"The Dad Who Knew Too Little" is an episode from The Simpsons fourteenth season. Simpsons redirects here. ... Image File history File links EABF03. ... is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Al Jean (left) and David Mirkin (right), have both been writers for The Simpsons for more than ten years. ... Matt Selman is a writer for The Simpsons. ... The three people are caricatures of (left to right) Rich Moore, Wes Archer and David Silverman[1] The following is a list of directors who have worked on the Fox animated television series The Simpsons. ... Mark Kirkland is a director of episodes of The Simpsons. ... Bart writes The Pledge of Allegiance does not end with Hail Satan The chalkboard gag is a running visual joke that occurs during the opening credits of many episodes of The Simpsons. ... The couch gag is a running visual joke in the opening credits of the animated television series The Simpsons. ... (left to right) Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Keith Richards, Homer, Mick Jagger, Lenny Kravitz and Brian Setzer guest starred in the heavily promoted season 14 episode How I Spent My Strummer Vacation. This is a list of guest stars who appeared on The Simpsons. ... Elliott Gould (born Elliott Goldstein on August 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor. ... The Simpsons 14th season (November 2002 - May 2003) began on Sunday, November 3, 2002 with Treehouse of Horror XIII. The season contains five hold-over episodes from the season 13 (DABF) production line. ... is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 138th day of the year (139th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Treehouse of Horror XIII is the first episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season, as well as the thirteenth Halloween episode. ... How I Spent My Strummer Vacation is the second episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... Bart vs. ... Large Marge is the fourth episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... Helter Shelter is the fifth episode from the fourteenth season of The Simpsons that aired December 1, 2002. ... The Great Louse Detective is the sixth episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... Special Edna, also titled Love and Marking, is the seventh episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... Strong Arms of The Ma is the true 300th episode of The Simpsons. ... Pray Anything is the tenth episode of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons. ... Barting Over is an episode of The Simpsons advertised by FOX to be the 300th episode of the show. ... Im Spelling as Fast as I Can is the twelfth episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... A Star Is Born - Again is the 13th episode from The Simpsons fourteenth season, which first aired on March 2, 2003. ... Mr. ... C.E. Doh is the fifteenth episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... This article or section contains a plot summary that is overly long. ... Three Gays of the Condo is an Emmy Award-winning episode[1] from the fourteenth season of The Simpsons that aired April 13, 2003. ... Dude, Wheres My Ranch? is the eighteenth episode of The Simpsons fourteenth season. ... “Old Yeller Belly” is the nineteenth episode of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons. ... Brake My Wife, Please is an episode of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons that aired on May 11, 2003. ... Bart of War is an episode of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons that aired on May 18, 2003. ... Moe Baby Blues is the finale of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons. ... The following is an episode list for the Fox animated television series The Simpsons. ...

Plot

Bart and Lisa are watching a TV program, "Padz" (a parody of MTV Cribs). They see a commercial for a new kind of personal diary, which does not allow anyone else to read it and shocks them if they try. Lisa, tired of Bart reading her diary (which he is doing at that moment), asks Homer and Marge to get her the diary for her birthday, to which they agree. The next day, Homer and Bart go to the mall to get the diary for Lisa. Homer gets sidetracked when he sees that the food court is handing out free samples. Bart tells him that they have to get Lisa's gift, but Homer ignores him and pigs out on all the free food (and when that runs out, he starts chewing up some pants in the men's department). Afterwards, they finally go to the toy store to get the diary for Lisa. However, all copies of the diary are sold out (the last one was bought by Mr. Burns minutes ago, to make a list of his enemies). Clueless about what to get for Lisa, Homer roams about the mall, until he encounters Ned Flanders, who informs him that he can make a personalized movie about Lisa, just like the one Flanders made for Rod. Homer, short of ideas, decides to go for Ned's idea (with the humorous quote "Stupid Flanders, you're a genius!"). For the comic book series of the same name, see Bart Simpson comics. ... Lisa Marie Simpson is a character in the animated television series The Simpsons, voiced by Yeardley Smith; Lisa is the only character Smith voices on a regular basis. ... The old MTV Cribs logo MTV Cribs is a reality television program on MTV that features tours of the houses and mansions of celebrities. ... Homer Simpson is also a character in the book and film The Day of the Locust. ... Marjorie Marge Simpson (née Bouvier) is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons and is voiced by Julie Kavner. ... Charles Montgomery Burns, normally referred to as Mr. ... Nedward Ned Flanders is a fictional character on The Simpsons, based on the real life Donald Macmillan, heir to the Alcan Fortune, voiced by Harry Shearer. ... Ned Flanders In the animated cartoon series The Simpsons, the Flanders are a family consisting of Ned, Maude and their two sons Rod and Todd. ...

