Secrets of a Successful Marriage
Encyclopedia
"Secrets of a Successful Marriage" is the twenty-second and final episode of The Simpsons
' fifth season
. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 19, 1994. In the episode, Homer
fears he may be a little slow, so he goes to the adult education
center. While there, he decides to teach a class of his own on the secrets of a successful marriage, since that is the only class he is qualified to teach. However, to keep his students interested, he is forced to tell personal secrets about his wife Marge
, which she dislikes.
The episode was written by Greg Daniels
and directed by Carlos Baeza
. It features cultural references to the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
and A Streetcar Named Desire
, and the films ...And Justice for All
, A Few Good Men
, Patton
, and Chinatown. The episode has been analyzed in books such as Leaving Springfield
and Education in Popular Culture. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It acquired a Nielsen rating
of 9.8, and was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired.
realizes that he is somewhat stupid, Marge
recommends that he take an adult education
course at the annex center. Down at the center, however, Homer changes his mind and decides to become a teacher. He talks to the administrator and accepts an opening to teach a class on having a successful marriage. Despite being confident that he can pull it off, he is frozen on his first day and cannot help his pupils with their relationship problems. The class collectively gets up to leave, but when Homer mentions his conversation with Marge in bed, the class decides to stay, eager to hear gossip. Marge soon discovers that everyone in town knows her personal secrets. She confronts Homer about it and he promises to stop, but he continues telling her secrets anyway; this time telling the class that Marge gets sexually excited whenever Homer nibbles on her elbow. Homer then takes the night off teaching class—so he can have his class observe the family over dinner.
When Marge growls at Homer that she wants the class to get out of their house, Moe
suggests that Homer should nibble on her elbow. Marge throws Homer out of the house, saying she can not trust him anymore, and refuses to let him back in. Homeless, Homer camps out in Bart
's tree house. Marge tries to reassure Bart and Lisa
that she and Homer love the kids, despite their current situation, but Lisa tells Bart she is worried their parents will get divorced. Marge tries to get advice from Reverend Lovejoy, who tells her to get a divorce.
While Homer longs for his wife, Moe comes by the Simpsons' house to declare his interest in Marge. She turns him down, but decides to invite him in for a glass of water. When Homer comes into the house with flowers he picked for Marge, Moe sees him and jumps out the window. Standing before her in rags, Homer professes his total and utter dependency on Marge. She tells him that that is not a good thing, but Homer then makes his winning argument: he loves her, he needs her to love him, and can not afford to ever lose her trust again or he will end up dead. Marge is won over and allows Homer to return to the house. The family is glad that he has returned, although Moe is less than thrilled.
The episode was written by Greg Daniels
and directed by Carlos Baeza
. It was the second script Daniels wrote for the show. He thought the staff had previously done many episodes where Homer "wasn't good at anything", so he tried to figure out something Homer was really good at, and he came up with the idea of Homer being a good husband. During season five, the staff of the show began writing more episodes about Homer and less about Bart. "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" was one of those episodes. The Simpsons writer Al Jean
said they started writing more Homer stories because the staff could relate more to him than Bart, making it easier to come up with Homer ideas. Executive producer David Mirkin
commented: "Bart, to write him accurately as a child, he can only have so much depth at a certain age. With Homer, we try to explore all levels of adulthood. There are just more places to go. Writing Homer properly is the trick, he's our main rock of the whole series. Homer's IQ is fairly flexible, he won't necessarily understand how to open a door at some point, but he can name the Supreme Court justices. Finding that balance is key to making the show work and making it surprising and making it believable and emotionally grounded." Mirkin was very fond of the fact that Homer and Marge have the biggest fight they have ever had on the show in the episode, and he thought it was a "really great" exploration of their marriage. He noticed that because Homer is thrown out of the house, the audience really worry about their relationship. Mirkin had been asked many times why Marge and Homer are still together, to which he replied that all people stay together even if they argue, "there's some sort of connection".
while talking to an administrator at the annex center. Smithers
's recollection of his marriage parodies the two plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
and A Streetcar Named Desire
, both written by American playwright Tennessee Williams
. Homer's bedroom rant to Marge is a parody mishmash of four popular films: ...And Justice for All
(1979), A Few Good Men
(1992), Patton
(1970), and Chinatown (1974). He says: "Look Marge, you don't know what it's like. I'm the one out there every day putting his ass on the line. And I'm not out of order! You're out of order. The whole freaking system is out of order. You want the truth? You want the truth?! You can't handle the truth! 'Cause when you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do! Forget it, Marge, it's Chinatown," all of which are lines from those films.
