Life on the Fast Lane/References

Episode	References	Gags	Appearances	Gallery	Quotes	Credits

◄ The Telltale Head

Life on the Fast Lane

Homer's Night Out ►

Cultural References

• The title is a pun on The Eagles' 1977 song "Life in the Fast Lane". The initial title ("Bjorn To Be Wild") was meant to be a play on Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild".
• The scene near the end parodies the film An Officer and A Gentleman, and contains the same music score as well.

Trivia

• This is the first episode in the series that primarily focuses on Marge.
• The original title of this episode was "Bjorn to Be Wild". This is because it called for Albert Brooks to voice Bjorn, a Swedish tennis instructor, but Matt Groening thought it would be better to make Brooks' character French. This then led to them nearly calling the episode "Jacques to Be Wild". Interestingly, and nineteen seasons later, in "Coming to Homerica", the name was recycled to name a bunky, athletic-alike Ogdenviliian man of Norwegian heritage (another Scandinavian country), who seems to fall in love not with Marge, but with Selma instead.
• The moon is seen to have three craters on it, much like a bowling ball when Jacques is dropping Marge off.
• This is the very first episode of The Simpsons to win an Emmy award.
  • According to the audio commentary on the Some Enchanted Evening episode later on at Season 1's end, when this 1st emmy took place, James L. Brooks taunted and mocked Gapor Csupo (who is the owner of Klasky-Csupo, Inc., which oversaw The Simpsons' animation from Seasons 1-3) by saying quote "maybe this shit isn't funny!". That was because that aforementioned episode, which was the 1st 1 produced ever for the show, actually originally had sloppy animation quality that almost no one on the team wanted (except Gapor Csupo & that episode's storyboard artist & director, Kent Butterworth, who wanted the animation to be over-the-top & off-model), and James L. Brooks yelled "this is shit!" in response to it. He got into an extremely heated feud with Gapor Csupo afterwards, who not only denied anything wrong with the animation, but also yelled at him "well, maybe this shit isn't funny!", or in other words, he thought there was something wrong with the way the show's writing was made. James L. Brooks then decided to repeat this line back at him to taunt him at the ceremony, presumably for payback or vengeance.
• Jacques takes Marge to Shorty's Coffee Shop for Brunch.
• Albert Brooks is credited under the name "A. Brooks" in this episode, as with all his other appearances on The Simpsons.
• Marge's shoe size is 13 AA.
• Jacques appears again in The Simpsons' seventh season episode "Team Homer", and makes a brief cameo as a bowler in the past in "And Maggie Makes Three". He also appears in the "Do the Bartman" music video dancing with various women (and Karl).
• This is the second and last episode to not play the theme but instead fades from the street in the intro to a shot of the Simpson house as the first six notes play on horns instead of xylophone dings, the seventh note draws out as the camera zooms onto the house, a quick drum roll plays to repeat the seventh note, and the episode begins from there. This first happened in "Bart the General".
• When the street in the intro fades to the Simpson house in this episode, the shot is different than the shot used in "Bart the General". In "Bart the General", the Simpson house shot was the infamous three-quarter front view, while in this episode, the Simpson house shot is a front view instead.
• Marge turns 34 years old in this episode (She used to be 33 years old for the first 8 episodes of Season 1 and of the whole show), but was shown to be 36 in later episodes.
• This is the first episode in which Homer almost loses Marge. He would almost lose her more in later episodes.
• This is Matt Groening's second favorite episode right behind "Bart the Daredevil".
• A scene from this episode could be seen in the 'It's on FOX' commercial from 1990.
• This episode was released the day before Marge's birthday, as confirmed in "Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart".

Goofs

Marge with white pearls

Marge with a white finger

• If Marge is 34, this would mean she gave birth to Bart, now 10, when she was 24. This is inconsistent with most flashbacks to Homer and Marge's earlier lives.
• When Marge tells Homer about her birthday plans, one of her fingers is colored white.
• Jacques says "four onion rings" without his French accent which could indicate that he is not French at all and his accent was fake.

• When Marge is seen twice putting on bowling shoes, she is putting them on her bare feet. In real life, you need to wear socks with bowling shoes in order to prevent the spread of foot fungus.
  • In addition to this, Marge is seen wearing socks in bowling shoes in "The Great Wife Hope", which makes this point even more valid.
  • This may be intentional to show Marge's lack of knowledge about bowling.
• The filling of Homer's sandwich changes from green to purple.
• Depending on the scene, the label of the French Perfume bottle changes between blue, purple, and red.
• In the scene where Marge is talking to Patty on the phone, Marge's pearls are white instead of the usual red.