While cooking dinner tonight, I suddenly realized something.

You know that episode of The Simpson, ‘You Only Move Twice’, where Homer gets a dream job with a boss who turns out to be a Bond villain (“My department is way ahead of the lasers and germ warfare divisions!”), only for the rest of the family to become dissatisfied with their newly comfortable lives and want to return home?

I just realized that Hank Scorpio being a supervillain has no bearing on the plot whatsoever.

In any other show, or in any other episode probably, the fact that Homer’s dream boss turns out to be an evil madman would be the main point. It practically writes itself (“Dad, Scorpio’s trying to take over the world!”). But here, it’s entirely a running gag that has nothing to do with the main plot, which is just the family being discontented by what they thought they wanted and Homer choosing to give up his perfect job to make them happy. It’s just part of the humor that he never realizes that his friendly and caring boss is an evil genius out to conquer the world.

Felt the need to point that out, since in retrospect it makes the episode even funnier.