It was revealed in a flashback in the episode that Smithers was briefly married to a woman, but the two split up when he devoted too much time to his boss Mr. Burns. Smithers's relationship with Mr. Burns has long been a running joke on The Simpsons. His sexual orientation has often come into question, with some fans claiming he is a "Burns-sexual" and only attracted to his boss, while others maintain that he is, without a doubt, gay. Matthew Henry wrote in the book Leaving Springfield
that this episode is "perhaps the best" example of an attempt to portray an actual gay lifestyle on the show. Henry added that the flashback is a "wonderfully rendered parody of scenes from two of Tennessee Williams's most famous plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. To fully appreciate it, one must know something of not only the two plays cited but also of Williams himself, of his own struggles with both heterosexual and homosexual desires and the way in which these struggles were incorporated into his art. The creators of The Simpsons offer what I think is a perfect parallel for the relationship between Smithers and Mr. Burns by combining Williams's two most notable male characters and their defining characteristics: the suppressed homosexual desire of Brick and desperate dependence of Stanley
."
In their book Education in Popular Culture, Alma Harris, Roy Fisher, Ann Harris, and Christine Jarvis analyzes the adult education
aspects of this episode that portrays adult learners as "stupid and lazy". After Homer is appointed as a teacher, he feels immensely proud and boasts to all his acquaintances about it, initially making it seem like if the show is indicating that adult education tutors have a relatively high status in society. "However," the authors added, "Homer's pride is undercut for the audience by the awareness of how he came to be appointed and by the subsequent representation of the adult education center. It seems that anyone can become a tutor. [...] Homer's fellow tutors are drunks, incompetents and down-and-outs, adult education is therefore presented as an amateur business staffed by the dregs of society." The writers of the book thought the whole idea of storytelling and building on experience that Homer uses, and that many adult education tutors uses in real life, is represented in the episode "simply as an excuse for gossip and prurient curiosity". They also thought that statements like "I can't believe I paid ten thousand dollars for this course. What the heck was the lab fee for?" imply that adult education is "exploitative and poor value for money, and that the students themselves contribute to this by demanding an essentially recreational service." The authors concluded that the episode "certainly sustains a popular view of adult education as pointless and recreational. Similarly, no value whatsoever is attributed to the extensively researched, proven through practice and well-argued perspective that adult learners do best when the curriculum
builds on and values their experience."
In its original American broadcast, "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" finished forty-third in the ratings for the week of May 16 to May 22, 1994, with a Nielsen rating
of 9.8. The episode was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following Melrose Place.
Since airing, the episode has received positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, thought it was a "confident finale" to the fifth season, which "had seen the series become progressively more surreal and self-aware." DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson wrote that he thought the episode ended the season with a "high note", and that Homer’s insensitive gossiping about his relationship "presents lots of good bits. It completes this excellent year well." Jacobson's favorite line of the episode was "This is a place of learning, not a house of hearing about things!", which Homer tells his class after they demand him to reveal more secrets about him and Marge. Patrick Bromley of DVD Verdict gave the episode a grade of A−, and commented that episodes focusing on the relationship between Homer and Marge can "never fail", and there are "numerous opportunities for some classic Homer-isms" in the episode. Bill Gibron of DVD Talk
gave the episode a score of 4 out of 5. One-time Simpsons writer and comedian Ricky Gervais
named "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" his fifth favorite episode of the show, and commented that Homer's line to Marge, "I know now what I can offer you that no one else can. Complete and utter dependence," is "so sweet, because he's right!" It was placed at number seven on MSNBC
s top ten The Simpsons episodes list. They felt the episode embodied Homer's qualities of being "stupid, good-natured and mildly pathetic, [...] from his conversations with his brain [...] to his final proclamation that the one thing he can give Marge that no one else can is 'complete and utter dependence'."
"Secrets of a Successful Marriage" contains one of CollegeHumor
's Amir Blumenfeld's favorite "switcharoo" jokes, a joke that leads you to believe one thing, but is then "flipped completely" to create a new punch line
. In the episode, a distraught Marge drives her car while hearing Homer's voice in her head saying things such as "You mean I'm going to be a daddy?" and "I hope we'll always be together... together... together..." The "switcharoo" is that it is revealed that Homer is actually hiding on the floor in the car's back seat, speaking these things to Marge. Blumenfeld said: "God, nobody saw that coming. And I mean that in a non-sarcastic way."
