The last best hope for her children is to give them the tools they will need to face the future. Whether it’s a zoo with more attractive animals, a Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame with no Pearl Jam or death panels, it’s better than turning all the dumb kids into Zuckerbergs. When the Mayor calls a town meeting on how to spend the loot, warning the townspeople that if they don’t come up good he’s just going to put up another sports stadium no one will come to, they offer compelling choices. Someone’s going to have to dust up after them. But the rush to the future will always be like that, sweeping relics of the past in their wake. What both the Springfield government and The Simpsons do to the Sea Captain is not very yar at all. Yar, by the way, is how Katherine Hepburn’s character in The Philadelphia Story describes a perfect sea vessel, one that handles well in any weather. Many secondary characters get their own standalone episodes but Sea Captain is dunked like it’s got dry rot. He gets a chance to be more than a one-dimensional background character. We finally see the seafarer as more than the man with at least one glass eye restaurant who can barely keep the only seafood restaurant in town, The Frying Dutchman, afloat. But he also plunders the Sea Captain himself. “Yarr,” they come home to be robbed by town ordinances and political trickery as the corrupt Mayor Quimby gerrymanders the town’s unincorporated waters like he’s spray painting genitalia graffiti with office sharpies. Plunder enough for all, they will each probably make a little more than their usual rates. They dance and sing sea shanties on the voyage home. When Sea Captain gets a second ping, his life finds its purpose. It’s consumed him, destroying his marriage, wasting countless roasts, and leaving him an empty seashell of the man he used to be. He’s been pinging for this thing all his life. He finds that Nazi treasure which the adventurous archaeologist sunk offshore in the setup. Sea Captain Horatio McCallister finally fulfills his lifelong dream. That wave completely washes over the opening setup of the episode.
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