marge (who is starting the sequel) for having humiliated him. She shoots back that he did not read the book. He runs over to Ned's house, but Ned takes off in his car. Homer follows in his ambulance.

Lisa tells Bart that this seems very similar to the ending of Marge's novel, where Temperance's husband corners Sirius on a cliff and then harpoons him after he found out that Sirius have made Temperance pregnant. Temperance comes there too late. Sirius falls over the cliff and the harpoon embeds itself into a whale. Temperance's husband gloats to Temperance, but his leg gets tangled in the harpoon's rope and he gets pulled underwater by the whale, leaving Temperance to brood alone.

Meanwhile, in real life, Homer chases Ned and tells him to pull over as he is driving an ambulance. Ned pulls over and runs towards a cliff (which looks identical to the one in the book's ending). He is cornered there by Homer. Homer tells him that he is about to do what he should have done a long time ago and that is... to get on his knees and beg to be told how to be a better husband! Marge arrives and sees them and is happy to hear that Homer is interested in being a better husband. They reconcile and Homer said that they gonna go home to do a little project of their own. They aren't kidding, as they start work on a book called "Who Really Killed JFK?". Homer feels that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK to steal the Jack Ruby, but that theory is shot down by Marge, who says that Jack Ruby is a man. Undeterred, Homer keeps looking.

Trivia

• Dr. Marvin Monroe was killed off in 1995, but he appears in this episode saying he has been sick.

Goofs

• Marge gets her inspiration for her novel from the old painting above the couch. She's not aware that whaling was ever used in a novel. The painting is a scene from Moby Dick, but Marge stated in a previous episode, The Trouble with Trillions, that she painted it herself.
• When Marge returns to her Computer after getting her inspiration off the Wall Photograph, a Pencil can be seen on the desk next to her Computer, at a shot seconds later from a different angle the Pencil has been removed off the desk; (Marge would not have had enough time to move the pencil in the time difference between the two shots.)

Quotes

• (Homer and the manager spy on a couple through a tinted window)
  Man: Well, honey, what do you think?
  Woman: Did that salesman cut one during the test drive?
  Man: Yeah, and then he turned on the radio to cover up the smell.
  Woman: Let's get out of here. I'm not shaking that guy's hand. (they leave)
  Homer: Well, I think that went well. (pause) (Homer then turns on the radio and looks around nervously)
• (Bart and Lisa watch as an ad for The Harpooned Heart is placed on a billboard)
  Lisa: If Dad reads that book, he's going to be so humiliated.
  Bart: He'll never read it.
  Lisa: What if they make into a movie?
  Bart: He'll never see it.
  Lisa: What if they parody it on MADtv?
  Bart: (pause) We're doomed!
• (Homer singing parody of the Gary Numan song Cars while cleaning his ambulance)
  Homer (singing): Here in my car, I am hosing off blood. Some of it's mine, but most of it's not. Here's Marge.
• Homer: I'll have to read Marge's book. And I swore never to read again after To Kill a Mockingbird gave me absolutely no useful advice on killing mockingbirds. It did teach me not to judge someone based on the color of their skin, but what good does that do me?!
• Ambulance Siren: Buy me! Buy me! Buy me!
  Homer: I'll do it!
  Car Salesman: Do what?
• Homer: Apu, do you sell crazy straws? I've got a guy with a broken back and I'm trying to cheer him up.
• Apu: This is how you talk when you learned English from porno movies.
• Thomas Pynchon: Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!
  '(He then starts yelling at passing cars)'
  Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!

• The Simpsons episodes, season 15