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
The Simpsons (season 5)
The Simpsons fifth season originally aired on the Fox network between September 30, 1993 and May 19, 1994. The show runner for the fifth production season was David Mirkin who executive produced 20 episodes. Al Jean and Mike Reiss executive produced the remaining two, which were both hold overs...
. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 19, 1994. In the episode, Homer
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
fears he may be a little slow, so he goes to the adult education
Adult education
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
center. While there, he decides to teach a class of his own on the secrets of a successful marriage, since that is the only class he is qualified to teach. However, to keep his students interested, he is forced to tell personal secrets about his wife Marge
Marge Simpson
Marjorie "Marge" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. She is voiced by actress Julie Kavner and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, which she dislikes.
The episode was written by Greg Daniels
Greg Daniels
Gregory Martin "Greg" Daniels is an American television comedy writer, producer, and director.-Life and career:...
and directed by Carlos Baeza
Carlos Baeza
Carlos Baeza is an animation director. He has worked for The Simpsons and Futurama.- The Simpsons episodes :He is credited with directing the following episodes:*"Lisa's Pony"*"Radio Bart"*"Bart the Lover"*"Treehouse of Horror III"...
. It features cultural references to the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
and A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
, and the films ...And Justice for All
...And Justice for All (film)
...And Justice For All is a 1979 courtroom drama film, directed by Norman Jewison. The movie stars Al Pacino, John Forsythe, Jack Warden, Lee Strasberg, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Lahti, Craig T. Nelson and Thomas G. Waites. It was also 75-year-old character actor Sam Levene's final film...
, A Few Good Men
A Few Good Men (film)
A Few Good Men is a 1992 drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name. A courtroom drama, the film revolves around the trial of two U.S...
, Patton
Patton (film)
Patton is a 1970 American biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H...
, and Chinatown. The episode has been analyzed in books such as Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture is a non-fiction compilation work analyzing the effect of the television program The Simpsons on society, edited by John Alberti. The book was published in 2004 by Wayne State University Press...
and Education in Popular Culture. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It acquired a Nielsen rating
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
of 9.8, and was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired.
Plot
After HomerHomer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
realizes that he is somewhat stupid, Marge
Marge Simpson
Marjorie "Marge" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. She is voiced by actress Julie Kavner and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
recommends that he take an adult education
Adult education
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
course at the annex center. Down at the center, however, Homer changes his mind and decides to become a teacher. He talks to the administrator and accepts an opening to teach a class on having a successful marriage. Despite being confident that he can pull it off, he is frozen on his first day and cannot help his pupils with their relationship problems. The class collectively gets up to leave, but when Homer mentions his conversation with Marge in bed, the class decides to stay, eager to hear gossip. Marge soon discovers that everyone in town knows her personal secrets. She confronts Homer about it and he promises to stop, but he continues telling her secrets anyway; this time telling the class that Marge gets sexually excited whenever Homer nibbles on her elbow. Homer then takes the night off teaching class—so he can have his class observe the family over dinner.
When Marge growls at Homer that she wants the class to get out of their house, Moe
Moe Szyslak
Momar / Morris "Moe" Szyslak is a fictional character in the American animated television series, The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria and first appeared in the series premiere episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"...
suggests that Homer should nibble on her elbow. Marge throws Homer out of the house, saying she can not trust him anymore, and refuses to let him back in. Homeless, Homer camps out in Bart
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
's tree house. Marge tries to reassure Bart and Lisa
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
that she and Homer love the kids, despite their current situation, but Lisa tells Bart she is worried their parents will get divorced. Marge tries to get advice from Reverend Lovejoy, who tells her to get a divorce.
While Homer longs for his wife, Moe comes by the Simpsons' house to declare his interest in Marge. She turns him down, but decides to invite him in for a glass of water. When Homer comes into the house with flowers he picked for Marge, Moe sees him and jumps out the window. Standing before her in rags, Homer professes his total and utter dependency on Marge. She tells him that that is not a good thing, but Homer then makes his winning argument: he loves her, he needs her to love him, and can not afford to ever lose her trust again or he will end up dead. Marge is won over and allows Homer to return to the house. The family is glad that he has returned, although Moe is less than thrilled.
