“The Computer Wore Menace Shoes” is the sixth episode of the twelfth season of The Simpsons.

Plot

Homer shows up to work, but no one lets him in. Lenny and Carl stop by and tell him the plant is closed; everyone else was informed via e-mail. Homer decides to buy a computer. The best one costs $5,000 and Homer must take out a fifth mortgage. After he gives up on learning how to use it, Lisa sets up the computer. Homer quickly catches on and starts his own webpage, which contains copyrighted material from other pages. To avoid getting sued, Homer calls himself “Mister X.” When no one visits his page, Homer posts a rumor that Mayor Quimby spent the street repair fund on a secret swimming pool. This rumor later proves to be quite true.

Homer then decides to post more rumors, vowing to keep digging and probing until everyone is in jail. He later uncovers that Apu is selling week-old donuts as bagels, a police scandal, and that Mr. Burns is selling uranium to terrorists. Mr. X wins the Pulitzer Prize, but when Homer hears the cash reward is going to starving children because no one knows who Mr. X is, he reveals that he is Mr. X. With the whole town aware of Homer's double identity, no one wants to talk to him. As his webpage's popularity drops precipitously, Homer posts made-up stories, but just as Homer's page gets popular again, he is kidnapped.

Homer wakes up on “The Island,” a strange Victorian era-style community straight out of The Prisoner (with the exception of the name, which in The Prisoner is “The Village.”) Everyone there has a secret that some powerful organization doesn't want to share with the world. Homer learns that one of his stories was true (the story he was captured for designated that flu shots were being loaded with mind-controlling additives). While he is trapped, Homer is replaced at home by an impersonator with a German accent. Homer gets help from Number Six (voiced by Patrick McGoohan, reprising the role he played in The Prisoner) and escapes the island. He returns home and defeats his German double. However, the entire family is drugged by the dog and taken back to The Island, where they are quite happy.

Trivia

Although Homer claims not to have a computer, he used one in the episode "King-Size Homer" when he was assigned to work at home due to his hyper-obesity. However, this was installed by (and likely remained the property of) Mr. Burns. In El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer, the "Space Coyote" instructed him to get more possessions, and reminded him that he did not even own a computer. On the other hand, during the meteor shower in "'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky", Marge makes a reference to a screensaver, implying that they do own a computer ("This is even better than our screensaver. And I love our screensaver.").

A reproduction of Mr. X's webpage was put up by Fox shortly before the episode aired and is still viewable as of January 2008. It is extremely faithful to the episode, with one omission: there is none of the poor grammar and spelling noted by Skinner.

Homer uses the pseudonym “Mr. X” in the episode “Secrets of a Successful Marriage,” when he is recreating a scenario between him and Marge.

This episode leaves the family stuck on The Island, with no obvious way of how they are meant to get back. A further example of an “anti-ending” episode is “Missionary: Impossible.” where the episode never reveals how Homer escaped the lava river.

In the German-dubbed version, Homer's doppelgänger has a slightly Italian-sounding accent.

This episode got 1.58 million viewers on its premiere Sky One showing in the UK on 7 January 2001, at the time the highest rated Simpsons episode on the channel ever. However, the record would be broken a month later with “Skinner's Sense of Snow,” which got 1.65 million.

The scene of Homer being chased by the bubble-like entity known as Rover was previously seen in The Joy of Sect where it chases Marge when she escapes from the Movementarian cult but catches Hans Moleman instead. Here, Homer easily punctures the bubble with a plastic fork. Rover was featured in many episodes of The Prisoner where it was used as an anti-escape device.

Larry Groznic, a fictional columnist for The Onion criticized this episode's faithfulness to The Prisoner TV show in one of his columns.

Cultural references

The title is a pun on The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, a 1969 film that has a loosely related plot.

The couch gag involves Santa's Little Helper dancing like Snoopy in the cartoon version of Peanuts.

Homer's instruction into the computer mouse to "kill Flanders" is a reference to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where Scotty attempts to direct a Macintosh by speaking to its mouse.

Elements Homer steals for his “Mr. X website” include the “Dancing Jesus” (a parody of the dancing baby) and the After Dark screensaver “Flying Toasters.”

References are made to controversial journalist Matt Drudge.

The story “Mr. X” posts on his website about flu shots being used as a mind control agent may be a reference to The X-Files episode “Red Museum.” The fact that it subsequently turns out to be true parallels the Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory.

The cymbal-banging monkey that Homer saw when he woke up after being drugged was the same as the monkey that Bender saw when he woke up on the island on the Futurama episode “Obsoletely Fabulous.”

The Prisoner references

This episode makes many references to the popular TV show The Prisoner, including:

Patrick McGoohan guest stars, reprising his role as “Number Six”; he claims to have spent 33 years trying to escape from “The Island,” the same amount of time between the end of The Prisoner and the premiere of this episode.

“The Island” resembles “The Village,” including the 1960s-styled inner sanctum containing lava lamps and egg chairs.

Homer's exclamation that he is a man and not a number, only to look at the pin on his shirt, is a parody of Patrick McGoohan's famous phrase: “I am not a number, I am a free man!”

Homer's escape from “The Island” is nearly thwarted by the “Rover” balloon (which had previously been parodied in the episode “The Joy of Sect”).

The escape also borrows the theme music from The Prisoner.