On Lisa's birthday, Bart gives her a laser pointer and demonstrates its power by flashing it at Principal Skinner's crotch, prompting him to examine closely what that "red dot" is. Homer gives Lisa her present — the personalized movie he made for her. She is disappointed that she didn't get the diary she wanted, nevertheless she watches the movie. It's a story about Lisa as a sheriff in a Western movie. The dialogue in the movie helps Lisa realize that Homer knows absolutely nothing about her. She runs upstairs crying, making Homer feel bad. ... Look up Sheriff in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Broncho Billy Anderson, from The Great Train Robbery The Western movie is one of the classic American film genres. ...

The next day, he tries to make it up to her by asking her about herself, but she blows him off, saying that he had eight years to get to know her and now it's too late. Later that day, feeling dejected, he goes to Moe's. When he tells the barflies there his problem, Moe tells him to have Lisa followed by a private detective and gives him a card for one, Dexter Colt. That night, Homer goes to a rather seedy part of town to meet Dexter. He wants Colt to follow Lisa and find out as much as he can, so that he can at least act as the perfect father. The shady detective takes the case. An exterior of Moes Tavern, in The Simpsons. ... Morris Moe Lester Szyslak (pronounced //) is a fictional character on the animated series The Simpsons, voiced by Hank Azaria. ... A private investigator, or PI, is a person who undertakes investigations. ...

Dexter starts following Lisa and going through her locker. He even muscles Skinner into showing him Lisa's permanent record. He blackmails Nelson to get him a book report of "The Secret Garden," written by Lisa. Finally, one day, as Homer leaves the power plant, he sees a large envelope on his car hood. It's the report by the detective about Lisa. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Using the report, he starts to bond with Lisa by playing the songs that she likes and going to a protest against animal testing at a research lab, where monkeys are made to smoke cigarettes and pigs are smothered with make-up. Later that night, Homer tucks her into bed, happy that he's getting to know her, although he almost lets slip about the report.

Homer goes to see Dexter Colt to thank him for all his work. When Colt gives him a bill for $1000 (which includes many unrelated costs, such as a $40 steak that would have been free if he had eaten the whole steak and silver bullets to kill Lisa if she was a werewolf). Homer refuses to pay the incredible amount. Colt pulls out his handgun and grabs Homer by his shirt, but Homer wriggles out of his shirt and jumps out of the window. Colt swears revenge as Homer runs off into the night.

The next morning, Lisa, Homer, and Bart are watching the news. They see that someone has vandalised the research lab and stolen all the animals. Chief Wiggum says that, based on the clues collected (such as a Malibu Stacy scrunchy, a saxophone reed and the book report for "The Secret Garden" by Lisa Simpson), Lisa Simpson is the main suspect. Lisa says she is innocent and Homer knows she has been framed by Dexter Colt. The cops come to arrest Lisa, but Homer and Lisa take off in the car, with the cops in pursuit. Finally, they manage to escape and disguise themselves with shoe polish (to color their hair). They check into a motel and call Marge, but the cops have tapped the phone and zero in on their location. Homer, meanwhile, tells Lisa the truth about the detective and she gets angry with him again. Police Chief Clancy Wiggum(1st May 1962) (voiced by Hank Azaria) is a fictional character from the animated television series The Simpsons. ... Though The Simpsons is itself a fictional show of fictional characters, there are also several characters within the shows universe who are fictional to the Simpsons characters themselves (see show-within-a-show). ... The saxophone (colloquially referred to as sax) is a conical-bored instrument of the woodwind family. ... For other uses, see Secret Garden (disambiguation). ...

When the cops arrive, Homer and Lisa escape through the window. After running for a while, they come across a circus, where they see the stolen animals from the research lab. They are about to call the cops, when Dexter Colt shows up, aiming a cannon (with a human cannonball inside) at them. He fires it and Homer pushes Lisa out of the way and gets hit by the human cannonball, but he's okay (a reference to the episode "Homerpalooza"). Colt pulls out his handgun and Homer takes off into a hall of mirrors. Many reflections of Homer show up, but Colt shoots Homer in the arm. As Colt is about to shoot Homer, Lisa shows up. Colt wonders how she heard them, and Homer says that Lisa's hearing is very good and that one day when she was very young, she had heard him quietly sobbing in the closet. Lisa, impressed that Homer actually remembered something about her, flashes Colt in the eye with the laser pointer that Bart gave her (incidentally blinding him). The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Homerpalooza is the twenty-fourth episode of The Simpsons seventh season and originally aired on May 19, 1996 as part of the season finale. ...