Production
Greg Daniels
Gregory Martin "Greg" Daniels is an American television comedy writer, producer, and director.-Life and career:...
and directed by Carlos Baeza
Carlos Baeza
Carlos Baeza is an animation director. He has worked for The Simpsons and Futurama.- The Simpsons episodes :He is credited with directing the following episodes:*"Lisa's Pony"*"Radio Bart"*"Bart the Lover"*"Treehouse of Horror III"...
. It was the second script Daniels wrote for the show. He thought the staff had previously done many episodes where Homer "wasn't good at anything", so he tried to figure out something Homer was really good at, and he came up with the idea of Homer being a good husband. During season five, the staff of the show began writing more episodes about Homer and less about Bart. "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" was one of those episodes. The Simpsons writer Al Jean
Al Jean
Al Jean is an award-winning American screenwriter and producer, best known for his work on The Simpsons. He was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and graduated from Harvard University in 1981. Jean began his writing career in the 1980s with fellow Harvard alum Mike Reiss...
said they started writing more Homer stories because the staff could relate more to him than Bart, making it easier to come up with Homer ideas. Executive producer David Mirkin
David Mirkin
David Mirkin is an American feature film and television director, writer and producer. Mirkin grew up in Philadelphia and intended to become an electrical engineer, but abandoned this career path in favor of studying film at Loyola Marymount University. After graduating, he became a stand-up...
commented: "Bart, to write him accurately as a child, he can only have so much depth at a certain age. With Homer, we try to explore all levels of adulthood. There are just more places to go. Writing Homer properly is the trick, he's our main rock of the whole series. Homer's IQ is fairly flexible, he won't necessarily understand how to open a door at some point, but he can name the Supreme Court justices. Finding that balance is key to making the show work and making it surprising and making it believable and emotionally grounded." Mirkin was very fond of the fact that Homer and Marge have the biggest fight they have ever had on the show in the episode, and he thought it was a "really great" exploration of their marriage. He noticed that because Homer is thrown out of the house, the audience really worry about their relationship. Mirkin had been asked many times why Marge and Homer are still together, to which he replied that all people stay together even if they argue, "there's some sort of connection".
Cultural references
Homer sings the end of the theme song to Family TiesFamily Ties
Family Ties is an American sitcom that aired on NBC for seven seasons, from 1982 to 1989. The sitcom reflected the move in the United States from the cultural liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s to the conservatism of the 1980s. This was particularly expressed through the relationship between young...
while talking to an administrator at the annex center. Smithers
Waylon Smithers
Waylon Smithers, Jr., usually referred to as Smithers, is a recurring fictional character in the animated series The Simpsons, who is voiced by Harry Shearer. Smithers first appeared in the episode "Homer's Odyssey", although he could be heard in the series premiere "Simpsons Roasting on an Open...
's recollection of his marriage parodies the two plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
and A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
, both written by American playwright Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
. Homer's bedroom rant to Marge is a parody mishmash of four popular films: ...And Justice for All
...And Justice for All (film)
...And Justice For All is a 1979 courtroom drama film, directed by Norman Jewison. The movie stars Al Pacino, John Forsythe, Jack Warden, Lee Strasberg, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Lahti, Craig T. Nelson and Thomas G. Waites. It was also 75-year-old character actor Sam Levene's final film...
(1979), A Few Good Men
A Few Good Men (film)
A Few Good Men is a 1992 drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name. A courtroom drama, the film revolves around the trial of two U.S...
(1992), Patton
Patton (film)
Patton is a 1970 American biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H...
(1970), and Chinatown (1974). He says: "Look Marge, you don't know what it's like. I'm the one out there every day putting his ass on the line. And I'm not out of order! You're out of order. The whole freaking system is out of order. You want the truth? You want the truth?! You can't handle the truth! 'Cause when you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do! Forget it, Marge, it's Chinatown," all of which are lines from those films.
Analysis
Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture is a non-fiction compilation work analyzing the effect of the television program The Simpsons on society, edited by John Alberti. The book was published in 2004 by Wayne State University Press...
that this episode is "perhaps the best" example of an attempt to portray an actual gay lifestyle on the show. Henry added that the flashback is a "wonderfully rendered parody of scenes from two of Tennessee Williams's most famous plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. To fully appreciate it, one must know something of not only the two plays cited but also of Williams himself, of his own struggles with both heterosexual and homosexual desires and the way in which these struggles were incorporated into his art. The creators of The Simpsons offer what I think is a perfect parallel for the relationship between Smithers and Mr. Burns by combining Williams's two most notable male characters and their defining characteristics: the suppressed homosexual desire of Brick and desperate dependence of Stanley
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...
