Homer "wins" a ticket to a candy convention being held in Springfield and insists on taking Marge with him so she can hold more candy in her coat. That means Bart, Lisa and Maggie get stuck with a baby-sitter while Homer and Marge are away. While at the convention, Homer notices a rare "Gummy DeMilo" concealed in a secured glass case which makes Homer's mouth water every time he sees it. Desperately wanting the "DeMilo" candy, Homer smashes into the glass case and grabs it setting off the alarm alerting the convention people and security personnel. Homer and Marge proceed to escape the convention center with the stolen "DeMilo" piece, and with the crowd in hot pursuit. While being chased, Homer hastily makes a bomb out of a package of pop-rocks candy and a soda can from a nearby machine and throws it at the crowd. Homer manages to escape as the convention center explodes behind him in a funny scene reminiscent of various James Bond movies. After returning home Homer notices his beloved Gummy DeMilo has gone missing, but Marge demands that he takes the baby-sitter home and look for it later. As the baby sitter is getting out of Homer's car when they get to her house, Homer notices the "Gummy DeMilo" had become stuck to the baby-sitter's bottom. Homer then proceeds to grab it from her bottom with his mouth watering. The baby-sitter mistakes this for sexual harassment and runs away. The next day, Homer's front lawn becomes the scene of a mass protest the baby-sitter had gathered thinking she was sexually harassed the night before. Marge believes him when he explains that he never meant to touch her inappropriately and she suggests Homer go out and try to explain his actions to the crowd. The crowd doesn't believe his story, and to make matters worse, Homer's robe gets blown open by the wind flashing the crowd. The protesters follow Homer everywhere, even to work, where they even continue to harass him at his own work station. The media, and even the national media, eventually gets wind of the situation and Homer's front lawn becomes a media circus. What we see is a perfect parody of much of the media outlets in America. We see all sorts of news reports and talk shows sensationalizing the story. Homer manages to get a interview on some tabloid news TV show, which is clearly a parody of various tabloid TV news shows at the time, such as "Hard Copy" and Inside Edition," to try to share his side of the story, but the show's editors cut and edit the whole interview making Homer look like he was actually admitting to the allegations. The show's editors also do quite a bit of grade school-level editing of the video, but the TV viewers still blindly eat it all up anyway. We also see a parody of the Sally Jessy Raphael talk show of the time, where female guests, who had never even heard of Homer Simpson, are goaded in to claiming they hate him anyway. In one scene from the local Channel 6 station, Kent Brockman uses a picture a news helicopter has taken of Homer getting out of the shower that day to claim that the curtains somehow gave Homer "sexual powers." In another scene from Channel 6, they use an infrared camera to spy into the Simpsons home. Despite clearly detecting Homer and and the family sitting in the dining room eating, they instead zoom into the kitchen where they claim a turkey baking in the oven was Homer "stewing in his own juices." In another funny scene, we see Homer and the family gathered around the TV where they are flipping through the channels, coming upon various talk shows of guests hating on Homer, and also a TV movie re-enactment with NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz playing Homer. In the end, it turns out that Groundskeeper Willie has a video tape he had shot of Homer and the baby sitter getting out of the car, and was able to prove that Homer didn't really sexually harass the woman at all. That still doesn't faze the media much, including the show that had interviewed Homer earlier. The show would admit to their "mistakes" during the closing credits, but they would scroll the credits far too fast for anyone to be able to read anything. The show then showed a preview of the next day's newscast where they tried to claim Groundskeeper Willie as some perverted voyeur who would take pictures of people's private moments when they least expected it. Homer buys into it anyway much to the family's chagrin, calling Willie "evil." Homer then proclaims that he has not learned anything from the experience and the episode ends with Homer hugging the TV promising they would "never fight again."
This episode is definitely one of my top 10 favorite Simpsons episodes. The episode also gives a clear picture of how the American media finds and distorts and sensationalizes too many news stories, which too much of the viewing public in turn eats up.
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