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| Marion Ross and Marcia Lewis on Happy Days. |
Fans of The Simpsons will undoubtedly remember the classic 1993 episode "Marge in Chains" in which the family's sensible matriarch goes to prison for a short stint after absentmindedly stealing a bottle of bourbon from the local Kwik-E-Mart. So many great moments in that episode: "I'll miss Sheriff Lobo!" "What kind of slime would I marry?" "He's history's greatest monster!" There's a brilliant court sequence featuring Phil Hartman as incompetent lawyer Lionel Hutz. And it ends up being a really sweet story about how much the Simpson family and the entire town of Springfield rely on Marge.
Fourteen years earlier, Happy Days did a very similar episode called "Marion Goes to Jail." The plot has Marion (Marion Ross) getting locked up for a slew of traffic violations after her car rolls downhill and crashes through the wall of Arnold's restaurant. The incident ultimately serves to make Marion's husband Howard (Tom Bosley), who'd previously been behaving like a jerk, appreciate her all the more. In a weird coincidence, when this episode originally aired on ABC, it was up against Homer's favorite show, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. I'm not sure if Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, the authors of "Marge in Chains," ever saw "Marion Goes to Jail." They're very pop culture savvy, though, so it's likely they did. Maybe it was a subliminal influence on them.
And what did we think of "Marion Goes to Jail"? Well, you can find out on the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.