Plot
Driving home after a trip to the dentist and a hip hop lesson in dental care from "Luda-Crest", Homer and the kids decide to go to the local ice cream parlor, where Homer buys what turns out to be the store's millionth ice cream cone. This results in Homer's appearing on Kent Brockman's TV news talk show Smartline. Kent is disgusted that he is forced to do a fluff piece instead of an in-depth, intellectually stimulating discussion of the conflict in the Middle East. During the interview, Homer accidentally knocks Kent's cup of coffee into his lap. Kent screams, "Owww! That hurt like a -" and swears so horribly that Marge cannot remove the word from Bart's Etch A Sketch.
After the commercial break, Kent apologizes for his despicable act, but is relieved to find that nobody saw his on-air faux pas, as (according to the Comic Book Guy) no one under 70 watches television for the news anymore now that the Internet has become a more popular resource. However, Ned Flanders sees Kent's infamous newscast during his nightly ritual of reviewing TV shows he deems are objectionable (with The 700 Club and the "Non-Indian" version of the "Please Stand By" test pattern as the only programs his children can watch). He immediately sends an e-mail to the FCC about the incident. The next day, during the Channel 6 newscast, Kent finds out that he is under scrutiny for his indiscretion and that the station has been fined a whopping $10 million. Kent is demoted to weekend weatherman with his rival, Arnie Pye, as the new anchorman. Krusty the Clown's show also suffers from cutbacks thanks to FCC fines, to the point that Krusty is now the replacement voice for Itchy & Scratchy. Later, Lindsey Naegle speaks to Kent, assuring him that his job is safe, but fires him after she finds cocaine in his coffee cup. Brockman tries to explain that the white powdery ring is Splenda, but Naegle dismisses "Splenda" as street slang for cocaine.
The next day, at the Simpsons' home, Homer finds Kent sleeping on their couch, after Marge took him in amid fears that he might kill himself. While watching TV, Lisa wonders why the cable channel Fox News can be so conservative while the Fox Network is more liberal (and libertine). Kent replies that Fox deliberately airs programs with morally reprehensible content that will catch the ire of the FCC, leading to fines, with the fines funding the Republican Party (according to Brockman, everyone in the entertainment business knows this, but no one is brave enough to report the scam). Lisa goads him into blowing the whistle on the scam, using her web camera and uploading the revelation on YouTube. Kent's subsequent webcast is so successful that Springfield's Republican Party members are less than thrilled about Kent threatening their ill-gotten gains, so Lindsay Naegle and Krusty the Clown hatch a plan to stop him.
The next day, Lisa and Kent are accosted by the party members, who offer him his old job back with a 50% raise, which Kent accepts two seconds later, before apologizing to Lisa. At home, Lisa complains to Homer that today's media figures have no bravery or integrity. Homer consoles her by telling a horrifying secret Kent told him about the FOX network, only for all references to the secret to be redubbed with an announcer praising all of FOX's programming, like House and American Idol. Before the closing credits, Homer tries again to tell FOX's horrible secret, only to be cut off by the vanity plates for Gracie Films Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)