Later, Colt is arrested and Lisa is exonerated. Homer tells her that he released all the lab animals into the wild. We see that he gave them to the Spuckler family, and Brandine Spuckler is suspicious of Cletus' intentions with the pigs. This is only a partial list. ... Cletus Del Roy Spuckler (voiced by Hank Azaria), also known as Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, is a fictional character on the long-running animated television show The Simpsons. ...

During the closing credits, we see that Lisa finally got her diary. When she goes to sleep, Bart sneaks in steals the diary using a pair of tongs. While the house was shown, we hear Bart walking to Homer and asking him to read him a bedtime story. Homer accepts and asks Bart to give him the diary. He opens it and gets electrocuted as a result of being an unauthorized user. The episode ends with Bart laughing at his gullible father's excrutiating pain and misery.

Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items into other sections and removing inappropriate items. (June 2007)

• Homer's gives his e-mail address as ChunkyLover53@aol.com, which is also writer Matt Selman's e-mail address. Matt wrote back to fans as Homer. About a month after this episode aired, however, his address was disabled due to too many sent messages.
• Lisa's third birthday in the series.
• The FOX promo showed Homer saying "You have enough blame to be on 'Oz Jr.'", then he said "Idea. Make a show called 'Oz Jr', but don't show it to ABC, they're IDIOTS!" The scene wasn't shown in the episode.
• Similar to "Homerpalooza," where Homer gets hit in the stomach with a cannonball. Here he gets hit in the gut again, this time with a human cannonball, though thankfully it isn't fatal, as the doctor had once indicated. This is probably thanks to Homer recovering over time or the fact that a human cannon ball is not as dense as a cannon ball. Another more likely possibility would be that as a cartoon character, Homer is not limited by the bounds of reality.
• In the novel JPod, one of the characters uses the email chunkylover53@aol.com.
• The diary Lisa asked for seems to have been made into an actual product - even sharing the name "Girl Tech" from the episode. It is manufactured by Radica, yet has no tie-in to the Simpsons.
• On the police radio, it mentions Lisa's hair being fair.
• The salesman that sold the last Turbo Diary to Mr. Burns is named Raphael, in the episode, "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming," Sideshow Bob calls him this.
• The Tickle Me Krusty doll was last seen in "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace."

Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Matt Selman is a writer for The Simpsons. ... Homerpalooza is the twenty-fourth episode of The Simpsons seventh season and originally aired on May 19, 1996 as part of the season finale. ... In anatomy, the stomach is a bean-shaped hollow muscular organ of the gastrointestinal tract involved in the second phase of digestion, following mastication. ... JPod is a novel by Douglas Coupland published by Random House of Canada in 2006. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sideshow Bobs Last Gleaming Sideshow Bobs Last Gleaming is the ninth episode of The Simpsons seventh season. ... Miracle on Evergreen Terrace is the 10th episode of The Simpsons ninth season. ...

Cultural references

• The couch gag is Groening's version of the famous 1932 photograph "Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper".
• Homer imitates comedian Phil Silvers when nervous.
• The episode title is a parody of the stories and films entitled The Man Who Knew Too Much, and, possibly, the earlier Simpsons episode, "The Boy Who Knew Too Much."
• The episode title is also a parody of the Bill Murray movie, The Man Who Knew Too Little."
• The part when Homer and Marge are talking on the phone in code is a parody of the movie Casino when Sam Rothstein had a somewhat similar system with his wife.
• Being on the run and finding refuge with a circus may be a reference to a plot point in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942).
• The cat-and-mouse action in the house of mirrors is reminiscent of a similar scene in the James Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun (1974).
• When Homer first reads the report from the detective about Lisa, he reads that "Lisa's pet peeve is phonies", a possible reference to The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger.
• According to The Simpsons One Step Beyond Forever, the scene in the hall of mirrors is a reference to the 1947 film The Lady from Shanghai.
• The song Homer plays on the record player is Godchild from Miles Davis Birth of the Cool.

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