."
In their book Education in Popular Culture, Alma Harris, Roy Fisher, Ann Harris, and Christine Jarvis analyzes the adult education
Adult education
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
aspects of this episode that portrays adult learners as "stupid and lazy". After Homer is appointed as a teacher, he feels immensely proud and boasts to all his acquaintances about it, initially making it seem like if the show is indicating that adult education tutors have a relatively high status in society. "However," the authors added, "Homer's pride is undercut for the audience by the awareness of how he came to be appointed and by the subsequent representation of the adult education center. It seems that anyone can become a tutor. [...] Homer's fellow tutors are drunks, incompetents and down-and-outs, adult education is therefore presented as an amateur business staffed by the dregs of society." The writers of the book thought the whole idea of storytelling and building on experience that Homer uses, and that many adult education tutors uses in real life, is represented in the episode "simply as an excuse for gossip and prurient curiosity". They also thought that statements like "I can't believe I paid ten thousand dollars for this course. What the heck was the lab fee for?" imply that adult education is "exploitative and poor value for money, and that the students themselves contribute to this by demanding an essentially recreational service." The authors concluded that the episode "certainly sustains a popular view of adult education as pointless and recreational. Similarly, no value whatsoever is attributed to the extensively researched, proven through practice and well-argued perspective that adult learners do best when the curriculum
Curriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
builds on and values their experience."
Reception
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
of 9.8. The episode was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following Melrose Place.
Since airing, the episode has received positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, thought it was a "confident finale" to the fifth season, which "had seen the series become progressively more surreal and self-aware." DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson wrote that he thought the episode ended the season with a "high note", and that Homer’s insensitive gossiping about his relationship "presents lots of good bits. It completes this excellent year well." Jacobson's favorite line of the episode was "This is a place of learning, not a house of hearing about things!", which Homer tells his class after they demand him to reveal more secrets about him and Marge. Patrick Bromley of DVD Verdict gave the episode a grade of A−, and commented that episodes focusing on the relationship between Homer and Marge can "never fail", and there are "numerous opportunities for some classic Homer-isms" in the episode. Bill Gibron of DVD Talk
DVD Talk
DVD Talk is a website for DVD enthusiasts founded in January 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman when DVDs and DVD players were first beginning to hit the market.The site started as an online forum, an email newsletter, and a page of DVD news and reviews...
gave the episode a score of 4 out of 5. One-time Simpsons writer and comedian Ricky Gervais
Ricky Gervais
Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, radio presenter, producer, musician, and writer.Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator...
named "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" his fifth favorite episode of the show, and commented that Homer's line to Marge, "I know now what I can offer you that no one else can. Complete and utter dependence," is "so sweet, because he's right!" It was placed at number seven on MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
s top ten The Simpsons episodes list. They felt the episode embodied Homer's qualities of being "stupid, good-natured and mildly pathetic, [...] from his conversations with his brain [...] to his final proclamation that the one thing he can give Marge that no one else can is 'complete and utter dependence'."
"Secrets of a Successful Marriage" contains one of CollegeHumor
CollegeHumor
CollegeHumor is a comedy website owned by InterActiveCorp and based in New York City. The site features daily original comedy videos and articles created by its in-house writing and production team, in addition to user-submitted videos, pictures, articles and links. In early 2009, CollegeHumor's...
's Amir Blumenfeld's favorite "switcharoo" jokes, a joke that leads you to believe one thing, but is then "flipped completely" to create a new punch line
Punch line
A punch line is the final part of a joke, comedy sketch, or profound statement, usually the word, sentence or exchange of sentences which is intended to be funny or to provoke laughter or thought from listeners...
. In the episode, a distraught Marge drives her car while hearing Homer's voice in her head saying things such as "You mean I'm going to be a daddy?" and "I hope we'll always be together... together... together..." The "switcharoo" is that it is revealed that Homer is actually hiding on the floor in the car's back seat, speaking these things to Marge. Blumenfeld said: "God, nobody saw that coming. And I mean that in a non-sarcastic way."
External links
- "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" at The Simpsons.com