Simpsonian Status Quo in "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer"

The status quo, and a story's return to it, is often lambasted as a curse. In serial storytelling, few things seem to aggravate a media literate audience than the knowledge that, after this episode or this comic book, the characters and story will reset to where they were before the story's most recent conflict. It's limited whole genres, like the superheroes who everyone knows will inevitably reset to their most popular version, blockbuster film franchises like Star Wars which couldn't move away from a status quo for fear of impacting merchandise sales and, most notably, it has limited television and the sitcom. The downfall of The Simpsons is often attributed to the second episode of season nine, "The Principal and the Pauper", citing that both its deviation from and return to status quo pushed the core fanbase too far. Yet, it is in the realm of television where we can also find the great storytelling potential of the status quo. Not merely a mechanism for ensuring a reliable, popular structure for an audience, the status quo can be used as an effective tool to further immerse audiences into a character's perspective.

And The Simpsons' greatest success in this field came only eight months before its presupposed downfall.

If someone was to bring up the ninth episode of The Simpsons' eighth season, "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)", you would expect the conversation to diverge into discussions of its psychedelic, hallucination sequence. With a Johnny Cash guest appearance (as a talking-coyote-cum-spirit-guide), it's certainly the headline attraction of the episode and the most memorable feature on initial viewing. Yet, the imagery is mostly either tame or derivative. Where I find the true appeal of the episode is in the emotionally resonant core that reassesses the Homer/Marge coupling and the success in this renegotiation relates directly to how the story deals with status quo.

The episode's story concerns Homer's disillusionment with Marge after a "Guatemalan Insanity Pepper" puts him face-to-face with the idea that his wife may not necessarily be his soulmate (expressed via space coyote). So Homer's search for a true soulmate is the story's emotional centre where, specifically, he searches for one who has a "profound mystical understanding" of his Real self. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the conceptual Mirror Stage refers to the first time our infant selves see ourselves in the mirror and first understand ourselves as a whole individual. From there, we are caught perpetually distressed by the dissonance between the Imaginary self we outwardly portray and our unintelligible Real self. This is the conflict facing Homer, when he realises that Marge actually has no "profound mystical understanding" of him. If Marge doesn't understand him, then no one can and suddenly Homer is faced with bitter reality- that we are all fundamentally alone.

The early tensions of the episode are drawn from the status quo itself; Homer's reliance on beer is established as having previously embarrassed Marge and any semi-regular watcher of the show can attest to this. A flashback is included, but is wholly unnecessary; Homer the drunk is well known to us. There is no new rift put between them, only the exacerbation of this established one. When Marge allows Homer to go to the fateful Chilli Cook-Off, it is under the condition of him promising not to drink any beer. He sees this through, though not without challenge, to find Marge angry with him regardless. Unfortunately for him, misunderstanding's abound and Marge believed his Insanity Pepper trip to have been the result of drinking. To Marge, Homer has broken his promise. The audience is privy to this extra layer of misunderstanding, so when Marge tells her children why Homer isn't leaving the cook-off with the rest of the family, "Your father decided he'd prefer to come home in a taxi... Or a police car.", it particularly grates. 

Post-pepper Homer returns home and, now believing that he can't find it in Marge (his argument with her and their difference in record collections cement his doubts), begins his search for a soulmate elsewhere. This categorically fails. For a moment, his saviour seems to lie in the lonely lighthouse keeper "EARL". EARL, of course, turns out to be the Electronic Automatic Robotic Lighthouse, a machine no more capable of "profound mystical understanding" than any human being. So Homer is caught in an untenable, but ultimately relatable situation, finally exposed to the true loneliness of our individual selves and, for a moment, seems to understand that he truly cannot be known by anyone. Marge turns up, just in time, to prove herself as the soulmate after all and to assuage Homer's (and our own) fears.

Johnny Cash's most significant mark on popular culture: Homer's Space Coyote.

It's an enchanting moment, as Marge shows that she does in fact "know" Homer, by listing off the "important" things she knows about him. But, what, then, constitutes the "important" things? Marge refers to her knowledge of Homer's opinion on public transport, his preference to walking downhill and his love of blinking lights. More so than a profound knowledge of Homer's real self, Marge professes an understanding of his idiosyncrasies. Can we not say that the "important" things Marge remembers about Homer in the story's finale are really no more (or less) valuable than the "unimportant" ones Homer encounters earlier on? The distinction is drawn between Homer's taste in records and his love for blinking lights, but I'd say there's little functionary difference between them.

One of the truly haunting moments of Homer's pepper-induced hallucination, a reinforcement of the rift Homer is now feeling between himself and his supposed "soulmate". 

So, after an episode's worth of conflict and separation, Homer and Marge reunite. We return to the same Simpson family status quo at the end of "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" as we do in "The Principal and the Pauper", but instead of aggravating the audience, this time the return moves us. We are grateful to return to the status quo. The episode's ending has been lambasted for its melodrama (and it's not wholly innocent from this), but it would be wrong to say that the emotion we feel at the episode's climax is manufactured or artificial. It's moving to watch Homer realise that Marge has some deep, transcendental knowledge of his true self, and it's moving because it is the fantasy which we all desire: the fantasy that someone can and will finally know us. More than that, it's an ode to the lives we already lead; the status quo of our own lives. Homer finds sanctity, clarity and fulfilment within the same family model that he was disillusioned with. Perhaps we are meant to do the same.

On one level then, Homer's return to the status quo is so easy to root for because of our own anxieties around our unknowable selves. We want to see Homer find his soulmate because it promises us that we also are capable of meeting someone with a "profound mystical understanding" of our Real selves. But, on another level, we can say that the resolution is so affecting because it not only reveals that the little, "skin-deep" differences are of no impediment to a successful relationship, but our lacking of the ability to understand each other is of no impediment either. And that, I believe, is the lesson to be taken from realising the loneliness of our individual selves. I cannot truly understand my Real self and, therefore, cannot expect any other individual to see through the Imaginary self I project and into my own reality.

Throughout this story, we are faced with our knowledge that Homer must return to Marge. The structure must be obeyed, the status quo must be restored. So the conflict of the story is directly concerned with this inevitable return to status quo and the tensions found within that. Why should Homer abet the return to his status quo if his world view, not only that Marge isn't his soulmate but that his true self is totally unknowable, has been flipped on its head? The inevitable return to status quo is on the minds of both audience and character and I think it is telling that an episode so concerned with status quo is also an episode concerned with married life.

It is worth noting that this usage of the status quo as an exploration of married life is not unique to this episode, it is seen in other lauded The Simpsons' stories, such as "The Last Temptation of Homer" (S5E09) and "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" (S5E22), but none quite reach the heights of Mysterious Voyage. That they don't tackle the fundamental rift between our selves and the unknowable nature of others is my suggestion as to why.

Perhaps we can argue that all further relationship problems Marge and Homer have in the series stems from the fact that they have never reconciled with this. They are perhaps doomed to an eternal cycle of believing and disavowing in their own profound, transcendental romance, until such a point where they break that cycle and declare that they can never be known in the way they desire (and change their behaviour because of it). But this matters little to how this particular episode's ending is so successful. We believe in the fantasy. We believe Marge can know Homer. Because we believe this, we can return to the status quo: a status quo treated with optimism and reverence. Here the status quo is left with no scratch or change, instead explored and addressed. Where status quo often creeps up like a phantom in a stories final moments to rob it of agency, "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" allows the status quo its own narrative role and, in doing so, crafts a stronger episode.


That all being said, the episode does end with the Short-Shorts Song, so maybe I'm just overthinking it a bit.