Oh boy everybody. We have a weird-ass episode today. I honestly have no idea what the deal with it is. Was something like this happening in 2003? It just seems so random. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s discuss Marge’s one-woman war on people without children.

The episode starts off with a joke that really felt weird in 2016, because it’s Bart and Lisa watching some sort of obvious Crocodile Hunter parody where he’s brutally attacked and killed by a crocodile. I double checked, and the real Steve Irwin had not been killed at this point, that would be two years later, but wow did it startle me seeing this right at the top of an episode.

But that doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the episode, and we move onto Lisa changing the channel to some sort of dollhouse makeover show, which I’m shocked TLC doesn’t actually have. This causes an argument with Bart though, and the two fight over the remote until it accidentally changes to some channel showing a children’s entertainer named Roofi, which is hilarious. I don’t know if Raffi was exactly a current reference in 2004, I would have imagined that the Wiggles would have been a more timely joke, but whatever, Roofi is what we get.

But Maggie is super down with it. She quickly starts loving Roofi and his show, and Marge starts giving in and letting Maggie watch it all the time. But things escalate when Bart accidently says that there are Roofi CD’s, which starts to slowly unravel the families sanity as Maggie and Marge insist on listening to the terrible music pretty much non-stop. The rest of the family slowly go mad, as Bart begs Mrs. Krabappel for detention to avoid driving home with Marge and Maggie, and Homer contemplates destroying the CD’s with a hammer.

Things take a weird turn though when Roofi announces that he has a concert coming up in Springfield. He guilts his child viewers and tells them that if their parents don’t take them they’ll make him sad, so Marge obviously has to get some tickets for her and Maggie. The rest of the family aren’t tortured into joining them, so Marge and Maggie head out into the country-side outside Springfield and get ready for the Roofi concert, which is basically a baby Woodstock.

The concert becomes a giant open-air celebration, with babies running around being themselves and enjoying the opening act of the Teletubbies. However, as the babies start to get irritated with the Teletubbies’ shenanigans it begins raining, and the babies quickly lose their minds. They become fussy and mad, to the point that when Roofi finally comes out to perform he finds the crowd hostile. He decides to bail on the concert, and things quickly escalate from Woodstock to Altamont.

The police try to stop the baby riot, but are overwhelmed, and the riot continues with the babies somehow causing a whole lot of damage. But the true effects of that concert aren’t shown until later when Springfield holds an emergency Town Meeting to discuss the damage caused by the babies. People are furious, and somehow that takes the form of a new organization, led by Lindsey Naegle called “Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens and Gays against Parasitic Parents.”

SSCCATAGAPP is dedicated to taking away the rights of people in Springfield who have children, allowing those who don’t to live their lives in peace without the annoyance of dealing with other people’s kids. And I gotta tell you, that sounds wonderful. Other people’s kids are the worst. But Marge does not agree with this assessment, and fights against the group, even though they quickly whip up the people of Springfield to destroy every childish thing in town.

Springfield quickly changes as its citizens destroy toys, make it so kids can’t ride roller coasters, and have Otto take old people to gamble instead of taking kids to school. Marge is disgusted by this sudden cultural shift, and tries to confront Lindsey in a parking garage to show her how great kids can be by showing her Lisa, but her mission is undercut when Bart and Maggie show up and reinforce Lindsey’s disdain for children.

But Marge isn’t going to give up. She rallies a group of parents in the small “Family Section” at Luigi’s, and lets everyone know that she plans on creating a rival group that will fight for family rights, and get ballot measures passed that will return everything to the way it used to be. But she runs into a bit of a snag when she realizes that no one wants to pay for getting a ballot measure passed. And since she doesn’t want to literally sell her soul to Big Tobacco to get it passed, she’s in a bit of a spot.

That is until Mr. Burns randomly decides to support the cause, wanting to keep children around so he can harvest their organs. And when the rest of the town sees Mr. Burns supporting the cause they decide that it’s worth checking out, and it starts really gaining momentum. So their measure gets on the ballot, and the war is on. Lindsey and her group begin campaigning against Marge’s group, causing Homer to release a ridiculous campaign ad that features subliminal messages and Rudy Giuliani.

But things don’t look great for Marge’s side. The polls aren’t in their favor, and Homer’s ad was all kinds of unhelpful, so it looks like it’s going to fail. Which is where Bart and Lisa come in. They decide to come up with a plan to fix things, and I guess they do. Basically they just get an army of children to wait around the polling center, and hug all the childless people, thus getting them so sick from their weakened immune systems that they can’t vote in time. Sure, whatever. The measure passes and the episode is resest to the way things were before it even started.

Lucky me. It’s my least favorite type of Marge episodes. Ones where she’s sanctimonious and trying to make the rest of the town believe the things she does; because there’s no way that she’s not right. Albeit, this time things are a little ridiculous. I don’t think that a town can pass insane legislation to ban people with children, but honestly I get where SSCCATAGAPP is coming from. Other people’s kids suck, and generally make any public gathering worse. I get that they want to curtail that. But Marge does not, and decides to just pound the city into submission, desperate for things to remain the way that they are. It’s just an odd episode, because I end up not feeling like I’m on either of their sides. Both Lindsey and Marge are in the wrong, to me, and I just end up resenting Marge for thinking that she knows better than everyone in town, and that her opinions should punish everyone else in town.

Take Away: Kids that aren’t related to you are the worst, but maybe don’t punish them through local government?

“Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens and Gays” was written by Jon Vitti and directed by Bob Anderson 2004.