At Long Last Leave

The Simpsons find out that Chinese missiles are approaching Springfield , and they are escaping to the bomb shelter for 3 hours. Later, they get bored, and Liza’s curiosity makes the family see that the city is empty. Suddenly, they notice that the mayor’s office has parked a lot of cars. It turned out that all the residents of Springfield had gathered at the town meeting, and they all voted to expel the family from the city forever.

The family betrays itself, they go on stage. Mayor Quimby says that Springfield has gone bankrupt due to the constant cleaning after their tricks. Marge decides to persuade residents to leave the family, but to no avail: Quimby considers her "the worst of the Simpsons." In honor of the expulsion of the Simpsons from the city, the townspeople arrange a holiday.

The family leaves by car, but at night there is no place for them to sleep overnight. Finally, they stumble upon a place called “Outlandish”: a deserted, rotten place where only bad people live and there are no rules. The Simpsons find a free home and try to settle down to a new life. Their neighbor is Julian Assange .

However, Marge begins to miss Springfield. Homer and Marge secretly leave for the city under the disguise of Mr. Burns and Smithers , get drunk and have sex in their old house. Chief Wiggum finds them and calls the citizens in order to shoot them. Marge says that they have finally found a place where they are accepted as they are and love each other without the hatred of others. Homer and Marge leave through the puzzled crowd and return to Outland.

In the new house, the family finally got used to their dirty life, and then Bart sees Lenny and Karl sneaking. They want to start another life too, away from Springfield. Soon Moe , Quimby, and all the other Springfield come and decide to settle down in Outland.

Director Skinner , however, stayed in the deserted Springfield until Bart picked him up on a homemade helicopter. Skinner says: “It’s good to be fit.”

The plot of the episode was first announced on “ Comic-Con ” on July 23, 2011 during a committee with the producers of the series ^[1] . Australian activist Julian Assange , the founder of WikiLeaks , voiced himself. In 2010, an arrest warrant was issued in Sweden for Assange for sexual harassment and rape ^[2] . In England, he was put under house arrest, so he recorded his lines on the phone. Executive producer Al Jin, who controlled his sound from Los Angeles, did not know the whereabouts of the activist. According to Gene in an interview with Entertainment Weekly , Matt Groining was rumored that Assange wanted to appear on the show. The casting director Bonita Pietile was assigned the task: to call Assange and make sure he was ready. In the episode there is no reference to his arrest. Jin commented: “He is a controversial figure, and there are good reasons for this. There was even a dispute whether he will or will not voice, but in the end we took and did it ” ^[3] .

In honor of the 500th episode's airing, the FOX television channel arranged a continuous marathon of episodes of the series in order to break the Guinness Book of Records record "as the longest television viewing". For the competition were selected hundreds of fans of the series. As Patrick Kevin Day of the Los Angeles Times noted: “It’s possible that the Simpsons' super-fans won't last until the 500th episode. Otherwise, they may have a risk of headache, hand shake, hallucinations, and depression. ” The marathon lasted from February 8 to February 12, 2012. 237 episodes of the series were shown ^[4] . After 86 hours and 37 minutes, the winners were identified - Jeremiah Franco and Karin Shreve - who beat the record duration set in 2010 while watching the “24 Hours” series , and received a cash prize of $ 10,500 ^[4] , as well as an invitation to celebrate on the occasion of the release of the anniversary 500th episode ^[5] .

Being a fan of musicals , the scriptwriter of the episode, Michael Price used in the title of the episode reference to the song of Cole Porter "At Long Last Love" ^[6] .

The episode received very positive ratings from television critics who viewed it on the pre-episode of the episode during the holiday. Matthew Roush of TV Guide called the screensaver stunning and came to the conclusion: “The Simpsons again prove that they can still be classic for our age and forever” ^[7] . Alan Sepinwall from HitFix wrote: “Though there is a similar plot that we already know, there are a lot of jokes that make the day happier” ^[8] . James Ponivosik, a TIME critic, believes that the quality of the show was reduced in the 1990s, but many moments made him "die with laughter and understand why I like the Simpsons so much" ^[9] .

• At Long Last Leave on the Internet Movie Database
• At Long Last Leave (English) on the site Wikisimpsons