The Simpsons (animation)/Recap/Who Shot Mr. Burns

"Who Shot Mr. Burns" (production codes 2F16 and 2F20) is a two-part episode, and the only one in the series. It was end of season 6 and the opener for season 7.

The reveal of the real murderer has been referenced in several episodes since.

""[Burns] became consumed by greed, he'd steal from anyone...and when he tried to steal our sunlight, he crossed the line from everyday villainy into Cartoonish Supervillainy!""
 * After-Action Villain Analysis: Smithers provides some.

"McCallister: Arr, Burns, your scurvy schemes will earn ye a one-way passage to the boneyard! Ned: I'd like to hear from Sideshow Mel! Mel: I'll see to it that Burns suffers the infernal machinations of hell's grim tyrant! Otto: Yeah! Burns: Oh, you all talk big, but who here has the guts to stop me?"
 * Armor-Piercing Question: Burns of all characters asks one, when Springfield's hatred of him was even more intense than usual.

"Smithers: Father, I'm not a Catholic, but...well, I tried to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade. But anyway, I've got a...rather large sin to confess. sniffles I'm the one who...shot Mr. Burns! Wiggum: (pokes head out, cocks gun) That's all I needed to hear! Boy, this thing works great."
 * Cliff Hanger
 * Confess in Confidence: Smithers goes to confession.

"'Marge: He's causing us all to yell!"
 * Contest Winner Cameo: Subverted. The person correctly guessing the resolution to the season ender would be animated into an episode. Nobody won the contest, however: Only one viewer correctly followed the episode's trail of evidence and concluded that Maggie did the deed, but that person never signed up for the contest.
 * Fair Play Whodunnit: Even though the culprit did seem to come out of the blue, the clues were indeed all there, with the mystery even being drummed up as a contest to see who could figure it out..
 * Foiler Footage: Even though only a few of them could have been guilty, there was a gunshot, and Principal Skinner's gun had a silencer; Moe had a shotgun, which would've killed Burns, and Apu is shown using an automatic weapon that still leaves just one wound. They also shot a full alternate summation where Smithers goes through his whole Motive Rant, and it's explained how all the clues could have added up to Smithers being the culprit.
 * Multi-Part Episode: Notably the only one the show has ever done.
 * No Indoor Voice: During the meeting, everyone seemed to have picked up a habit of shouting out what Burns had recently done to their lives.

"Moe: I've been writing creepy letters to that?"
 * Parrot Expowhat: Jasper says "You shot who in the what now?"
 * Pay Evil Unto Evil: Subverted. Burns is portrayed as an opportunist with no moral restraint. When he decides to block sunlight from Springfield, a town hall meeting is called on the subject, and everyone brings a gun to the meeting. But when someone actually SHOOTS Burns (hid behind a Shadow Discretion Shot) he is perceived as a victim, despite his obviously evil nature, and the attempted murder is investigated anyway. This is VERY out of character for Springfield, the kind of town that would leave a boy in a well for previously pranking the town into thinking someone else fell into a well.
 * Poor Man's Porn: Moe is forced to admit under a lie detector test that he spends his evenings ogling the women in the Sears catalogue (even though Sears stopped sending out Sears catalogues at the time of the episode's first airing, but who's to say that Moe doesn't have a stash of them from around the time that they were sent out through the mail?)
 * Sears catalogues are still published to this day in Canada, so maybe Moe was getting new catalogues from there?
 * Moe invokes this trope again when he brings up "this porn channel i'm too cheap to descramble," which turns out to be an infomercial for shoe inserts.


 * The Scream: A variation appears on the first half; on realizing that Mr. Burns has forgotten his name yet again despite all his efforts, Homer takes a deep breath and yells a profanity (starts with an "F", the rest is covered by the sound of an organ playing). It's given exactly the same treatment as The Scream.