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The Simpsons Season 11 Episode 14 Alone Again Naturadiddily

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14th episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons

"Alone Again, Natura-Diddily"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no. Season 11
Episode 14
Directed by Jim Reardon
Written by Ian Maxtone-Graham
Production lawmaking BABF11
Original air date February 13, 2000 (2000-02-xiii)
Guest advent
Shawn Colvin as Rachel Hashemite kingdom of jordan
Episode features
Chalkboard gag "My suspension was not "mutual""
Burrow gag The Simpsons come in on bumper cars. Homer is then pinned to the wall and slammed repeatedly.
Commentary Mike Scully
George Meyer
Ian Maxtone-Graham
Matt Selman
Jim Reardon
Mark Kirkland
Episode chronology
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The Simpsons (flavour 11)
Listing of episodes

"Lonely Again, Natura-Diddily" is the fourteenth episode of the eleventh season of the American idiot box series The Simpsons, and marks the final regular appearance of the grapheme Maude Flanders. In the episode, she is killed in an blow while watching an auto race, devastating Ned Flemish region and prompting Homer to observe a new woman for his grieving friend. Afterwards a series of unsuccessful dates, Ned begins to question his faith in God. Nevertheless, his faith is restored later hearing the female atomic number 82 vocalizer of a Christian rock band, played past guest star Shawn Colvin, sing in church. The episode'southward championship is a parody of the song championship "Lone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan.

The episode was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Jim Reardon. Maude was voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven after regular voice thespian Maggie Roswell had left the testify over a pay dispute, and the producers decided to kill off the character to open for new storylines. The episode was viewed in 10.viii 1000000 households during its original broadcast on February 13, 2000, and was the highest-rated show on the Trick network the week it aired.

A commercial for "Solitary Again, Natura-Diddily" that aired earlier the episode was broadcast was criticized by many viewers because information technology appeared the episode would be parodying an incident at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N Carolina that left three spectators expressionless. Then-Fob affiliate WCCB in Charlotte, N Carolina refused to show the commercial, but after viewing the episode they came to the conclusion that it was not making fun of the incident.

Reviews of "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" from television critics have been mixed.

Plot [edit]

On a trip to the bird sanctuary, the Simpson family discovers that an oval racing rails built effectually the sanctuary is opening that solar day, to Lisa'southward dismay. The family watches the stock car race from the stand and sees Ned Flanders and his family unit, who claims to enjoy the high levels of safety the drivers employ. Afterwards, a squad of cheerleaders fires costless T-shirts from air cannons into the crowd, and Homer rudely demands one. Irritated, Maude leaves to buy hot dogs. The cheerleaders send a total salvo of T-shirts in Homer's management, only at the last second, he spots a bobby pin and bends over to choice information technology up, merely equally Maude returns. The T-shirts hit Maude and she falls over the bleachers to the basis, where Dr. Hibbert declares her dead.

Everyone offers their condolences to a devastated Ned, and Bart reluctantly plays a Christian video game with Rod and Todd. Homer accompanies Ned back home after the funeral and talks with him after that night when Ned is unable to slumber due to his loneliness and concern over having to raise his sons solitary (during which Homer confesses that he parked in the ambulance zone, making it incommunicable for Maude to be resuscitated). Feeling bad for his part in Maude's death, Homer secretly makes a videotape of Ned to testify to single women across Springfield in lodge to assistance him get on with his life. In spite of the amateur editing (including footage of Maggie'southward nativity that Homer could not tape over) Ned gets to date several women thank you to the record, including Lindsey Naegle and Edna Krabappel, simply none of them are successful.

On a Saturday nighttime, Ned prays to God, only becomes angry when he feels he is not getting any response. The next morning, Ned is still angry and tells his sons he volition not be going to church, scaring them. Guilt-ridden, he later rushes to church building and upon entering, sees a Christian stone band, Kovenant, performing. He is attracted to the singer, Rachel Hashemite kingdom of jordan, who sings nigh not losing faith in God because He is always there for people. Inspired by the vocal, Ned subsequently assists Rachel in loading some equipment onto her truck and confides in her of his loss, with which she sympathizes. He and Rachel get acquainted, but she has to leave for the side by side stop on the band's tour, promising to come back and meet up with him afterward.

