Mother Simpson (The Simpsons)

Mother Simpson is the eighth episode of The Simpsons seventh season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 19, 1995.

Plot
To get out of cleaning a highway as part of community service, Homer fakes his own death. When this results in the family's utilities being cut off, Marge puts pressure on him to reveal that he is alive. However, the spurious news of his "death" brings his long-lost mother - a hippie who is on the run from the law because of her activism against Mr. Burns - back to Springfield.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Mother Simpson is a perfect combination of real emotion, good jokes, and an interesting story.
 * 2) The score is the definition of tearjerking, so much so that it's absolutely brilliant.
 * 3) Mona Simpson is one of the best and most interesting characters in the series as she isn't in many episodes.
 * 4) This episode is all about Mona, and her backstory and the explanation of why she left her son and husband at such a young age. Mona is an important character to every member of the Simpson family.
 * 5) The setting of this scene where they are, in the desert, a wasteland, showing that they are alone, just to talk for the last time with no artificial noises.
 * 6) Cinematography ties in with the idea of the episode, his mother and him fill up the whole screen, showing their closeness and as soon as the window winds up and they drive away, you see the camera moving back further, showing that his mother is slipping away from his grasp.
 * 7) The last scene, where Homer is shown sitting alone on his car hood looking at the stars, easily rivals Seymour's death in Futurama 's "Jurassic Bark" as the saddest ending to an episode from an animated TV series.
 * 8) Everything that is spoken is perfect, up to (and including) the very last line of the episode. However, the greatest part of it was, after Mona uses Homer's world-famous line to show that they are connected, not another word is spoken. No jokes are here to break the mood.
 * 9) At the time the episode aired, FOX had started ending shows with split-screen credits with ads for other shows playing over them. The Simpsons ' staff fought tooth-and-nail to have the entirety of the end credits play over the final scene. They succeeded.
 * 10) The episode had two sequels to the episode, and those being "My Mother the Carjacker" and "Mona Leaves-a" (her third and final return to Springfield in that episode where she tragically died).

Reception

 * It holds a rating of 8.7/10 on IMDB.

Trivia

 * The scene where Homer gets angry at Walt Whitman's tombstone is one of David Silverman's favorite jokes.