Product [edit]

"Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed past Jim Reardon equally part of the eleventh season of the evidence (1999–2000).[1] When the writing staff conceived the idea for the speedway parts, they were thinking that it would be a groovy opportunity for them to get several NASCAR drivers to make invitee appearances in the episode. However, according to Scully, they could not become a single 1 because "they were all concerned near the way we were portraying NASCAR".[2] Speedway racing is depicted in a negative low-cal in the episode, with an overemphasis on crashes.[2]

The episode features the decease of the graphic symbol Maude Flanders,[three] who had previously been voiced by cast fellow member Maggie Roswell. This kill-off was the event of Roswell leaving The Simpsons in jump 1999 after a pay dispute with the Fob Broadcasting Company, which airs the show.[iv] [5] Since 1994, she had been flying between her Denver home and Los Angeles twice a calendar week to record episodes of The Simpsons.[vi] [7] She somewhen grew tired of this, and the price of plane tickets was constantly increasing.[4] [8] [ix] As a result, she asked Play a trick on for a pay raise from $2,000 per episode to $6,000 per episode. However, Fox but offered her a $150 raise, which did non cover the travel costs, so she decided to quit.[10] [11] [12]

Vox actress Marcia Mitzman Gaven was hired to fill in for Roswell's characters,[13] including Maude in this episode and the earlier episodes of the eleventh season,[14] although the producers decided to kill her off to open upward new storylines for the show.[13] Executive producer Mike Scully said information technology "was a chance for one of our regular characters [Ned Flanders] to face a challenge and grow in a new direction. The idea came upwards chop-chop, we all latched on to information technology, and it just felt right. We didn't want to impale a grapheme for the sake of killing. We wanted it to have consequences for surviving characters to deal with in future episodes."[15] Roswell returned to The Simpsons in 2002[xvi] after reaching a deal with Play tricks to tape her lines from her habitation in Denver.[17] Since returning, she has voiced Maude in flashbacks and as a ghost.[sixteen] [xviii] When asked by The Denver Mail service on how she thought Ned was doing without Maude, she replied: "OK. But Maude was such a vulnerable character. Maude and Lisa and Marge were the only vulnerable characters, really, everybody else has an edge. So they [the staff] discovered that arc was lost, and now there are a lot of flashbacks with Maude."[18]

Scully has noted that "at that place was a lot of discussion near making sure we [the staff] did deal with some of the emotional ramifications of death [in the episode] and non just make information technology all joke, joke, joke. Simply at the same time, nosotros're a comedy, they're animated, they're non real."[19] In one of the first scripts for the episode there was a scene in which Rod and Todd discuss their mother'south death. Still, according to Maxtone-Graham, the writing staff decided to cut information technology considering "it just never played anything but distressing." He added that the writers "actually wanted to address how [the children] would feel" just they "could never pull it off without it just being sad."[20] Scully has commented that it was a "very sweet scene" simply it was too difficult to "exit of it comedically to the next scene."[two]

American musician Shawn Colvin guest starred in the episode as Rachel Jordan,[21] [22] a character that she would later return to phonation in the episode "I'm Goin' to Praiseland" (2001) from season twelve.[23] In that episode, she stays at the Flanders' house with Ned, and leaves briefly after he attempted to mold her in the prototype of his deceased wife. At the terminate of the episode, even so, she returns and has a date with him.[24] Colvin told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that being raised in Carbondale, Illinois meant she did not have to practise much research for the invitee appearance: "It'due south simply very isolated [in Carbondale]. In that location was church building music and that was well-nigh it. [...] I didn't take to dig too deep for the part. I suppose the whole 'Simpsons' thing is kind of like a hick town."[25] Colvin has shown a segment of her guest role on The Simpsons during some of her concerts, including one at Cape Cod Melody Tent in 2007.[26] She has as well performed the song that she sings in "Alone Once again, Natura-Diddily" in concert.[27] [28] The Wisconsin State Journal reported that during her 2001 concert at Barrymore Theatre, the "loudest audition response came afterward she sang a ditty that she performed as a graphic symbol on The Simpsons."[28] The song, called "He'southward the Man", later appeared on the 2007 soundtrack album The Simpsons: Testify.[29]

Circulate and ratings [edit]

According to executive producer Mike Scully, one of the reasons for killing off Maude was to increment ratings.

The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February xiii, 2000.[xxx] It tied Dateline NBC for the 17th place (compared the season boilerplate of 37) in the ratings for the week of Feb vii–thirteen, 2000, with a Nielsen rating of 10.7.[31] The episode was the highest-rated show on Play a trick on that week, and was viewed in approximately 10.8 million households.[31]

Scully has admitted that another reason for killing off Maude was to increase ratings for The Simpsons during the February sweeps.[15] To bring in even more than viewers for the broadcast, the Simpsons producers chose not to reveal beforehand who the grapheme that would be killed off was to create speculation.[30] Fox also decided non to ship out screener tapes to television critics to keep it a underground.[32] Even so, according to an commodity in the Contra Costa Times that was published on the twenty-four hours the episode aired, "all the accelerate rumors advise that Ned Flanders' wife, Maude, should picket her back."[30] The revelation of the episode'due south title, "Alone Again, Natura-Diddly", was one of the reasons that the media and many people suspected Maude.[32] Every bit The Post-Standard 's William LaRue writes, "diddly" is the "familiar greeting of Maude's married man, Ned Flanders."[33] Roswell's announced departure strengthened this suspicion.[32]

Reception [edit]

The episode has received mixed reviews from tv critics.

Gregory Hardy of the Orlando Sentry placed it at number eleven on his list of the prove's fifteen best episodes that target the globe of sports.[34]

Writing for IGN, Robert Canning gave the episode a seven out of 10 rating, commenting that he thought the iii acts felt asunder. He wrote: "First Maude dies, then Ned dates and now Ned questions his faith. To me, these three storylines would have been amend served had they been the focus of their own individual episodes."[35] Canning added that he felt "the episode made a poor choice by rushing through the mourning period and moving correct into Ned dating," just that "the dating stuff, while, again, feeling hurried, was quite funny, especially Ned's date with Edna Krabappel."[35]

DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson commented on the episode in a negative style, writing that information technology was "a harsh and contemptuous motion [to kill off Maude because of Roswell's departure], though I could forgive the determination if it produced a more satisfying episode. Possibly the writers made this one super-sincere to counteract the inherent cynicism behind its origins, simply the show just seems sappy and lame."[36]

Winnipeg Complimentary Press columnist Randall King wrote in his review of the eleventh season of The Simpsons that there is "something undeniably funny well-nigh having Maude Flanders die by a avalanche of T-shirts fired by air cannons at a speedway. But the episode Alone Again Natura-Diddily was proof that the dependably bright serial could – and did – go seriously wrong when it turned 11. Killing off Maude was a sin [...]".[37]

Controversy [edit]

Before "Lone Again, Natura-Diddily" was broadcast, a promotional commercial aired on boob tube that featured, amongst other things, the announcement that "one of Springfield's most beloved volition die"[38] and a snippet of a scene from the episode with the graphic symbol Lenny, sitting in the speedway spectator stand up, being striking by a machine tire,[39] giving the impression that he would be the one who would die.[40] Many viewers of the commercial, including Speedway Motorsports, Inc. owned Lowe'south Motor Speedway president and public address announcer Jerry Gappens, expressed their business every bit information technology appeared the episode was parodying an actual incident that happened during a speedway race at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May 1999, in Charlotte, Northward Carolina, when flying droppings in a crash killed three spectators. Gappens said that doing a parody of that was "a real insensitive matter to practice, pretty irresponsible. Obviously what might appear funny in 50.A. or New York isn't funny here in Charlotte."[38] Lowe's Motor Speedway appear to WSOC-Tv's Aqueduct 9 Eyewitness News on February seven, 2000 that they were thinking of placing a complaint to the Fox Broadcasting Company.[38] WCCB, the then-Fob affiliate in Charlotte, refused to proceed showing the commercial for the episode.[38] Every bit a result, Trick distributed a new commercial to the affiliate on February nine that did not contain the scene with Lenny.[39]

Antonia Coffman, a spokeswoman for The Simpsons, told The Charlotte Observer that "the Lowe's incident didn't inspire the scene" and that the episode was not meant to offend anyone.[40] Subsequently WCCB had gotten the opportunity to actually see the episode they decided that they would air information technology, realizing that the original commercial was misleading and that they did non remember the episode was making fun of the incident.[39] In the episode, the viewers can see that Lenny tries to get the attention of the cheerleaders by raising his hand and so that they aim a T-shirt with the cannon at him. Yet, he is striking by a car tire instead.[39] Unlike what the commercial unsaid, Lenny is not killed and is soon back in his seat.[xl] WCCB told the Associated Press that their estimation of the scene was that someone threw the tire to Lenny considering he was raising his hand, and that the tire did not actually come from a machine crash on the track. Despite this, the affiliate announced that they would start the broadcast of the episode with a message alarm viewers of the scene anyway.[39] [41]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "Simpsons - Alone Again Natura-Diddly". Yahoo!. Archived from the original on 2011-09-30. Retrieved 2011-07-19 .
  2. ^ a b c Scully, Mike. (2008). Commentary for "Lonely Again, Natura-Diddily", in The Simpsons: The Complete Eleventh Season [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
  3. ^ Seifert, Andy. "Indiana Man says no to the White Sox T-shirt cannons". The A.Five. Club. 2009-04-26. Archived from the original on 2010-05-08. Retrieved 2010-08-08 .
  4. ^ a b "Vocalism Of 'Maude' Disputes Written report". The Columbian. 2000-02-05. p. E6.
  5. ^ Cartwright, Nancy (2000). "Lady, that ain't no gutterball!". My Life equally a 10-Yr-One-time Male child. New York Metropolis: Hyperion. p. 96. ISBN0-7868-8600-five.
  6. ^ Purdy, Penelope (1995-07-23). "Bart Simpson's neighbor is mad at DIA". The Denver Post. p. D-iii.
  7. ^ Lopez, Greg (1994-12-18). "It's all in the throat for blithe couple". Rocky Mountain News. p. 16A.
  8. ^ "Character killed off". The Cincinnati Post. 2000-02-01. p. 12A.
  9. ^ McDaniel, Mike (2000-02-11). "Not true, 'Maude' says". Houston Relate.
  10. ^ Brownfield, Paul (2000-02-05). "Extra: Greed killed Simpsons graphic symbol". Lexington Herald-Leader. p. 17.
  11. ^ Husted, Bill (2000-01-27). "D'oh! Denver voice gets killed on "The Simpsons'". The Denver Post. p. A-02.
  12. ^ Koha, Nui Te (2000-02-06). "Ned faces life alone". Sunday Herald Sun. p. 25.
  13. ^ a b "Maude Flanders will likely leave Simpsons". The Record. 2000-02-05. p. F04.
  14. ^ "Will corporate greed kill Maude of 'Simpsons'?". Pittsburgh Postal service-Gazette. 2000-02-07. p. D8.
  15. ^ a b Close-upward of the episode in a February 2000 upshot of TV Guide.
  16. ^ a b Basile, Nancy. "At that place's a New Maude in Town". About.com. Retrieved 2010-08-06 .
  17. ^ Husted, Neb (2003-06-01). "Maggie'southward back". The Denver Mail. p. F-02.
  18. ^ a b Husted, Bill (2011-04-21). "She's wanted dead or alive by folks on 'Simpsons'". The Denver Post.
  19. ^ Elber, Lynn (Associated Press) (2000-02-04). "'Simpsons' character to be rubbed out for skilful". The Albany Herald. p. 9C.
  20. ^ Maxtone-Graham, Ian. (2008). Commentary for "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily", in The Simpsons: The Complete Eleventh Flavor [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
  21. ^ Newhouse News Service (2000-02-11). "Character to be killed off on 'Simpsons'". The Cincinnati Post. p. 11C.
  22. ^ Jordan, Mark (2006-10-13). "Colvin is back, gear up to move on -- Vocalist-songwriter deals with fame in the '90s, low". The Commercial Appeal.
  23. ^ Gilmore, Molly (2011-01-21). "Soloists join forces in Oly Shawn Colvin Loudon Wainwright III". The Olympian. p. 3.
  24. ^ "I'm Goin' to Praiseland". The Simpsons. Season 12. Episode 19. 2001-05-06. Fox network.
  25. ^ Stout, Gene (2002-07-05). "A 'Whole New' Colvin Still Probes The Complexities Of Human Relationships". Seattle Postal service-Intelligencer. p. 10.
  26. ^ Miller, Jay (2007-08-27). "Concert Review - Life lessons posing as songs bring downwardly the house for Hiatt". The Patriot Ledger.
  27. ^ Moorhouse, Donnie (2000-07-17). "iii performers proffer passion in the Pines". Union-News.
  28. ^ a b Alesia, Tom (2001-05-ten). "Colvin's low-cal touch still lovable". Wisconsin State Journal. p. E3.
  29. ^ "David Byrne, B-52'southward for Simpsons compilation". NME. 2007-07-thirteen. Retrieved 2011-07-19 .
  30. ^ a b c "The 'A' List". Contra Costa Times. 2000-02-xiii. p. C03.
  31. ^ a b Associated Press (2000-02-27). "Weekly Nielsen Ratings". The Stuart News. p. P10.
  32. ^ a b c Brantley, Mike (2000-02-13). "'Simpsons:' And and then there's Maude". Mobile Register. p. 08.
  33. ^ LaRue, William (2000-02-11). "Telly best bet on WSYT: 'The Simpsons'". The Post-Standard. p. 21.
  34. ^ Hardy, Gregory (2003-02-16). "Hitting 300 - For sporting comedy, 'The Simpsons' always score". Orlando Lookout. p. C17.
  35. ^ a b Canning, Robert (2008-08-04). "The Simpsons Flashback: 'Lonely Again Natura-Diddly' Review". IGN . Retrieved 2022-01-24 .
  36. ^ Jacobson, Colin (2008-11-19). "The Simpsons: The Consummate Eleventh Flavour (1999)". DVD Movie Guide. Retrieved 2011-07-17 .
  37. ^ Randall, King (2008-ten-09). "dvd with Randall Kin". Winnipeg Free Press. p. fifty. Retrieved 2012-08-11 .
  38. ^ a b c d "Some say 'The Simpsons' speedway episode goes likewise far". Channel 9 Eyewitness News (WSOC-TV). 2000-02-07. Archived from the original on 2000-04-17. Retrieved 2010-08-08 .
  39. ^ a b c d east Nowell, Paul (Associated Printing) (2000-02-12). "'Simpsons' scene revs up raceway". Star-News.
  40. ^ a b c Goldberg, Jon (2000-02-eleven). "Play a trick on show, ads echo accident, trouble some". The Charlotte Observer. p. 1B.
  41. ^ "Simpsons episode disturbs some in Charlotte". The Post and Courier. 2000-02-12. p. 6-B.

External links [edit]

  • "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily episode sheathing". The Simpsons Archive.
  • "Solitary Once again, Natura-Diddily" at IMDb

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_Again,_Natura-Diddily

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